The book is named according to the words of a scholar in Song dynasty - 'he who bites vegetable roots is able to do everything.'
The author, Hong Yin Ming is a legendary person who lived in Ming Dynasty, about 400 years ago. He mastered Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. People hardly knew where he came and where he went, and he was regarded as a half-god at that time.
The book is a compilation of 358 of his quotes. They were written in simple sentences. The quotes contain ideas from Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, and mention about code of conduct for gentlemen at that time. Since the book teaches peopl e 'rules for living', it is also known as a collection of 'wisdom of life'.
For some reasons, the book had not been known in China. It was not until 1915, that a Chinese scholar found a Japanese version of the book in Kyoto, Japan. After reading the book, he was impressed and brought it back to China. Thus Chinese were able to reg ain this precious heritage of their precedents.
In present days, this book is greatly appreciated among the Japanese business people. They value the book as a guide for administration, human resource management, and interpersonal communications. It is also a fad to study the Stories of Vegetable Roots, after the interest in Romance of The Three Kingdoms, and Sun Tsu's Arts of War.
Due to some constrains, we are not able to present the whole book to you. So we have chosen four quotes and explained them using cartoons. If you want to know more quotes, you can try to find the original book in Chinese Library.