"China is, indeed, the Mother of Gardens," wrote British plant collector E.H. Wilson in his memoirs in the 1920s. "The people are endowed with an innate love for flowers and gardens. . . . Volumes of poems have been written. . . . The dwelling of the poorest peasant is usually enlivened by an odd plant or two."

"Branches like crouching dragons, flowers like shreds of white silk." When the late Chinese painter Chiang Chao-shen saw the splendor of the plum trees in flower at Feng-kuitou in Nantou County, he exclaimed that they were every bit as good as the plums of Mt. Gu by the West Lake at Hangzhou. （photo by Li Ying-ju）

Did the 19th-century plant hunters of the West bring back the culture of flower appreciation from China's ancient civilization? In Taiwan, with its year-round spring and after our economic miracle, can we inherit the gentle teaching of flowers?

Music, chess, calligraphy, painting, wine--and flowers. Whether planted in the adjacent courtyard, grown indoors in tubs, or shown in a vase in a painting, they are something no traditional Chinese study can be without. Our picture shows Cao Dagu Teaching calligraphy, by Jin Tingbiao of the Qing dynasty. （courtesy of the National Palace Museum）

No matter what corner of the world you might be in, this series of articles about flowers will accompany you in appreciating the changing seasons, and will soothe the longing for home to allow the enjoyment of the coming blossoms and butterflies.

"I rack my brains all day trying to depict your beauty; Heaven sent you to test a poet's wits."

Thus lamented a painter who had struggled all day, but still found he could not do justice to the beauty of the plum flower.

A 2000-year battle of wits

The black plum (Prunus mume-also known by other names such as the Japanese flowering apricot) is a small deciduous tree of the rose family (Rosaceae). Its new shoots are bright green; the trunk is straight and vertical; the flower petioles are short. The tree bears white, red or pink blossoms which bloom before the new leaf buds burst. Each flower has five petals. The tree bears a round stone fruit. . . .

Put simply, this is a flowering fruit tree. But by the time the gifted painter Shi Tao (1642-c.1718) of the early Qing dynasty "racked his brains all day trying to depict her beauty," this little deciduous tree had already been testing the wits of Chinese literati for a couple of thousand years. After another 300 years of endless praise and tireless painting, another wave of talented people, full of fighting spirit, went the whole hog and chose it as their national flower, to represent the soul of the nation.

What outstanding virtues and qualities does the plum flower have, to merit such a distinction? Is it the indomitable way that, in the words of the popular song, she "blooms more splendidly the colder the weather"? Or does she succeed by sheer force of numbers, by "growing wherever there is soil"?

"In the bitter cold of the northern winter, when the ground is frozen a yard deep, what flowers are there but the snowflakes brought by the blizzards?" In an essay, mainland Chinese author Deng Yunxiang evokes how in Beijing, which has been a capital city for a thousand years, plum trees can barely be induced even to grow, let alone bloom amid the snow.

Some people say that on the island of Taiwan, with its spring-like weather all year round, the lack of winter snow in the plains robs the plum of her finest hour, her chance to "bloom more splendidly the colder the weather." But even in mainland China, the home of the ancient poems, does the plum really "grow wherever there is soil"?

Wherever there is soil?

When we open the plants section in the encyclopedic 18th-century Gu Jin Tushu Jicheng (Collection of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times) and carefully reread those familiar quotations, it becomes apparent that in fact the black plum grows only in certain regions.

In the fifteen groups of songs from different geographical areas collected in the ancient Book of Songs, only four songs include the character mei (used for the black plum in modern Chinese). But in fact three of these refer to the nanmu tree. "Piao You Mei" ("Plums Fall"), one of the "Shao Nan" group of songs, alludes to how a girl, once grown, should be married-one shouldn't wait until she is like a plum left on the tree, which becomes overripe and falls to the ground, for then it is too late! This was a song from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

Princess Shou Yang, who created the first "plum flower attire" when she awoke from her siesta with fallen plum flowers adhering to her forehead, was chosen by later generations as the spirit of the plum flower. She was the daughter of Emperor Wu Di of the state of Song in the Southern Dynasties period. Wu Di reigned in the fifth century AD, and had his capital at Jiankang, which today is called Nanjing.

