Why is the orchid called the flower of literati?

The orchid's fragrance, color, spirit and charm are its four excellences, rich in the artistic aesthetic values of inner beauty, beauty of sentiment, beauty of character and beauty of spirit. Its wondrous fragrance and elegant color have stirred the literary inspiration of many poets and scholars through the ages, who wielded brush and ink to praise and chant of orchids, hence the saying that one stalk of orchid inspires ten thousand poems. Perhaps the reason poets' inspiration bursts forth also lies in the charm of the orchid; an ancient poem says: "An orchid stalk in the wind has the charm of poetry."

    For a thousand years, poets have praised the orchid without cease. The I Ching contains the line: "Words of kindred hearts are as fragrant as orchids." Confucius, the ancestor of Confucianism, recorded in The Family Sayings of Confucius: "A gentleman cultivates the Way and establishes virtue, and does not change his integrity because of poverty and hardship." "To dwell with a good person is like entering a room of irises and orchids: after a long time one no longer smells their fragrance, for one has become one with them." And his lament in later years: "The orchid is the fragrance of kings, yet now it blooms alone in company with common grasses." As a vehicle of Confucian thought and morality, the orchid was passed down to later generations age after age. The orchid also appears many times in the Classic of Poetry and the Li Sao; Qu Yuan wrote of the orchid seven times and of the hui orchid six times in the Li Sao. Is the "orchid" chanted in these classical poems and lyrics the orchid of the genus Cymbidium in the family Orchidaceae as we refer to it today? In reality, though some entries in ancient texts are used as supporting evidence, none is sufficient to convince us of the claim that the orchid of ancient and modern times is not the same thing; perhaps there is no need to distinguish the true from the false.

    The orchid has the elegant epithets of "flower of the gentleman" and "fair one of the empty valley." In every literary genre, including shi poetry, ci lyrics, songs, fu rhapsodies, prose and fiction, traces of the orchid can be found, and Tang poetry and Song ci lyrics in particular abound in praise of orchids. Some great writers and poet-sages left behind many peerless orchid verses. Tao Yuanming wrote the poem "The Hidden Orchid": "The hidden orchid grows in the front courtyard, holding its fragrance awaiting the clear breeze. The clear breeze comes drifting by, and it stands apart from the mugwort thicket." The charm is profound and the lines are widely loved. Li Bai's poem "To a Friend" says: "The orchid does not grow by the door; it is otherwise a grass of the idle courtyard." Bai Juyi's poem "Asking a Friend" says: "Plant orchids and not mugwort, yet when the orchid grows the mugwort grows too... Hoe the mugwort and I fear harming the orchid; water the orchid and I fear nourishing the mugwort. The orchid cannot be watered, nor the mugwort removed." The philosophy is profound and the poetic feeling is rich. Li Hongrui, a native of Minhou in the Qing dynasty, compiled the poems and lyrics in which men of letters praised orchids into the Su Lan Chang He Ji (Collection of Verses on the Plain Orchid), gathering many famous lines and fine pieces celebrating the Jian orchid. Among them is "The wondrous fragrance of the Jian valley surpasses the tea of the ridge; the person of plain heart cherishes the flower of plain heart," expressing a deep affection for the Jian orchid.

    Orchids and hui orchids are subtle in fragrance, and literati are lofty in character; literati have always loved to compare themselves to the orchid, which comes from the mountains, is incomparably holy and transcends the mundane, expressing their noble aspiration to embrace fragrance and keep integrity, to avoid extremes, to seek no fame and to show quiet resolve. Hence there are many literati and refined scholars who express their feelings through orchids and voice their aspirations by means of orchids. At the end of the Song dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan, the Fuzhou-born poet and painter Zheng Sixiao, admired by the people for his integrity as an official and his noble character, painted orchids without roots or soil to signify that the "territory" had fallen, yet he remained determined to restore it; he called his studio "Benxue Shijie" (the world of benxue), where "benxue" was the hidden meaning of "Great Song" - by moving the "shi" (ten) of the character "ben" below the character "xue," it became "Da Song," expressing Zheng Sixiao's intent to resist the "southern invasion"; on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in 1306, Zheng Sixiao created an ink painting on paper of a spring orchid without soil or roots, which is still preserved in the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts in Japan, signed Suonan Weng, with the inscription: "Hitherto bowing my head I asked Fuxi, who are you to come to this place. Before there was painting, nostrils opened, and ancient fragrance floated across the sky."

    Literati and orchids share an inseparable bond; on the one hand, the orchid enters poetry, prose and painting as a literary subject; on the other hand, literati use the noble orchid to symbolize people, things and events - this is the reason the orchid is called the flower of personality.