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http://www.gpejournal.org/   ISSN 2163-758X 

 

71 

 

The Thought of the Relationship between Man and Nature in 

Wandering About Freely and its Modern Value 

Yuqian Liu 

Baotou Teacher’s College, Baotou, China 

 

Abstract 

 

Wandering About Freely is the masterpiece of Zhuangzi, an ancient 

Chinese philosopher, which contains thoughts about the relationship 

between man and nature. It uses the symbolic approach to explain the 

author's main ideas through several stories about animals and people. 

Zhuangzi of the Taoist school believes that the nature of man is the same 

as nature. People should return to their natural nature, and at the same 

time conform to nature and get along with nature. These thoughts of 

Taoism are reflected in this article of Zhuangzi. Moreover, such an idea 

is of great value to us in dealing with the relationship between man and 

nature today, when environmental issues are prominent. In this article, 

the first part will be an analysis of Wandering About Freely, and the 

second part will be based on the above analysis to illustrate the 

philosophical ideas contained therein. The last part is to link the thoughts 

with the environmental problems in the world today and explore its 

significance in the modern era. 

 

Introduction 

 

Zhuangzi is an important philosopher in ancient China. He is also a representative of 

the Taoist school. His masterpiece is Wandering About Freely. In this article, Zhuangzi 

expressed his philosophy. And the idea that people live in harmony with nature is still 

of great significance to our society today. At present, there are many environmental 

problems in the world, including environmental pollution, species extinction, global 

warming, etc. The existence of these problems is actually a concrete manifestation of 

the relationship between human and nature. We have not been able to deal with the 

relationship between man and nature very well, which has led to a large number of 

problems. In this ancient article of Wandering About Freely, the ancient Chinese 

philosopher Zhuangzi actually gave us a way about how to make people and nature 

live in harmony and he told us the right way to treat nature. Therefore, this is the value 

of the thoughts in Wandering About Freely in the modern times. 

 

 

 

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72 

 

Three stories in Wandering About Freely 

 

Wandering About Freely includes three stories: the story of big fish becoming a roc, 

the dialogue between a turtledove and a cicada, and the story of the three ideal figures 

that Zhuangzi considers. In the first story, a giant fish lurks in the sea for a long time. 

One day, when the sea moved to produce a strong wind, it became a roc and then 

flew to the sea in the south. In this story, the author wants to explain to us the 

conditionality of things. Before the absence of strong winds, the big fish lurked in the 

sea until one day, with favorable conditions for it to use, it used this condition to achieve 

its purpose. At the same time, the author also told us that we should be good at using 

the existing conditions. The second story is a conversation that takes place between 

two small creatures, turtledove and cicada. They are very small compared to the roc 

and the giant fish. These two small creatures could not understand the behavior of the 

roc and thought that there was no need to fly so far. They say that they often can’t fly 

to the top of the tree and fall, not to mention flying to the 90,000-mile sky where the 

roc can fly. Although they can't reach the height of the roc, they are not depressed, but 

satisfied with what they are.  

 

In the second story, the author tells us that different things have different abilities, and 

we should be satisfied with what we are, rather than constantly craving more and 

constantly demanding to satisfy our own desires. The two little creatures in the story 

have no way to fly to the sky like the roc, but they are not frustrated. On the contrary, 

they think they have their own advantages, so they feel happy and satisfied. The story 

of turtledove and cicada tells us that we should learn to be satisfied and know 

ourselves. They are not depressed because of their own smallness but are satisfied 

with the happiness they currently have and are satisfied with their current state.  

 

The last story is about three people. In the text, they are called the perfect man, the 

divine man and the true Sage. They are the people in the minds of the author who truly 

reach the realm of freedom. They do not pursue fame and money, they can even 

eliminate the boundaries between self and foreign objects, thus forgetting themselves 

and integrating with nature. These three people are the most ideal people in the 

author’s opinion. By shaping these three ideal figures, the author expresses the belief 

that the man should be in harmony with nature and follow nature’s course to us. 