There was also a male flower spirit, He Xun. A civil servant, he was posted to Luoyang, but for the sake of the plum flowers of his homeland, he preferred to forego the promotion and return to his native prefecture of Yangzhou, by the Yangtze River. He Xun too lived in the Southern Dynasties period.

All I can send you is the southern spring

Another famous poem featuring plum blossoms goes: "While collecting plum branches, I met the courier, and wanted to send you a gift in the north. But here, south of the Yangtze, I have nothing; all I can send you is a branch of spring." This describes even more directly the irrepressible spring of southern China. Meeting the postman on the road, the poet thought of his good friend far away in Chang-an, and sent off a token of the southern spring. This really was a beautiful thought, but sadly the people of the north were not always able to appreciate such guestures.

Shuoyuan, a Han-dynasty collection of moral tales and political anecdotes, includes the story of how in the Spring and Autumn period an envoy from the state of Yue went to see the King of Liang bearing a branch of plum blossoms. The King of Liang's prime minister was ignorant and small-minded, and failing to appreciate the lofty and unusual sentiment behind this gift of the southern spring, decided to embarrass the ambassador. He ordered that this guest from afar could only have audience with the king if he wore a hat, as demanded by Liang's elaborate dress code. But it was the custom of the people of the small coastal state of Yue to wear their hair short and to tattoo their bodies in imitation of the dragon prince, in order to ward off floods. They never wore hats at all.

A small state has no diplomatic clout, but nonetheless this son of the dragon spoke up boldly and forcefully: "If that is the way of it, when emissaries from your country cross the border into mine, will they also have their hair cut short and their bodies tattooed before they enter?" The impression this plum-flower ambassador left to later generations really was one of gentleness and assurance worthy of a painting.

The story of the "plum-flower emissary" ends with the King of Liang not only immediately dressing to receive the guest, but also giving marching orders to the minister who had bullied the visitor from afar. Although the northerners were not familiar with the plum, it was the plum which got the better of this encounter.

Too cold for flowers?

The black plum is native to China, and its natural distribution ranges throughout the central part of the country, as far north as the Qinling Mountains (just south of the River Wei) and as far south as the Dayuling Mountains (which separate Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces). Ancient plum trees are especially abundant at places in the Yangtze River basin such as Wuxing, Hangzhou's West Lake and Guiji (which straddled modern Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and was perhaps where the tattooed ambassador of Yue plucked that plum branch). But the black plums which grow in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Taiwan are mostly introduced.

Each year in June and July, the plum trees develop flower buds. As the days shorten in autumn, they enter a period of dormancy, until they are reawakened by the low temperatures of successive winter cold snaps, and begin to flower. This is the secret of the plum's ability to bloom amid the frosts of winter, "more splendidly the colder the weather." Plums cannot flower under conditions of high temperature and high humidity, unless their dormancy is broken by chemicals which make up for the missing stimulus of low temperatures.

But the cold which induces the plum to flower is the cold of southern China. Across the Qinling Mountains in the real north country, where the winter's chill freezes the ground a yard deep, the cold is too severe even for the cold-loving plum.

Of course, this does not mean that for northerners the plum is a complete stranger. But making her acquaintance takes a little more effort.

Plum-branch lanterns

The Ming-dynasty book Festivals in Beijing states: "In the twelfth lunar month they tie plum plants in pots, then bury them three feet deep, [in cellars] five feet or more below ground, and light fires to slightly warm the earth. The plums gradually set white blossoms, which they encircle with paper. In the last days of the year they sell them on the markets as 'New Year flowers'. . . ." Huang Yung-chuan, an expert in the history of Chinese flower arranging, says that this technique of using cellars as hothouses emerged way back in the Song dynasty.

Shakespearean expert Liang Shih-chiu, who lived in Beijing as a child, also mentioned how in his home city "the weather was so cold that you never saw plum flowers." But every year just around the new year, people would bring "cellar goods" to their house: hothouse-grown potted flowering plums.

