Idiom Explanation:
Cannot make curtsies for the salary of five bushels of rice, it is a metaphor for a person who is noble and has a backbone.
Pronunciation:
不为五斗米折腰
bú wèi wǔ dǒu mǐ zhé yāo
Origin:
唐·房玄龄等《晋书·陶潜传》：潜叹曰，“吾不能为五斗米折腰，拳拳事乡里小人邪！”
Story:
Tao Yuanming, also known as Tao Qian, was a famous literary figure in ancient China and the earliest Chinese poet of the countryside. His ability to compose many works on natural scenery and rural life is closely related to his experience and situation.
In the autumn of 405 A.D., Tao Yuanming came to Pengze, not far from his hometown, as a county magistrate in order to support his family. In the winter of that year, the governor of the county sent a governor to inspect Pengze County. The postmaster, who had low taste but some power, spoke in front of the sheriff at least by his mouth. The postmaster sent this time was a vulgar and arrogant man. As soon as he arrived at Pengze’s hostel, he sent someone to call Tao Yuanming, the county magistrate, to pay him a visit.
Tao Yuanming got the news, and although he despised this kind of person who gave orders in the name of his superior, he had to leave immediately. He was stopped by one of his men, who said, “You must wear official clothes and a big belt to see this governor, otherwise it will be unseemly and he will speak ill of you in front of the county governor.”
Tao Yuanming, who had always been upright and noble, could not hold back any longer, and said with a long sigh, “I can’t bend my back for five buckets of rice and fist to serve the villain in the countryside!” He said, “I would rather starve to death than bend my back to such poor people because of the official salary of five buckets of rice.” After saying that, he simply took out the official seal, sealed it, and immediately wrote a letter of resignation, leaving the post of county magistrate, which he had held for only eighty days, and never worked as an official again.
After retiring from the officialdom, Tao Yuanming farmed in his hometown and lived a self-sufficient life in the fields. In the idyllic life, he found his home and wrote many beautiful idyllic poems. He writes about the leisurely life of a farmer: “The village is far away, the smoke in the marketplace”; he writes about his feelings of labor: “Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge, seeing the southern mountains at ease”; he also writes about the hardships of farmers’ labor: “Planting beans under the southern mountains. He also writes about the hardships of farmers’ work: “The grass is so rich that the bean seedlings are rare.
However, life in the fields is both beautiful and difficult, and there is no harvest if you do not work. In his later years, Tao Yuanming lived in poverty, especially after a fire destroyed all his belongings, adding to the hardship of his family. At the age of 63, Tao Yuanming passed away in a state of poverty and illness.
Tao Yuanming’s greatest achievement was that he greatly enriched the creation of agricultural and idyllic themes with his own personal experience and his remarkable poetic talent. The ordinary things such as mulberry, hemp, chickens and dogs, which were rare in his poems before, were all interesting and interesting once he wrote them in his poems, and his kindness in describing nature often aroused people’s infinite yearning.
There was one less official in the political arena, but there was one more literary scholar in the literary arena. Tao Yuanming’s story of “not bending over for five buckets of rice” has become the portrayal of Chinese intellectuals who are upright and not attached to the trend. Later, people also often describe those who are not willing to sacrifice their moral integrity for some material benefits in life as “not bending for five buckets of rice”.
