Hidden Dreams of Hermit Scholars: Behind a Crazy Life

Our previous podcast discussed some of the ancient hermits that feature in the Palace Museum’s Figure Paintings Across the Ages exhibition. They gave up political pursuits right from the start and never wavered. But unlike them, most hermit scholars depicted in the exhibition were deeply involved in politics in some way. For Jiang Ziya and the four old men, they lived in seclusion just to wait for the right time to realize their political ambitions. In Jiang Ziya’s case, the lifestyle w...