The potted plum trees in rich houses bloomed to greet the spring by virtue of the nurserymen's skill and the indoor temperatures. But although the skill involved was remarkable, the trees' broken-limbed, scrappy appearance prompted some people to call them "sick plums." This was probably because they felt that-just like seeing elephants shut up in heated elephant houses in European zoos-it went against the plums' true nature.

But still further north on China's loess plateau, at Lantern Festival 15 days after Chinese new year, people take dry twigs, stick a few paper flowers to them, and attach candles to make "dry-twig plum lanterns." By giving a reminder of the far-off southern spring in this amusing way, the sight of the plum flower filled a great yearning.

A love based on flavor

So it would appear that the plum flower does not necessarily grow only "wherever there is soil," and is not really tough enough to "bloom more splendidly the colder the weather" either. Even so, both in the north and in the south, in regions where plums grow and in regions where they do not, the Chinese try to get hold of some plum flowers to celebrate the new year. So just how did this southern flower come to conquer such an enormous spiritual dominion?

Chinese people's affection for the plum flower actually began with the sense of taste. In early texts, melons, peaches, Japanese plums (Prunus salicina) and black plums are spoken of together as healthy, tasty foods, without the overblown rhetoric of later times. In the Book of History we find the passage: "If we compare [politics] to making soup, you are as important as salt and plums"-which prompted a writer of a later age to specially warn that the plum flower takes umbrage at poetic allusions to "ambitions to flavor soup."

Yet this was not an expression of the flower's dissatisfaction with the gastronomic culture of an ancient civilization, but rather one of displeasure at the tendency-much seen in Taiwan today-to "politicize everything." For when the Yin emperor Gaozong referred to plums used to flavor soup, he was alluding to the role of his prime minister!

But having captured the taste buds, the plum still had to capture Chinese people's hearts. The plum flower did not begin to test the ingenuity of poets until the Six Dynasties period, when from the early third to the late sixth century AD, six dynasties had their capitals at what is now Nanjing in the Yangtze River valley, in the heart of the area where the plum grows best.

You care for me, I care for you

"Amazed that the plum tree blossoms so late, everyone rushes to catch a glimpse of it in the snow." The first device by which the plum flower began to attract people was her "late development." But the poet who noticed this only saw her as "afraid to be lagging behind all other flowers," so that she had no choice but to muster her strength and blossom amid the frost. The Southern Dynasties poet Wu Jun (469-520) also wrote: "The plum is promiscuous by nature, and all look down on her. So she flowers among the frost, to catch the eye of the well-to-do." As galling as it might have been to be mentioned in poetry merely as a soup ingredient, such wounding words as these from Wu must have been enough to make the proud plum swear "never to bloom in Jinling [modern Nanjing] again."

But fortunately failure is the mother of success, and the next time around, although the plum still set her sights on rich folk, she chose a perceptive woman. Lady Hou of the Sui dynasty wrote: "The plum in the courtyard took pity on me, and unfurled a first promise of spring at the tip of her branch." This delicate description brought a timely change of fortune for the plum flower, sending her in one leap from being a late developer the back of the pack, into first place. Later, a poet of the Tang discovered in her a lofty spirit which "disdains to share the spring with common blooms," and a pride whereby "the plum flower refuses to have other colors of spring at her side."

By the Five Dynasties period, in the 10th century AD, the Book of Flowers by Zhang Yi not only ranked the plum higher than any other flower, but was even particular about the person watering them: no-one but a hermit or an emaciated monk was worthy of the job.

However, the time when people really took the plum flower into their hearts was the Song dynasty. The people of the Song would shower the plum with praises on the slightest pretext. "If the words 'plum flower' appear in a poem," averred one Song writer, "they give a sense of nobility." Song people explored the plum flower's snowy purity, strength of character and grace to the full.

A boundless expanse of white clouds?

When winter comes and the north wind blows away the petals, all flowers wither. But suddenly, "In the snow beyond the village, a branch blossomed last night." At first the poet had thought he was seeing unmelted spring snow on the tip of the branch, but on looking closer he realized it was the plum flower venturing out among the frost and snow.

