Is the yellow flower not a chrysanthemum? Li Qingzhao's famous line "thinner than a yellow flower" has been misread for nearly a thousand years

Thin mist and thick clouds grieve the endless day, the auspicious incense burns away in the golden beast. The Double Ninth Festival comes again, on the jade pillow and in the gauze bed-curtain, the chill first seeps through at midnight.

After dusk I pour wine by the eastern hedge, a subtle fragrance fills my sleeves. Do not say it does not overwhelm the soul; when the west wind rolls up the curtain, one is thinner than a yellow flower.

Li Qingzhao was a famous female ci poet of the Southern Song dynasty, and this piece of hers, Zui Hua Yin, has been passed down through the ages, yet later generations have all misinterpreted it. Later generations all assumed that the "yellow flower" in Li Qingzhao's "thinner than a yellow flower" referred to the chrysanthemum, but in fact it does not, because no variety of chrysanthemum, whatever it may be, can give the impression of being thin.

So what flower exactly did Li Qingzhao write about? Let us first look at the line "a subtle fragrance fills my sleeves" in the ci. The fragrance of the chrysanthemum is very strong and can be smelled from far away; Yi'an would not have made such a low-level mistake as to describe the intense fragrance of a chrysanthemum as a subtle fragrance filling the sleeves.

Taking several lines of the ci together, the "thinner than a yellow flower" used as a metaphor by Yi'an in this ci should be the orchid, because only the orchid's fragrance is distant and subtle; the so-called subtle fragrance filling the sleeves can only be achieved by the fragrance of an orchid. As for thinness, when the west wind rolls up the curtain, the orchid leaves sway gracefully - could anything be thinner than that? The chrysanthemum is obviously too plump and absolutely does not give a feeling of thinness.

Some netizens have asked, Yi'an wrote this ci at the Double Ninth Festival; were there orchids then? Yes, there were - the Jian orchid (Cymbidium ensifolium) blooms at that time. So I think Li Yi'an must have kept a pot of Jian orchid on her east-facing windowsill, because an east-facing balcony is most suitable for growing orchids, and the reason for this was explained before by Haoshe Nongfu in articles and videos. At that time this pot of Jian orchid was in full bloom, and its subtle fragrance stirred the poet's thoughts, and so she wrote this masterpiece that has been passed down through the ages.

Dear friends, what do you think? You are welcome to join the discussion.