The inspector who accused the great eunuch's mother's house and was hunted for it; he fled a year and every door he came to took him in, and the age named the flight for him.
He changed his name and fled a whole year, and at every door he came to he threw himself on it; the houses took him in, though harbouring him was a charge against a whole clan.the Hou Han shu's narrative of Zhang Jian's flight; Hou Han shu, juan 67, Memoir of the Partisan Prohibitions — the memoir's phrase, which became the idiom, not a speech of his
Appears in
Relations
- Li Ying colleagues — The case that destroyed Li Ying in 169 was built on Zhang Jian's accusation and Zhang Jian's flight: the palace charged that they had made one party of the empire's named men.
Myth vs record
The party was a secret society with rolls and officers, and the hunted man was its courier, carrying its papers from house to house.
He was hunted for a year across whole commands and the record captures no letter, no instruction, no organisation — the accusation was that the empire's famous men called one another famous, which the memoir itself treats as the offence. What was real was the counter-measure: a thousand in gold for his capture and the same crime charged to whoever sheltered him. He was amnestied in the rising year of 184 and lived another fourteen years; the shelterers the memoir names by story, the Kong house at Queshan, lost the elder brother to the court's choice.