#peach blossom springs

For a Random Stuff post, this is a very long one. Sit tight y'all, it’s story time.

In the Taiyuan years of Eastern Jin (1), there once lived a fisherman in the Wuling (2) area. One day, he paddled his way up a stream, eventually forgetting how far he’d ventured.

All of a sudden, the fisherman found himself near some woods consisting entirely of blooming peach trees. Within two-hundred paces of the water, delicate flowers, lush green grass, and fallen peach blossoms carpeted the banks.  Astonished at this sight, the fisherman decided to press on, determined to reach the end of these woods.

Arriving at the source of the stream and the edge of the woods, he found a cave in the side of a mountain.  A light beckoned at the end of the tunnel.  The fisherman, now filled with curiosity, abandoned his boat and gingerly entered the tunnel.

At first the passage was narrow and could only fit one person, but after walking for a while, the walls abruptly gave way to the scenery on the other side. Fertile farmland and rows of houses framed by plains spread out before the fisherman, decorated by ponds, mulberry trees, and clusters of bamboo. Little paths fringed the fields, reaching into all corners of the village, while the clucking of chickens and the occasional woofing of dogs formed an audible backdrop. The villagers worked among their crops, dressed in much the same way as everyone outside of this paradise.  There were elders and youngsters as well, and all seemed to enjoy their lives.

The villagers also seemed shocked to see the fisherman, so they asked him where he was from.  The fisherman answered their question, and was promptly welcomed into their homes as a guest, where they prepared a feast for him.  The news of the fisherman’s arrival soon spread, and other villagers who caught wind of this man from the outside came to greet him.

From the conversation the followed, the fisherman soon learned about how these people came to settle in such a secluded place.  Over half a millennia ago, their forebears fled from a war (3) that destroyed much of their hometown.  Eventually the refugees found this paradise, so they settled here with their families and never moved out again.  When the fisherman asked if they knew the current government, the villagers apparently didn’t.  They didn’t even know about the previous dynasties (4), so the fisherman recounted all that came to pass in the past few hundred years:  all the tales, the wars, the changes.  The villagers could only react with sympathetic sighs.

After the conversations and more feasting over the following days, the fisherman finally bid goodbye to the villagers.  Before leaving, the villagers requested him to refrain from telling others about their village.

Unfortunately, the fisherman did not plan to keep the secret.  Upon emerging out of the cave, he found his boat and began rowing back slowly, while marking the way he came.  Once he was back in Wuling, he relayed his discoveries to the mayor.  The mayor immediately ordered some of his men to follow the fisherman back to the village.  However, they could not find the marks left by the fisherman, and soon became lost.

Nevertheless, the rumors of the “Peach Blossom Springs” circulated far and wide.  A hermit in Nanyang (5) by the name of Liu Ziji (6) heard the rumor, and came to search for this place.  The hermit failed, and died soon after.  Since then, no one has tried to find the place again.

(Notes and Interpretations/Background below)

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Notes:

1. Taiyuan years of Eastern Jin:  376-396 AD.
2. Wuling (武陵):  a city during Eastern Jin dynasty.  Around the same place as Changde, Hunan (湖南常德) today.
3. Over half a millennia ago; war:  refers to the Warring States era before Qin dynasty was established, or ~5th century BCE to 221 BCE.
4. Previous dynasties:  refers to Han dynasty, Wei dynasty (including the Three Kingdoms era).
5. Nanyang (南陽):  a city during Eastern Jin dynasty.  The city still exists today under the same name.
6. Liu Ziji (劉子驥):  a real person who lived during Eastern Jin era; his birth name was Liu Linzhi (劉驎之), Ziji (子驥) was his courtesy name.  He has an official biography in The Book of Jin (22nd biography under the Hermits chapter).

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Interpretations and Background:

As you can probably guess from the story itself, the Peach Blossom Springs isn’t a real place.  It’s a story, after all, and it’s the very story where the four-character idiom 世外桃源 (meaning “a paradise beyond this world”) originated.  But as stories go, people have different interpretations.

The most well-supported interpretation was somewhat based on the author’s life.  The author of this story was Tao Yuanming (陶淵明, 365-427 AD), and at the time he wrote this story, the country was again in turmoil, people were suffering, and the government wasn’t doing anything to help.  This story was also written as an introduction for his poem of the same title and subject.  The last 2 lines of the poem, however, gave a hint of his motivation:  “The average mortals of this world, how would they know the wonders that lie beyond? / I would rather fly away with the breeze, to search far and wide for my soulmate.” (請問世間凡夫子，可知塵外此奇跡？我願踏乘輕雲去，高飛尋找我知己。)  Thus, the Peach Blossom Springs could be understood as Tao Yuanming’s version of an ideal world, a sort of utopian dream, born of a harsh reality.

The second interpretation was more or less the same as the previous one, except it was slightly more morbid.  It proposed that perhaps instead of the Peach Blossom Springs being an utopian dream, it might have been Tao Yuanming’s vision of what the afterlife looked like.

The third interpretation likely came about in the age of the internet, and, the internet being the internet, this interpretation is the darkest of the three.  People theorized that instead of the story being about an utopia, it was all an illusion.  The refugees fleeing the war died, and the Peach Blossom Springs was actually an ancient neglected cemetery where they were buried.  All the villagers the fisherman saw were ghosts.

But, regardless of the interpretations people came up with, there’s one thing that everyone agrees on:  the Peach Blossom Springs is not of this world.