'Ma Shuo — On Horses': The World Does Not Lack Great Horses—It Lacks Those Who Can Recognise Them

Some forms of talent remain unseen not because they are insufficiently remarkable.

They remain unseen because the person holding the whip has never understood the horse standing before him.

Ma Shuo — On Horses is a Mandarin male-vocal work composed from Han Yu’s celebrated classical prose text of the Tang dynasty.

Nothing has been expanded into modern lyrics or rewritten in contemporary Chinese. Apart from selected original sentences repeated to form the musical structure, every sung word comes from Han Yu’s original text.

The production combines melancholic Mandopop R&B with a dynamic 1990s urban groove, acoustic guitar, guzheng melody, sweeping strings, vintage vinyl crackle, restrained falsetto turns and layered male-vocal harmonies.

Through this sound world, the satire, grief and moral force of Han Yu’s prose re-enter contemporary emotional life nearly twelve centuries after the text was written.

On its surface, Ma Shuo discusses horses.

At its deepest level, it asks why talent is buried:

When a person has never received adequate conditions, suitable guidance or genuine understanding, do we still have the right to condemn that person for failing to display the full extent of their ability?

Are there truly no great horses?
In truth, people simply do not know horses.

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Watch the MV: 🎬 Ma Shuo — On Horses | Official Music Video

Headphones recommended. Begin in the dawn mist of a late-autumn Tang relay station, follow Han Yu’s contemplative gaze, and witness how a horse capable of travelling a thousand li is confined by hunger, improper handling and the judgement of those who cannot recognise it.

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“Only When There Is a Bole Can There Be a Thousand-Li Horse”

Han Yu begins:

世有伯樂，然後有千里馬。
Only when there is a Bole can there be a thousand-li horse.

This does not mean that Bole creates the horse’s ability.

The horse already possesses its exceptional potential.

Within society, however, an ability that is never understood, named, cultivated or given an opportunity may effectively be treated as though it does not exist.

The importance of Bole therefore lies not in granting talent to the horse, but in recognising what is already present.

To recognise talent is also more demanding than simply declaring that someone has potential.

It requires understanding particular strengths, providing suitable conditions, choosing appropriate methods and allowing ability to be tested through meaningful responsibility.

The MV establishes this idea through a twenty-one-second guzheng introduction.

Dawn mist covers a mid-Tang relay station. An official road leads towards an old stable. Behind timber rails and deep shadow, a chestnut stallion reveals only one bright and contemplative eye.

Han Yu is not presented as the historical owner of this horse or the literal participant in a documented incident.

Within the MV, he functions as an observing and interpreting presence: entering the stable, witnessing its conditions and gradually recognising the relationship between the confined horse and unrecognised human talent.

Before the first lyric is sung, the film proposes its central idea:

Some gifts remain unseen not because they are inadequate, but because the world has never learned how to read them.

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“Thousand-Li Horses Are Common; Boles Are Not”

Han Yu continues:

千里馬常有，而伯樂不常有。
Thousand-li horses are often found, but Boles are not often found.

The sentence reverses a familiar assumption.

We often speak as though exceptional people are extremely rare.

Han Yu suggests that what may be rarer is the capacity to recognise them.

A thousand-li horse may stand among ordinary horses.

Because of hunger, exhaustion, insufficient training or prolonged constraint, it may not immediately appear more capable than those around it.

When evaluators look only at current performance and ignore the conditions that produced that performance, they may mistake a restricted state for the limit of ability.

In the MV, the stable contains many horses.

Workers carry feed, ropes and tools while moving through their daily routines. No one pauses long enough to observe the deep-chestnut stallion.

Bole appears only briefly.

He places a hand upon the horse’s neck and studies its frame, posture and alertness. Recognition passes across his face—and then the true judge of horses disappears from the visual narrative.

The horse remains.

The person capable of seeing it does not.

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“Humiliated in the Hands of Stable Servants”

Han Yu writes:

故雖有名馬，祗辱於奴隸人之手。
Therefore, even when a fine horse exists, it is merely humiliated in the hands of stable servants.

The classical expression “奴隸人” refers here to servants and handlers responsible for managing and feeding horses. It should not be read solely through the modern meaning of institutional chattel slavery.

