Fourteen years looking for a ruler who would listen

Around 497 BC, Confucius held office in his home state of Lu. According to tradition, a rival state sent the ruler of Lu a gift of eighty dancing girls and over a hundred horses to distract him. The ruler neglected his duties, and Confucius left.

He was in his mid-fifties. For the next fourteen years he travelled with a group of disciples through states including Wei, Song, Chen and Cai, hoping to find a ruler who would govern by virtue and let him put his ideas into practice.

Rulers received him politely, but none gave him real power. In one town he was mistaken for an enemy and surrounded; in another he was threatened by an officer who wanted him dead. A gatekeeper once described him as “the one who knows it can’t be done, but keeps trying”.

At about 68 he returned to Lu and spent his last years teaching. He died believing he had failed. But his students recorded his conversations in the Analects, and for two thousand years his ideas shaped how China was governed. He found his audience, only later than he hoped.