When the plum woods deep in the mountains are in full bloom, seen from afar they appear like a blanket of snow or fog, spreading for miles and seeming to drift gradually upwards like white clouds. But how does the lonely wanderer leaning on his staff know that what is before his eyes is not winter clouds heavy with snow? How can he tell whether he is seeing snow, or plum blossoms? The poet, thinker and political reformer Wang Anshi (1021-1086) was a changer of laws, but he was also a flower fanatic. He tells us: "Only the subtle fragrance informs us from afar that this is not snow."

That's right-another weapon in the plum flower's magic armory is her cool, pure scent. When a large expanse of trees is in bloom, "the perfume brings to life the bleak mountains and the shores of the wild waters" with what people called a fragrant sea of clouds. Another writer said of his encounter with the plum's cool splendor and perfume: "I can only blame her beauty at our meeting" for so entrancing him that he did not notice the flower's scent at all. "Not until leaving did I find to my surprise that my whole body was bathed in scent"-only then did he realize the power of the plum's subtle fragrance.

Another time, as night fell on a snowy evening, a poet walking through a fragrant mist could not fathom why this year's "thin plums" appeared so fat. On returning home and closely examining the branch he had broken off under the lamplight, he saw "beads of sweat on that fair countenance," and realized the branch was thick with both plum flowers and snow. That being so, he began another comparison: was it the plum flowers which were whiter and prettier, or the snow? On still closer inspection, he found that "the plum cannot quite match the snow for whiteness, but the snow does not have the plum's fragrance." Song people really played out their penchant for probing things' inner nature.

Not bothered with ordinary flowers

Thus categorized by the people of the Song, not only was the plum flower judged the most virtuous of the "noble four" of the black plum, the orchid, the bamboo and the chrysanthemum-the names of its cousins the peach, the Japanese plum, the cherry and the almond were all blackened.

In Song-dynasty eyes, the peach and the Japanese plum were "fat serving-wenches" or "slave girls"-lowly characters of no worth. The black plum did not deign to "fawn on the spring" like the peach and the Japanese plum, for these were common flowers, vulgar to the core. The fastidious poet Lu You (1125-1210) "could not get excited about ordinary blossoms," and, "having seen the plum flowers, could sleep through the spring." His line "vulgar folk love peach and Japanese plum" even takes to task the people who enjoy such flowers, along with the flowers themselves. Lu's close friend Fan Chengda went even further in loving plum flowers to the exclusion of all else. In his Plum Album he states clearly at the very beginning: "The black plum is the finest of all things under heaven. No-one, wise or foolish, virtuous or evil, can deny it." He leaves no room whatever for compromise.

Compared with the white-flowered jiangmei ("Yangtze River") variety of black plum, with its restrained "cool stamens and white cloak tinged with green," the peach flower, it seems, is a voluptuous young temptress, and the almond blossom gaudily overdressed. But what of the green sepals and red blossom of the red-flowered plum? Are they garments of refinement, or of vulgarity? The poet tells us: "The red and green are too gaudy, they try too hard to catch the eye. We should smile on the white plum, contented in her simplicity, singing alone to the moon over the west bridge." His preference could not be clearer.

A rather special case is wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), known in Chinese as lamei or "wax plum" for the rich yellow beeswax color of its flowers. Wintersweet actually belongs to the sweetshrub family (Calycanthaceae), and is not a plum at all. But it has often been mentioned by writers praising the plum's virtues, and people unaware of the distinction often mix them up.

Robes of purple and gold

Wintersweet blooms at the same time as the black plum. Its yellow petals are dappled with purple, thus combining the two colors most revered by Taoists. Its fragrance is not inferior to that of the plum in quality, and perhaps even surpasses it. The affection the literati of the Song felt for it found prolific expression. "I don't mind sitting drunk by the flower for a month," wrote one, who drank himself to intoxication on the plum's account. "In the night the plum's fragrance robbed me of my drunken slumber"-another, who had been imbibing to get a good night's sleep, was kept awake by the flowers' fragrance. A third simply "stayed awake all night, holding a candle and looking at the blossoms"; he stood in blind infatuation till the dawn.

