113

Hsieh Fang-te (1226–1289), aka Hsieh Ping-te, was from Yiyang in Kiangsi province and served in Hangchou as an examiner of civil service candidates. His selection of topics, however, led to his dismissal and subsequent demotion to the provinces, and eventually to the prefecture next to his hometown. When the Mongols finally brought the Southern Sung dynasty to an end in 1279, Hsieh formed an army of resistance in Yiyang, but he was defeated and fled to Fukien. He was later captured and taken to the new capital in Beijing, but he starved himself in prison rather than serve the rulers of the new Yuan dynasty. Here, he visits a hermitage in the hills just south of Yiyang. T’ao Yuan-ming’s story, which supplies the background for this poem, recounts how a fisherman followed peach petals that were drifting down a stream until he reached their source in a cleft in the rocks. Squeezing through the crevice he came out into an idyllic valley, where he met people whose ancestors had come there several hundred years earlier to escape the brutal rule of the Ch’in dynasty (221–207 B.C.). After returning to tell others of his discovery, the fisherman was unable to relocate the valley, as the refugees had obscured the trail and the crevice. Hsieh uses the Ch’in here to represent the Yuan (1280–1368), from whose encroaching dominion he hoped to find refuge.

The Peach Blossoms of Chingchuan Hermitage

HSIEH FANG-TE

In Peach Blossom Valley they escaped the Ch’in

peach blossom red means spring is here again

don’t let flying petals fall into the stream

some fisherman I fear might try to find their source