'Xiangyu' in Liaozhai: The Flower Spirit and Incense in Pu Songling's Writings

The 'xiang' (fragrance) in 'Xiangyu' from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is not the incense burned in a censer—it is a name.The white peony at Xiaqing Palace at the foot of Mount Lao became a spirit, transformed into a woman in white, and called herself 'Xiangyu.' Pu Songling took the olfactory term most valued by the Chinese and assigned it to a flower. From then on, 'xiang' shifted from an object to a person. This is a brilliantly executed substitution in the history of Chinese fiction.

Key Points

• The male protagonist of 'Xiangyu' is Scholar Huang from Jiaozhou, who lodged and studied at Xiaqing Palace (around today's Taiqing Palace) at the foot of Mount Lao; Xiangyu is the spirit of a white peony, and Jiangxue is the spirit of a wintersweet (camellia).
• Timeline of the story: inscribing a poem—meeting—the white peony is dug up by the Lan family of Jimo—writing fifty poems mourning the flower—the flower deity is moved by his deep affection—Xiangyu is resurrected—after Huang's death, he transforms into a red sprout beneath the peony.
• In the tale, 'xiang' undergoes a displacement: from a combustible substance to the name and breath of a non-combustible person.
• The Taiqing Palace at Mount Lao indeed has ancient camellias (wintersweet) and white peonies; the prototype of the story is found in local documents such as Miscellany of Mount Lao.
• When Pu Songling writes of incense, he almost never mentions censers or burning—he writes of 'fragrant breezes overflowing.'

I. The Story: A Scholar and Two Flowers

At Xiaqing Palace at Mount Lao, in the courtyard there is a wintersweet (camellia) two zhang tall and several dozen spans around, and a peony over a zhang tall, which blooms in a splendor like brocade.Scholar Huang from Jiaozhou lodged in the temple to study.

One day he saw through the window a woman in white partly hidden among the flowers; when he went out, she had vanished. Later he saw her come with a woman in red, 'both peerlessly beautiful,' but the woman in red was the first to sense 'there is a stranger here'; the two fled in alarm, 'sleeves and skirts fluttering,fragrant breezes overflowing"。

Scholar Huang was enamored and inscribed a poem under the tree:

Endless longing is bitter, with feelings I face the short window.I fear she will return to Shazhali; where shall I find Wushuang?

'Shazhali' alludes to the tale of Han Yi and Lady Liu of the Tang (a foreign general who used his power to seize another's concubine); 'Wushuang' alludes to the Tang tale The Story of Wushuang.These two lines are both a declaration of love and a prophecy.

That night the woman came and said:

My childhood name isXiangyu, registered in Pingkang Lane. Being confined by a Daoist in the mountains was truly not her wish.

The one in red was named Jiangxue, her sworn sister. Xiangyu wrote a poem in reply:

The good night is easy to exhaust, the morning sun already at the window.I wish to be like the swallows on the beam, wherever we perch, naturally a pair.

Later one evening, Xiangyu came to say farewell with a sorrowful look, saying "The beauty now belongs to Shazhali, no righteous hero like the ancient Yaya remains"—your poem has become a prophecy. The next day, the Lan family of Jimo, while on an outing, took a fancy to the white peony and dug it up. Only then did Huang realize that Xiangyu was a flower spirit.

Hearing that the white peony was withering day by day at the Lan house, Huang was "extremely grieved,and wrote fifty poems weeping for the flower, going to the grave daily to weep and wail". Jiangxue also came to the grave and shed tears. Huang said:"Xiangyu is my beloved wife, Jiangxue is my good friend."

The flower god was finally moved by his deep affection and allowed Xiangyu's flower soul to return to the palace, but it was only a shadow without substance. Xiangyu left a method:

You takewhite ampelopsis powder, mixed with a little sulfur, and daily pour a cup of water for me; next year on this day I will repay your kindness.