Were it not for the poems' titles, later readers could hardly guess that the subject of these poems was in fact the "wax plum"-wintersweet-which is no relation to the true plum at all. But if we understand the truth of these poets' situation, it is not hard to imagine desolate literati sitting alone through cold winter's nights, trying to raise their spirits by "concentrating on the Taoists' yellow." Their drinking bouts and sleepless nights can surely not have been unconnected with the many difficulties they faced whether they chose to withdraw from the world of politics, or to get involved.

It has been said that only by "being idle in those things in which the world is busy may one busy oneself with those things the world ignores." A few individuals who really did succeed in escaping from the mundane world successively developed ever more moving sentiments for China's plum flower.

Meditating among plums and cranes

At Mt. Gu by Hangzhou's West Lake, the Northern Song poet Lin Bu grew plum trees and kept cranes. He did not leave the place for 20 years, never thinking this would make him famous. The Song emperor Zhenzong (ruled 998-1022) sent an official to call on him and wish him well every year, and many other visitors also flocked to his door. Lin saw no choice but to hang a notice on the wooden gate of his plum orchard, reading: "Do not ask me to hurt the trees by breaking off branches. You may look as much as you like. I do not meet or see off guests. Forgive my foolish obstinacy."

Lin lived day and night with 300 plum trees, and sold enough fruit each year to live on, with a little to spare. His lines, "Sparse, leaning silhouettes; the water clean and shallow. The subtle fragrance floats across the moonlit dusk," put the countless plum-praising poems of past ages in the shade.

Another plum-crazy artist of the Northern Song, Master Zhong Ren, was a Buddhist monk. Every year when the plums blossomed, he moved his bed out under the flowers and would converse with them in whispers. He repaid the plum flowers' kindness in keeping him company by developing the first inkwash paintings of plums in Chinese art. He is said to have got the inspiration for this on a moonlit night from seeing the sparse, slanting silhouettes of plum trees against the window paper. When the great calligrapher Huang Tingjian saw Zhong Ren's inkwash plum flowers, he exclaimed: "All that is missing is the scent!"

The literati of the Northern Song dynasty fell in love with the plum flower and used it as a vehicle to express their aspirations. But in the subsequent Southern Song dynasty, the literati carried their passion for the plum blossom almost to a state where "flowers and humans were as one."

Flowers have feelings too

In the Xiaozong reign (1163-1189) of the Southern Song, the literatus Zhang Gongfu not only planted an orchard full of plum trees and built his house among them, he also listed dozens of things plum flowers liked or disliked, or which they found honorable or shameful, delectable or loathsome. The plum flowers loved the dawn and the dusk, gentle rain and light mists; they loved people sweeping snow, brewing tea, or playing a flute in the orchard. Plum flowers despised bad poetry, old crows, vulgar men and ugly women, raucousness on the paths among the flowers, and talk of politics. Apart from this, dog dirt under the trees, people hanging up clothes to dry on their branches, and coarse servant-girls being given names like Spring Plum or Winter Plum, were all insults to the plum flower. Zhang really was considerate of their feelings.

Yang Wanli of the Southern Song was another plum-loving poet. Whenever he took up his brush to write a line or two, "the plum flowers looked on with a smile"; whenever he had a few friends round for a get-together, the plum flowers in their vases counted among the guests. And even Lu You, who never had a good word to say about peach blossoms or Japanese plum flowers, and had nothing but scorn for the narcissus, always spoke of black plum flowers in the gentlest of tones.

In a poem, he described how in the depths of a cold winter's night he suddenly wanted to drink tea, but the servant-boy was asleep. There was no-one else around, so he had to go himself to the well to fetch water. As he carried the pail of water back into the house, however, he hesitated: "Coming back, the walkway was bathed in moonlight, and I could not bring myself to tread on the sparse shadows of the plums." Lu, whose patriotic poems were full of bloodthirsty passion, now did not even have the heart to tread on shadows on the ground!

The modern philosopher Cheng Chao-hsiung hit the nail on the head when he described plum flowers as "Song flowers." But sadly the people of the Song, who conquered such vast spiritual dominions for the plum flower, themselves lost half their national territory. Lu You, in his old age, was always telling his family: "When the King's armies go north and retake the Central Plain, do not forget to tell me the news at ancestor-worship ceremonies." He can never have imagined that when he had been buried only sixty years, not only would the shame of the Jingkang Insult not have been wiped clean, but the whole country would have fallen into the hands of the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty.

