Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
The Peach Blossom Spring
桃花源
The Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源, Táohuāyuán) is a story from the Chinese classic by Tao Yuanming, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 1 (Beginner).
Retold from Tao Yuanming's classic tale: a fisherman follows a river of peach blossoms into a small cave and finds a village that hasn't seen the outside world in nearly six hundred years.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells this tale quietly, as if the peach forest were just past the next hill.
- The fisherman · 渔夫 — A curious fisherman from Wuling who rows farther up the river one spring day than he ever has before.
- The village girl · 小女孩 — An eleven-year-old girl from the hidden village who has never met anyone from beyond the mountain.
- The old villager · 老爷爷 — The girl's grandfather, a kind host whose family came into the mountains long ago to escape a war and never left.
- The governor · 太守 — The governor of Wuling, a busy official who wants to see this hidden village with his own eyes.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Peach Forest
都是桃花
A fisherman rows farther up the river than ever before and drifts into a forest of peach blossoms that never seems to end. What lies beyond it?
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Chapter 2: Behind the Cave
山洞后边
Beyond the dark, narrow cave lies a sunny village, and a girl with a basket stares at the stranger as if he has fallen from the sky.
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Chapter 3: A Village Out of Time
还是秦朝吗？
Over chicken and wine, an old villager asks the fisherman one simple question about the world outside. The answer is six hundred years long.
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Chapter 4: Never Found Again
找不到了
The fisherman marks every bend of the river on his way home, then goes straight to the governor. But will the cave still be there?
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Key words in The Peach Blossom Spring
Behind the story
Tao Yuanming (陶渊明), one of China's best-loved poets, wrote 桃花源记, “A Record of the Peach Blossom Spring,” around AD 421. The short prose tale is set in the Jin dynasty, and Chinese students still study it in middle school; many learn it by heart.
Tao lived through years of war and chose a quiet life of farming. His hidden village, where families farm in peace and no one has heard of the dynasties outside, became one of China's favorite pictures of a perfect world, and painters have painted the fisherman and his boat for centuries.
Did you know?
- 源 (yuán) means “source,” the place where a river begins. That is why 桃花源 is called the Peach Blossom Spring in English.
- Wuling (武陵) was a real region in what is now Hunan province. The city of Changde there still has a Wuling District, and a Peach Blossom Spring scenic area welcomes visitors.
- The idiom 世外桃源 (shìwài táoyuán), “a peach-blossom land beyond the world,” comes from this story. Chinese speakers use it for any peaceful place far from the busy world.