Who is Zhe Xiang 折像?

Zhe Xiang, a Taoist from the late Eastern Han Dynasty. His courtesy name was Boyi. He was from Luo (now north of Guanghan, Sichuan). Born into an official family with wealth and 800 servants.

From a young age, he had a compassionate heart, did not kill insects, did not break sprouts, excelled in Jing Fang's I Ching studies, enjoyed the teachings of Huangdi and Laozi, especially believed in Laozi's idea that "excessive hoarding leads to rapid ruin," and proposed the proposition that "to be rich without benevolence is called misfortune." He considered the phenomenon of wealth being highly concentrated during times of social turmoil as something negative and must be negated.

He said: "In the past, Dou Ziwen once said, 'I am fleeing disaster, not avoiding wealth.' My family has been accumulating wealth for a long time, and the fault of overfilling is what the Taoists fear. In this era of decline, you are also not talented. To be rich without benevolence is called misfortune; just like a wall that grows too high, it will collapse quickly." (from "Book of Later Han · Biography of Zhi Xiang") This shows his intention to follow the example of Dou Ziwen, a minister of King Cheng of Chu during the Spring and Autumn period, who regarded wealth as a calamity and sought to escape it at all costs. Based on this understanding, after his father's death, he distributed his gold and silk assets among relatives, friends, or other people in need. Some people advised him against doing so, saying that he had three sons and two daughters, with children and grandchildren filling his home, and should increase his property rather than exhaust it. He firmly refused these suggestions and before his death, "there was no surplus capital left in his household" (ibid.). There is a biography of him in Volume 82 (upper) of "Book of Later Han."