Sharing winter feelings

Throughout the two Song dynasties, which were surrounded by powerful enemies on the outside and riven internally by continual factional strife, the strength of character of the literati and the tenacity of the winter-flowering plum amid the snow really did go well together. When Su Dongpo, falsely accused by conspiring enemies, was sent further and further south into exile by the Song emperor Shenzong, didn't plum flowers "take the trouble to see [him] all the way to Huangzhou"? Demoted again and sent across the Dayuling Mountains to modern-day Guangdong province, he sighed: "Who could have guessed we would meet again here?" In all his wanderings, from Huangzhou's Spring Wind Ridge, to Hui-zhou's Pine Wind Pavilion, and then to Plum Flower Village below Luofu Mountain, Su Dongpo seemed to trace out a "journey of the plum flowers."

Intellectuals who were not willing to compromise their honesty and principles to flatter tyrannical rulers gave each other encouragement through the lavish praise they expressed in plum flower poems. And when they finally had to face the calamity of the Southern Song's downfall, the plum flower became a symbol of cultural continuity.

The late Song painter Zheng Sixiao's emotions on seeing plum flowers were ones of "shame that we are still embroiled in warfare when the plum blossoms herald a new spring in our ruined cities"; this was very far removed from an earlier writer's view of the plum flower as "unsullied by the dust of the mundane world, content between bamboo fence and thatched cottage." But when one's country is conquered and one's family killed, even if one withdraws to the wild mountains and rivers to live as a recluse in a thatched hut in a bamboo enclosure, one cannot cut oneself off from the tragedy of the withering of the flower of a nation. And when the great Yuan-dynasty painter Wang Mian (1287-1359) "planted and painted plum trees in their thousands," and wrote poetry in their praise, his heart was filled with the wish to keep his native culture alive under the foreign yoke: "While barbarians freeze to death beside the Great Wall, who can believe there is a different spring south of the Yangtze?"

With the collapse of the Ming dynasty in the 1640s China once again fell under the rule of a foreign people. At this time the accomplished plum painter Shi Tao, whose prospects of a brilliant civil service career were dashed by the Qing conquest, wrote this poem to the plum flower: "The green mountains and bright moon are the same as they always were and will be. Why give them such harsh looks with your white eyes? With a hand caressing the plum flowers and eyes turned up to the moon, who could not be joyful here and now?" To describe the plum blossoms as white eyes looking reproachfully at the heavens is something quite remarkable, but we also see the unbearable anguish in the monk's heart.

Blood and tears of a defeated nation

From the late Ming on, the imagery of the plum flower blooming pristine in the frost under the bright moon became a symbol of blood and tears and of national suffering. When the Manchu armies of the Qing invaded China they laid waste to Yangzhou, that city of wealth and culture of which a Tang poet had said, "If there were three bright moons in the night sky, two would shine on Yangzhou." The epitaph on the tomb at Meihualing (Plum Flower Ridge) to the north of Yangzhou of Shi Kefa, a minister who survived the fall of the Ming dynasty, reads: "The countless plum flowers are the tears of a defeated nation, the city of two moons the heart of a former minister." Romantic poet Xu Zhimo of the May 4th Movement period would often brave heavy rain to climb the hills and visit the osmanthus trees, just to see whether their flowers "were as coquettish as last year." In a time of chaos, this talented man of letters wrote a moving poem-"The Plum Flower Seizes Spring from Winter's Grasp":

"New year in the south, a day of blizzards;

I go to Lingfeng for news of spring plum flowers;

Fallen petals and sepals lie buried in the snow,

I laugh and say, your colors are still not bright enough!

Fate says, hurry back to town for the flower-spirit's birthday;

I will show you such a splendid scene of spring:

The cold and driving snow is still the whitest,

But the plum flowers are the hot blood of young children!"

National flower-too great a burden?

In the past 40 years of peace in Taiwan, the blood-red plum flowers of Xu Zhimo's poem have flown into countless spring paintings. In those paintings the plum flowers are sometimes the national soul, and sometimes homesickness for the lost mainland.

