Legendary Warring-States Daoist figure known almost exclusively from Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 ch. 23 Gēngsāng Chǔ 庚桑楚, where he appears as a disciple of Gēngsāng Chǔ who, told by his master that he is “of slight talent and not enough for me to transform you,” is sent south to study with Lǎozǐ 老子 in person. Nán Róng Chū’s troubled question to Lǎozǐ — “If I am ignorant, men call me dim; if I have knowledge, my own person is troubled; if I am unkind I harm others, if I am kind my own person is troubled; if I am unrighteous I injure others, if I righteous I trouble myself — how can I escape from this?” — and Lǎozǐ’s reply (“Can you embrace the One, can you not lose it?… Can you become as a child? — the child moves without knowing what it does, walks without knowing where it goes, its body like the branch of a withered tree and its mind like dead ashes; for such a one, neither happiness nor calamity comes — and where there is no calamity, where can disaster come from?”) form one of the most-quoted dialogues in the Zhuāngzǐ on the Daoist art of bào yī 抱一 (“embracing the One”).
In Daoist hagiography Nán Róng Chū is counted among the shízǐ 十子 (“Ten Masters”) of Lǎozǐ’s lineage; he is the fourth figure in Zhào Mèngfǔ’s 趙孟頫 Xuányuán shízǐ tú 玄元十子圖 (KR5a0164). Historical lifedates are not establishable — the figure is purely literary, derived from the Zhuāngzǐ parable. No CBDB record.