The following year the peony indeed regrew, and Xiangyu revived within the flower. More than ten years later, Huang fell gravely ill and said to the Daoist:

One day, beneath the peony, a red sprout will vigorously grow, and the one that puts forth five leaves is me.

The year after his death, a plump sprout indeed grew beneath the peony, with leaves matching that number. After the old Daoist died, his disciples did not cherish it and cut it down. The white peony then withered and died, and soon the camellia died as well.

Two, the character "fragrance" in the name

What is most worth mentioning in this story is:Pu Songling transformed a concept of incense culture(香学) into a personality.

In the incense catalog system, "fragrance" is a category: agarwood, sandalwood, borneol, musk—all are substances that can be weighed, burned, and blended. But Xiangyu in "Xiangyu" isthe name of a flower。

Why is this? Look at a detail in the original text:

The two women fled in alarm, their sleeves and skirts fluttering,a fragrant breeze overflowing, they ran past the low wall, and all was silent and gone.

As she passed, what she stirred up was a "fragrant breeze"—the scent of flowers, not incense from a censer. From beginning to end, Pu Songling never has Huang Sheng light a single stick of incense.Throughout the whole story there is no incense burner, no incense material, no act of burning incense, there is only the scent of the flowers themselves.

This is a very deliberate step. In Chinese tradition, "incense" and "flowers" have always been entangled:

• Qu Yuan's "Li Sao": "I drape myself with jiangli and bizhi, I twine autumn orchids to wear as a garland"—fragrant herbs are character;
• Lin Bu's "sparse shadows slant across the clear shallow water,a hidden fragrance floats in the dusk of the moon"—plum fragrance is spirit and charm;
• By the time we reach Pu Songling, he simply turns fragrance into a person.

The fragrance in "Xiangyu" is "the person who is smelled."Huang Sheng first smells the fragrant breeze, and only then sees the person; after the peony is dug up and the flower withers and the person dies, he weeps before the flower hollow every day—there is no fragrance left in that hollow, yet he still goes. The presence or absence of fragrance becomes the boundary between life and death.

III. Jiangxue: another layer of "fragrance"

Beyond Xiangyu, the Jiangxue thread is often overlooked, yet it actually shows even greater craft.

Jiangxue is transformed from a naidong (camellia), wears red, is "by nature rather aloof," and always treats Huang Sheng only as a friend.Whenever Huang Sheng invites her, she never comes; but when Huang Sheng weeps for Xiangyu, she quietly weeps beside the hollow too. Later, Huang Sheng sees Jiangxue in a dream asking for help, rushes there by starlight, and saves the naidong that the workman was about to cut down.

Huang Sheng's line "Xiangyu is my beloved wife, Jiangxue is my good friend" separates the two relationships:Xiangyu is of feeling, Jiangxue is of righteousness.

From the angle of fragrance, this is yet another stratification—Xiangyu's fragrance is sweet, warm, and close to people; Jiangxue's "fragrance" is cold, distant, and can only be viewed from afar(the naidong blooms in winter and spring, its flower color like "a layer of crimson snow fallen," a cold beauty to the eye). One is experienced by the nose, the other by the eyes. Pu Songling assigns the two senses to the two flower spirits.

IV. Are these two flowers really on Mount Lao

Yes, and they are real.

In front of the Sanguan Hall of Taiqing Palace on Laoshan there is a camellia (nandongs), estimated to be about seven hundred years old, over eight meters tall, with a trunk circumference of nearly two meters; in winter and spring the whole tree is covered with red flowers, making it a rare large camellia in the world.——The name "Jiangxue" comes from "red flowers fragrant and beautiful, as if a layer of crimson snow had fallen." Nearby there was originally a white peony, tall enough to reach the eaves, which is the prototype of "Xiangyu."

The source of the story was not invented by Pu Songling out of thin air either. Local documents from the early Qing dynasty such as Miscellaneous Gleanings from Laoshan record: in the palaces and temples of Laoshan there was a white peony several hundred years old; in the Ming dynasty Vice Minister Lan of Jimo traveled here and wanted to transplant it, and that night a woman in white robes bade farewell to the Daoist priest. Pu Songling collected these Laoshan legends and wrote them into "Xiangyu" and "The Taoist of Laoshan."

