A Scholar at the Crossroads of Dynastic Collapse

In the crisp autumn of his thirtieth year, Liu Bowen departed Jiangxi after five years of service, gazing back at Nanchang’s walls with uncharacteristic tears. Unlike the legendary assassin Jing Ke, who strode toward destiny at the River Yi a millennium earlier, Liu drifted like a withered leaf—rootless, uncertain of his path. His detour to the mist-shrouded Wuyi Mountains yielded only hollow poetry, and at Goose Lake, the site of Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan’s famed philosophical debates, he confronted his own intellectual inadequacies. “I must do something meaningful,” he vowed.

This moment crystallized Liu’s reckoning with the Confucian ideal of the “Three Immortalities” (立德, 立功, 立言)—moral virtue, monumental achievement, and enduring wisdom. Yet history had canonized only two-and-a-half exemplars: Wang Yangming, Zeng Guofan, and a half-credit to Zhuge Liang. Liu’s unconventional approach—first articulating ideas through writing, then cultivating virtue, and finally seeking deeds—defied Confucian orthodoxy. As rebellions erupted across the Yuan Dynasty’s crumbling landscape, Liu’s journey became a microcosm of an empire unraveling.

The Art of War and the Paradox of Pacifism

Liu’s first major work, The Extraordinary Strategies of a Hundred Battles (百战奇略), distilled military theory into pragmatic axioms. He argued that victory hinged not on numerical superiority but tactical ingenuity:

– Asymmetrical Warfare: When outnumbered, lure enemies into confined terrain to neutralize their advantage.
– Disciplined Retreats: Citing the Battle of Fei River (383 CE), where the Former Qin’s chaotic withdrawal led to disaster, Liu emphasized orderly retreats as critical as bold advances.
– Psychological Warfare: Strike deep into enemy territory to exploit their emotional ties to homeland.

Yet the treatise concluded with a paradox: “The supreme art of war is to avoid war altogether.” This tension—between ruthless pragmatism and Confucian moralizing—mirrored China’s historical duality. Dynasties erected ideological “archways” extolling virtue while waging relentless internal wars. Liu, too, initially adhered to this dichotomy, though his later writings would discard such pretenses.

Bridging Theory and Peasant Realities: The Vulgar Arts

Confronted by his brother’s resentment over scholarly privilege, Liu immersed himself in agrarian life—briefly. His frail physique betrayed him, but the experience birthed The Vulgar Arts (多能鄙事), a 12-volume encyclopedia of peasant pragmatism:

– Folk Medicine: Recipes like “Egg Threads” (beaten eggs with salt, served with wine) promised affordable vitality.
– Superstitions: Newborns were warned to stay indoors for 100 days to evade “old demons” craving their yang energy.

Though dismissed by later scholars as beneath Liu’s stature, the manual revealed his commitment to grounded wisdom—an antidote to abstract Confucianism.

Wandering the Fractured Empire (1344–1346)

Liu’s northward journey in 1344 intersected invisibly with history: as he traveled, a 17-year-old orphan named Zhu Yuanzhang buried his plague-stricken family, later donning monastic robes. The parallel went unnoticed.

In Danzhou (modern Nanjing), Liu’s three-year sojourn among literati failed to soothe his restlessness. By 1346, the sight of starving refugees and bandit-ridden highways steeled his resolve. “I will never return north,” he declared after witnessing the Yuan elite’s indifference to collapse. Yet his hunger for governance persisted, erupting in poems like Ballad of Wuling Valley—a rejection of Tao Yuanming’s escapist hermitage.

The Turning Point: Family and Fate

In 1347, dual miracles arrived:
1. A Son: Second wife Chen (a childhood friend) bore Liu Bowen’s heir, Liu Lian, amid auspicious omens—a bronze helmet unearthed by his brother, interpreted as celestial approval.
2. A Summons: The Yuan administration, desperate for talent, recalled him to Hangzhou.

For Liu, this was the elusive “third immortality”—立功—beckoning. His decade-long odyssey through war manuals, peasant almanacs, and existential crises had converged at history’s hinge moment.

Legacy: The Unyielding Realist

Liu Bowen’s trajectory—from disillusioned bureaucrat to pragmatic strategist—mirrored China’s transition from Yuan decay to Ming resurgence. His later counsel to Zhu Yuanzhang (now Emperor Hongwu) would shape the dynasty’s military and bureaucratic foundations. Yet his true innovation lay in rejecting Confucian hypocrisy:

> “Life is short. Why feign virtue while practicing ruthlessness?”

This ethos—unity of thought and action—rendered Liu an anomaly in an age of performative morality. Modern leaders still grapple with his core question: Can governance reconcile idealism with the dirty hands of power?

As rebellions smoldered in 14th-century China, Liu Bowen’s tears at Nanchang’s gates marked not an ending, but the awakening of a mind that would help forge a new empire—one battle, one egg recipe, one unflinching truth at a time.