Category / Issue 5

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Golden Delicious Qian – Everyone is Living Two Lives

My two lives, my many lives, are simultaneous

Many lives, many deaths, many visions of peace.

       You were saved because you were the last.
       Alone. With others.
       On the right. The left.
       Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
       Because the day was sunny.
       – Wislawa Szymborska

My two lives, my many lives, are simultaneous. I leave home and I don’t. I die and I don’t. I’m asleep and dreaming, and also awake and dreaming. The car crash, the tyranny, the epidemic, the fire; it killed me, it missed me, I was careful, I was careless but lucky. It was my fate.

And here we are living the life we have, ramshackle and improvised, with the ice sheets melting, and the old agreements that held us together, broken.

This is our time to live. We don’t get another, we have to love and enjoy each other and get enlightened right here. 

I am also an apple tree, by which I mean that is one of my lives. 

Regrowth from brushfire in Australia

The little apple tree in the front yard was gradually shaded more each year by Monterey pines. It is a golden delicious, but though its name has the flavor of advertising, it’s a farm tree and the apples are greenish yellow, crisp, and delightful. In October three years ago, the fire from the east, pushed by Santa Ana winds, burnt through Glen Ellen, leaving only porcelain toilets and chimneys above ground, around the winding valley road beside Sonoma Mountain, destroyed the newly built house in the middle distance, but left the children’s play structure untouched and intimate against the sky, crossed a paddock, jumped the road, and burnt the little apple tree along with the persimmon tree near it and the Gravenstein apple tree, and the lilac and the cedar, and the old concord and chardonnay grape vines, though none of them fatally.

After some recovery time the trees were pruned but the great pines shed every needle and died. The little apple recovered and grew tall, rather pleased with the improved light.

This year, in August, lightning hung in great nets in the sky, like an image of the galaxy. There was little rain and the Santa Anas blew hot and hard again, whipping the lightning strikes into fires that have been burning for over a month. In our case the wind merely broke off the apple tree at a height not much taller than a person. She now looks like a young girl with wild, wild hair. We picked the apples on the broken branches and gave her some water during the heatwave that followed. I felt for her the way I feel for the little fox who comes by for dates in the dark of the night and has to dodge coyotes, dogs, gangs of raccoons, the occasional bobcat, and the rare mountain lion. 

A month later it is autumn, and the Sonoma grape harvest is in early along with its questions of insurance and smoke damage and are there enough adjustors, and will the workers harvest the cabernet and pinot noir that’s left on the vine and so get paid and so send money home to, say Oaxaca, but probably they won’t. 

There are still a few golden apples on the boughs, and the little tree has bloomed. Perhaps, in case she died, she wanted to offer something before departing. 

Which is a quest we are all engaged in. The trees and the animals do what they can in these strange, hard days. And so do we, walking through the valley of this time, describing what we can, sharing what we can, holding lanterns. 

 

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by Corey Hitchcock

Qian is Separated From Her Soul – The Koan Story

Zhangken had a single daughter

This koan story from Zen Master Wuzu emerged as the inspiration for our 5th Issue of Uncertainty Club. We are launching it in a time when most of us are confined at home and many of our usual social activities are curtailed due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Each of our previous issues has formed around a theme which refers to a koan or verse from a zen text.

We editors grew particularly attached to Qian’s story as the pandemic, fires and political storms raged. So here is her story as recorded for us in the Tang Dynasty, a time when China was going through many harsh adjustments to reality. Sound familiar?

This translation is by Roshi Susan Murphy, taken from her book, “Upside Down Zen”.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl called Qian. She lived beside one of the great rivers of Ancient China, with just her father, Zhangken. Her sister had died young, and her father cherished her even more deeply after that. Nothing is known about her mother (which is often the way with stories of this kind).

As a young girl, Qian was inseparable from her cousin, Zhao, a boy slightly older than her, a playmate, gradually a soulmate. One day, watching Qian and Zhao together, Ken said in play, “You’re such a well-matched couple. When you grow up we should marry you to each other, for you seem to belong together.” And so they childishly thought of themselves as engaged, and in the course of time they found themselves in love with each other. But when Qian finally reached marriageable age, an important official approached her father for her as a wife, and Zhangken, who had long forgotten his lightly spoken words, gladly consented.