In addition, this is also the core idea of Zhuangzi. Through these stories which are full 

of philosophical and abstract thoughts in Wandering About Freely, the author 

expounds his philosophical thoughts, explaining that man and nature should live in 

harmony, obey the rules of nature, and that human should survive under the premise 

of obeying the rules of nature. 

 

Chinese philosophical thoughts in the story 

 

These are some of the stories in the Wandering About Freely. These stories are 

romantic and reflect the author's rich imagination. By fictionalizing these images and 

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Global Partners in Education Journal – Special Edition   February 2020, Vol. 8, No. 1  
http://www.gpejournal.org/   ISSN 2163-758X 

 

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stories, Zhuangzi mainly aims to convey his philosophical thinking. As an ancient 

Chinese philosopher, he is not like other philosophers. He does not need to explain 

his philosophical thoughts in obscure language but expresses his thoughts through 

vivid stories. Therefore, his articles are very interesting. At the same time, because of 

the use of symbols and other literary creation techniques, his works are difficult to 

understand, and Wandering About Freely is such an article. The above mentioned is 

the specific story content in the work, however, Zhuangzi does not intend to just tell us 

some wonderful stories. These interesting stories are just his means. His real intention 

is to convey his ideas through stories.  

 

First of all, all the above stories run through a central idea, that is, nature. This is the 

core idea of Zhuangzi's philosophy and the central idea of Taoist philosophy. Nature 

means respecting things as they are, following the laws of nature, and not artificially 

distorting or transforming them. In Taoist philosophy, nature is not what we often 

understand. It is not a noun, but a verb. Zhuangzi does not oppose the use of nature 

by man. He opposes that people do not use nature in accordance with the laws of 

nature. Secondly, Zhuangzi's philosophy advocates respect for nature and love of life. 

He believes that everything in the world, like our human beings, has the rationality of 

existence. The life of all things is related to human life. Therefore, human beings must 

treat and respect all things in nature. He also believes that nature is an organic whole, 

it is not an inanimate object. The natural interior has a strong vitality. It breeds 

everything and gives life the power of life, including humans. Based on the idea that 

all things have the same status, we can find that Zhuangzi advocates an ecological 

wisdom of equality of all things.  

 

In the modern history of the world, the idea of anthropocentrism has always occupied 

a dominant position. Human beings have always believed that man is the subject and 

the master of the world, and nature is the object used to serve people. Those who hold 

anthropocentric views regard nature as a mechanical physical world and believe that 

its value is endowed by human beings. Human beings are the masters of the world, 

and everything else belongs to human beings. They are all means or tools for human 

existence. This is the view that those people agree with. It is such an idea coupled 

with the endless desire of mankind, nature is destroyed by us, ecological problems 

appear frequently, and the relationship between man and nature is in trouble. 

Therefore, after the rational awakening of modern humans and the beginning of 

science, human beings have gradually forgotten the role of nature, gradually placed 

themselves in a supreme position, and the relationship between human beings and 

nature is increasingly alienated. Nowadays, if we want to solve this problem, we need 

to re-recognize the relationship between man and nature and adjust the current 

unreasonable way of life. And the Zhuangzi and Taoist philosophy as reflected in 

Wandering About Freely can correctly guide us to re-examine the relationship between 

man and nature. Respecting and revering the nature is the most profound revelation 

of Zhuangzi philosophy to modern people. 

 

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Global Partners in Education Journal – Special Edition   February 2020, Vol. 8, No. 1  
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74 

 

Modern value 

 

Putting the ideas in the article into the present, it still makes sense. As mentioned at 

the beginning of this article, today's environmental problems are getting more and 

more serious. How can we solve these problems? From my point of view, solving 

various environmental problems in the world through various methods is only a 

temporary method. Thinking in essence, why do these problems arise? It is because 

the way we get along with nature is wrong. If we just focus on solving various specific 

environmental problems, it may not have much effect on solving the whole problem. 

Because once one problem is solved, the next problem will occur. Only when we 

fundamentally change the way we transform nature, change our way of life, improve 

our relationship with nature, and change from plundering nature to rational use of 

nature, the problem will stop. As Zhuangzi said in Wandering About Freely, we should 

live in harmony with nature and obey the laws of nature instead of opposing people 

and nature.  

