Stick No. 14
陶淵明醉酒
Asking about Home · one of the deck's middle grade signs
The short answer
Tao Yuanming under his apricot tree, half-drunk and content with the sound of rain, is the image this stick hands you for a reason.
Reviewed 2026-06-08
Full readingA hermit adores the bamboo around a thatched hut, Enchanting himself by listening to dazzling rain flood.
Just lying beside the apricots whenever drunk, He hates to be wakened up by nightingale twitters snug.
Tao Yuanming was China's most famous literary hermit, a 4th-century poet who walked away from government service to live as a farmer. Picture this: he'd already climbed the bureaucratic ladder, but one day realized he was miserable. So he quit, went home, and spent the rest of his life growing chrysanthemums, drinking wine, and writing poetry about the simple life.
His friends thought he was crazy — giving up status and steady income for what? But Tao became legendary precisely because he chose authenticity over appearances. He wrote about finding joy in small moments: rain on his roof, flowers blooming, sharing a drink with neighbors.
Chinese culture has celebrated him for 1,600 years as someone who figured out what actually matters. This wasn't just dropping out of society — it was choosing a different definition of success, one based on inner peace rather than external validation.
Tao Yuanming under his apricot tree, half-drunk and content with the sound of rain, is the image this stick hands you for a reason. He had the career, the title, the respectable answer to give relatives at New Year dinners. He gave it all back so he could listen to bamboo. The verse mentions one frustration only: being woken too early by birdsong. That is the scale of his complaints now. Sit with that for a moment, because your household is being measured against it.
The stick reflects a home where the air has gotten heavy with performance. Maybe it is the WhatsApp group where everyone posts wins, the cousin's renovation that came up at dim sum, the unspoken scoreboard about whose children are doing what. Somewhere in the past months your family has been spending energy on a version of itself meant for outside eyes. This is a 中平 reading, not a warning, which means nothing is broken; it is simply tired. The apricot tree is still there. The rain still falls on your roof the same way it falls on everyone else's. What the verse points to is the quiet you have been postponing because quiet feels, to a busy household, like falling behind.
Cancel one obligation this week that exists mainly so the family looks a certain way to relatives or neighbours. Have the unhurried meal at home you keep replacing with something photographable. Ask the person you live with what they actually want less of, and listen without defending the schedule.
Stop narrating the household's status to the relative who always asks. Authenticity at home is slow work, and the people inside the house notice long before anyone outside does.
