The Oath of the Peach Garden

One man sold mats. One sold wine and butchered pigs. One pushed a cart of goods from place to place.

That morning, in a rural county called Zhuo, the three men had never met. None of them held any rank. There were only three trades, three ways of earning a meal, and a notice just pasted on the wall at the head of the market.

People crowded around to read it. The country was in turmoil, so the authorities had posted notices in every county, calling on young men to come forward and help keep the villages safe.

The mat seller stood reading for a long time. Then he sighed.

His name was Liu Bei, and he was also called Xuande. His family was poor. His father had died when he was small, and mother and son looked after each other. Day after day he wove straw sandals and plaited mats, carried them to the market, and brought every coin home to his mother. He lived in the hamlet of Lousang. To the southeast of the house stood a huge mulberry tree, more than five zhang tall. A zhang is a traditional Chinese measure of length. The tree's crown spread so round that from afar it looked like a carriage canopy. A passing fortune teller looked up at it and said this family would surely bring forth someone great.

On that morning in front of the notice, that someone great was still only a mat seller, sighing.

Right behind him, a voice rang out. A true man, it shouted, should put his strength into the common cause, not stand there sighing.

The man who shouted was big, with a voice like thunder. His name was Zhang Fei, also known as Yide. His family had lived in Zhuo for generations. He owned farmland, kept a wine shop, and worked as a pig butcher. He loved making friends far and wide, and a man sighing in the street annoyed him.

Liu Bei turned around without anger. He said he was sighing because the people of the region were suffering, and his own strength was small. At that, the big man changed his tone at once. He said his family had some means. If they pooled their means and gathered the young men of the village, that would beat standing there lamenting.

The two went off together to the tavern at the head of the market to talk.

Just then, a tall man pushed a cart of goods up to the tavern door and stopped to rest. He came in, sat down, and called for his wine to be poured quickly. He still had to get into town in time to put his name down.

Liu Bei looked up. A red face, a long beard, and a stance as steady as a tree. He invited the stranger to join their table.

The cart pusher said his family name was Guan and his given name was Yu, and he was also called Yunchang. He came from Xieliang, in the Hedong region. Back home, a man had used his power to bully the people around him. Guan Yu had stood up against that man, and afterward he had to leave home. For five or six years he had wandered, pushing his cart from region to region. When he heard that men were being called here, he came.

The three sat together for a long while. The more they talked, the better they got along.

Then Zhang Fei blurted out words that would still be repeated hundreds of years later. Behind my farm, he said, there is a peach orchard, and the trees are in full bloom. Tomorrow morning let us go there and declare ourselves before heaven and earth. Let the three of us become brothers and be of one heart. Then we can plan great things.

The next day, the three men went out to the peach orchard.

The peach trees were at their very peak. Blossoms covered every branch and every path, and at the faintest breeze the petals drifted down onto their shoulders. In the middle of the orchard they set out offerings, lit incense, and bowed together twice.

Their oath said that the three bore different family names, but now that they had become brothers, they would be of one heart and one strength. They would help those in hardship and rescue those in danger. Above, they would repay their country. Below, they would bring peace to the people. Then came the last line, the one that has sounded heavy to every generation since. They did not ask to be born on the same day, in the same month, of the same year. They only wished to die on the same day, in the same month, of the same year.

People of that time often bound their hearts with weighty words like these. It was not a wish for misfortune. It was how grown men of old told one another that from now on three fates had become one. They would share the good times and the hard ones, and no one would abandon another halfway. And the part they lived by all their lives lay in the words that came earlier, the promise to lend a hand to anyone in hardship.

With the oath sworn, the three set their order. Liu Bei became the eldest brother, Guan Yu the second, and Zhang Fei the youngest.

Then came the feast. More than 300 young men from the area heard the news and came. They sat in the middle of the orchard and drank deep, while peach petals fell into their cups, onto their shoulders, and into their hair.

In the morning, the three brothers set to work and ran straight into a very ordinary problem. They had men now, but they had no horses to ride.

Just then, someone came in to report that two travelers were out on the road, driving a herd of horses toward the farm.

The two travelers were big horse traders from Zhongshan, one named Zhang Shiping and the other Su Shuang. That year the roads were unsafe, so they had to turn back with their herd. They listened to the plan of the three brothers. Then, on the spot, they gave them 50 good horses. They added 500 taels of gold and silver, and 1,000 catties of fine iron.

With iron in hand, they called for smiths.

The forge glowed red for days on end. Liu Bei had a skilled smith make him a pair of twin swords, two blades that belonged together as a set. Guan Yu had a blade forged, curved like the rim of the moon. It was named the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, and it weighed 82 catties. Zhang Fei had a steel spear made, one zhang and eight chi long.

The story of the three would go on to travel very far. Yet the part people remember longest stays inside that orchard, at the moment when the three had nothing but one another.

This scene comes in the first chapter of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a long novel of 120 chapters. Tradition says that Luo Guanzhong wrote it in the 14th century. The histories of that era record no oath sworn by the three men in a peach orchard. In other words, the orchard was a storyteller's invention. Yet it has outlived many real events. Everyone who hears it finds a familiar wish in their own heart: to choose their own family.

People in Vietnam took this scene to heart long ago and made it their own. Vietnamese has a phrase for it, kết nghĩa vườn đào, which means to swear brotherhood in the peach orchard. It describes people with no blood ties who take each other as brothers and love each other like kin. The phrase is so familiar that many people use it all their lives without ever wondering where that orchard lies.

More than 200 years ago, a Vietnamese official named Nguyễn Đề traveled north to China as an envoy. He was an elder half-brother of Nguyễn Du, born of the same father. Nguyễn Du was a celebrated Vietnamese poet, the author of The Tale of Kiều. On his way, the envoy stopped at the spot that people pointed out as the old peach orchard, and there he wrote a poem in classical Chinese. In the poem he wrote that the three men had different family names, yet their bond was the bond of brothers. And that peach orchard, after a thousand years, still held a whole spring.

So behind the phrase stand the three trades of that one morning. One man sold mats. One sold wine and butchered pigs. One pushed a cart of goods from place to place. Three strangers met because of a notice pasted on a wall, and by the next morning they stood under the peach blossoms, taking one another as family.