Crazy for you, obsessed with you - what is the reason for such devotion?

Promote Chinese orchid culture, spread orchid knowledge

It was 1990, my daughter was nine years old and just in the third grade of primary school. One day after school she said to me: "Dad, the school leaders are coming in three days, and the teacher asked each of us to bring a pot of flowers to the classroom for display." I had no interest in flowers at all. But I could not bear my daughter's pitiful gaze, so the next morning I took my daughter to the Guanyinqiao flower market to buy flowers.

At this time it happened to be the Jiangbei District Spring Flower Show, with all kinds of fresh flowers in dazzling array, each striving to outdo the others in beauty... In front of a flower stall I saw a potted plant with thick, fleshy leaves arranged in opposite pairs in a herringbone shape, with a few dewdrops crystal clear on the leaf surface, seemingly about to drip - I was delighted by it. I asked the flower farmer and learned that this flower was called "Junzi San" (Gentleman's Three), twenty-five yuan including the pot. So my daughter and I happily carried the flower home.

This was the first pot of flowers in my life.

One afternoon with nothing to do, I strolled around near my home. I saw a neighbor's house with a birdcage hanging outside, and inside the cage a thrush was singing merrily. Curious, I walked closer to look, and when the owner saw me he warmly brought out a stool and brewed tea. In the course of conversation I learned that the owner's surname was Luo, and he was a worker in Workshop 15 of my factory. During the chat, my gaze casually glanced and I saw a flowerpot under the birdcage, inside which the plant was lush and green, with leaves slightly curved. When a gentle breeze came, the whole pot of flowers swayed in the breeze, appearing so graceful and poised, carrying a touch of poetry inside and out, exuding a sense of spirit... Curious, I asked, what flower is this? Master Luo answered: an orchid, a cymbidium. Where is it sold? At the Luzumiao flower market in the city center, but you must go early, for if you are late the good flowers will have been picked out by others.

So I did not sleep all night. At six in the morning, Master Luo and I took a bus from Jiangbei Wulidian straight to the Luzumiao flower market. The flower market was crowded with people, and before dawn had fully broken, some people were holding flashlights and gathering around orchid vendors from various places, picking and choosing among piles and baskets of wild-collected orchids. I was excited and also squeezed into the crowd, choosing according to what I myself thought were beautiful and well-proportioned plant shapes... After buying the orchids, I headed home. At the end of the flower market, a dozen or so people surrounded an orchid seller. The seller was holding an orchid in bloom, three seedlings, asking one thousand yuan. I secretly muttered to myself: why is this orchid so expensive? You should know that one thousand yuan at that time was equivalent to four to five months' wages for a worker. Seeing my puzzlement and doubt, an old man beside me said: It has plum-petal form and hard fingers - that is why it is worth so much. I asked: Why? The old man answered: It is like falling in love with a person - for love, whatever you give and however much you give, it is all worth it...

Just like that, I fell in love with orchids. Not many days later, Master Luo gave me a book titled "Orchids" written by Shen Yuanru and Shen Yinchun. Through this book I learned that orchids also have petal forms, plain-heart types, and so on; and classifications such as spring orchids, summer orchids, and cymbidiums. Through what the book introduced about how to identify good and poor orchids through the leaves, bud sheaths, and other aspects of the orchid plant... With the guidance of this book, from the wild-collected orchids at the Luzumiao orchid market I selected peach-cheek plain and spring plain orchids that I felt satisfied with, and among them what is most worth mentioning is that I actually selected a Buddha orchid.

Also at the Luzumiao flower market, among a flower vendor's stock I found two seedlings of spring orchid that looked quite distinctive. My heart stirred, and I bought them for ten yuan. About a month after planting, they unexpectedly produced a flower. The whole flower was white with a slight tinge of yellow, with narcissus petals, and the strange thing was that between the petals and the tongue, spots and blocks of red and yellow formed the image of a Guanyin Bodhisattva with hands pressed together in prayer, sitting cross-legged on a lotus pedestal - the likeness was vivid and the fragrance was rich. I was greatly delighted.