The central problem is not the social rank of the handlers.

It is that those who control the horse’s daily existence do not understand what kind of horse stands before them.

The fine horse therefore receives the same careless management as any ordinary animal.

It is pulled, driven and confined according to methods that ignore its nature.

For human talent, the deepest humiliation is not always a single public rejection.

It may be the prolonged experience of being placed in an environment that fundamentally misunderstands one’s abilities—being used incorrectly, measured simplistically and eventually made to doubt one’s own worth.

The MV does not turn the stable workers into theatrical villains.

They are busy, habitual and emotionally indifferent. They display neither dramatic cruelty nor genuine understanding.

This makes the tragedy more disturbing.

Talent is not always destroyed by deliberate persecution.

It may also be buried by routine, institutional carelessness and the unquestioned belief that “this is simply how things are done.”

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“Dying Side by Side Between the Troughs and Stalls”

Han Yu continues:

駢死於槽櫪之間，不以千里稱也。
It dies beside ordinary horses between the troughs and stalls, never known by the name of a thousand-li horse.

A horse capable of travelling a thousand li does not fall upon an open road after completing a great journey.

It spends its life within the narrow space of troughs, timber rails and confinement.

The deepest tragedy is not death alone.

It is that the horse reaches the end of its life without ever being recognised as what it was.

This is the tragedy of unrealised possibility.

When a person is never given the opportunity to test, carry or demonstrate an ability, others may later declare:

You never accomplished anything; therefore you never possessed the ability.

Yet the absence of achievement and the absence of talent are not the same.

The MV represents this line through narrow barriers, empty troughs, cold light and the lowered head of the stallion.

The horse is not depicted as a grotesquely dying animal.

Its noble frame and intelligent eyes remain. What diminishes is the strength slowly consumed by hunger and prolonged restriction.

What approaches death is not only the horse.

It is the life that the horse has never been permitted to begin.

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“It May Consume a Full Measure of Grain in a Single Feeding”

Han Yu explains:

馬之千里者，一食或盡粟一石。
A horse capable of travelling a thousand li may consume a full measure of grain in a single feeding.

The horse needs more food because it possesses greater physical capacity, carries a larger potential burden and may be required to travel far beyond the ordinary.

This is not a demand for indulgent privilege.

Different abilities, responsibilities and goals naturally require different forms of support.

If a manager feeds a thousand-li horse according to the needs of an ordinary horse, yet expects it to complete an extraordinary journey, the failure does not belong to the horse.

It lies in the contradiction between resources and expectations.

The same principle applies to human development.

Some people need time. Some require trust. Some need greater independence. Others need demanding but genuinely appropriate guidance.

Fairness does not always mean giving every person an identical quantity of the same resource.

It may also require understanding difference and providing what is necessary for a particular responsibility to be fulfilled.

In the MV, a large grain measure appears beside an almost empty trough.

The handler is not entirely without food.

He simply does not understand why the horse before him requires a different standard of care.

Ignorance here is not merely stinginess.

It is the refusal to recognise meaningful difference.

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“Underfed, Lacking Strength, Its Talent and Beauty Cannot Appear”

The central causal sequence of the essay is expressed in three clauses:

食不飽，力不足，才美不外見。
It is not fed enough; its strength is insufficient; its talent and beauty cannot appear outwardly.

The horse is underfed.

Therefore it lacks strength.

Because it lacks strength, its natural excellence cannot become visible.

Han Yu does not attribute the horse’s failure to weak character.

Nor does he demand that spiritual determination overcome every material limitation.

He states clearly that outward performance is shaped by conditions.

A person who fails to display an ability may not be without ability.

They may lack resources, opportunity, training, support, security or an environment in which meaningful work can be completed.

When we judge results without examining the conditions that produced them, we risk turning institutional failure into personal blame.

In this section of the MV, the stallion lowers its head and breathes heavily after a moment of frustrated movement.

Its body remains powerful, yet long deprivation has made that power inaccessible.

Han Yu stands nearby. For the first time, his expression moves beyond observation into visible grief and moral anger.

The horse has not lost its talent.

It has lost the strength through which talent might be seen.