Zhao was devasted, and vowed at once to go and live in a distant province, far from the heartbreak of losing Qian. And Qian was like-wise lost in grief, for she was a dutiful and loving daughter. But on the night that he was pushing off in his boat from the river, heading toward forgetfulness, he was startled to hear Qian’s voice as she came running down the path, saying, ‘Wait, it’s me – I cannot bear to lose you. Let me run away with you!’ Shaking with joy and fear, the two travelled up the river to a remote province, far enough away for the wrath of Zhangken to be forgotten, for a time, and were married.

They lived there in all the usual ways of considerable happiness and, in the course of time, had two children together. Life grew thick, and busy, but as the seventh year approached, Qian grew sad and sorrowful. Finally she came and told Zhao that she had to go back to ask forgiveness and to honor her father before he grew old and died – that she could not remain forever an outcast from her home. Zhao was full of anxiety about this but he assented to her wish, and they planned to make this difficult journey together as soon as possible. And so they set out to travel back down the river.

When they arrived back in her father’s province, as was the custom in old China, Zhao went first to see her father and receive the brunt of his anger, while Qian remained in the boat. And so he was astonished when Ken received him with obvious pleasure, saying, ‘Where have you been all these years? I’ve missed you!’ Zhao bowed his head and asked forgiveness, reassuring him that his daughter Qian was well and had been very happy as his wife, and that she was now the mother of two fine children and was here to seek his forgiveness. But what Zhangken said in reply nearly stopped his heart.

‘Which Qian is that?’ asked Ken. ‘For more than six year – ever since you departed so suddenly for a distant place – Qian has been ill in bed, hardly moving and unable to speak. Come with me, and see for yourself.’ Fearfully, Zhao went with him and saw that, indeed, Qian was lying in her old room barely conscious, but seeming to register his presence as he came into the room.

‘This is very strange,’ he told Ken, ‘but stranger still is what I have to show you. Please, come with me.’ Together, they walked out of the house and down the path towards the boat, where Qian has waiting.  But Qian had grown tired of waiting in the boat, and she was walking towards them. And behind them, coming from the other direction, the other Qian had risen from her bed and was also walking along the river path.

The two men stepped back and watched in astonishment as the two Qians met on the path and took each other in. And then each Qian stepped forward into the arms of the other to embrace her completely, becoming in that moment a single Qian more astonishing than ever before.

Qian made a deep bow to her father. ‘If indeed you are my daughter,’ he said, lost in wonder, ‘I have nothing but love for you.’

And Qian turned to Zhao. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you,’ she told him, ‘and I was happy with you, except for my deep shame. But all the time, I did not know that I was sick at home in my father’s house, devastated by a sorrow beyond dreams.’

‘I myself am not sure which was the real Qian, the one as if dead, at home in my father’s house, or the one who has lived with you, wife and mother to your children.’

So Wuzu asked, which is the true Qian?

 

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by Corey Hitchcock

Vimalakirti’s Sick Bed

Vimalakirti in his bed – Vimalakirti Sutra

‘I am sick because the whole world is sick. If everyone’s illness were healed, mine would be, too’ – Vimalakirti, translated by Joan Sutherland, from her Vimalakirti & the Awakened Heart.

In a story first told two thousand years ago, the great Vimalakirti, the epitome of someone following the Buddha way while maintaining a household and family, lies sick in bed in a bare room. He’s taken to bed because he finds the entire world ill. While he’s in his 10 x 10 room, Shakyamuni is down the street in what appears to be in a garden of delight. He hears of Vimalakirti’s state and sends a crew of divine and enlightened emissaries to visit him, and thus begins the elaborate, fantastical story of the sick Bodhisattva who asks about nonduality. From his hospice bed he asks: “What is the Dharma gate of nonduality that the bodhisattvas enter?” This elicits a variety of responses from the gathered celestial beings. In the story, Vimalakirti’s own response is silence, which Joan Sutherland describes as ‘roaring’. Yes, sounds about right for that silence.

The koan regarding this story (Case 84 – Blue Cliff Record), never mentions Vimalakirti’s famous silence. The koan ends with Manjusri speaking and Xuedo commenting. Xuedo reminds us of the true era in which this story is occurring. 

Manjusri asked Vimalakirti, “Each of us have spoken; now, kind sir, you must tell us what the bodhisattva’s Dharma gate of nonduality is.” (Xuedo comments: What will Vimalakirti say? All has been revealed.)

Joan Sutherland points out that the sick/well split found in the sutra is echoed in the sick/well split found in the Qian story. In the sutra it is clear that Vimalakirti is not ill because of some deficiency. In fact, his illness is not a deficient condition relative to wellness. It is the necessary dark twin to Shakyamuni dwelling in a luxurious garden. The  spiritual beings who visit Vimalakirti are frightened of him, disturbed by him and his ill health. Since his question regarding nonduality is asked from his death bed, any valid response must include the reality of the wasting human who’s asking it.

