Tao Kan, a man of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was preparing to bury his father when one of the family's oxen suddenly vanished.
“Have you seen an ox?” he asked a passerby at the village entrance. The passerby shook his head. “Have you seen an ox?” he asked a woodcutter at the foot of the mountain.
The woodcutter waved his hand dismissively.
He climbed to the mountaintop and scanned the surroundings, but still there was no sign of the ox, so he had no choice but to head home. On the way, he encountered an old man with a flowing white beard and white hair drifting over his shoulders.
"Old sir, have you seen an ox?" Tao Kan asked with a bow.
The old man studied Tao Kan for a moment, then said, "I saw it sleeping in a puddle on the ridge of that mountain ahead. If someone is buried there, their descendants will surely become high officials." Pointing to another hill, he added, "That spot has excellent feng shui too. If used as a grave, the family will produce a provincial governor." With that, he vanished.
Tao Kan followed the old man's directions and indeed found the ox in a puddle on the mountain ridge; upon returning home, he ordered his family to bury his father on that very ridge.
Since Tao Kan's father and Zhou Fang's father had both served as officials in the same court of the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period, and both families later moved to Xunyang, with Zhou Fang's daughter also marrying Tao Kan's son, Tao Kan offered the other mountain indicated by the old man to Zhou Fang, and after Zhou Fang's father passed away, he was buried on that mountain.
The old man's words proved remarkably accurate—Tao Kan and Zhou Fang both later rose to high official positions, and even their sons and grandsons went on to hold government posts.
Later, the idiom "Niúmián Dì" was used by superstitious people in old times to refer to an auspicious burial site.
Source: *Book of Jin*, "Biography of Zhou Guang"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "牛眠地" came to describe an auspicious burial site.