Wei Bian San Jue

韦编三绝

Literal Meaning: the leather binding the book broke for three times

Metaphorical Meaning: It is used to describe someone’s diligence in studying

When the Confucius reached his old age, he liked reading “Zhouyi”.

In the Spring & Autumn Period (770 – 476 BC), there was no paper. The words were written on bamboo slips. When composing a book, many pieces of bamboo slips were bound together with the strings made of cowhide, which was called “Wei” in Chinese. When people didn’t read these books, they rolled them and placed them on the side of the desk.

“Zhouyi” was hard to comprehend because of its vague words and obscure description. In addition, the huge amount of words made the book made of bamboo slips large and heavy. But these didn’t erase the Confucius’ fascination for it. He read it again and again and the intensive reading even wore out the cowhide string for several times.

In spite of that the Confucius was not still satisfied. He said: “If I can live longer, I can know more about the ‘Zhouyi’.”