Dream Journey to the Peach-Blossom Land

Spring arrived suddenly,, here in Korea. It was below freezing, and now is in the low 20s.

The first sign of spring are always the flowers of a delicate purple shrub called Jindelae, which grows in the shade of the tree covered hillsides.  Here’s some I picked and relocated to my studio.

Next, there arrive the fruit-tree blossoms. There a small orchard close to my house that always reminds me of the peach orchard in Ahn  (or An) Gyeon’s painting ‘Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land’ (1447).   Here’s the orchard nearby:

And here’s a detail of the painting. The original is a handscroll in ink and light colour on silk, and is very long, measuring 438 cm x 106 cm.  So, it’s impossible to see very clearly in reproduction in its entirety. The orchard is at the top right of the handscroll.

One of the painting’s 23 colophons was composed and penned by Prince Anpyeong, who commissioned the work. In it he describes how he had a vivid dream in which he became the fisherman described in a famous poem by the Chinese poet Tao Quian (365-427CE) called A Peach Blossom Spring. Prince Anpyeong writes that soon after having his dream he asked Ahn Gyeon to paint the handscroll. He also describes what he saw in his dream: ”The paradise is a land of mountains, range upon range formed by deep gorges, and the rocky peaks are lofty and remote…….Mountains on four sides stood like walls in thick clouds and mists. Peach trees in the near and far distance were reflected through hazy, rosy clouds.” It is this peach grove, which we see in the right-hand section of the painting,  that announces the location of the secret Utopian community. 

Tao Quian’s poem was written during a time of great political turmoil for China, and the origins of the symbolism of the sacred peach lie in Taoism. The immortals were said to live in a paradise of eternal youth and eternal life. Xi Wangmu, the Queen of the West, was believed to live on Mount Kunlun, and it was said that eating a peach from Xi Wangmu’s grove, which grow only once in every 3000 years, granted a person eternal youth and eternal life. The paradise of the Taoist immortals was a place free from troubles, so people often sought to embody this perfect world in their daily lives by adding a grove of peach trees to their garden or building a sanctuary for themselves. Tao Quians’  poem begins with a fisherman following a stream, and losing track of the distance he traveled. He encounters a peach blossom grove, and after enjoying the fragrant air filled with blossoms, looks for the end of the grove and finds a tight crevasse in a hillside. He squeezes through, emerging on the other side to see a village surrounded by lush fields, ponds, mulberry and willow trees, and towering bamboo. The villagers accept the fisherman into their homes, and he speaks to them of the dynastic changes and continual warfare experienced by the people of China since the villagers became separated from the rest of China.  After a stay of several days the fisherman departs with well wishes, and a request from the villagers that he keep their paradise a secret.  But  on his return journey the fisherman leaves markers along the way, and he is soon leading an expedition to find the place again. However, all his efforts -  like those of the many others who would follow him – ended in failure. Since that time no one has ever re-entered the ‘Peach Blossom Land.’

Ahn’s masterpiece is therefore a painting of a dream of a poem.. 

 Handscroll painting is an intimate form of visual art that can be viewed by only a few people at a time. In contrast to a hanging scroll, the handscroll usually tells a story that extends across time. Unrolled from right to left, so that about 50 cm is revealed at a time, the section to be viewed is then re-rolled before another section is unrolled. The same character or characters may appear at multiple points over the extent of a painting, something like a cartoon strip or animated film. But Ahn’s painting is unusual insofar as it unrolls from left to right, and there are no human characters at all. As I mentioned, we don’t see signs of the utopian community itself – just three outlying and empty buildings at the edge of the orchard at the middle and top right of the painting. We can only imagine what it’s like. 

To end today’s post on a more realistic note, here’s a picture of a local pillbox. Note the small Jindelae blossoms just to the left. Such military structures are everywhere around here, part of the defenses against the failed utopia on the other side of the DMZ.

For my next post I will do a short photographic inventory of some choice examples of local defenses.