What are the symbolic meanings and significance of the lotus?
1. Praise of beautiful women
In ancient China, many poetic lines using the lotus as a symbol can be found. In the "Guofeng · Chen Feng · Ze Bei" it says, "On the banks of that pool, there are cattails and lotus. There is a beautiful person, what can be done about the longing? Lying down and rising, doing nothing, tears pour down." Here the lotus refers to a woman with a lovely face.
2. Symbol of love
The lotus is also called the water lily, and because twin lotuses and lotus root fibers are hard to separate, it is often used to express the entanglement of love, with "twin lotuses blooming" as a metaphor for unending love. In addition, it is a homophone for "harmony," and the folk painting "Two Immortals of Harmony" is commonly seen to pray for perfect love.
3. Noble character
In "On the Love of the Lotus," the author expresses the lotus's noble quality of "standing tall and clean, to be admired from afar but not played with disrespectfully." The green lotus is also a homophone for "incorruptible," so it can describe an honest and upright official, as in a painting of a green lotus and an egret, meaning "incorruptible all the way."