Since the desire for a better world is an anthropological constant, it is not surprising that Chinese writers in one way or another have also conceived utopian communities. The form of their narratives follows more or less logically from their intention to construct a world different from the one they are living in, but the results of these attempts are impregnated by Chinese geographical conditions and cultural preoccupations. Chinese writers of utopian fiction posit a secluded world that is difficult to access and hence protected against outside influences: situated in a mountainous region, faraway borderlands, or overseas. It is projected into a distant, little-known past or a completely imaginary fairyland. The values prevalent in such utopias contravene the sordid practice of synchronous politics and social conventions.

In several – but not all! – respects Chinese utopian narratives happen to resemble European and American utopian fiction. This becomes apparent from observing the development of Chinese utopias from its early days, when there was no Western influence on Chinese culture at all, up to the present. This is not a case of implying a Western genre concept on non-Western texts, but one of acknowledging the utopian impulse as a universal phenomenon and the specific Chinese manifestations of that phenomenon as resulting from the Chinese imagination and conditions. I am not saying that concepts originated in the West have played no role in my argument, but some of these concepts are universally applicable. For instance, I have used a concept of genre conceived by Western scholars that enabled me to indicate the principal features of a set of texts in shorthand. The recognition of a certain genre is based on conventional and unavoidably simplifying categorizing that may go back to a certain prototype. Thomas More’s Utopia has been considered a prototype of the genre of utopian fiction in the West. In a similar way, “The Story of Peach Blossom Spring” (“Taohua yuan ji”) by Tao Yuanming, also named Tao Qian (365-427), serves as a prototype of the Chinese genre of utopian fiction. These different prototypes account for part of the differences between the Western and Chinese concepts of utopian fiction.