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“It Cannot Even Equal an Ordinary Horse”

Han Yu asks:

且欲與常馬等不可得，安求其能千里也？
If it cannot even be treated as the equal of an ordinary horse, how can one demand that it travel a thousand li?

The horse is denied even the condition of ordinary equality, yet is expected to prove extraordinary ability.

This contradiction remains strikingly contemporary.

The environment does not provide basic conditions, yet the evaluator demands exceptional results.

Management is unsuitable, yet responsibility is placed entirely upon the person being managed.

When the expected result does not appear, the absence of achievement is then used to justify the original prejudice.

A closed cycle emerges:

Because we do not believe, we do not provide opportunity.
Because there is no opportunity, there is no visible achievement.
Because there is no visible achievement, we believe even less.

Ma Shuo criticises more than one ignorant horse handler.

It criticises a system of judgement capable of manufacturing evidence for its own assumptions.

In the MV, the thousand-li horse stands among ordinary horses.

Its frame and bearing remain distinct, yet hunger and confinement prevent it from running.

The visual absurdity requires no spoken explanation.

The audience sees a horse that has been prevented from displaying its capacity being asked why it cannot travel a thousand li.

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“Driven Without the Proper Way”

Han Yu gives three consecutive judgements:

策之不以其道！
食之不能盡其材！
鳴之而不能通其意！

They drive it without following the proper way.

They feed it without enabling its ability to be fully realised.

They hear it neigh, yet cannot understand its meaning.

The handler assumes that a heavier whip, a harsher command or stronger pressure will force the horse to reveal its capacity.

Yet genuine ability does not naturally emerge under an unsuitable method.

Improper management may only damage what it claims to develop.

“Feeding it without enabling its ability to be fully realised” does not mean that the horse has no ability.

It means that the conditions of feeding are insufficient for that ability to be expressed.

The final clause deepens the tragedy.

The horse is not silent.

It neighs, resists and communicates distress.

Those in authority hear the sound but fail to understand what it means.

The music reaches a principal emotional ascent across these three lines.

A handler raises the switch; the horse recoils across wet ground; the empty trough returns; finally, the stallion raises its head and cries out.

The surrounding workers appear irritated or indifferent.

Only Han Yu stops to listen.

To the others, the sound is noise.

To the person who understands, a life is attempting to speak.

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“Holding the Whip, They Declare: ‘There Are No Horses’”

The most powerful image of satire arrives near the end:

執策而臨之，曰：「天下無馬！」
Holding the whip and standing before it, they declare: “There are no horses in the world!”

The person holding the whip stands directly before a thousand-li horse and announces that no such horse exists.

His methods have produced hunger, weakness and failed performance.

He then treats those consequences as proof of his conclusion.

This is not merely misunderstanding.

It is ignorance equipped with authority.

Because the speaker controls feeding, handling, evaluation and naming, his error can become an institutional judgement.

The horse has no recognised position from which to answer.

It can only endure a final verdict delivered by the very person incapable of understanding it.

The song repeats this sentence twice.

The first repetition resembles a cold declaration.

The second becomes the principal ironic climax as strings, rhythm and layered vocal harmonies intensify.

The MV uses a lower camera position, placing the raised switch and dismissive evaluator in the foreground.

The thousand-li horse stands immediately beside him.

The audience can clearly see the horse’s nobility and potential, and therefore understands the truth before the authority figure does:

What is absent is not the great horse.

What is absent is his capacity to recognise one.

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“Are There Truly No Horses?”

Han Yu concludes:

嗚呼！
其真無馬邪？
其真不知馬也！

“Alas” transforms the preceding argument into a profound sigh.

“Are there truly no horses?” appears to remain a question.

The final sentence, however, gives a decisive judgement:

In truth, people simply do not know horses.

Responsibility shifts away from the evaluated horse and returns to the evaluator.

The text asks those who hold resources, opportunity and authority to examine themselves:

What you call an absence of ability—could it be the result of conditions you never provided?
What you call silence—could it be a voice you never learned to understand?
What you call a world without great horses—could it reveal only that you never learned to recognise one?

The musical tension gradually returns to restraint.

Han Yu lowers his head within a lamplit study, where paper scrolls, ink, brush and candlelight replace the mud, troughs and timber barriers of the stable.

