The short answer is "no." Chuang Tzu almost certainly did not make a will because he knew that when his life ended he would be swept back into the limitless Way and that his worldly loved ones and possessions would soon follow. He also would have avoided lawyers at all costs.
But the question popped into my head when I saw this story in today’s People’s Daily:
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Wills play a growing role in ChinaAn increasing number of people across the country some of them just
teenagers are ignoring the taboo surrounding death by writing wills.
Experts said the trend reflects a growing interest in property
rights in China, even if it means exercising them from beyond the
grave.
Statistics from the Luwan District notary office in central Shanghai
showed that more than 170 people registered wills in the first 10
months of this year, representing an increase of 15 per cent from the
same period last year.And the number has been growing for years.
The ages of some of the will-signers are also something of a
curiosity among them are businessmen in their 30s, trendy women in
their 20s and even one forward-looking soul of just 19.
"The trend shows that the public is turning to legal means to
tackle family issues," said Zhao Jinhong, director of the Luwan
District notary office.
"It reflects people’s growing awareness of the law, as well as a sense of social harmony," he added.
Unlike in the Western world, where people are more open about
preparing for their deaths, few Chinese people think of turning to
legal documents to look after their families after they have died.In the past, family members negotiated among themselves when it came to dealing with the property of the recently departed.
Even millionaires, who have so much to pass on, tend to view such preparations as inauspicious.
What caught my eye were the lines "taboo about death" and "preparations as inauspicious." I do not doubt that many Chinese people, like many people in other countries (including my mother), fear death and do not want to speak of it, so as not to tempt bad luck. But what struck me was how this attitude is so unlike Chuang Tzu.
Chuang Tzu seems utter unafraid of death. Here is A.C. Graham (from his translation of Chuang Tzu, p . 23):
The liberation from selfhood is seen above all as a triumph over death. His [Chuang Tzu’s] position is not that personal consciousness will survive death, but rather that in grasping Way one’s viewpoint shifts from ‘I shall no longer exist’ to something like "In losing selfhood I shall remain what at bottom I always was, identical with everything conscious and unconscious in the universe.’ In the exaltation with which Chuang Tzu confronts death he seem to foresee the end of his individuality as an event which is both an obliteration and an opening out of consciousness. To come to feel that extinction of self does not matter since at bottom I am everything and have neither beginning nor end is (along with acceptance of annihilation and faith in individual survival) one of the three classic solutions to the problem of death; no thinker in Chinese literature, nor for all I know in the literature of the world, has experienced it as deeply and expressed it as eloquently as Chuang Tzu.
So, I guess my question is: why don’t more Chinese people, or more people everywhere for that matter, embrace Chuang Tzu’s view of death? If they did they would not see death as "taboo" or preparing for it as "inauspicious." It’s just another experience, another inescapable facet of Way. It would seem that, at least in this regard, Chuang Tzu did not have, and does not now have, all that much of an impact on Chinese culture.
This is not to say that Chuang Tzu would be absolutely against wills. They do have a certain positive function (and another interesting thing about the article was how wills are strengthening a sense of property rights in China), making sure loved ones are cared for. Rather, he would tell us not to fear death, not to worry about talking of it, not to let it come to define our lives. Write the will, sure, but live each moment as it comes.
The Useless Tree 
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