Chu Ci — 举世皆浊

“Everyone is muddy, yet I alone am clear; everyone is drunk, yet I alone am sober”—these lines from the *Chu Ci* capture a moment of stark moral solitude. Spoken by the exiled poet-official Qu Yuan to a fisherman on the banks of the Xiang River, they express not pride but anguish: clarity and sobriety here are sources of exile, not virtue in the eyes of the world. The fisherman responds not with condemnation but with pragmatic wisdom—why not stir the mud and ride the waves? Why not share the dregs and sip the thin wine? His question presses on the cost of unwavering integrity. Qu Yuan answers with visceral imagery: just as one shakes dust from a newly washed cap or robe, so must the self resist contamination—not abstractly, but bodily, existentially. “How could I let my pure body endure the world’s filth?” he asks. His refusal is absolute: better to sink into the river than to dim his whiteness with worldly grime. The fisherman departs singing of the沧浪 waters—clear enough to wash a cap, turbid enough to rinse feet—leaving no resolution, only the weight of choice. This passage, from the *Chu Ci*’s “Fisherman” chapter, offers no doctrine, only a confrontation: clarity amid confusion, wakefulness amid stupor, and the quiet gravity of standing apart.