Wong Tai Sin Sign 36陶淵明歸家Tao Yuanming Returns Home
This stick suggests you're entering a phase where things finally start making sense again.
Like a wandering boat returning to its pier, This lot brings good news that home is near.
When you raise your eyes there stands your hometown, And dinner's ready for you ere the sun is down.
Tao Yuanming Returns Home
Tao Yuanming was a 4th-century Chinese poet who famously quit his government job to return to farming. Fed up with political corruption and bureaucratic nonsense, he walked away from a comfortable career to grow chrysanthemums and write poetry in the countryside. His decision seemed crazy to his contemporaries — who gives up status and steady income? But Tao became one of China's most beloved poets, celebrated for choosing authenticity over ambition. His story represents the courage to prioritize personal values over social expectations. The 'returning home' isn't just geographic — it's about coming back to your true self.
Seven Short Readings
- CareerTao Yuanming's image is of a man walking back toward his own gate, recognising the smoke from his kitchen before he sees the door.READ
- WealthYour base is steadier than you realize — stop chasing, start counting what's already yours.READ
- LoveTao Yuanming walked away from the official's robes and the bow he refused to make, and the verse pictures him at the moment his own roof comes back into view, dinner already on the table.READ
- HealthTao Yuanming walked away from the magistrate's seal and went back to his chrysanthemums because his body had been telling him something his career kept overruling.READ
- StudyTao Yuanming's return home is the image at the heart of this stick: a scholar who spent years in the wrong building, doing the wrong work, before he raised his eyes and recognised where he actually belonged.READ
- FamilyThe image at the heart of this stick is Tao Yuanming walking away from the magistrate's office, refusing to bend his back for five pecks of rice, and turning toward the chrysanthemums waiting at home.READ
- The whole situationThis stick suggests you're entering a phase where things finally start making sense again.READ
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