Sima Qian records Zhuang Zhou as a minor lacquer-garden official in Meng, flourishing around the late 4th century BCE, who declined King Wei of Chu's offer of high office with the turtle parable. The Inner Chapters (1-7) of the book bearing his name are held to be his own hand; the rest is school accretion.
The popular Zhuangzi: drum-beating widower, butterfly dreamer, the man who laughed at usefulness. Self-help has adopted him as the patron saint of opting out, usually without the chapter where he explains that opting out is also a position, and therefore also a trap.
The deeper read: Zhuangzi's refusals were not modesty but method. Fame, office, even reputation for wisdom are 'hostages of the named.' His philosophy is the systematic practice of becoming unusable to power, what the tradition calls the perfection of being nobody.
Was he a sage, a slacker, or the first man to see that the distinction is the trap?