Tradition holds that over 2,000 years ago, a young man lived in the Shouling area of the State of Yan. His name is lost to history, so we refer to him as the Shouling youth.
His family advised him to improve his awkward manner of walking, but he felt they were poking their noses into his affairs and were unwilling to fund his education. Relatives and neighbors sneered at him, claiming he would never learn anything. Over time, he grew so self-conscious that he doubted his own way of walking, finding it increasingly clumsy.
One day, he overheard travelers chatting. One remarked that people in Handan walked most gracefully. Intrigued, the youth hurried over for details. To his surprise, the group laughed and walked away upon seeing him.
Unable to imagine what made their gait so graceful, he decided to travel to distant Handan to learn their way of walking.
Upon arrival, he was dazzled by the novelty. He tried to learn from everyone: from children, whose walk he found lively; from the elderly, whose steps seemed steady; and from women, whose swaying gait he deemed beautiful. Attempting to imitate all styles, he became utterly confused. In less than half a month, he even forgot how to walk normally. Having exhausted his funds, he was forced to crawl back home.
This story comes from "Autumn Floods" in The Works of Zhuangzi (a famous Chinese philosopher circa 300 BCE). The idiom "learning to walk in Handan" now criticizes the foolish act of mechanically copying others and thereby losing one's own original abilities.