Governing a Great State Is Like Cooking a Small Fish
The Text
治大国，若烹小鲜。以道莅天下，其鬼不神。非其鬼不神，其神不伤人。非其神不伤人，圣人亦不伤人。夫两不相伤，故德交归焉。
Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish: too much handling breaks it. When the way presides in the world, ghosts lose their power — not that ghosts lack power, but their power does not harm people. Not that the sage harms people, but neither side harms, so virtue converges — and flows back to both.
Reading it
The most famous cooking instruction in political theory: the fish is delicate, the spatula is violence, and every extra flip is the cook serving his own nervousness. The ghost passage reads oddly until you see it is about paranoia — when administration is sound, the things that feed on disorder lose their jurisdiction.
政治理论里最有名的一条烹饪指令：鱼娇嫩，锅铲是暴力，每一次多余的翻动都是主厨在伺候自己的紧张。鬼神一段要读到「多疑」才通——治理健全时，靠失序养活的东西失去了管辖权。
Take one thing you keep re-handling — a draft, a plan, a person’s task. Put the spatula down this week.
挑一件你反复翻动的东西——稿子、计划、下属的任务。这周把锅铲放下。