The ten li of the Qinhuai River in Jinling have long been praised as “a quarter of mist and moonlight from the Six Dynasties, a gathering place of beauty and luxury.” My friend Wu Xuan, a scholar from Jizhou, lived alone as a guest in Jinling and ran a teahouse on the left bank of the Qinhuai, specializing in all varieties of flower tea. Wu Xuan told me that not long after the teahouse opened, he often saw women worshipping beneath the willow tree before his door. From a distance he could make out under the tree a divine image more than a foot tall, with white eyebrows. But whenever he went forward to ask about it, the women worshipping there would grow nervous and immediately rise and leave. When he looked down again, the statue would be gone as well.
Several more months passed before Wu Xuan saw a regular customer of his, Madam You, beneath the willow too. He waited until she had finished worshipping, invited her into the teahouse, brought out his finest linden-honey tea, and asked her to clear up his doubts. Madam You had always had a free and easy temperament, so she told him everything. Along both banks of the Qinhuai, she said, there were smoke-willows numbering exactly the Heavenly Spirits. Outsiders could not distinguish them from ordinary willows. On the third day of each month, all women from entertainer households had to come beneath the trees to worship the Third Young Lord, which would ensure health of body and prosperity in business. The so-called Third Young Lord was none other than Robber Zhi. Women of entertainer households in every dynasty had secretly venerated his image. Because his eyebrows were entirely white, they also honored him as the White-Browed God. Since entertainer households were of low status, and prostitutes lower still, scholars contemptuously called them “flower-willow demons,” and so Robber Zhi’s spirit tablet could find no place in any proper temple. Along the Qinhuai, the images of the Third Young Lord were often hidden among the smoke-willows, recognizable only to those in the trade.
Wu Xuan then asked how to identify a smoke-willow. Madam You showed reluctance to say more. Only after he offered her two more packets of mandala tea did she explain that any willow whose roots and trunk were shaded by fine green vines was a smoke-willow. This vine belonged to the orchid family, though its name was unknown. The women of the entertainer households jokingly called it Mutou Ran. If its leaves were picked, dried, and burned beneath a smoke-willow on the third day of each month, one would be able to see the image of the Third Young Lord.
Wu Xuan said that afterward he specially followed this method, yet he never saw the White-Browed God appear, and so guessed that Madam You must have been teasing him. But I think every trade has its own rules. It is understandable that Madam You would not openly reveal the true ritual method. Entertainer households have often felt ashamed of their low status, and so, in order to elevate their cultivation, they all developed the habit of growing orchids and bamboo. In his “Inscription for the Chaste and Righteous Woman of Laishui in Liyang,” Li Bai wrote, “Orchid steam and peppered libations, with yearly rites never lacking.” Thus it is reasonable enough that orchids would serve as the ritual medium in worship.
In fact, there truly is a plant called Mutou Ran. It is produced by grafting a qinchun vanda with a jade-tree zhilan orchid. Because it originated in Empress Wu’s palace, it received its name. Its scent is thin and its flavor mild. Small Knowledge of the Principles of Things records: “Hidden orchid, Jian orchid, and Mutou Ran: their roots are sweet and suitable for medicine. Their flowers may be eaten, and their leaves soaked in oil to darken hair.” The Supplement to the Compendium of Materia Medica says that Mutou Ran, “when eaten, clears ulceration and festering,” and among flowers and grasses it is one of the easiest to use medicinally. In old times, those suffering from heat-induced sores and itching would boil Mutou Ran into tea and drink it, or chew it to pulp and apply it to the afflicted area, with marvelous effect. Prescriptions for treating venereal disease through the ages also often included Mutou Ran, and wandering doctors even sighed, “If a man does not know Mutou Ran, he may taste the hundred herbs in vain.”