In Chinese mythology, peaches are the fruit of immortality. Sun Wu-kung, Monkey, gains immortality and special powers by stealing and eating one of the peaches of immortality and helps bring the Buddhist scriptures from India to China in the novel Journey to the West.
Tao Yuan-ming, one of the earliest Chinese nature poets and an inspiration for many of the T’ang dynasty great poets, wrote a remarkable prose poem called “The Peach Blossom Fountain” about a fisherman who travels through a river in a peach forest to a hidden community which has isolated itself from the rest of the world for hundreds of years. It is a vision of Utopia or Shangri-la and, although the fisherman marks his trail, no one is ever able to find this peaceful place ever again.
Whenever I find a reference to peaches or peach blossoms in Chinese poetry, I think of immortality. Whenever I enjoy a peach (and I enjoy both yellow and white peaches fresh from my farmers’ market as often as I can), I taste it as fully as possible as if I were already immortal and this moment of sweet juice and flavor would last forever.
