When I die, bury me as I am'': spiritual quest of early medieval China's intellectuals

The period after the collapse of the Han dynasty, long internecine war and following division of the country into pieces with the short periods of reunion was one of the pivotal points in the long history of China. That was the period of deep changes in all the spheres of Ancient Chinese society. Although orthodox Chinese historiography showed this period as the period of chaos, destruction and decline, even superficial overview of the early medieval (III-VI A.D.) shows that in spite of or may be due to the political disasters of the time it was the golden age of culture. The whole culture of the time was passing through a deep rebirth. Critics of the official Confucian ideology that began during the Han dynasty led to considerable ideological emancipation of a person. Although Confucianism was still the official ideology of bureaucracy, this spiritual turbulence showed a significant impact on the moral and ethic foundations of the society. Endless wars and riots that took place after the Han dynasty had collapsed put the most educated aristocrats before an important choice: either to join the fight for power or to be moved to the periphery of the political life. And the fight was not a competition in skills and knowledge, there were cruel behind-the-scene activities, bloody battles, betrayal and guile. Those who had found themselves pushed out from the ''stage'' faced the reality of impossibility to self realize, to apply skills and knowledge gained in decades of study. The growing pessimism and apathy took some of the most talented people of the time to the Taoist heritage. They admired Chuang-tsu's ability to ''free and boundless wandering'' (xiao yao) and ''sitting in oblivion'' (zuo wang) and using wine were trying to reach these ideals. They disdained hypocrisy of the public morality and Li (Ritual propriety). They were called the Ming Shi (famous people) and their life was the expression of the new ''style'', which later was called ''Wind and Flow'' (Feng Liu). Those who were Feng Liu were looking for self-expression unobstructed with social boundaries, and sometimes it took shape of craziness, which others called Fang Dan (willfulness and indulgement) as later Liu Yiqing, the author of ''Essays and Criticism'' (Shi Shuo Xin Yu) named the twenty third chapter, where he shows examples of such a behaviour of the early period of ming shi like the scholars, writers and musicians of an intellectual group of The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (Zhu Lin Qi Xian). The system crisis, which took place in early medieval China, forced deep transformation of Ancient Chinese society and according to some researchers, due to the changes this transformation brought, we can now see the difference between the Ancient Chinese people and modern Chinese as between Ancient Romans and modern Italians.

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