Tao Yuanming got the news and had to leave at once, although he looked down on such a person who gave orders in the name of more than one company. Unexpectedly, his secretary stopped Tao Yuanming and said, "This official should pay great attention to details, dress neatly and be modest, or he will speak ill of you in front of his boss."
Tao Yuanming, who has always been upright and lofty, couldn't help it any longer. He sighed and said, "I would rather starve to death than bow to such a poor man because of the official salary of five dou meters." He immediately wrote his resignation letter and left the county magistrate's post for more than 80 days. From then on, he no longer became an official.
After retiring from officialdom, Tao Yuanming farmed in his hometown and lived a self-sufficient pastoral life. In rural life, he found his home and wrote many beautiful rural poems. He described the carefree life of farmers: "It's warm in a distant village, and there's smoke in the Yi market". He wrote about his feelings of labor: "Picking chrysanthemums under the hedge, leisurely seeing Nanshan". He also wrote about the hardships of farmers' labor: "beans are planted at the foot of Nanshan Mountain, and the grass is covered with bean sprouts." "Spring is not bitter, and you are often afraid of it."
However, rural life is both beautiful and hard. If you don't work, you will get nothing. If you encounter natural and man-made disasters, you will get nothing even if you work. Tao Yuanming lived in poverty in his later years, especially after a fire destroyed all his possessions, the life of the whole family was even worse. At the age of 63, Tao Yuanming died of poverty and illness.
Tao Yuanming's greatest achievement is his own personal experience and outstanding poetic talent, which greatly enriched the creation of agriculture and animal husbandry. Ordinary things such as mulberry, hemp, chicken and dog are rare in previous poems. Once he writes them into poems, they are full of interest. And his description of the goodness of nature can often arouse people's infinite yearning.
In addition to poetry, he also left many exquisite essays for later generations, the most famous of which is Peach Blossom Garden Poetry. In this work, the author describes a utopian society, where there is no turmoil, no regime change, no state monarch and minister, no corvee tax, and the people live a rich and peaceful life. The author's beautiful language makes this work have permanent charm, so that people in later generations have always called this utopian society "Peach Blossom Garden".
There is one less bureaucrat in the officialdom and one more writer in the literary world. Tao Yuanming's story of "five buckets of rice don't bow their heads" has become a portrayal of China intellectuals' integrity. In daily life, if a person is unwilling to sacrifice his integrity for some material benefits, he often says, "Don't bow down for a bucket of rice." .