The Assignment
By: Emily
2-16-99
Long ago in Beijing, China, two friends named Ti Li and Su Nai were sitting in school. Their teacher was named Mrs. Chin. Mrs. Chin was handing back a test on Chinese History and Ti Li got the better grade on the test. Ti Li got a 98% and Su Nai got an 83%. Su Nai was always jealous of Ti Li. You see, Ti Li always got a better grade than Su Nai on everything. It was accepted that Ti Li was the smartest one in her grade at Shing Tuo High School.
The next day, Mrs.Chin announced that she was going to give an assignment to find out why the Chinese wanted to build the Great Wall of China.
Su Nai was so happy. "This isn't a hard task at all," she thought. Su Nai was the kind of person who rushed into things. She didn't stop and think. But as Su Nai looked in books, all she found was that the Chinese built the Great Wall so they would be protected from the barbarians from the North who were attacking them.
"That's a silly reason. I wouldn't be afraid of any barbarians," she thought to herself.
So the next day Su Nai went to school without any answer to the problem. She didn't know what to do. Should she copy Ti Li's answer, or should she use the one she had found? Su Nai decided to copy Ti Li's answer.
As she wrote the same answer she was sure it would be the right one since it was Ti Li's idea. She copied, " I think that the Great Wall of China was built so that China would be more interesting." Su Nai thought that it was a great answer.
Su Nai was satisfied with the answer until the next week when they got their tests back.
When Mrs. Chin handed Su Nai her test, she saw that she had failed it.
The answer that she believed to be so silly was really the correct answer. "Ti Li actually got something incorrect!" Su Nai thought excitedly. " Why did I copy from Ti Li's paper?" she asked herself angrily. "What was I thinking?"
From then on, she never copied from anyone else's paper, no matter how smart they were.
This folk tale illustrates the Chinese proverb, "When the blind lead the blind they both fall over the cliff."