Yuan Rang (原壤) was either a young acquaintance of Confucius whom he rapped on the shin for his rudeness or an eccentric old friend of the sage whom he indulgently chided for his casualness.
According to a famous story in the Book of Ritual, the latter persona of Yuan Rang was such a free spirit that he jumped on his mother’s coffin and sang before her funeral while Confucius walked away pretending not to have heard him. Probably this is an entirely fictional incident. Continue reading Contemporary figures in the Analects of Confucius: Yuan Rang