page_title: Tao Yuanming
section_title: Incident at Tiger Creek Bridge
hierarchical_section_title: Tao Yuanming / Life / Younger years / Incident at Tiger Creek Bridge
caption_attribution_description: English: A distant view of Donglin Temple with peasants working nearby fields.
context_page_description: Tao Yuanming, also known as Tao Qian or T'ao Ch'ien, was a Chinese poet who was born during the Eastern Jin dynasty and died during the Liu Song dynasty. Tao is a major poet of the Six Dynasties period. Tao Yuanming spent much of his life in reclusion, living in the countryside, farming, reading, drinking wine, receiving the occasional guest, and writing poems in which he often reflected on the pleasures and difficulties of life, as well as his decision to withdraw from civil service. Tao's simple and direct style was somewhat at odds with the norms for literary writing in his time.
  Relatively well-known as a recluse poet in the Tang dynasty, during the Northern Song dynasty, influential literati figures such as Su Shi declared him a paragon of authenticity and spontaneity in poetry, that Tao Yuanming would achieve lasting literary fame. However, Tao Yuanming's inclusion in the 6th century literary anthology Wen Xuan argues for at least a beginning of fame in his own era, at least in his own birth area. Tao Yuanming would later be regarded as the foremost representative of what we now know as Fields and Gardens poetry.
context_section_description: Tao Yuanming's birth place was very near Mount Lu (Lushan), which became a center of Buddhism, and eventually a source of origin for Pure Land Buddhism. According to historical accounts, in the eleventh year of emperor Xiaowu's Taiyuan reign period (386), when Tao Yuanming would have been 21 years old, Buddhist priest Huiyuan (later considered First Ancestor of Pure Land Buddhism) came to build the Donglin Monastery and organized the White Lotus Society, or a branch therof. Many scholars and poets participated in the Huiyuan's social circle, centered at the mountain monastery. According to the book Stories of Worthy Personages in the Lotus Society (蓮社高賢傳), Master Huiyuan was supposed to never leave the monastery, except for one time. The official border of the monastery was known as Tiger Creek (also known as Tiger Gorge), over which there was a bridge. Tiger Creek was named for the tigers then inhabiting the neighboring hills. However, once, following a visit by Tao Yuanming and another scholar, Master Huiyuan, on accompanying his guests out, became so wrapped up in their conversation, that he did not notice that he was leaving the monastery grounds. Upon crossing the Tiger Creek Bridge, the local tigers were so astonished at this departure from the Master's practice of never leaving the monastery grounds that they began to roaring and howling. The story goes on to say that once Huiyuan realized he had breached his practice, the three all burst out laughing. This incident later became the subject of the famous paintings of  "Three Laughing Men at Tiger Creek".
caption: Donglin Temple, Lushan, today, seen from a distance.
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