Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Mi
Shu Han and Western Jin official who declined a summons to court in a memorial on caring for the grandmother who raised him, and later served as governor of Hanzhong
Mural of Memorial Expressing My Feelings, a work by this person.
A grandson kneels beside his frail grandmother’s bed while an imperial summons rests on the table. The bedside vigil reveals the conflict between filial care and public duty.
Also known as Ziling Bo
Li Mi, courtesy name Lingbo, also called Qian, came from Wuyang in Qianwei. His father died when he was six months old and his mother remarried when he was four, so he was raised by his grandmother, Lady Liu. A student of Qiao Zhou, he served Shu Han as a secretarial court gentleman. After Shu fell, Emperor Wu of Jin summoned him early in the Taishi reign to be a tutor in the crown prince's household, and he declined in a memorial, the Chen qing biao, explaining that he was forty-four and his grandmother ninety-six with no one else to care for her. After her death and the mourning period he took up the post, then served as magistrate of Wen and governor of Hanzhong. A banquet poem complaining that without friends at court one might as well go home to farm angered the emperor, and he was impeached and dismissed, dying at home. Xiao Tong included the memorial in the Selections of Refined Literature (Wenxuan).
Life and times
Dates 224 CE–287 CE