Changde's name in Chinese literature comes from a single poem and essay. Tao Yuanming's fourth-century story of a fisherman who finds a village hidden behind blossoming peach trees became the picture of a lost utopia, and the Peach Blossom Spring in Taoyuan county is the place most closely tied to it.
The region is also older than any of that. At Chengtoushan, in Li county, archaeologists found a walled settlement from the Neolithic period, with moats, house foundations and some of the earliest rice paddies known in China. The site is regarded as one of the oldest walled settlements in the Yangtze valley.
