The Shanghai Acrobat

In our profession, and in our culture, we’re conditioned to fear the idea of failure. Here's a true story about something I once saw that puts “failure” in a slightly different perspective.

In 1985 I got to attend a performance of the Shanghai Circus (in Shanghai, of all places).

The whole show was breathtaking. But one performer made an impression that’s stayed with me for twenty five years.

He was the last act of the evening - forty-ish, slightly pudgy, wearing blue cotton pants and a shirt, and slippers, not like the brightly coloured silks the rest of the performers wore. He was accompanied by a young woman with a large, covered cart.


The lights dimmed to a single spot on him. He took a glass rod, about the length and thickness of a pencil, and balanced it on his nose.

His assistant handed him a pane of clear glass, about 16″ square. He carefully balanced it, flat, on the top of the glass rod on his nose.

She then handed him four wine glasses, which he slowly placed at the four corners of the glass square.

Then ANOTHER sheet of glass on top of the four wine glasses.

Then he added a lit candle in a candle holder. On top of the glass pane, on top of the four wine glasses, on top of the first glass pane, all balanced on the glass rod on his nose.

With each new added layer, the applause got louder and louder - when he added the candlestick, most of the audience were on their feet.

His assistant then brought out a ladder. Not a step-ladder that folds open, with a solid base: just a ladder. He held the ladder in front of himself, and slowly, slowly, placed one foot on the first step. And then he stepped up, balancing himself on the ladder, without support, with the entire tower of glass still balanced on his nose. The audience gasped, then roared.

Then he took a second step up. Then a third; and the whole works came crashing down. He maintained his balance on the ladder, stepped carefully down, took his bows, and departed.

As we headed out to our bus, I said to our guide/translator: “that was the most amazing act I’ve ever seen. “Too bad he didn’t get to finish it”.

She laughed.

“He NEVER gets to finish it,” she said. “Every night, it ends with a crash like that. That’s because every night, every show, he’s pushing himself right to the edge of what he can do, and then just a little more. When I saw him last month, he got as far as the first step. And every night, every show, he gets a little further.”

You can draw your own conclusions from that story. But I’ll tell you what I took away. If I take risks, I know sometimes I will fail. But those risks, and that failure, are part of what it takes to for me to grow. So I have to remember not to be afraid to take that one last step.