Vimalakirti seems to have chosen illness almost as a teaching device, but I’ll take him at his word – his sickness is embodying the sickness of the world. His porousness, his open heartedness to the world, undoes the usual notions of choice. In some ways there’s not that much left of him to engage in choosing. He’s responding. Roshi Sutherland would say that Bodhichitta has risen in Vimalakirti, he moves with an awakened heart.

Qian Calls to Qian

Consider the Qian who does not head downriver, does not take a husband and start a family, but stays back. This Qian is upstairs in her sick room, some translations say she is in a coma. 

I realized I had seen the returning Qian as the rescuer. It was her vital embrace which restored the sick Qian. I had imagined that the sick Qian would vanish, becoming well in their merging. If this were true, then the question of which Qian is the true would have an answer – the Qian who’s well. This answer would break the wholeness, and back we’d be in the land of small questions and small answers.

It was the call of the Qian who stayed that troubled the heart of the Qian who left. It was the bed-ridden Qian, with her unknown life up in her room, who tugged on her distant soulmate to return. Just like the sound of geese in the fall dusk calls me to return to the great migration  home.

Covid quarters, China

It’s not so hard to see how other ‘sicknesses’  — say, daily double shots of anger — are not something that needs to be quashed. Rather, it’s a healing call from my sick bed, asking me to attend, to return to the source of my splitting.

Stone Woman Gives Birth in the Night

Sometime koans entrain other koans, forming constellations. They constellate what I think of as myself, they map the shape of my body in fresh ways. The koan: ‘The stone woman gives birth in the night’, showed up when Qian bumped into my dying mother. My mom had come to envision her death as giving birth. She said the baby was coming, but she did not know when. It was coming soon but could not be rushed.

A ninety-five year old woman on the verge of death seems as dark as a stone on a moonless night. She would not be rising from the hospice bed, not her body at any rate, which is where my mom had been located my entire life. The Qian in good health listens as the Qian who is sick tells him about the baby that is coming. The merging of the Qians may take place beyond the boundaries of a single body. 

Someone is always in the bed and someone is always sitting near. One is well, one is ill. Somehow, this entirety is the shape of my body. When the Stone Woman gives birth, when her water breaks, my mom and me, and the hospital bed and the fluorescent light and her roommate’s snoring, form a single, birthed body.

Corona

The Last Judgement, detail of the damned in the River Styx and Charon’s boat full of passengers, before 1562 by Tintoretto, Domenico Robusti (1560-1635)

Well make me down a pallet on your floor
Make me down a pallet on your floor
Make me a pallet down, soft and low
Make me a pallet on your floor

– Mississippi John Hurt

The current sick room stretches across the globe. In a real way, any person sick with the COVID-19 is so because the world is sick. As the world heals, each person heals. Retreating into our homes, we also enter a retreat space – to help and be helped. We are like countless Vimalakirtis taking our place in cells of nearly monastic isolation. As the cells in our bodies do what they can to live, to participate in that single great body, our physical separation is what we can do to live together, participants in a single great body.   

When Mississippi John Hurt sings about that soft and low pallet, he’s clearly thinking not only of sleeping. But his desire is still for nothing other than a place on your floor. The Buddhist notion of Sangha could be imagined as us all sleeping on a single floor, fulfilling a deep desire to rest together. The corona virus has us slightly separated, but at any time, millions dream together on this one great floor. Death has separated my mom and I slightly (?), but the stone woman continues giving birth. The Qians are slightly separated, yet a single river carries one to the other.

‘What did Vimalakirti say? It has all been revealed.’

 

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As the world heals, each person heals.

by Corey Hitchcock

How I Became a Ghost & Back Again

Instead of Dante’s fearful inferno, I found the comforting warmth of a hearth.

Qian Stayed – Corey Hitchcock 2020

 

Gone! 

Fire season’s hot breath scorched on into November. After five unnerving months I was still alive, but not unscathed. Raw, edgy and worn out by power outages, wind alerts and small, dangerous fires. Then the weather demons did a turnabout and a final fire outage-alert yielded overnight to a dizzying snowstorm. Within a week of the big snow, as things began to new-normalize, I answered a breathless call from one of my sisters. Our youngest niece was gone, dead by her own hand. I felt myself tip and fall, like Qian, into bed. Fire is dangerous, but alive. This death had snuffed out my ordinary joy in living.

