An Account of the Peach Blossom Spring

An Account of the Peach Blossom Spring is a prose work written around 421 CE by Tao Yuanming, a former government official who withdrew from political life and became a recluse. It follows a fisherman who discovers a hidden community whose ancestors fled political violence and whose inhabitants ask him to keep their existence secret. Written against the backdrop of a divided China, the work is a social commentary on coercive political power. Luminous and enduring, it offers a glimpse of an enchanted refuge while indicting the political conditions that made it unattainable.