Abstract:
The term "outsider" occurred three times in Tao Yuanming's Travel Account of the Peach Blossom Garden. Especially the "outsider" in the remark "all men and women are dressed like outsiders" should be a shortened form of "foreigners" or "exotic persons" rather than "persons outside the peach garden" as has been long mistaken. To sum up, there are four cases of misinterpretation of the term: 1. merely a misinterpretation of the term in the remark "all men and women are dressed like outsiders"; 2. an contradictory interpretation caused in comprehending the Travel Account of the Peach Blossom Garden and the poem of the Peach Blossom Garden; 3. a logical confusion caused by the misinterpretation; 4. two views, that is, "view of realistic recording" and "view of fiction", introduced based on the misinterpretation. In fact, the Travel Peach Blossom Garden.was both realistic and fictitious, which was, however, not to be explored based on the misinterpretation of the term "outsider".