A Ghost

‘What is this?’, I asked the I Ching, Oracle of Change. ‘Bound!’  the Oracle responded. That cautious hexagram’s moving line (me) had no field of activity. Exactly, I thought. No volition, no spark. I cooked tasteless meals, and woke unrested. Even small tasks were impossible. I was at once anxious, restless and paralyzed. One night, as I lay stiffly in my bed feeling into that numinous state between waking and sleeping, a ghost man came through the wall, completely attuned to his own misery and loneliness. Breathing with effort, he got into bed beside me. Not young, not old, he was dressed for a funeral and lay down fully clothed on top of the covers. He did not look at me, nor was he particularly frightening. I am not even sure he knew I was there. I’m attracting ghosts, I said out loud. Maybe I’m becoming a ghost.

 

A Dream  

The next night I dreamed:

I have in my closet a wonderful ancestral dress. It is cream colored and composed of many layers of lace and veil. It is a ritual dress, long like a wedding dress but not to be worn at a wedding. I meet a man I don’t know well who admires the dress. Thinking, ‘I don’t really need it’, I give it to him. This causes my father’s face to loom in fury at my disregard for this dress I’ve been given. Was it given by him? He does not speak, but glares fiercely and I feel intense shame that I have carelessly given away my ancient and precious heritage.
 

Another man appears carrying a drum and a small wooden ‘puzzle box’. He is ritually dressed and identified as an ‘ancestor’. Attached to the box is a small curved dagger, and inside is an amulet, finely engraved with the image of a woman wearing that wonderful dress.  The ancestor uses this curved dagger to sever the strange man’s attachment to my dress. ‘It must be returned!’, he shouts. And in this dream moment I feel relief because I know his words have made it so.

Breath fills my lungs again.

Breathing in the Dark

After the dream I discovered a fingernail hold of courage to peer further into the darkness. Its atmosphere seemed suffocating. How could I meet it? It was killing. I pictured myself holding onto an enormous stone and sinking. When I hit bottom, I breathed into the dark vastness, tentatively at first, and then in huge satisfying gulps. Instead of Dante’s fearful inferno, I found the comforting warmth of a hearth.

Memories and pleasant sensations flooded me. Colors returned and dazzled me – shimmering coral, the exact blue of a Bluebird’s wing, the delirious green of new grass. My beloved grandmother was there, sitting quietly, radiating her unconditional love. My brother long dead, so full of intelligence and wit gazed at me with affection. The stunning opalescent light of my birth city, San Francisco, enfolded me in the salty shimmer of the bay. Singing with friends, comforted by a herd of deer, running in moss; moments of deep play, swimming in warm ocean water. Smelled seaweed, horses, Plumeria; touched the honey colored pine walls of a favorite cabin. I fell back into endless summer afternoons, watched shadows, waves, insects, fish. All my long-dead cats bathed and purred beside me. I felt the depth of friendships with people I did not see often enough – we were still connected. Our separation was tenderly held here. All this was alive in the dark below.

 

Western Bluebird Blue

Qian Stayed

From this contented dark center, I took a new look at the place I‘d fallen from. Up there, in the light of day, I briefly practiced re-appearing . I sketched an image of my head popping through an imaginary portal into the light above. To my horror, I had drawn myself as a somber puppet head.
My zones had reversed – the place I had feared to inhabit was now alive and familiar, a pulsing, sourced center. Now the light of day flattened everything, including me. A deep reversal in my determining atoms had occurred. Something akin to a polar shift wrenched me around to see the truth and richness of my entire life. What I had held as deadly I now saw as vital. Had I received a turning word? I don’t know. Could I live in both places? Had Qian?

What about the Qian who stayed?

The one who is lying unconscious in her childhood bed. Did she fall into her own dark center to save herself? Was Qian returned to herself the way my ancestral dress was returned to me? This Qian who stayed drew me close in a sisterly embrace. I had thought of her as confined for years in a grey room between life and death. I saw now that she had sunk down and been protected and nourished by her ancestors. She had sheltered that hidden vastness that dwells at the center of every life. Held there, she allowed herself to return, lifting the father’s inadvertent curse.

Me too! An ancestor brought the dress made just for me. I allowed myself to put it on. The dark materials I had feared would snuff me out now rippled with the beauty and fullness of my life. I thought I had lost this dress, this gift, forever. Now I saw that was impossible. And so, yes, I could live in both worlds, because they were one in me. I had the freedom to choose my treasures, to ‘take them and use them however I wished!’ 

