MUZIChinese Matrix
Writers › Writer / Poet
Wei poet and son of Ruan Yu, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who served as infantry commandant and wrote the eighty-two Poems Singing My Thoughts
Mural of the event “Flourishing of Neo-Daoist Thought”, which this person took part in.
Following the collapse of Han Confucian scholasticism amid bloody political purges, literati sought ontological truth and existential refuge from rigid orthodoxy.
Also known as Zi Sizong · Ruan Bubing
Ruan Ji, courtesy name Sizong, came from Weishi in Chenliu and was the son of Ruan Yu. Devoted to the *Laozi* and *Zhuangzi*, he was summoned to office by the Grand Commandant Jiang Ji and later served Sima Yi and Sima Shi as an aide. The *Book of Jin* (*Jinshu*) says that when Sima Zhao wanted Ruan's daughter for his son Sima Yan, Ruan stayed drunk for sixty days so that the proposal could never be made, and that he asked to be made commandant of the infantry because its kitchen kept good wine. He showed the whites of his eyes to sticklers for etiquette, and with Ji Kang, Shan Tao and others he was later counted among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. In 263 he was made to draft the officials' petition urging Sima Zhao to accept the nine honors, and he died that winter at fifty-four. Zhong Rong's *Grading of Poets* (*Shipin*) placed his eighty-two *Poems Singing My Thoughts* (*Yonghuai shi*) in the top grade.
Han
Three Kingdoms
Took partage 30The Bamboo Grove Sages and metaphysical ontology, sparking individual awakening and literati aesthetic freedom.
Literature · Sayings3Literature · Poetry2Literature · Prose1Literature · Rhapsodies1
Stage · Pieces1
Ruan JiRuan Ji, courtesy name Sizong, was a man of Weishi in Chenliu. He wrote more than eighty Yonghuai poems, which were valued by his age, and went home and wrote the Biography of Master Daren.
Ruan Ji was especially fond of the Zhuangzi and the Laozi, and wrote the Dazhuang lun, setting out the worth of non-action.
