For over two millennia, the question of what Xiaoyao You—traditionally rendered as “Free and Easy Wandering”—truly is and what practical utility it serves has remained one of the core unresolved puzzles in Zhuangzi studies. Grounded in the three defining qualities of analytic philosophy—conceptual clarity, expressive precision, and rigorous argumentation—this paper parses the text of Zhuangzi’s Xiaoyao You and draws on the Gaitian (Canopy-Heaven) cosmology preserved in the ancient Chinese astronomical treatise Zhoubi Suanjing(The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven) to resolve this puzzle. The “sea migration” (haiyun) of the Great Peng from the Northern Ming to the Southern Ming described in Xiaoyao You is the very “Xiaoyao You,” corresponding precisely to the sun’s north-south circuit from the Inner Heng to the Outer Heng recorded in Zhoubi Suanjing. Dismissed as “useless” by the cicada, the little dove, and the quail, the Great Peng’s flight exerts its great utility by enabling all creatures under heaven to “wander unburdened by its side and recline at ease beneath its shade”—an act that mirrors the very operation of the Heavenly Dao revered in classical Chinese philosophy. The Heavenly Dao sustains the endless cycle of all living things; the sage ought to model himself on this Dao, practice the Way of the Sage, and secure the continuous thriving of all people under heaven. This, indeed, constitutes Zhuangzi’s true aspiration.
H Huang (2026) studied this question.