1) The Demonstration That Shook the Court

The account describes Yan Shi presenting a humanlike figure that walked, gestured, and performed as if alive.
The automaton’s realism is the point: it is meant to blur the boundary between the natural and the constructed—
to force the audience to ask what, exactly, makes a human “real.”

2) What Makes This “Proto-Robotics”

By modern technical standards, the Yan Shi figure is not a robot in the electronic sense. Yet the narrative is profoundly
“robotic” in its logic: lifelike behavior is presented as the result of internal structure—parts organized into functions.
The story treats the human form as a system that can be replicated, inspected, and plausibly rebuilt.

3) Engineering Document or Philosophical Thought Experiment?

A careful reading suggests the passage operates less like a workshop manual and more like a disciplined provocation:
if a constructed object can convincingly imitate a person, then “human-ness” becomes a question of perception,
behavior, and internal organization—rather than mere appearance.

4) Why This Story Still Goes Viral

The Yan Shi narrative persists because it sounds modern: a mechanical human so convincing it produces awe and discomfort.
It compresses today’s debates—automation, imitation, and identity—into a single ancient scene. That is why the story keeps
resurfacing and spreading: it feels like the distant origin story of the world we are now living in.