But good times did not last. Once the flower faded, the two seedlings of grass also withered away. What could be done? What could be done!

About half a month after the Buddha orchid passed away, while bored in the office I leafed through the newspaper and saw a piece of news in the Economic Daily: a Buddha orchid had been discovered somewhere in Hubei, and orchid collectors and buyers were frantically searching for it. Only then did I know that the orchid that had passed away was called a Buddha orchid, and that it was extremely valuable.

My heart went cold, utterly cold!

In this world, whenever one has a love, hardship and exhaustion are sure to accompany it. Ever since I fell in love with orchids, I looked for orchids and bought orchids everywhere and at all times. I heard from a colleague in my office that a hotel manager in Chishui, Guizhou, kept many orchids, so taking advantage of a business trip to Zigong, I detoured several hundred kilometers to Chishui, but the timing was not favorable - the manager was not at home, so I had no choice but to regretfully buy a few seedlings of wild-collected orchids and a few seedlings of rabbit-ear orchids on the street, and slink back to Chongqing. Passing through Luzhou, I heard the bus driver say that someone at a road and bridge company kept quite a lot of orchids, so I found this master in Luzhou and bought nearly one thousand yuan worth of orchids at his home. When I reached into my pocket, I was two hundred yuan short. Fortunately this gentleman was an honest man and said it did not matter, just send him the money by remittance after returning home - we are all orchid friends after all. And so, carrying the trust and warmth of an orchid friend, the first thing I did after returning to Chongqing was to send the remittance to the master in Luzhou.

This matter led my colleague, because of some minor conflict at work, to report me to the Party committee. Spending more than one thousand yuan on orchids was, at that time, equivalent to three months' wages for a worker. The Party committee thought this was no small matter! Where did he get so much money to buy flowers? So they investigated! After investigating back and forth, the result was that I was completely clean. A colleague in our section had an older sister living in Kunming, and Yunnan is rich in orchids. So there was a business trip to Kunming on official business (a typical case of using public business for private ends). As it happened, the chairman of the labor union at his sister's factory (whose name I will omit here) was the vice chairman of the Kunming Orchid Association. So I played host and treated him to a meal. After eating and drinking his fill, we went to his orchid house, and densely packed, about more than one thousand pots of orchids met my eyes. In the end he sold me three seedlings of spring orchid, and I gave him two hundred yuan. The next year when they bloomed, there was no fragrance at all. The second and third times I went to Kunming I never looked up this gentleman again... Since falling in love with orchids, only orchid growers themselves know the sour, spicy, bitter, and sweet within. Not to mention being fooled and cheated many times by orchid vendors - as long as it was an orchid I truly admired, I would find some way, even tightening my belt and eating less, to buy a few plants... This is truly: crazy for you, mad for you, loving you without negotiation!

Now that I am older, I no longer have the obsession and impulse of youth; although my love for orchids remains the same, I also have a bit more reason and calm. In the final analysis, orchids are also just a kind of flower - it is only because of personal fondness that one falls in love with them. Some of my friends occasionally come to visit, and I take the initiative to offer them a pot of orchids (the extras from dividing my own pots), but some friends do not want them either, for the reason is very simple: they do not like them. "In former days the swallows in front of the emperor's hall flew into the homes of ordinary people." Now the orchid world no longer has the fanaticism and restlessness of the past. Orchid prices have become nearly affordable, and buying orchids has become rational. Due to the development of social productive forces and the gradual increase in people's incomes, buying a pot of one's favorite orchids is no longer a luxury. Today's orchid market can be described as bustling and extraordinary. Just look - every Saturday and Sunday at the Jiangbei Wanghai flower market, orchid buyers and orchid sellers come and go, with brisk buying and selling. This is the new era of the orchid market: rational, peaceful, buying with calm and selling with honesty. Although there are still cases of fraud, those are only isolated and no longer the mainstream of the market. This is my own orchid-growing journey: although stumbling along the way, my original aspiration remains unchanged. I love what I love; I like what I like. Unchanging from beginning to end, loving to the end of my years! Author: Tian Tian

Orchid Bar, your good teacher on the road of orchid growing