Once there was a stonebreaker who was very weary of his exhausting work, and wished more than anything to live the luxurious and lazy life of a fat merchant. Who knows how, but his wish came true. After a time, however, from his shop window he saw a mandarin passing by, being carroed in a comfortable seat by his many servert. " Oh, how lovely it would be if I were a mandarin!" he sighed, and soon after that, he too became a mandarin.

However, since he was still obliged to obey the emperor, the mandarin really wished he was in his place. Time passed and his wish came true: he became the emperor. But the sun still burnt him. " oh how wonderful it would be if I were the sun!" he exclaimed.

At once, he was the sun; but when a cloud obscured him, he became a cloud, only to find that the wind was stronger than the cloud, and so he had to become wind. He went to blow against a mountain and discoverd that it was stronger than the wind; so he became a mountain.

At this point, he heard the hammer blows if men who were digging out of the mountain, and at last he realised that stonebreaker was the stringest of all, and then he became, once again, what he had been at the beginning, a stonebreaker.
by: Samuel @ 8:12 PM