Confucius can be considered the patriarch of Chinese dissidents in exile.

Much like today’s public intellectuals, he was well-versed in both Chinese and Western learning, concerned with the welfare of the people, and harbored grand political ambitions. In an era when feudal states vied for conquest and war raged across the land, he proposed, out of step with the times, the restoration of the Zhou rites—essentially, “The ruler be a ruler, the minister be a minister, the father be a father, the son be a son.” In other words, if everyone fulfilled their proper roles, society would be harmonious and the state at peace.

Mao Zedong, a man born of banditry, despised this system. Even after seizing power in 1949, he periodically indulged in class struggles. Near the end of his life, he personally launched the “Critique of Law and Confucianism” campaign, desecrating Confucius’ ancestral tomb. “The ruler is not a ruler, the minister not a minister, the father not a father, the son not a son”—the chaotic history Confucius worried over repeatedly resurfaced over millennia, culminating in our era. Since the CCP came to power, over one hundred million abnormal deaths have occurred. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, rebellion became fashionable: students attacked teachers, sons struck fathers, couples slept in the same bed yet lived in separate worlds, and conspiracies lurked even in the palace. Mao’s body was scarcely cold before Empress Jiang Qing was imprisoned.

Would the prophetic Confucius, watching from heaven, cover his face and weep? He once earnestly taught: “Do not enter a chaotic state; do not dwell in a dangerous one.” Yet now, the entire country has become both chaotic and dangerous, and the people without means to emigrate must merely endure.

Confucius, born of parents who met casually on the grasslands, did not mind his humble origin. He endured hardships, never yielding, and eventually became a master. He opened schools, taught three thousand disciples, and had seventy-two outstanding pupils. At fifty-three, he became the Grand Minister of Justice of the State of Lu; at fifty-six, he was promoted to Acting Chancellor, equivalent to Prime Minister.

Confucius’ governance bore fruit quickly: within one year, initial results; within two, abundant harvests; within three, no one stole from the roads. Yet neighboring states, fearing Lu’s prosperity, sent spies to spread rumors about him. Even more extreme, they sent eighty beauties in a diplomatic troupe to Lu. Instantly, rulers and ministers were seduced into debauchery, lost in night-long pleasures, minds in disarray. Confucius’ political reforms were overturned, and he narrowly escaped assassination.

Defeated by the schemes of women, the sage fled in the night, leaving his wife and children behind. Unexpectedly, this exile lasted fourteen years.

Confucius’ exile was large in scale, reminiscent of the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers. The difference is, the Dalai Lama settled in India and established a government-in-exile, while Confucius wandered through more than ten states with no place to stay. Once, in the capital of Zheng, he and his disciples became separated. The sage, stranded in a foreign land amidst wind and rain, was utterly disoriented. A local happened to see him and informed Zigong, “There is a white-bearded old man, short-legged, soaked to the skin, huddling under the East Gate to avoid the rain. Could this miserable dog be your teacher?” Zigong hesitated but went to fetch him and soon saw Confucius, his brows furrowed in sorrow. Zigong sighed, bluntly saying, “Sir, we see you as a sage, others see you as a miserable dog.” Confucius paused, then laughed heartily: “Yes, yes, aren’t we both just miserable dogs?”

In this dark world, with lives as fleeting as grass, even the most famous “miserable dog” in history could only leave his fate to heaven. He carried the Book of Changes with him, casting hexagrams wherever he went to avoid misfortune and seek fortune. In old age, he personally annotated and edited the version that survives today.

I, a political prisoner of the 1989 Tiananmen movement, have used this version to divine countless times, encountering Confucius in similar circumstances, in parallel language and settings. The surging waves of time, Confucius once stood on a foreign riverbank, pondering: “Does time and memory flow like this? Day and night, without pause?” I often wondered and asked: “If time and memory flow like rivers, where is our homeland—near, far, or in the books of Changes or Records of the Grand Historian? In the vast gambling of heaven, no emperor’s reign lasts; a homeland can become an enemy, and a conquered land, home again. What, then, is the ultimate meaning of exile and return?”