 

This is also the basic spirit in Zhuangzi's philosophy. Such a harmonious way of 

thinking is worthy of consideration by modern people. Although it was proposed by the 

ancients, it is only a simple way of thinking about the relationship between man and 

nature, but it can indeed be adopted by our society today. People and nature are like 

people getting along with each other. We must regard nature as a friend and use the 

environment in which we live as an object we should care about. Nature is not an 

objective object without life, but something that is full of vitality and important to us. 

While developing nature, we also need to protect nature and use it under the premise 

of protection. This is Zhuangzi’s idea that people and nature live in harmony. Harmony 

between man and nature not only emphasizes that human beings should protect the 

natural environment, it also emphasizes that human beings must live in harmony with 

everything in nature, such as protecting animals and plants. It is consistent with the 

concept of emphasizing the equality of all things in Zhuangzi’s thought. 

 

This article can inspire us. It shows the following values for the modern people in the 

relationship between man and nature. Firstly, from the perspective of the exploitation 

of nature, we should be moderate. Just like the giant fish turned into a roc. It is the full 

use of the existing conditions to achieve the purpose, rather than try every means to 

create conditions to the purpose. Natural resources are limited, and we should exploit 

them moderately. Make full use of the natural resources that we already have, don't 

waste resources while constantly mining new resources, and complain that resources 

are not enough. Secondly, from the perspective of the people themselves, we need to 

be content. Natural resources are limited, and human desires are infinite. What we 

can do is to be content and develop nature in a reasonable degree of desire. Finally, 

from the attitude of man to nature, we need to go with the flow and follow the laws of 

nature. 

 

In short, by analyzing the ancient Chinese story of Wandering About Freely, we can 

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Global Partners in Education Journal – Special Edition   February 2020, Vol. 8, No. 1  
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see the author's thinking about human and nature issues, and these ancient Chinese 

philosophical thoughts are still of great significance to modern people even today. 

Perhaps this is another role of myths or fairy tales. They can convey the author's 

thoughts, and some of them will have important meanings at all times. Building a 

harmonious living world is a comprehensive and globally important issue in the 21st 

century. Although it appears on the surface to solve the problems of ecological 

destruction, resource shortage, environmental pollution and other predicaments in the 

current social development, from a deeper perspective, it reflects the human being's 

attempt to deal with the relationship between man and nature and a deep philosophical 

concept. Returning to the thought of ancient Chinese philosophy, returning to Taoist 

philosophy, we can unearth the rich and profound ancient ecological consciousness 

that embraces nature, cares for life, and unites man and nature. Although this ancient 

survival wisdom cannot provide a ready-made answer to the survival dilemma faced 

by modern people, it plays an important role in the pursuit of building a modern and 

harmonious living world and correcting the paranoia of modern people's way of life 

and life attitude. It is a valuable ideological and cultural resource. This also shows that 

sometimes a myth or legend or fable story is not just a simple fiction, the ideas 

conveyed in the story are often more inspiring than the story itself. 

 

References 

 

Allinson, Robert Elliot (2009) The Butterfly, the Mole and the Sage, Asian 

Philosophy, 19:3, 213-223, DOI: 10.1080/09552360903230747 

 

Hendrischke, Barbara (2016). The Philosophy of Life: A New Reading of the 

Zhuangzi By Chen Guying. Religious Studies Review. 42:4, 310-311, DOI: 

https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12764 

 

Sai Hang Kwok (2016) Zhuangzi’s philosophy of thing, Asian Philosophy, 26:4, 294-

310, DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2016.1244883 

 

 

Yuqian Liu is a student in Baotou Teachers College in China and studies in the 

College of History and Tourism Culture majoring in literature, especailly philosophy 

and related subjects. Yuqian Liu enjoys a love of nature, caring for animals and is 

very concerned about topics related to environmental protection and animal 

protection. Therefore, after reading Zhuangzi's philosophical works, Yuqian found 

that the ideas contained therein can play a role in solving these problems. Email: 

906428313@qq.com  

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