The North Pond Hermit

In ancient China, anyone who could write would be eligible for employment in the Imperial Court. A lot of intelligent people did go there, but when they observed the degree of corruption in the court, they had no alternative to think that they were going to try to reform anything. They would leave, they would recluse. Many of them wrote thereafter. Even though he lived in the mountains, Dufu was an official all of his life and longed to quit because he saw the whole thing as corrupt. When he finally did, he simply left for the mountains with his family.

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