The "yellow flower" in "thinner than a yellow flower" is not a chrysanthemum: Li Qingzhao's ci poem has been misread for nearly a thousand years

Thin mist and thick clouds sadden the endless day, the rare brain incense burns away in the golden beast. The fine festival is again the Double Ninth, on the jade pillow and in the gauze curtain, the chill first seeps through at midnight.

After dusk I pour wine by the eastern hedge, a faint fragrance fills my sleeves. Say not that it does not undo the soul, when the curtain rolls in the west wind, 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 misunderstood it. Later generations all thought 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 can give a feeling of thinness.

So what flower was Li Qingzhao writing about? Let us first look at the line "a faint fragrance fills my sleeves." The chrysanthemum's scent is very strong, and can be smelled from far away; Yi'an would not make such a low-level mistake as to write the intense fragrance of chrysanthemum as a faint fragrance filling the sleeves.

Taking several lines of the ci together, the "thinner than a yellow flower" used as a simile in this ci by Yi'an should be the orchid, because only the orchid's fragrance is distant and subtle; the so-called faint fragrance filling the sleeves can only be achieved by orchid fragrance. As for thinness, when the curtain rolls in the west wind, the orchid leaves sway gracefully; is there anything thinner than that? The chrysanthemum is obviously too plump, and absolutely gives no 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 windowsill, because an east-facing balcony is best suited to growing orchids; the reasons for this were discussed before by Haoshe Nongfu in articles and videos. And at that time this pot of Jian orchid was in full bloom, and its faint fragrance stirred the poet's thoughts, so she wrote this masterpiece that has been passed down through the ages.