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Keynote Speech I Utopian Landscapes: from Thomas More's Utopia to Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring

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Keynote Speech I Utopian Landscapes: from Thomas More's Utopia to Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring Keynote Speech I Utopian Landscapes: From Thomas More’s Utopia to Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring Fang Fan and Xue Qian School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China Email: [email protected]; [email protected] [Abstract] The concept of “Utopia”, with a long history in western culture, shares a lot with the philosophy of “Peach Blossom Spring” in the Chinese culture (See Appendix I). By analyzing British writer Thomas More’s Utopia and Chinese poet Tao Yuanming’s “Peach Blossom Spring”, this paper tries to illustrate how both writers present a harmonious nation, society and culture, giving solutions to problems, and therefore, modeling an ideal society and a better future. Thomas More and Tao Yuanming put similar ideas into different literary practices, giving insightful Utopian landscapes even in today’s world. [Keywords] Utopia, Peach Blossom Spring, Utopian landscapes Introduction In the long process of history, the idea of “Utopia” (meaning “nowhere”) has a long-standing influence on western cultural tradition. In ancient Greece, Aristophanes (BC446-385) once made an ideal aspiration of society in The Birds (BC414), describing “a republic of wood-pigeons in clouds”. The concept of Utopia can be dated back to Plato’s (BC427-347) The Republic (around BC380), while the word of “Utopia” was first adopted by British writer Thomas More. The implication and expression of Utopia vary from a literary expression to the blueprint of an ideal political policy of a society, even to the psychological status of pursuing a happy life, and finally can be generalized as a plan for any future. The place called Utopia is not only an ideal society for living a happy life, but also an imagination and a configuration that never exists in reality. This double meaning gives opportunities for people to give different interpretations and add more possibility to establish their theories. The Utopian tradition was established, and since then a number of works show landscapes of Utopia with historical marks, such as Italian Utopian communist Thomas Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1623) and British famous materialist philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627). In fact, “Utopia” only demonstrates that it is possible to build an ideal society, which gives an expression of dissatisfaction and places hope in the critique of their Utopian intent (Chen, 2000). Germany Marxist and Utopian theorist Ernst Bloch broadened the concept of “Utopia”, making it a philosophical concept which can be characterized by superstition or unrealistic fantasy, and can also be expressed by some kind of rational expectations and plans (Chen, 2000). “Utopia” has obvious overtones of politics since it has an inseparable relationship with the political system. It is also a purveyor of literature, such as a Utopian novel and science fiction. Frederic Jameson, through focusing on science fiction, analyzes ideology and Utopian scenes through the narrative and archaeology, showing political, ideological and Utopian issues in different cultural texts (Fang, 2012). The narrative of “Utopia” in Chinese literature and the imagination of an ideal society have fallen into a deep route of literary tradition, which is typically represented by Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring (Wu, 2006). The poet of the Dongjin Dynasty, influenced by Taoism and Buddhism, finally embodied his seclusion idea in describing an ideal rural land of peach blossoms under the effect of 9 Confucianism. Comparatively speaking, Tao Yuanming withdrew from the world under the influence of Taoism, while More, who lived like a Confucian, entered the world and made more efforts in society. Tao’s imaginary world is full of fantasy. People in this place enjoy warmth, tranquility and satisfaction. It seems that there is no evil in that world, only kindness and peace. This peach blossom spring both corresponds to Confucius’ philosophy of the ideal and “great harmony” society, and also the philosophy of Taoism – such as “governing by doing nothing against the nature”. Traditionally this peach blossom spring is closely related with the ancient Chinese concept of “great harmony”, which makes the harmonious eras of Yao, Shun and Yu as the best examples. Also we can see in the earliest collection of poems and songs in China, the Book of Songs (BC1123-BC256), there is a description of similar landscapes to that in Peach Blossom Spring, “The villagers help each other in the farming. They go out farming when the sun rises and come home for rest when the sun sets”. The same landscape is also shown in another Chinese philosophical work Book of Master Zhuang (BC290) when it tells people to work when the sun rises, to rest when the sun sets, and to take life easy in the universe in order to find your own heart (Guo, & Cheng, 2011). They both share the ideal community, not politically-oriented but naturally and harmoniously surrounded. In this community of “great harmony”, there is no exploitation, no class difference and no oppression. In the Book of Rites (BC202-BC8), there is a clear definition of “great harmony”: the whole world as one community; people of virtue and talent are employed …there is no cheating, no stealing, ...that is great harmony. Sun (2011) points out that the ideal community continues in all phases of Chinese history, exemplified by Sun Yat-sen after the 1911 Revolution in the modern history of China: the aim of human evolution is what Confucius means when stating “when the great way prevails, the world is equally shared by all” (p. 226). In the long history of human beings, both western and eastern literature show an eagerness for an ideal society, an always better-world than the world today. Both western and eastern literature show the reflection of the time when writers live and write of their imagination for a better future. Among them, Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring are the two best examples, showing the landscapes of the Utopian world. Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring: Communism and Seclusion Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring are different in their approaches to an ideal society, however, they are equally satisfactory in their result. The British writer Thomas More published his famous work Utopia in 1516, in which he put his diplomatic experience as the background. On the other hand, Tao Yuanming felt depressed about his unsuccessful career. After resigning and living in seclusion, he turned to writing. In his representative works Returning to My Farm and Peach Blossom Spring, he developed an ideal society and placed all his hope on writing in a poetic way. More gave a full account of Utopia in six aspects: public ownership, mode of production, agriculture and handicraft, city planning, medical security and education. On the contrary, Tao’s description was much shorter and more abstract. In their writings we can see how communism and seclusion are presented. It was not Plato’s, but More’s foresight that there could be a wealthy public ownership society. A hierarchical society misleads Plato to advocating that the minority might be rich because he thinks that wealth makes lazybones. More, as a representative of petty bourgeoisie, cares for the general public. His Utopia upholds a public ownership, which takes the road of common prosperity. Peach Blossom Spring, without tortuous introduction, never tells what kind of ownership it is. The basic unit of a society, in both Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring, is the family (home, private house). The male does the farm work in 10 fields, and the female weaves at home. Tao highlighted the hospitality of people in Peach Blossom Spring, describing families twice: “they invited him to their homes, where they put wine before him, killed chickens and prepared food in his honor”; “Afterwards all the rest invited him to their homes, and all feasted him with wine and food.” It is the highest courteous reception to invite the fisherman to the villagers’ homes rather than to the public places, which, to a great extent, shows that Tao is in concordance with a Confucius’ well-to-do family. Family is not only the beginning and the end of an individual life, but also the fundamental unit in sociological perspective. It is the icon and principle of property. Utopia has some general characteristics of a communist society. However, it is reported that every household has two slaves, who are either from foreign countries or are Utopian criminals. In this place, wealth is of little importance and is only good for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing these nations to fight each other. Also, it is a welfare state with free hospitals, acceptable euthanasia and married priests, while premarital sex and adultery are seriously punished. People share meals in community dining halls, while the old and the administrators are given the best of the food. What’s more, laws are made deliberately simple here so that all people understand them with no doubt. Compared with these communist features, Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring shows more of his philosophy of living in seclusion. Local people’s clothes were quite different from the outsiders’. They had good fields, ponds, plants and flowers, living peacefully and quietly. They talked with the fisherman, and entertained him with delicious food and drink. When the fisherman introduced the outside world to them in detail, they sighed but insisted that the fisherman should never mention this paradise place to others. Finally, no matter how hard the fisherman tried, he could never find the way back to the paradise. Though the social system is different, the two texts share the isolation of geographical landscape from the outside. The geographical landscape of the Island of Utopia, according to More (1965), is “broadest in the middle, where it measures about two hundred miles across.
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