Distribution of Tao Yuanming’s descendants.

Tao Yuanming (365-427) was a poet, poet, and essayist in the Jin and Song Dynasties. A Qian, with the courtesy name Yuan Liang, and his private nickname Jingjie. A native of Chaisang, Xunyang (now southwest of Jiujiang, Jiangxi). Tao Yuanming was born into a declining official family. Great-grandfather Tao Kan was the founding father of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. He held the rank of Grand Sima, military commander of eight states, governor of two states in Jingjiang, and was granted the title of Duke of Changsha. Tao Yuanming's grandfather was a prefect, his father died early, and his mother was the daughter of Meng Jia, a famous scholar in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The descendants of Tao Yuanming migrated with the times and were roughly distributed in Hunan, Zan (zuǒ) Lane, Lukou Town, Nanjing, Zan Lane, Lukou, Jiangning, and Taowu Town, Jiangning District.

In the second year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, Duke Zhang and Duke Gong, the descendants of Tao Yuanming's eldest son, migrated from Jiangxi to Hunan together. One settled in Anhua, Yiyang, and the other settled in Hanshou, Changde. Tao Xinhao (descendant of Tao Yuanming) is the descendant of Zhang Gong who settled in Changde. Since then, the Tao descendants of this line have flourished in Hunan. Qiangong was fond of learning, but his descendants seemed to be contrary to him on this point. The Tao family had few literati and many military generals. Tao Fanggui, a native of Hanshou County, once served as the deputy political commissar of the Lanzhou Military Region, and Tao Chengyuan, a former Lieutenant General of the Kuomintang and the Democratic Party, was also a native of Li County, Hunan, and both belonged to the Tao family lineage in Changde.

During the Xianfeng and Tongzhi years of the Qing Dynasty, the descendants of the Tao family of the "De" generation moved from Zan Lane in Lukou, Jiangning to the Hujia Garden in Hualugang, west of Nanjing City Gate, in order to avoid the disasters of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Nearby, it has a history of four generations and more than a hundred years. Hualugang was formerly known as "Xinghua Village", which is the "Xinghua Village" referred to by Du Mu when "the shepherd boy pointed to Xinghua Village from a distance". The "Xinghua Gujiu" in the "Forty-eight Scenes of Jinling" in the Qing Dynasty refers to this place.

Tao Yi (a descendant of Tao Yuanming) was born in Hualugang in the south of Nanjing. He still vaguely remembers that his home was next to the descendants of Gu Qiyuan, a celebrity from the Ming Dynasty, and they often played together. Next to it was the Hu Family Garden. , where they often leave their footprints. My grandfather often told Tao Yi that during my great-grandfather's time, there was a five-in-one house with smoke and willows covering it, meandering from the back door of Hualugang to the edge of the "Loess Mountain" in Hu's garden. By the time pottery came to the world, the Tao family could only enter the courtyard three times. In my memory as a pottery artist, I still remember that the front door of their house was the "eight-character gate" and that it was a neighbor of the ancient house of Gu Qiyuan, the "Gu Tianguan". The families with the "Bazi Gate" were the wealthy families at that time. It is a pity that all this, together with the famous private garden Hu Family Garden in Nanjing (equally famous as the Suzhou Lion Grove), has long ceased to exist.