Ch'ü Yüan

A river; Ch’ü Yüan drowns himself in, 152 Mi-lo Fo.

He was I suppose the greatest poet since Ch'u Yuan, who came some seven centuries earlier; it is from him we get the story some of you may know under the title Red Peach-Blossom Inlet.

The theme of it is this: From earliest childhood Ch'u Yuan had sought the Tao, but in vain.

All the world is foul," answered Ch'u Yuan, "and I alone am clean."—"If that is so," said the fisherman, "why not plunge into the current, and make its foulness clean with the infection of your purity?

Ch'u Yuan took the hint: leaped into the Mi-lo;—and yearly since then they have held the Dragon-boat Festival on the waters of Middle China to commemorate the search for his body.—