It is known that the first edition of the Book of Changes was completed by King Wen of Zhou while imprisoned by the Shang dynasty, its blueprint derived from the Fuxi Eight Trigrams. Fuxi and Nüwa, progenitors of humankind in Chinese tradition, hold a position comparable to Adam and Eve in the Bible. Besides the trigrams, Fuxi invented the guqin (ancient zither). Legend has it that during a thunderstorm, Fuxi, a jungle prince clad in animal skins, struck by inspiration, carved a charred tree struck by lightning into a prototype guqin, arranging five strings according to the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, earth. Thousands of years later, five strings became seven, with added pivot notes by King Wen and King Wu, marking two monumental events: fleeing tyranny and overthrowing tyranny.

Fuxi created the trigrams and guqin; Confucius inherited and interpreted them centuries later. During exile, Confucius, inspired by birds and falling leaves, faced unknown confusion and helplessness. The Analects, read by scholars for generations, is but the hurried record of his disciples’ notes.

Ancient texts indicate Confucius excelled at guqin and song, combining instruction with entertainment. Once, at the border of Cai and Chen, thousands of armed villagers, incited by conspirators, surrounded his disciples. Amid their shouting, the bookish students, useless in combat, were beaten and had nowhere to hide. Although disciples like Zilu were skilled fighters, Confucius repeatedly forbade drawing swords to prevent casualties. Lacking justification to kill them all, the mob resorted to cutting off food and water, starving them for three days and nights. The malnourished students faltered—some sang, some passed out, some stared blankly at the sky. Confucius, alternating between lucidity and delirium, stomach convulsing, the sun a scorched disc overhead, had neither the will to eat nor the strength to speak. As the teacher of millennia, what could he do? He sat beneath a tree, playing the guqin calmly. He performed the “King Wen Melody”—a music once played by King Wen of Zhou, who survived imprisonment by tyrant King Zhou of Shang through quiet intelligence and established the Zhou rites, ensuring everyone their due place.

Confucius repeatedly rehearsed this “palace music,” an illusion of ideal governance: wise rulers, virtuous ministers, honest officials, and good citizens. Beneath a vast sky, across endless fields, fighting seemed unnecessary; war, absurd.

In this illusory governance, Confucius forgot hunger, forgot his location. Standing atop the chaotic peaks of the realm, he strummed the seven strings of his guqin, setting rules for peace: loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, honesty, shame. Ancient and modern dictators did not believe in such principles but cited them to govern. The “miserable dog” Confucius, powerless in life, became a most visible and feared political brand, enduring to the present.

Finally, rescuers arrived, scattering the mob. Confucius’ disciples, having survived a lesson in peril, revered their teacher even more. The guqin and Confucius became sacralized, a staple for generations of scholars’ moral cultivation.

Fourteen years later, the battered “miserable dog” returned home, nearly seventy, frail, threatening no one. Former enemies were dead; yet Yan Hui had starved, Zilu had fallen in battle. What remained for him? For an old man, beyond the deep respect born of suffering, what else?

“Exile, why do you return?
The rival is old, the watchdog dull-eyed.
To whom do you pour your weary melodies?
What fills you with compassion?
Traveler of the world,
whose claws have picked you bare?”

These lines were written in my youth, before I was imprisoned. Years later, I gave them to Liu Binyan, a 1989 exiled dissident, who died in 2005, aged 81, never returning home, though his persecutor Deng Xiaoping predeceased him.

Other exiled elders, like Wang Ruoshui, Wang Ruowang, and Ge Yang, dying abroad, may see Confucius in heaven—fortunate or unfortunate.

Disillusioned with his homeland, Confucius spent his final three years in scholarship, compiling texts, leaving us a vast cultural legacy. Until his last days, shivering in the cold, he sang like Zhuangzi, but his song proclaimed:
“Mount Tai will collapse!
The temples will fall!
The philosophers will wither!”

Decades later, his later disciple Mencius sang:
“Had Zhongni not been born,
The long night would have no guiding light.”

Over two millennia later, writer Liao Yiwu, inheriting his exilic legacy, would say the same.