Playing the zither to a cow

Playing the zither to a cow is an expression for communicating something to an audience that cannot appreciate or understand it. The novel gives the phrase a literal, comic life through the zither player Kang GuangLing, while also echoing its underlying problem of mismatched understanding in scenes where speech is deliberately coded and listeners must infer what is left unsaid.

The phrase as an insult

When Kang GuangLing mourns the death of his friend Venerable Xuan Ku, he recalls that Xuan Ku listened repeatedly to his song “Peaceful PuAn in Sanskrit” and understood its Buddhist meaning. Kang contrasts that attentive, sympathetic listener with Venerable Xuan Nan, speculating that playing for him would be like playing the zither to a cow. The remark is an irreverent joke delivered in grief: Kang’s sorrow is genuine, but his account of musical understanding includes a dig at the monk standing before him.

Venerable Xuan Nan initially takes Kang’s crying for simple grief. He then realizes that Kang is lamenting the loss of an audience for his music and has disparaged Xuan Nan’s capacity to appreciate it. Xuan Nan is not offended; he regards Kang and his companions as eccentric and wild. The exchange makes the idiom’s social edge clear: it does not merely describe an unsuccessful performance, but judges the listener as incapable of receiving what the speaker values.

The phrase returns as a direct taunt when Bao BuTong says that Kang knows only how to play the zither to cows and that nobody understands him. Kang angrily offers to play at once, taking out his jade zither and laying it across his knees. The object and gesture turn the expression into a comic challenge: the insult concerns his music’s reception, but he answers by preparing to perform rather than conceding that the music is poor.

Understanding, performance, and coded speech

The novel also gives the expression a broader resonance through episodes in which apparent conversation carries information beyond its literal words. When A'Zhu questions Madam Ma while disguised as Bai Shijing, Madam Ma uses the moon and mooncakes to allude to a private exchange with the real Bai Shijing. A'Zhu’s replies do not fit the remembered flirtation, and Madam Ma recognizes that something is amiss. The episode turns understanding into a test: the listener must know the private context behind ordinary phrases, and a mismatch exposes the disguise.

A'Zhu also coaxes Madam Ma into revealing that Duan Zhengchun is the concealed “leading big brother.” She disguises her own promise of secrecy in an oath that places the consequences on Bai Shijing, not herself. Here, speech is neither simple disclosure nor failed communication: it is a performance shaped to extract information while evading responsibility. The novel’s recurring concern is less that a listener cannot understand than that understanding depends on context, identity, and what a speaker chooses to conceal.

A comic phrase with a wider reach

Kang’s zither episode gives the idiom its most literal form, but the surrounding scenes complicate its easy division between a gifted speaker and a foolish audience. Venerable Xuan Ku had valued Kang’s song because he grasped its meaning; Venerable Xuan Nan, whom Kang dismisses, receives the joke without anger. Elsewhere, A'Zhu reads clues that Xiao Feng initially struggles to interpret, while Madam Ma detects A'Zhu’s disguise from a failure of contextual knowledge. Across these contrasts, the phrase points toward a central difficulty of communication: expression succeeds or fails not in isolation, but in relation to a particular listener and the knowledge they bring.