In subtropical Taiwan, in fact we rarely have the chance to see plum blossoms in the snow, but the plum flower is by no means a stranger to people here. On the eve of the university entrance examinations, many harried candidates, apart from counting down the days to the exam on the blackboard, have given each other encouragement over the years by writing on the walls in large, eye-catching characters: "If you have not been chilled to the marrow by the cold of winter, how can you smell the perfume of the plum flowers?"

When these blossoming scholars with their ice-sharp intellects later went on to advanced studies overseas, they may finally have had the opportunity to see plum flowers blooming amid the snow. In the overseas student literature which was tremendously popular for a time, we see many fervent passages such as this one: "Plum flower, oh plum flower, how Chinese you are! . . . The instant I see you I think of our free motherland. At that moment, there is no-one who is not so moved that their eyes fill with hot tears." Particularly in the period when the ROC withdrew from the United Nations and the USA severed diplomatic relations, the theme song to director Liu Chia-chang's film Plum Flowers was sung everywhere, inside and outside Taiwan.

Painter Chang Ta-chien, who was living in San Francisco at the time, is said to have often admonished his friends: "The plum flower is our national flower. To love the plum flower is to love our country, and if you love our country, you must love the plum flower." His uncompromising tone was reminiscent of Fan Chengda of old. Chang too wrote a poem to the plum flower: "A hundred planted plum trees make me sigh; seeing the flowers I shed tears and think even more of home. My eyes also see so many shameless fools-they don't recognize the plum as their own national flower."

Plums and orchids, I love you

However, wanting to weep whenever one sees the national flower is surely no solution to anything. If we trace back the process by which the plum was chosen as the national flower, in fact it is not so solemn. According to records, after the success of the Northern Expedition, which subdued feuding warlords at the end of the 1920s, the Ministry of Finance planned to make new dies for the national coinage, and requested that the government select a national flower. At that time, the Ministry of the Interior's protocol, uniforms and insignia approval committee had already recommended the plum flower as the national flower, with the triple grouping of its stamens symbolizing the Three Principles of the People, and its five petals the constitutional five-way separation of powers. To ensure proper review, the Central Propaganda Department set up groups to study the matter, and finally proposed the plum, chrysanthemum and tree peony, as three flowers well loved by the Chinese people, for consideration at the ruling KMT's third national party congress. The topic attracted a lively discussion, but the debate ended with a resolution not to discuss the question any further, since more pressing matters were at hand. However, permission was given to use the plum flower on the national currency and on emblems of military rank. In 1963 the Ministry of the Interior raised the issue again with the Executive Yuan, which agreed to the proposal as presented, but added the comment: "This has long been publicly acknowledged by the whole nation." Therefore it did not issue a special ordinance to bring it into force.

Was this statement that the plum flower's status as the national flower was "acknowledged by the whole nation" one that "no-one, wise or foolish, virtuous or evil," could deny? Liang Shih-chiu once said frankly: "I have nothing against it as the national flower, but the idea of the five petals and triple stamens is rather far-fetched--I don't accept it." However, this did not mean that Liang opposed the Three Principles of the People or the five-way separation of powers. Rather, it had more to do with the 2000-year old problem of too many political plums in the soup.

No match for the old gardener

So what attitude should we have towards a flowering and fruiting tree? Let us stand under a plum tree in flower, in a plum orchard in the mountains of Nantou County. The crowds of people who have come to see the plum blossoms are busy being photo-graphed with the flowers, as well as enjoying a charity sale of calligraphy and paintings, and performances of traditional Chinese music, laid on by the organizers, the China Youth Corps.

At this time, should the plum flowers be offended, or flattered? Is this a scene of the plum flowers teasing the humans, or of the tourists messing the plum flowers about?

Confucius said: "I am no match for the old gardener." But the old gardener here is off warning the tourists not to be picking the flowers, so we can only ask the old gardener's son: What were his feelings every year as a child when he saw the flowers blooming brightly in sudden splendor? He stands silent for a few moments, trying hard to remember.

"I used to think: Oh heck, I'll have to get time off school again to help my family pick the plums," he replies at last.

