Confucians Without a Cause

The Scholar-Official class in China is particularly interesting to me when good government breaks down beyond repair. Without a benevolent government to serve, what's a good Confucian to do with all of that culture and learning?

What else, but get creative?

I call them "Confucians without a Cause" when teaching them, which I find very clever, even if my students don't. (A poet I recently met told me it should be a name for a band. I told her she should tell my students that.)

A more accurate, but less catchy, title would include the Daoist layer that Confucianism gained during the Han Synthesis, and the whole "back to nature" and "just chill out and enjoy the moon and stars" options it provides the lucky Chinese -- lucky because it has the equivalent of a "straight and uptight" religion, and of a "loose and relaxed" alternative one.

Anyway, a few periods and examples, in particular:

The Period of Disunity after the Han:    
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove create escapist literature that's for all the world a mix of '60s hippie  counterculture (Xi Kang writes a 6-page verse essay on the power of his guqin, which Jimi Hendrix would have enjoyed) and British Aestheticism. They refuse to work for the corrupt Jin Dynasty like Vietnam era college students dropped out of their own mainstream culture.

Ruan Ji reportedly launched into an epic sixty-day drunk to avoid pressures to marry into the Jin family.

Tao Qian "sold out" to 13 years in corrupt government, then "dropped out" to retire early into a life of reclusive farming, gardening, music, and writing. He wore flowers in his hair. (So much more attractive than tie-dye.)

These guys liked their wine and song -- but instead of sex, they celebrated friendship and poetry. "Wine, friendship, and song"?

And calligraphy became an art during this 400 years of bad government too. See Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" -- for its content and calligraphy (he's the Michelangelo of calligraphy). Tang Emperor Taizong had someone steal this scroll from a Buddhist monk, then had himself buried with this scroll, he found the calligraphy so beautiful. (My kind of politician.)

The Chinese Garden: Sculpted Homes
Even when government was good, they were creative innovators. The Chinese gardens of the scholar-officials in Suzhou, particularly, during the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties are masterpieces of landscaping and architecture. Scholars usually designed these homes and gardens themselves, tapping into their Daoist and painterly sides.

Dropping Out from the Mongol Scene
During the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty, when the Chinese were discriminated against, many Scholars again took their abilities from the political to the cultural sphere -- giving birth to Chinese drama.

Dropping Out from the Ming Scene Too
During the Ming, which had a few periods of anti-Confucian purges under this most totalitarian of dynasties, the scholars developed the golden age of the Chinese novel and opera.

So there's innovation and individuality galore in this tradition.