Zhan (mother of Tao Kan)

Zhan ( Chinese  湛 , Pinyin Zhàn ) was the mother of the Chinese Jin general Tao Kan . Due to her strict and at the same time self-sacrificing upbringing of her son, she is one of the women in ancient China who are literarily recognized as role models .

Life

Zhan was the concubine of Wu General Tao Dan , who came from the city of Yunyang in today's Hubei . Both her status as a concubine and the possibility that Zhan and thus her son could have belonged to the Xi minority is controversial among historians . Only her family name Zhan is known, but not her first name.

Zhan lived with Tao Dan in Xingan City and had the son Tao Kan. After Tao Dan's death, living in uncertain circumstances as a weaver, she raised her son in a principled manner and, through her commitment, helped him get his first job at the court. It is also known that she strictly encouraged Tao Kan to use alcohol in a highly controlled manner.

Several anecdotes have come down to us, on the basis of which Zhan has been stylized as a prime example of maternal willingness to sacrifice, hospitality, law-abiding and frugality:

• When the scholar Fan Kui was in town one winter, she invited him to her modest home so that he could give her son a recommendation for an office in the capital. Since the family had nothing to eat, Zhan cut off her hair and sold it to a vendor to buy enough food to eat with Fan Kui and his servants. She tore open the straw mattresses to make hay for the guests' horses and instructed Tuo Kan to make firewood from the wooden building materials of the property (or an annex). In fact, Fan Kui was impressed with Tao Kan's hospitality as well as conversational skills and gave the desired recommendation.
• When Tao Kan was the manager of a fish dam, he sent her a pot of salted fish. The mother refused this gift on the grounds that it was misappropriated state property. Tao did not give her joy, but sorrow. However, the same story is ascribed to Mengzi's mother , who also raised her child alone.

This strict upbringing fits in with the traditional character traits of Tao Kan, who, among other things, has been described as principled, controlled and incorruptible. Zhan's great-great-grandson Tao Yuanming praised the qualities of his ancestor, who were immortalized in numerous other literary works.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Xiao Fei Tian: Tao Yuanming & Manuscript Culture. P. 70 f. (Digitized version)
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Lily Xiao Hong Lee; AD Stefanowska: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women. P. 380 f. (Digitized version)
3. ↑ ^{a b} Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 458.

Web links

• China's Most Famous Mothers No.7: Tao Kan's Mother , engl.