一片草叶
Lu Ban and the saw: a Chinese legend
Name: ________________ Date: ________
两千多年前，鲁国有一个木匠，大家都叫他鲁班。他做的桌子不会摇，他修的房子几十年也不会坏。
相传有一年，鲁班接到了一个任务：修一座很大的宫殿。这需要很多很多木头，可是给他的时间很短。
那个时候还没有锯子，砍树只能用斧头。鲁班带着一群徒弟上了山，从早砍到晚，每个人的手都破了，可是一天下来，也只砍倒了几棵树。照这样下去，到了日子，连一半也修不完。
这天，鲁班一个人爬上一座更高的山，想找一些更好的树。路很滑，他脚下一滑，赶紧一把抓住了路边的一把草。他站稳以后，觉得手上很疼，一看，手指被划破了，血都出来了。
“这么软的小草，怎么会把手划破？”他觉得很奇怪，就摘下一片草叶，放在眼前仔细看。原来，叶子的两边长着一排很小很小的“牙”，摸上去很硬。
鲁班看着这片小小的叶子，心里突然一亮：要是做一个工具，边上也有这样的小牙，拿着它在树上拉来拉去，不就能很快地把树弄断了吗？
他马上下了山，先用竹子做了一个。在竹子的一边弄出一排小牙，在树上一拉，果然能拉进去一点儿。可是没拉几下，小牙就坏了。他又请铁匠打了一条铁片，在边上做出一排小牙。这一次，两个徒弟一个人拉一头，拉来拉去，没过多久，一棵大树就倒了下来。
就这样，锯子出现了。听说最后，鲁班按时修好了宫殿。
这个故事是不是真的，现在已经没有人知道了。但是中国的木匠一直把鲁班当作自己的祖师。中文里还有一个成语，叫“班门弄斧”：在鲁班家门口玩斧头，意思是在真正的高手面前，表现自己的那一点儿本事。所以，要是你的朋友很会做菜，你在他面前做菜的时候，可以先客气一句：“我这是班门弄斧了。”
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 修 | xiū | to repair; to mend; to fix |
| 任务 | rènwù | task; mission; assignment |
| 座 | zuò | constellation; zodiac sign (as in 巨蟹座) |
| 破 | pò | to break; to split; broken; damaged; torn |
| 棵 | kē | classifier for trees, plants and vegetables |
| 血 | xuè | blood |
| 眼前 | yǎnqián | before one's eyes |
| 仔细 | zǐxì | careful; attentive; carefully |
| 叶子 | yèzi | leaf |
| 排 | pái | to arrange; to line up |
| 片 | piàn | film; movie (as in 影片) |
| 要是 | yàoshì | if; in case |
English (for the teacher)
More than two thousand years ago, there was a carpenter in the state of Lu whom everyone called Lu Ban. The tables he made never wobbled, and the houses he built stood for decades without falling apart.
The story goes that one year, Lu Ban was given a job: to build a huge palace. That needed a great deal of wood, but he was given very little time.
In those days there were no saws yet; the only way to cut down a tree was with an axe. Lu Ban took a group of apprentices up the mountain, and they chopped from morning to night until everyone's hands were raw, yet at the end of a day they had felled only a few trees. At this rate, when the day came, they wouldn't even have finished half.
That day, Lu Ban climbed a higher mountain on his own to look for better trees. The path was slippery; his foot slid, and he quickly grabbed a handful of grass by the path. Once he had his footing, he felt a sharp pain in his hand, looked, and saw that his finger had been cut and was bleeding.
“How can grass this soft cut my hand?” He found it strange, so he picked a blade of grass and held it up close to look carefully. It turned out that both edges of the leaf had a row of tiny “teeth”, hard to the touch.
Looking at the little leaf, Lu Ban suddenly saw it: if he made a tool with teeth like these along its edge and pulled it back and forth across a tree, couldn't he cut the tree through quickly?
He went straight down the mountain and first made one out of bamboo. He made a row of little teeth along one side of the bamboo, and sure enough, one pull across a tree bit a little way in. But after only a few pulls, the teeth broke. Then he asked a blacksmith to beat out a strip of iron and made a row of teeth along its edge. This time, two apprentices each took one end and pulled it back and forth, and before long a big tree came crashing down.
And so the saw came into the world. They say that in the end Lu Ban finished the palace on time.
Whether the story is true, nobody knows any more. But Chinese carpenters have always honoured Lu Ban as the founder of their craft. Chinese even has an idiom, “班门弄斧”: playing with an axe at Lu Ban's door, meaning showing off your little bit of skill in front of a real master. So if you have a friend who's a great cook and you're cooking in front of them, you can say modestly first: “I'm swinging my axe at Lu Ban's door here.”