Yuan Mei
Yuan Mei (1716–1797) was a well-known poet, scholar, artist, and gastronome of the Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Mei was born in Qiantang, Zhejiang province, to a cultured family who had never before attained high office. He achieved the degree of jinshi in 1739 at the young age of 23 and was immediately appointed to the Hanlin Academy. Then, from 1742 to 1748, Yuan Mei served as a magistrate in four different provinces in Jiangsu. However, in 1748, shortly after being assigned to administer part of Nanjing, he resigned his post and returned to his hometown to pursue his literary interest.
In the decades before his death, Yuan Mei produced a large body of poetry, essays and paintings. His works reflected his interest in Chan Buddhism and the supernatural, at the expense of Daoism and institutional Buddhism - both of which he rejected. Yuan is most famous for his poetry, which has been described as possessing "unusually clear and elegant language". His views on poetry as expressed in the Suiyuan shihua (隨園詩話) stressed the importance of personal feeling and technical perfection. Among his other collected works are treatises on passing the imperial examinations and food.
“There is a difference between dining and eating. Dining is an art. When you eat to get most out of your meal, to please the palate, just as well as to satiate the appetite, that,my friend, is dining.”
“A month alone behind closed doorsforgotten books, remembered, clear again.Poems come, like water to the poolWelling, up and out,from perfect silence”
“To learn to be without desire you must desire that.Better to do as you please: sing idleness.Floating clouds, and water idly running -- Where's their source?In all the vastness of the sea and sky,you'll never find it.”