Dreaming to return home

There are many cases where people become envied by others when they abandon a position that appears to be plush and return to their hometown. A representative example is Tao Yuanming, who quit his position as a village head during the Wei and Jin Dynasties and returned to the countryside. Tao Yuanming said he would not bow down to his superiors for a reward of five measures of rice. In a similar era, the actions of Zhang Han, an official assisting the king of Qi, were equally unconventional. As the autumn breeze blew in Luoyang, he suddenly threw away his official position. He drove a cart toward his hometown, saying he missed the sunchae (Brasenia schreberi J.F.Gmel) soup and raw sea bass from his hometown, Suzhou. Rather than coming up with some absurd excuse for “personal reasons,” should we say he is honest and confident?

The poet was enjoying great power as Zhu Yuanzhang, a strategist of the Ming Dynasty. Historians compare him to Zhang Liang, who assisted Liu Bang, the Han great-grandfather, and Zhug, who assisted Liu Bei during the Three Kingdoms period. As Tao began to doubt his career as a government official, he attempted to leave his hometown, but it did not last long. A prime minister with whom he had a conflict in the past reported his disloyalty to the emperor, and he had to return to the court to prove his innocence hastily. The poet returned to his home country in the last years of his life, before his death due to serious illness. The pleasure of guzzling up poetry could no longer be enjoyed.