Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao Entering the Tiantai Mountains

Liu Chen (劉晨) and Ruan Zhao () were semi-legendary figures active during the Han dynasty, known for their trip to Tiantai Mountain. First described in the early fifth-century '' zhiguai'' anthology ''Youming lu'' (), the legend of Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao has been depicted in paintings, plays, and poetry.

Synopsis

The legend of Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao was first described in the '' zhiguai'' anthology ''Youming lu'' (), whose authorship is attributed to Liu Yiqing (403–444). It is recollected in the ''

Taiping Yulan The ''Taiping Yulan'', translated as the ''Imperial Reader'' or ''Readings of the Taiping Era'', is a massive Chinese ''leishu'' encyclopedia compiled by a team of scholars from 977 to 983. It was commissioned by the imperial court of the Song ...

''. In the fifth year of the Yongping Emperor, Shengzhou natives Liu Chen (劉晨) and Ruan Zhao () head to Tiantai Mountain to procure medicinal herbs, whereupon they encounter a couple of beautiful maidens in a valley of peach blossoms. They cohabit with them but begin to feel homesick after half a year. However, Liu and Ruan return home discover that hundreds of years have elapsed after meeting their seventh-generation grandchildren. In the eighth year of the

Taiyuan Taiyuan (; ; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; also known as (), ()) is the capital and largest city of Shanxi Province, People's Republic of China. Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural and international exchange center of Shanxi Province. ...

reign of the Jin dynasty, Liu and Ruan disappear again, this time apparently forever.

Depictions

Painted on a

Cizhou ware Cizhou ware or Tz'u-chou ware () is a term for a wide range of Chinese ceramics from between the late Tang dynasty and the early Ming dynasty, but especially associated with the Northern Song to Yuan period in the 11–14th century. It has been ...

pillow, dating back to the Jin dynasty and currently housed at the

Palace Museum The Palace Museum () is a huge national museum complex housed in the Forbidden City at the core of Beijing, China. With , the museum inherited the imperial royal palaces from the Ming and Qing dynasties of China and opened to the public in 192 ...

in Beijing, are "two gentlemen crossing a bridge and walking towards a cloudy ravine"; according to scholar Li Qingquan, the two men are Liu and Ruan. The Yuan dynasty playwright Wang Ziyi () adapted the story into a play titled ''Liu Chen Ruan Zhao wu ru taoyuan'' or ''Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao Strayed into the Land of Peach Blossoms'' (). Yuan painter Zhao Cangyun's "most famous painting" is on the handscroll ''Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao Entering the Tiantai Mountains'' (), which has been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since September 1999; the handscroll also features inscriptions by Zhao and is accompanied by colophons by Zhao Heqin (), Hua Youwu (), Yao Guangxiao (), and Song Yong ().

Allusions

The previously unpublished autobiographical account of Zhang Daye's (1854–?) life during and after the Taiping Rebellion—whose manuscript was rediscovered and translated into English by Xiaofei Tian as ''The World of a Tiny Insect'' in 2013—begins thus: Tian writes that Zhang's "deliberate discursive choice" of evoking the legend of Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao with the phrase "trip to Tiantai" serves to create an "ironic reversal of the idyllic, if legendary, past"; moreover, while Zhang did pass by the mountain, his final destination was his friend Yuan Jichuan's residence in Shaoxing.

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* * * * * * {{refend Male characters in literature Legendary Chinese people