Qian and I could wear our dream dresses, we had returned.

 

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by Corey Hitchcock

The True Qian

Something immense is looking for us

True Qian, 2009 © Allison Atwill. Charcoal on paper with acrylic and silver leaf. 24″ x 31″

Our own awakening is in the same realm as painting – In the way that while we are struggling to find/make the painting, something immense is looking for us. And when the piece finally comes to rest and is complete, when we look back, we can see, yes, this is how to make this painting. We discovered the directions by painting our way through. It is beyond our ideas of necessary and unnecessary steps, it is simply the way.

KOAN

Qian and her soul are separated.  Which is the true Qian?

 

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by admin

Mario & the Fox

Whenever we are reunited with our soul others are involved

Whenever we are reunited with our soul others are involved. Sometimes those others don’t have a human shape. Mario da Cunha was generous in sharing on PZI Talk a small bit of the years-long relationship he’s had with a fox. At the end of his posts Mario would thank us for listening. We are thankful that he has been listening, a wide open listening, not limited to ears. – Editors

Baizhang’s Fox

A Teacher Appears


I live and work on a large piece of property in Santa Barbara. Many birds, trees and small animals live on this property and have been very helpful to me over the years. I’ve grown to understand how to belong from them, to take my place among them.

For longer than the six and a half years I’ve been here, one of the residents has been a lovely petite western red fox. The Hispanic gardeners, here for decades, call her “Mama”, or “perrita roja” (little red dog) affectionately.

I’ve seen her raise 4 litters of adorable kits over the years. On late summer evenings, when the light was dimming, I would hide behind a stone balustrade and watch the littles chase, joust, duck and roll all under the watchful eye of their mama and papa. If either parent caught a whiff or sight of me, a small yip would be sounded by one or both, and off the kits bolted for the nearest cover.

Over the years I’ve watched her as she has watched me. I started to feed her a bit when she looked too skinny during her mothering. Now that she’s at least 10 years old I feed her more regularly. It’s a thing we do together. The photo above is of her eating some roasted unsalted peanuts. Ted, the grounds foreman, and I call it her peanut face. Squinty eyes and a yapping chewing motion.

Over the years, Mama and the trees and all the others have taught me so much about the nature of love, community and belonging. Loving something just because it is, just the way it is. Including me in there as well.

Not sure what else to say.

Thanks for listening.

First, the Breakfast Protocol. 

Dana Accepted

Early each morning I listen for the crow calls on the large property where I live and work. The timbre and tone let me know if they’ve seen Mama fox and how near she is to the house. I warm a few ounces of chicken meat and add a bit of broth, warm a whole raw egg, and grab the big bag of roasted unsalted peanuts. I serve breakfast in a couple of different places depending on the work being done by the gardeners.

Roasted peanuts in the shell, a small pile of shelled roasted peanuts, the chicken and crushed peanuts at strategic places for the shy towhees and juncos. The bluejays (“cowlick” and “apollonia”) are daring enough to dart in and out while I’m laying out the feast. The small birds make their little noises under cover in the junipers and orange trees. The quiet crows line the cornice 20 feet above. Their respectful silence is out of character in my experience.

Mama first takes the egg, trotting off somewhere to bury it. She digs a shallow hole, gently places it inside and fills the hole by using her nose to push the earth. The crows then let me know that she’s returning with raucous jeering calls. Mama usually starts with chicken, then part way through the course, supplements with either the shelled or unshelled peanuts, then back to finish the chicken. When she’s finished, she moves away without the slightest gesture toward me. Full now, time to move on….

The crows, until now silently watching, now erupt in chorus of seeming excited calls at their turn at the bounty. They are the connoisseurs of fine dining, shoving and squabbling for every bit. The banquet table is completely cleared and cleaned by the last guests.

Sometimes, I wonder why I have the urge to write to you all about this part of the life I live. I sense that I have the desire, if that’s the correct word, to share something that touches me so deeply, to convey something of the way I crack open and the universe enters.

I often find that I’m engaging in an unconscious effort to “pave” the world and my experience in it with language. When I sit with Mama, or see weeds growing through cracks in the (my) pavement, then something unnamable is stirred and comes forth. There’s freedom. The landscape of this life expands in such surprising ways.

Thanks for listening.

(Editors’ note – Mr. da Cunha understands that foxes come in many shapes, some with eight legs. A weaver recognizes a weaver.)

