“On and on the Times Move”: Tao Yuanming on the (Im)possibilities of Utopia

Tao Yuanming’s poem “Time Moves On” 〈時運〉 is in close dialogue with Analects 11.26 where Kongzi asks his disciples about their aspirations. Of the four in attendance, the first three profess goals of statecraft—desiring to secure a position that would allow them to transform the state. The fourth, Zengxi 曾皙, who had been playing the zither when the other three were responding, stopped and said, “Toward the end of spring, with my spring clothes ready, I would head out with five or six men and six or seven boys to bathe in the Yi River and [to enjoy] the breeze at the altar where the rain dance is performed. We would then return home in song” 莫春者，春服既成，冠者五六人，童子六七人，浴乎沂，風乎舞雩，詠而歸. After hearing all four disciples’ wishes Kongzi stated, “I’m with Zengxi” 吾與點也. Like Kongzi, Tao is with Zengxi.

In “Time Moves On” there is a longing for a past that never was. This is but one utopic moment in Tao’s poetry, but there are many others. Utopias exist outside of time. They are imaginative reconceptualizations of the present. “Time Moves On” and Analects 11.26 describe a time that Kongzi could only imagine. Tao Yuanming continually imagines alternatives to the present to express his discontent with it. 

Tao’s most well-known utopic piece is “A Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” 〈桃花源記〉 and its accompanying poem. Many interpreters read it as a utopia rooted in passages 18, 19, and 80 of the Daode Jing. In these passages “the great Way is thrown into disuse” 大道廢and erudition along with other attributes emerge, leading to “great hypocrisy” 大偽. The Daode Jing then encourages its readers to “cast aside erudition” 棄智 and “cut off craftiness” 絕巧 in order to create a more peaceful and mutually beneficial society. The passages further advocate “embracing simplicity” 抱樸. The 80th passage in particular describes a utopic society—depicting what human living would look like if we returned to our original condition of simplicity. The author describes it as a society where people live in small groups, tools (as well as boats and carriages) are left unused, only the simplest means of keeping track of time are employed, and even though one might hear the sounds of the neighbors’ dogs and roosters, “the people grow old and die, without ever having visited each other”民至老死，不相往來. Tao seems to allude to these passages in “A Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” and other poems. Yet there are significant differences between what the Daode Jing advocates and what Tao advocates. For the former, returning to simplicity entails a rejection of the technology and relationships that enable a complex society—in the Daode Jing’s ideal world, people use only the simplest of tools and rarely interact with each other. With Tao, on the other hand, tools, carriages, and boats populate his poetry. Perhaps more importantly, Tao finds inter-personal relationships key to living a good life. Tao does, however, advocate for a kind of simplicity. Nonetheless, his simplicity is not so plain that he denies the comfort of crafty technology. Indeed, there is a place for erudition and skill, as long as they are watched over and tended to as one tends to one’s crops. 

“A Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” is a complicated narrative about the (im)possibility of utopia. The people living behind the spring are not supernatural figures, nor do they have access to things we do not; indeed, what is remarkable about the people and their land is their divinely unremarkable daily life. Yet this utopia is never found by anyone intentionally seeking it—the fisherman who “discovers” it, found it by chance, and when he brings government personnel to look for it, it remains hidden. Even Liu Ziji, whom Tao praises in other poems as a high-minded recluse like himself, dies before finding it. The essay concludes with a reference to Analects 18.6—after Liu Ziji, “there was no one that asked about the ford” 後遂無問津者. In the context of the Analects, the line refers to Kongzi and his disciples who ask two farmer-recluses about the best way to cross a river. They are met with criticism and an invitation to join in the lifestyle of the farmers, which they decline. Kongzi is clearly the one asking about the ford, but he is also the one who refuses to live the life of a recluse. Yet Tao seems troubled by the fact that no one else asks about the ford (i.e., the path to the Peach Blossom Spring). 

Material such as “A Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” is often included when talking about utopian studies in a Chinese context. Zhang Longxi has been particularly influential in this field. Building on western theorists of utopia such as Krishan Kumar and Alain Touraine, Zhang argues that utopias are essentially secular narratives—ones that come about only after ideas of transcendent paradises are abandoned—and that Tao Yuanming provides precisely this kind of narrative. In contrast with Tao, Chinese authors writing similar kinds of literature often depict “a fairyland beyond the human world.” Tao’s secular narrative, for Zhang, provides a goal within the realm of human attainment. Yet the fact that Tao’s utopia cannot be found even when sought after with the right intentions, opens the way for a reading with a result similar to those Zhang eschews; namely, that successfully constructing a utopia lays beyond human control.