Fan Zhongyan writes the Yueyang Tower essay

1046

In exile at a provincial post, the reformer-official composed his famous essay on the Yueyang Tower, declaring that a true scholar should 'be the first to worry about the world's troubles and the last to enjoy its pleasures.' The line became the most quoted expression of Confucian public duty in the Chinese language, memorized by every schoolchild for a thousand years.