Light in All Things

I am continually moved by the smallest things. This morning, after a difficult night following some difficult weeks, while sipping tea from a mug my daughter made in her childhood, a sister of the arachne family slowly creeped up the side of the monthly planner on the table. She, being the size of a dot used to top a lower case “i” in 24 point font, was just visible to me as she made her way across the month of August. Beginning on the 4th and leaving near the 24th. Across dates and activities that have happened and those yet to be. Traversing post-its, coupons, pieces of cornice stone, worn drapery tassels and finally onto the clear paper of the future date yet to be. As I watched her I greeted her with a “hello there” that likely sounded to her like very close thunder rumbling. The point I guess for sharing this is that the smallest of things offer great freedom for me. Boom. Like that.

Thanks for listening.

What is This?

Are You Listening?                                 

                                   Awoke today with many answers,
                                   luckily, a fox — just now,
                                   chased them away.

Thanks Dears

New Kits!

Fox Spirits

I emailed a friend a couple of days ago telling her about how there are actually eight kits and how watching them play around their nursery is like watching an English farce play — all the comings and goings from the large hedge — and how the baby foxes play all the roles. She said “…. the baby foxes play all the roles. It is thus.” Yes! We baby foxes play all the roles! Another way the subtle touch graces us all. 

So here is one of her kits, she ran all the way across the lawn with her mom for a chance at a chicken drumstick. The kits are solitary eaters. They grab food from their mum and sprint to evade their siblings.

After the food is gone, everyone settles into games and playtime. Mama might groom a couple of the littles that will sit still for it. Boo sometimes plays with her stepbrothers and stepsisters, but mostly she lays in the grass near Mama where they both stretch and scootch along the rough dry grass to scratch their sides and backs. Then after a bit everyone goes their separate ways. 

Something about all this touches me in a place where there are no words. Thanks for listening.


Invasive Species

A New Presence

This is a daughter of Mama Fox’s. Mama is the OG (original Guanyin). This daughter is sitting in the place, on top of the garden wall, where her mother usually waits for me on feeding days.

You know, I looked up these little creatures to find out more about them. They’re an invasive species brought to the west coast in the mid nineteenth century for their fur and to be prey for human hunting. I have a deep feeling for them and an internal conversation about supporting them. As a singular example of another invasive species I have mixed emotions. Maybe more on this later.

Anyway, I’m so struck by the lovely innocence of the expression of her face.

Thanks.

 

A Dear Friend

A Teaching That Lasts a Lifetime

 

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by Corey Hitchcock

To Love Without Shelter

She is always there

Two Women – acrylic on canvas, 2019

 

To love without shelter,

Do we want that?

My paintings come from nowhere,

they answer some question that I don’t know I am asking. A color calls me and I begin.

Each painting is many paintings.

Often I cover good things. Too late!

Color entrances and moves me on.

At some point I give up. A fury arises.

I lose control and paint.

The second figure appeared behind the first. An odd angle. She stayed.

They stare at me.

I stare back.

I’m uncomfortable.
That must mean it says something true.

It’s an honorable task being human, to do the best we can.

So many people live with terrifying things.
In the in-between we live.

To love without shelter
Do we want that?
I could never figure it out.

Sacha Kawaichi

 

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by Corey Hitchcock

The Legend of the Blue Willow – Fairytale Qian

A twin pair of ever in love.

The Blue Willow Pattern – 1800’s

 

The Blue Willow Pattern, found in 19th century ceramic dishware, brings alive an ancient Chinese fairytale.

Long ago, in the days when China was ruled by emperors, a Chinese mandarin, Zuoling, lived in a magnificent pagoda under the branches of an enormous apple tree, shown near the center of the plate. The pattern is named for the willow seen drooping over a bridge, behind the graceful fence line. Zuoling had a beautiful daughter, Guangse, who he promised in marriage to an old but wealthy merchant. Guangse, however, fell in love with Zhang, her father’s clerk.

The pattern shows the lovers eloping across the sea to a cottage on an island. The mandarin pursued and caught the lovers and was about to have them killed when the gods transformed them into a pair of turtle doves. These doves are gazing into each other’s eyes at the top of the design.

A lengthy and old Staffordshire poem describing the pattern concludes with the verse:

“In the oft quoted plate two birds are perceived,
High in the heaven above:
These are the spirits of Zhang and Guangse,
A twin pair of ever in love”. 

 
Blue Willow China, in its present form originated in the United Kingdom (England) in 1790 by Thomas Turner at Caughley Pottery Works in Shropshire.

 

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