[Picture Caption]

Around every Chinese New Year is when Taiwan's plum trees come into full bloom. The most splendid are those of the plum orchards of Nantou County, like this one on Tienshan Ridge, Shuili.

Leave the pretty blossoms on the branch, and don't be sad when the snowy petals are blown away by the wind, for every flower will give birth to a plum!

"Branches like crouching dragons, flowers like shreds of white silk." When the late Chinese painter Chiang Chao-shen saw the splendor of the plum trees in flower at Feng-kuitou in Nantou County, he exclaimed that they were every bit as good as the plums of Mt. Gu by the West Lake at Hangzhou. (photo by Li Ying-ju)

Music, chess, calligraphy, painting, wine--and flowers. Whether planted in the adjacent courtyard, grown indoors in tubs, or shown in a vase in a painting, they are something no traditional Chinese study can be without. Our picture shows Cao Dagu Teaching calligraphy, by Jin Tingbiao of the Qing dynasty. (courtesy of the National Palace Museum)

"Tell your children and your children's children: the plum flower is the soul of our nation!" The many affinities and resonances discovered over the centuries between the plum flower and the character of the Chinese have made it into a spiritual symbol of the nat ion.

(left) The sparse, slanting twigs of a single plum branch in the shallow water of a miniature landscape bring poetry into the home.

(center) In olden times people believed that placing flowers in a bronze vessel which had been buried for many years would make them flower quickly and brightly, with long-lasting blooms. If watered with meat juices, they would even fruit in the vase.

(right) Inserting winter plum flowers and camellias into a small-necked, wide-bodied "plum vase" is a very traditional way of displaying them. (photos on these two pages courtesy of the Chinese Floral Art Foundation)

When the snow stops falling and the sky clears, wintersweet sends its fragrance everywhere. Winter-sweet is known as the "wax plum" in Chinese, and although unrelated to the true plums, it is equally revered. At left is Chimonanthus and Birds, painted by Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty. (courtesy of the National Palace Museum) At right, wintersweet in bloom at Mt. Qixia, near Nanjing. (photo by Tseng Yun-chih)

Seductive peach flowers greet the spring with a blaze of color, but compared with the prestigious plum, they have been regarded as common, vulgar blooms. (photo by Hsu Yu-chun)

In subtropical Taiwan, the plums bloom without snow for company. If you want to see them together, the plum flower on the cap of this winter combat training officer is about the closest you'll get. (photo by Diago Chiu)

In ancient times, people used plums to season meat. Today, they boil them to make a thirst-quenching drink. After all, the plum is a healthy and tasty fruit.

"Tell your children and your children's children: the plum flower is the soul of our nation!" The many affinities and resonances discovered over the centuries between the plum flower and the character of the Chinese have made it into a spiritual symbol of the nat ion.

（left） The sparse, slanting twigs of a single plum branch in the shallow water of a miniature landscape bring poetry into the home.

（center） In olden times people believed that placing flowers in a bronze vessel which had been buried for many years would make them flower quickly and brightly, with long-lasting blooms. If watered with meat juices, they would even fruit in the vase.

（right） Inserting winter plum flowers and camellias into a small-necked, wide-bodied "plum vase" is a very traditional way of displaying them. （photos on these two pages courtesy of the Chinese Floral Art Foundation）

When the snow stops falling and the sky clears, wintersweet sends its fragrance everywhere. Winter-sweet is known as the "wax plum" in Chinese, and although unrelated to the true plums, it is equally revered. At left is Chimonanthus and Birds, painted by Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty. （courtesy of the National Palace Museum） At right, wintersweet in bloom at Mt. Qixia, near Nanjing. （photo by Tseng Yun-chih）

Seductive peach flowers greet the spring with a blaze of color, but compared with the prestigious plum, they have been regarded as common, vulgar blooms. （photo by Hsu Yu-chun）

In subtropical Taiwan, the plums bloom without snow for company. If you want to see them together, the plum flower on the cap of this winter combat training officer is about the closest you'll get. （photo by Diago Chiu）

In ancient times, people used plums to season meat. Today, they boil them to make a thirst-quenching drink. After all, the plum is a healthy and tasty fruit.