Gongshang Kan, a native of She County, called himself an ink master.
In the “Eminent Learning” chapter of Han Feizi it is written: “After Mozi’s death, there was the Mohism of the Xiangli clan, the Mohism of the Xiangfu clan, and the Mohism of the Dengling clan; Mohism divided into three.” In his daily habits Gongshang Kan lived on plain food and tea, and wore coarse hemp tied around his right ankle. Those who knew such things said that this was indeed the dress of the Xiangli branch of Mohism.
She County is famous for producing Huizhou ink. Although Gongshang Kan, like most people of She County, was highly skilled in the methods of ink-making, he did not make his living from that craft. At sixteen he went alone to work at a fishery in Jiaodong, and after several years opened his own fish shop, “Gongshang’s Fish House.” His fishery lay in the near sea and could employ only the traditional offshore floating-rope net-cage method of fish farming, in which floating rope cages are set in relatively deep coastal water outside the harbor for intensive, high-density cultivation.
Yet Gongshang Kan used the net cages merely as bait. He bought fingerlings from elsewhere, placed them in huge ponds, and soaked them in an ink mixture he had compounded himself. That ink was thick with a fishy smell and full of dark red suspended matter. The fingerlings grew quickly in it, and strange markings appeared on their bodies. After a month of soaking, they were released into the net cages and lowered into the near-sea fishery.
Usually, within only two weeks, pods of deep-sea whales would come following the scent of ink carried by the fish. Because this was near shore, those that came were usually only hammerhead whales and long-beaked whales between five and ten meters in length, though now and then enormous and distant narwhals and belugas would also visit. Whenever that happened, Gongshang Kan would direct the sailors to pour in another kind of bluish-green ink. Once it entered the water, it turned gelatinous and could trap the whales. Gongshang Kan hunted only whales that were already wounded or old. All the others were driven back to the deep sea. If he encountered pregnant females or calves, he would even feed them for a time before driving them away. By the end of fishing season, the fingerlings that had served as bait had grown large. Because of the ink and the whales’ dung, they became exceptionally plump and their flesh was extraordinarily delicious, so they sold for very high prices. Gongshang Kan fished only once a year. At all other times he sailed out to sea, and no one knew where he went.
After some fishermen spread the word that Gongshang Kan knew how to summon whales, whaling ships began waiting every year at the mouth of Bohai Bay during fishing season, hoping to catch the returning pods. At first Gongshang Kan noticed nothing, until one year the whales returned to his fishery already gravely wounded and startled him. He immediately put out to sea and saw that the blood of the slaughtered whales had dyed the surface of the water red. In fury he coughed up blood. Gongshang Kan at once returned to the fishery, prepared an ink of the darkest concentration, and poured it into the sea. A violent fishy odor rose from the seafloor. On the third night, whales as huge as sea islands arrived at the mouth of Bohai Bay and raised towering waves. Not a single whaling ship survived. Those whales were many times larger than the greatest blue whales known to man. They sang long and lingering whale songs, circling in place through the entire night before gradually vanishing. People at the fishery saw those incomparably vast forms through telescopes, and the skiffs and net cages shook with the whale-song. They asked Gongshang Kan what sound it was, and he replied leisurely:
“That is the crying of the kun.”