He and the horse then form a visual dialogue across moonlight, mist and predawn fields.

When the final sentence is sung, the sky begins to brighten.

This is not a simplistic victory.

It is a delayed moment of moral clarity.

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A 1990s Mandopop R&B Language for Classical Prose

Ma Shuo is a concise, forceful piece of Tang-dynasty prose with an exceptionally clear argumentative rhythm.

This musical setting does not rewrite it as a modern song lyric.

It preserves the original order and meaning, reorganising the listening experience through melody, beat, pause, repetition and emotional contrast.

The production combines:

• Melancholic Mandopop R&B, establishing a sorrowful yet flowing emotional foundation.
• A dynamic 1990s urban groove, giving the classical syntax clarity and forward motion.
• Prominent acoustic guitar, providing a warm and immediately accessible Mandopop framework.
• Guzheng melody, preserving an elegant Chinese line through the twenty-one-second introduction, transitions and closing instrumental passage.
• Erhu and sweeping strings, extending the grief of confinement, deprivation and unanswered protest.
• Vintage vinyl crackle, creating a texture of memory, age and nostalgia.
• Restrained male falsetto runs, carrying the movement between controlled narration and emotional ascent.
• Layered vocal harmonies, intensifying the irony of “There are no horses” and the closing question.
• Clear Mandarin diction, preserving the intellectual weight and comprehensibility of the classical text.

The arrangement avoids oversized historical spectacle, operatic vocalisation and theatrical recitation.

Its purpose is to preserve the precision, sharpness and restraint of Han Yu’s prose while allowing it to enter the immediate rhythmic language of contemporary Mandopop R&B.

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The MV: From a Late-Autumn Stable to the Open Field at Dawn

The MV remains within a mid-Tang visual world.

There are no modern characters and no movement between ancient and contemporary timelines.

Han Yu and the thousand-li horse form the dual centre of the film.

Han Yu appears at approximately forty years of age: lean, grave and observant, with a short moustache and beard. He wears the same dark blue-grey Tang scholar’s robe, charcoal-black cloak and black futou throughout the film.

The thousand-li horse remains the same deep-chestnut stallion: a small white star upon its forehead, long mane, intelligent dark eyes and a noble frame. It appears slightly depleted during the early scenes and gradually regains visible vitality near the conclusion.

The principal settings include:

• A relay station and stable in late autumn approaching early winter.
• An official road, dry grass, distant hills and low dawn mist.
• Wet earth, timber rails, troughs and grain measures.
• Han Yu’s lamplit Tang study.
• An empty moonlit road and a cold night stable.
• An open field gradually revealed by predawn light.

Bole appears only briefly.

He is not framed as a heroic rescuer, but as evidence that genuine recognition is possible and exceptionally rare.

The handlers and the authority figure are not exaggerated villains.

They represent a more widespread and difficult problem: people who do not understand difference, yet possess the power to allocate resources and deliver judgement.

Eight opening images fill the twenty-one-second guzheng introduction, moving through the official road, stable exterior, horse’s eye, indifferent workers, a fleeting moment of Bole’s recognition and the silent meeting of Han Yu and the horse.

The central movement turns inadequate feeding, improper handling and the unheard neigh into a direct visual narrative.

The bridge moves into lamplight, paper scrolls, moonlit stable yards, empty roads and predawn fields.

During the final twenty-second guzheng passage, the stable gate opens.

The horse steps into morning light and begins to run.

Han Yu does not pursue or possess it.

He stands within the field and sees the power that had always existed finally become visible.

This is not intended as a literal rewriting of the prose’s tragic conclusion.

It is a symbolic closing image:

Even when an age fails to understand genuine ability, that failure does not erase the dignity of the ability itself.

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📜 Complete Original Text and Lyrics

The completed song uses the full original text without modern expansion or rewriting. Selected original sentences—including “Only when there is a Bole can there be a thousand-li horse,” “Thousand-li horses are often found, but Boles are not often found,” “Holding the whip… they declare: ‘There are no horses in the world,’” and “Are there truly no horses?”—are repeated solely to form the musical structure.

