The Meaning of Plants (21)

桃花源，The Peach Blossom Spring，陶渊明(365—427) was lived in a chaos time of East Jin Dynasty东晋（317－420）.陶渊明 had resigned in a strange way. At his time, the seal is the ID of an officer. So when he left office, he hanged his seal in the middle of his office. He said, I will never bow and flatter for just fifty litre rice. (At that time a salary of officer was fifty litre rice).

  At that time China had endless wars in successive years. People longed for a time of peace. Someone even dreamt a place as Shangri-la. Then陶渊明 the resigned officer wrote a story it told that a fisherman sailed a boat at a place called 武陵. There was a river full of peach blossom. The fisherman felt strange. He landed there and found a mountain that had a small cave. He went in, at beginning it was very narrow only allow one person to pass but later it got wider and he found a new world behind. It had beautiful farm land people worked among the field busily.  They lived peacefully and happily unlike the outside world. They didn’t even know the history for the past few century. They said that their ancestors settled in that land for many centuries and never contact with outside since then. The whole village was like a big family, every house kept open doors and when one family had a vistor, all the villagers would come to see him as a big news. They enjoyed their life so much.

When the fisherman was ready to leave, the villagers told him not to tell outside world about them. Yet the next time, when the fisherman went there seeking them he got lost totally.  

Pic from http://www.chinancient.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/shangri-la-02.jpg