So when reading "Xiangyu," it is best to know that it grew out of real trees and real legends.This is also the consistent method of Liaozhai: first there are local storytellers, then there is Pu Songling's pen.

Five: Three Uses of Incense in Chinese Fiction

Let me make a brief summary here. Looking at "Xiangyu" within a larger context, "incense" in classical fiction roughly has three identities:

What is special about "Xiangyu" is that it combines the second and third layers:Xiangyu is both an object of love and desire and a kind of being that can be revered as "virtue"(writing fifty poems weeping for her, mourning her for a year, and finally becoming a sprout himself).

In Chinese incense culture there has always been a saying: "Incense is virtue." Huang Tingjian wrote "The Ten Virtues of Incense," speaking of "becoming a friend in stillness" and "preserved long without decay." Pu Songling did not write a treatise on incense, but with one name he turned "incense virtue" into a character.

Six: From Story Back to Objects: If You Want to Smell "Floral-Type" Incense

People who read "Xiangyu" mostly wonder: can that kind of "overflowing fragrant breeze" floral scent still be smelled today?

Yes, but you need to distinguish two approaches.

One approach is the "floral type" in blended incense.The ancients did indeed make flower-imitating scents—using agarwood as a base, paired with jasmine, sambac, osmanthus and the like, letting the floral scent enter the incense material through steaming and scenting (窨). The Song dynasty "heart-character incense" was of this kind: people of Panyu took half-opened sambac and jasmine and layered them alternately with thinly split agarwood, sealed it, changing the flowers once a day, and when the flowers were spent the scent was complete (see the Ming scholar Yang Shen's Cipin, quoting Fan Chengda's Canluan Lu).

The other approach is those single-origin agarwoods that naturally carry floral charm.In some production areas of the Hui'an family, especially fine material from around Nha Trang, the lingering finish reveals a clear, sweet floral-honey note—not cloying, not harsh. This material suits low-temperature heating; once the temperature rises, the floral charm is gone.

If you want to find agarwood with floral charm, you're welcome to come to the shop and smell for yourself—no obligation to buy; decide after you've smelled and understood it. If it's inconvenient to come, call 400-809-1913, and the shopkeeper will give you a direction based on your budget and preferences.For methods of describing scent profiles, see alsoScent Characteristics and Layers。

Frequently Asked Questions

In Liaozhai's "Xiangyu," is Xiangyu a flower spirit or a ghost?

Both, in a sense. After the white peony was dug up and died, the flower deity first let Xiangyu's "flower soul" return to the Xiaqing Palace; at this point she was "floating like a shadow," belonging to the state of a ghost/soul. The following year, when Huang Sheng watered it according to the prescription, the white peony was reborn, and Xiangyu revived within the blooming flower, only then regaining a physical form. So in this tale it is first ghost, then flower—two stages.

Is the "white ampelopsis powder plus sulfur" that Huang Sheng used to water the flowers a real prescription?

This is the novelist's invention, not a formula from incense manuals. White ampelopsis and sulfur do have real uses in horticulture for killing pests and improving soil; Pu Songling probably set up the plot to mean "medicine and minerals save the flower." Readers need not try it as a gardening formula—if you really want to grow peonies, still listen to a horticulturist.

Are the winter-flowering camellia and peony at Taiqing Palace in Laoshan still there?

The winter-flowering camellia (sasanqua) still survives, about seven hundred years old, and is a famous ancient tree of Taiqing Palace; the white peony, having been transplanted and gone through withering and flourishing, no longer exists in the original plant corresponding to the story. Pu Songling once stayed at Laoshan and spent his days facing these two flowers, and thus conceived "Xiangyu." Before visiting, it is advisable to confirm the scenic area's latest situation.

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