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Not Merely an Essay About Unrecognised Talent

Ma Shuo is frequently summarised as an essay about talent that fails to receive recognition.

That description is correct, but incomplete.

The text does not merely say that gifted people remain undiscovered.

It establishes an entire chain of responsibility:

There is no accurate recognition.
There is no adequate nourishment.
There is no appropriate method.
There is no understanding of the horse’s voice.
Ability therefore cannot become visible.
Finally, the manager declares that no great horse exists.

The deeper subject of Ma Shuo is the power to evaluate.

Who defines ability?
Who provides the conditions in which ability may appear?
Who explains failure?
Who has the authority to declare that talent does not exist after helping to produce the conditions of failure?

The thousand-li horse is not only a symbol of the frustrated scholar.

It may represent anyone who has not yet received a suitable environment:

A young person entering a profession, a specialist placed in the wrong role, a creator without resources, a student who has not been understood, or any person judged too quickly by a single standard.

Bole is also more than a person with a miraculous eye for future stars.

True recognition carries a more demanding responsibility:

To see possibility before it is fully realised, to understand the conditions beneath performance and to provide a method through which ability can genuinely develop.

Thousand-li horses are often found.

The difficulty is not waiting for miraculous talent to appear.

It is learning how to recognise the horse already standing before us.

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💿 Credits

• Song Title: Ma Shuo — On Horses
• Chinese Title: 馬說
• Classical Source: Han Yu, “Ma Shuo”
• Literary Period: Tang Dynasty
• Original Text / All Sung Lyrics: Han Yu
• Lyrics Format: Complete original prose set to music, with no modern expansion or rewriting; selected original lines repeated for musical structure
• Musical Structure and Original-Line Repetition: Grandevity Studio
• Composition / Arrangement: Suno AI / Grandevity Studio
• Vocals: Suno AI
• Music Production: Grandevity Studio
• AI-Assisted Visuals: ChatGPT Images
• Video Editing / Art Direction / Creative Production: Grandevity Studio
• Released by: Grandevity Limited
• Production Year: 2026

Music Style and Mood:

Melancholic Mandopop R&B / Dynamic 1990s Urban Groove / Chinese Fusion. Smooth but restrained Mandarin male vocals, falsetto turns, prominent acoustic guitar, guzheng melody, sweeping strings, vintage vinyl crackle and layered harmonies carry the horse from confinement, hunger and unheard protest to the absurd declaration that “there are no horses,” and finally to the lucid judgement: “In truth, people simply do not know horses.”

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⚖️ Copyright Notice

Han Yu’s classical prose work “Ma Shuo — On Horses” is a public-domain literary text.

The music production, sound recording, arrangement, mixing, mastering, MV visuals, cover artwork, video editing, subtitles, copywriting, musical-structure arrangement, storyboard design, art direction and overall creative concept of this project were produced or lawfully licensed by Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio and are protected by copyright and related rights to the extent permitted by applicable law.

Unauthorized re-uploading, redistribution, reproduction, editing, sampling, commercial use, public broadcasting, platform distribution, AI training, dataset use, remixing, or use in any other audiovisual work is strictly prohibited.

Licensing Contact:

info@grandevity.co.nz
https://grandevity.co.nz

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About the Project

Ma Shuo — On Horses is part of Grandevity Studio’s Classical Literature Reimagined in Music series.

The project seeks to bring classical Chinese prose beyond textbooks, annotation, recitation and memorisation, allowing it to re-enter contemporary melody, rhythm, sound, imagery and emotional life.

Nearly twelve centuries ago, Han Yu wrote:

Thousand-li horses are often found, but Boles are not often found.

The ways in which talent is evaluated have become more complex.

Résumés, data, view counts, examinations, performance metrics and algorithms provide new instruments of measurement. They may also become new forms of the stable and trough.

The true difficulty is not merely becoming a thousand-li horse.

It is refusing to let another person’s blindness erase one’s sense of worth before recognition arrives—and, when we ourselves possess the power to evaluate others, refusing to let habit and prejudice obscure the possibility before us.

May every great horse that has not yet been seen encounter someone who truly knows how to recognise it.

And may every person who holds opportunity and judgement learn to understand the horse’s cry before declaring that the world contains no horses.