Trends and Buzz

Debate over China's national flower

JDM050722meihua.jpg
Plum Blossom

With 5000 years of history you can't have just one National Flower. China is finding it difficult to chose a single representative from among the vast field of candidates that show up throughout traditional art and culture - peony, plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, bamboo, water lily, Chinese rose, azalea, camellia, osmanthus, and narcissus.

Front-runners all along have been the peony (牡丹) and the plum blossom (梅花). And now 62 scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering have thrown their weight behind a "dual national flower" plan to name both flowers to the position.

The Recommendation Concerning Setting the Peony and Plum Blossom as National Flowers as Early as Possible calls China's lack of a national flower a hinderance both to propagation of China's rich heritage of flower culture and to the flower industry's ability to compete on the world stage. As the only major nation without a national flower, China should be spurred to make a decision by the impending 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

The two-flower recommendation is only one of several possibilities, however, each with its own numbered formulation. There's "One Country, One Flower," which would require breaking somehow the peony-plum deadlock. "One Country, Two Flowers" is the name of the academicians' choice. "One Country, Four Flowers" adds the chrysanthemum and the water lily. And then there's "One Country, Five Flowers," also known as "One Primary, Four Supplementary," which would name the peony as the main national flower and add one supplemental flower for each season in a new version of the traditional "four gentlemen" - chrysanthemum (autumn), plum (winter), and orchid (spring), with water lily (summer) substituting for bamboo.

JDM050722mudan.jpg
Peony

These candidates were proposed in the 1980s but no resolution could be reached. China Daily reported back in 2003 that authorities were close to putting it to a vote, but that too was just over-optimistic speculation.

And, as one would expect, the decision to declare so significant a symbol as a national flower is not free from political considerations. The peony was named national flower in the late Qing dynasty, so it has historical precedence. But the national flower of the Republic of China is the plum blossom, first declared in 1929 and then again in 1964. The latter declaration tied the plum blossom to Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles and Taiwan's five branches of government, so "One Country, Two Systems" may require "One Country, Two Flowers" for the mainland to avoid the appearance of blindly following Taiwan by choosing the plum blossom, or leaving it to its own devices by choosing the peony.

Links and Sources
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
090609guardian2.png 090609CNN3.png
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
laomo2008fpA.jpg
Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
AXL090619paulfrenchbook.jpg
Foreign journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao : Paul French, author of a book on Carl Crow has written a book about the lives and exploits of foreign journalists reporting from China from the 1820s to 1949.
Earnshaw Books' Tales of Old Peking: Tales from Old Peking is available from Earnshaw Books, and like its sister, Tales from Old Shanghai is a book of fragments of information about periods, events or places in Beijing's history, collaging together pictures and text about eunuchs, concubines, the Lama Temple, Opium Wars, art, emperors, and a miscellany of other interesting topics
Henry F. Pringle's "Bridge House Survivor": Pringle was imprisoned by Japanese forces from October 1942 to August 1945, and Bridge House Survivor, available from Earnshaw Books, is his harrowing account of torture under the Japanese.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ A short interview with Muzi Mei (2004.02): Danwei interviews Muzi Mei
+ CCTV vs. classic movies (2006.03): A rundown of several pastiches of Chinese movies appearing online as 大史记 - "The Year That Was". Some from CCTV, others not. With links to video.
+ Street hawker cries of Beijing (2006.12): Yang Changhe demonstrates hawker's cries in a video shot by Muzimei.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30