Preface to the Poem on the Peach Blossom Spring (421-2008)

As a contemporary artist, Huang Yong Ping re-reads the classic Preface to the Poem on Peach Blossom Spring written by Tao Yuanming in 421 and interprets the text in an entirely new way.
Huang takes Peach Blossom Spring to be a post-historical world in Francis Fukuyama’s sense, a world where economy and democracy are fully developed, a world that is universal and homogeneous, and has transcended the cycle of rise and decline. The world outside Peach Blossom Spring is, in contrast, the historical world, filled with contradictions and struggles, the rulers and the ruled – it is a society within the historical process. From the historical world, the fisherman entered the post-historical world by accident, in a sense ahead of time. He chose to leave in the end, but he and his followers could never again find the entrance. The text Preface to the Poem on Peach Blossom Spring is here interpreted as a political metaphor in the modern sense, from which we can see profound reflection and insight on the post-cold war global reality, the tension between the west and the non-west, and the dilemma of non-western intellectuals in a western world.