Inheriting the Peach Blossom Spring in the best way

I first read “The Sto­ry of Peach Blos­som Spring” in 2009, and was imme­di­ate­ly struck by its over­whelm­ing beau­ty. Although the text was a mod­ern retelling by Mr. Mat­sui Nao, see­ing Mr. Cai Gao’s paint­ings brought back Tao Yuan­ming’s time­less mas­ter­piece. “Dur­ing the Taiyuan peri­od of the Jin Dynasty, a man from Wul­ing made a liv­ing by fish­ing.” (The first folio of the text) — turn­ing to the next page, “Walk­ing along the stream, I for­got how far I had gone.” — turn­ing anoth­er page, “Sud­den­ly I came upon a for­est of peach blos­soms, stretch­ing for hun­dreds of feet along the banks, with no oth­er trees in sight. The grass was fresh and fra­grant, and the fall­en petals were scat­tered pro­fuse­ly…” As I chant­ed the beau­ti­ful “falling petals pro­fuse­ly” and gazed upon the vibrant blos­soms, I felt a lit­tle reluc­tant to turn the page.

Because I’ve loved this ancient Chi­nese text since child­hood, I’ve always been able to recite it. I know it’s actu­al­ly the pref­ace to the Peach Blos­som Spring, but I can’t mem­o­rize the five-char­ac­ter poem itself. This pref­ace, how­ev­er, remains deeply etched in my mind. I’ve seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered why “Peach Blos­som Spring” appeals to chil­dren. First, it’s a beau­ti­ful and mag­i­cal sto­ry. The sense of won­der it evokes in a lost won­der­land cap­tures a child’s curios­i­ty and leaves a last­ing impres­sion. Sec­ond, it’s the sound and rhythm. Although the 321 char­ac­ters are writ­ten in prose, the sen­tences are typ­i­cal­ly com­posed of three, four, or five char­ac­ters, cre­at­ing a rhyth­mic flow, like free verse uncon­strained by meter. If you under­stand the sto­ry and recite it repeat­ed­ly in a rhyth­mic man­ner, you’ll like­ly find your­self danc­ing and enchant­ed.

As a pic­ture book for con­tem­po­rary young read­ers, it was cru­cial for Japan­ese pub­lish­er Nao­ki Mat­sui to adapt the sto­ry into a mod­ern lan­guage. Thanks to his child-friend­ly retelling, com­ple­ment­ed by Cai Gao’s stun­ning illus­tra­tions, the sto­ry was includ­ed in Japan­ese ele­men­tary school text­books. This ful­filled a dream of Nao­ki Mat­sui’s. Influ­enced by his father from a young age, he deeply loved the sto­ry of Peach Blos­som Spring. After a long jour­ney, he final­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty, through inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, to bring Peach Blos­som Spring to the hearts of even more Japan­ese chil­dren. I believe that hav­ing an adult read the text aloud to chil­dren while they look at the accom­pa­ny­ing illus­tra­tions is the best way to begin enjoy­ing the Peach Blos­som Spring sto­ry.

How­ev­er, I have even greater expec­ta­tions for young Chi­nese read­ers. I believe that after becom­ing ful­ly famil­iar with the sto­ry, recit­ing the orig­i­nal clas­si­cal text direct­ly while observ­ing the illus­tra­tions will be even more enjoy­able. The sto­ry told in the illus­tra­tions alone per­fect­ly aligns with the mean­ing and rhythm of the orig­i­nal text, demon­strat­ing the artist’s pro­found lit­er­ary mas­tery. In the orig­i­nal sto­ry, upon return­ing home, the fish­er­man “went to the pre­fec­ture and report­ed the inci­dent,” imply­ing that the fish­er­man had proac­tive­ly report­ed the inci­dent. The adapt­ed ver­sion is more tol­er­ant of human nature, with the pre­fect ques­tion­ing the fish­er­man after hear­ing the rumor. The added details of the spread of infor­ma­tion in the illus­tra­tions make this process more nat­ur­al. The adapt­ed orig­i­nal sto­ry omit­ted the fol­low­ing tid­bit: “Nanyang Liu Ziji, a noble man, upon hear­ing the news, hap­pi­ly set out to vis­it…” How­ev­er, the artist’s final folio could also be inter­pret­ed as con­vey­ing this mes­sage. The fig­ure furi­ous­ly writ­ing on the boat could be either Tao Yuan­ming or Liu Ziji. There­fore, turn­ing to the last page and see­ing the lone­ly boat per­fect­ly embod­ies the sen­ti­ment of “no one has since come to vis­it.”

I’ve read this book direct­ly from Tao Yuan­ming’s orig­i­nal text in many read­ing activ­i­ties with chil­dren. The most mem­o­rable one was at the Bei­jing Con­cert Hall. Accom­pa­nied by a per­former’s impromp­tu music, we immersed our­selves in a beau­ti­ful imag­i­na­tive world cre­at­ed by the efforts of ancient and mod­ern peo­ple, Chi­nese and Japan­ese. We knew it was a sto­ry, but it was more than just a sto­ry; it was a beau­ti­ful wish, worth pass­ing down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion in the best pos­si­ble way.

Cai Gao’s expe­ri­ence of hav­ing to teach in remote vil­lages for many years dur­ing a spe­cial peri­od has nour­ished her brush with a strong rur­al fla­vor. The folk cus­toms in the book are real and tan­gi­ble. Even the four words “all come out of wine and food” in ancient texts are reflect­ed in the pic­ture as fra­grant farm meals in west­ern Hunan. Read­ers of all ages will have a bet­ter under­stand­ing and love of life through such read­ing.

How­ev­er, thanks to a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nao­ki Mat­sui, known as the “Father of Japan­ese Pic­ture Books,” this book also ful­ly incor­po­rates the nar­ra­tive lan­guage of mod­ern pic­ture books. The edges of the images are blurred through­out the sto­ry, giv­ing this beau­ti­ful tale a con­stant air of mys­tery. Water is present almost every­where in the sto­ry, yet the artist rarely depicts it direct­ly. The blank space left in tra­di­tion­al paint­ings often becomes the read­er’s imag­i­nary water, and some­times serves as a blank space for text. There’s also the direc­tion: the fish­er­man enters the Peach Blos­som Spring from left to right, but leaves from right to left…

There’s an inter­est­ing detail. Since child­hood, I’ve won­dered how the fish­er­man, upon leav­ing, marked the path to Peach Blos­som Spring, hop­ing to return. Why then, despite search­ing for the path he had marked, did he still get lost? Where did his ear­li­er mark­ings go? This book sur­pris­ing­ly pro­vides the answer! Of course, this is a sub­tle play on details the artist left in the paint­ing. I believe young read­ers will enjoy dis­cov­er­ing it for them­selves.

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021