Losing the taste for meat

[xianhua]

So 孔子 is being interviewed by a modern-day journalist (naturally). The journalist asks Confucius about his love for music, to which our venerable sage replies:

"对,记得有一次我学习音乐时,听到一种古代音乐,非常好听,听了以后三个月长不出肉味来"

So was this ancient music so wonderful that he couldn't taste the flavour in meat for three months? Is this a way of saying 'to lose one's appetite' perhaps?

[anonymoose]

This might be useful.

[xianhua]

Thanks for the link, anonymoose. So it sounds like the music was so outstanding that his attention was diverted in such a way that he couldn't enjoy the taste of meat. It appears that the phrase is linked only with Confucius.

[skylee]

I think 长 is a typo. It should have been 嘗.

[animal world]

Thanks for making the correction to 嘗 (simplified: 尝), Skylee, as 长 makes no sense whatsoever.

[xianhua]

Thanks for making the correction to 嘗 (simplified: 尝), Skylee, as 长 makes no sense whatsoever.

Oh, for godsake - what the hell did that ridiculous reply add apart from deliberately trying to make the OP look stupid?

[animal world]

Huh?

I didn't try in the least to make you look stupid as i assumed you had simply cut and pasted something from an article you read.

It's really your response that is somewhat "ridiculous" because how in the world would you know my intention was to make you "deliberately" look stupid?

[HashiriKata]

what the hell did that ridiculous reply add

It's right to say thanks to skylee, as I myself was also trying to make sense of the sentence without realising 长 being a typo

(三个月+长 make it reasonable to assume that 长 is not a typo ).

[animal world]

Thank you, Hashiri Kata, as i really was a little hurt by the response i got. I so honestly thought that the mistake was in the article itself that had been cut and pasted. And even if you have typed it yourself, it is soooo easy to get a mistake with those editors. You mean to click option 3 but the editor quickly picks option 1 and you don't catch the mistake.

[HashiriKata]

So was this ancient music so wonderful that he couldn't taste the flavour in meat for three months? Is this a way of saying 'to lose one's appetite' perhaps?

No, it doesn't mean losing appetite. It means the music sounded so good that his mind was completely occupied by it, so for three months after he still couldn't tell the normally good taste of the meat he was eating. The music did not put him off eating meat

[creamyhorror]

Oh, for godsake - what the hell did that ridiculous reply add apart from deliberately trying to make the OP look stupid?

What? He was just saying thanks for the correction (which was very helpful indeed). No need to read insults in everything.