Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu)

Also known as Zhuang Zhou · Zi Xiu · Nanhua Zhenren

Zhuangzi, personal name Zhou, came from Meng in the state of Song (around modern Shangqiu, Henan). The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says he served as an official of the lacquer garden at Meng and lived in the time of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi. When King Wei of Chu sent envoys with rich gifts to make him chief minister, he refused, saying he would rather play in a muddy ditch than be fattened as a sacrificial ox. He wrote more than a hundred thousand words, mostly in parables; the received Zhuangzi, edited by Guo Xiang of the Western Jin into thirty-three chapters in inner, outer and miscellaneous sections, includes Free and Easy Wandering and The Equality of Things. In 742 Emperor Xuanzong of Tang gave him the title True Man of Southern Florescence and renamed his book the True Classic of Southern Florescence (Nanhua zhenjing).