Category: Health

The Chrysanthemum: Symbol of Strength and Resilience

A detail from an ink-wash landscape painting, in which artist Du Jin portrays poet Tao Yuanming strolling through the mountains and admiring the chrysanthemum blossoms. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Public Domain)

A detail from an ink-wash landscape painting, in which artist Du Jin portrays poet Tao Yuanming strolling through the mountains and admiring the chrysanthemum blossoms. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Public Domain)

The Chrysanthemum: Symbol of Strength and Resilience

BY  CORA WANG October 15, 2020 Updated: October 15, 2020

As the chill of autumn sets in, trees begin to  lose their vibrancy, and plants begin to wilt. However, one particular flower prevails—the chrysanthemum. While its surroundings fade away, defeated by the frigid winds, this resilient flower starts to bloom. Since ancient times, the chrysanthemum has been admired by Chinese scholars and literati, inspiring countless poems, stories, and artworks. Besides praising it for its beauty, they celebrated it as a symbol of vitality and tenacity.  

Humble Origins

One of the earliest instances of the chrysanthemum being referenced in poetry is in Qu Yuan’s famous poem “Li Sao,” composed during the Warring States period. In it, he writes: “Dew from magnolia leaves I drank at dawn, / At eve for food were aster petals borne.” 

Aster refers to the Asteraceae family of flowering plants, to which the chrysanthemum belongs. Chrysanthemums were commonly used for medicine. In just a few lines, Qu Yuan conveys that what matters isn’t one’s wealth, but rather the purity of one’s one’s heart.

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As the poem suggests, the chrysanthemum was a relatively unremarkable flower, frequently used by the common people. In the “Compendium of Materia Medica,” a Chinese herbology volume written in the Ming Dynasty, numerous species of chrysanthemums were documented. One may wonder how such an ordinary plant acquired such cultural significance. 

The chrysanthemum’s escalation in status didn’t occur until the Jin Dynasty, when it was brought to prominence by the poet Tao Yuanming. Much of his poetry described his simple life of reclusion in the countryside. He often drew inspiration from the beauty and serenity of nature, with the chrysanthemum being a frequent motif. In one of his most famous poems, “Drinking: No. 5,” he wrote: “I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge, / and gaze afar towards the southern mountains.” 

Du Jin portrays poet Tao Yuanming strolling through the mountains and admiring the chrysanthemum blossoms
In this central panel of an ink-wash landscape painting, artist Du Jin has portrayed poet Tao Yuanming strolling through the mountains and admiring the chrysanthemum blossoms. Yuanming was known for his love of the flower, and often alluded to it in his poetry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Public Domain)
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How do pandemics usually end?

How do pandemics usually end? And how will this one finish?

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A group of nurses wear face masks during the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak.
Masks were a common sight during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and again now, just over a century later.(State Library Of Queensland)
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Just over 100 years ago, a new strain of influenza infected a third of the world’s population — but within just three years, the threat of this deadly flu had all but passed.

This was a time before modern medical care and even before humans understood what viruses were. So what’s changed since then?

It’s a question plenty of you have asked in recent months: how do pandemics end? And how will the one we’re currently living through end?

Three ingredients for a pandemic

An infectious agent needs three conditions to cause a pandemic, says virologist Kirsty Short from the University of Queensland:

  1. 1.It needs to cause disease in humans
  2. 2.It needs to be highly transmissible
  3. 3.We need to have no pre-existing immunity to it

“For example, we live with MERS today,” says Dr Short, referring to Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, a coronavirus that is related to the one that causes COVID-19.

“It hasn’t caused a pandemic yet because it’s not highly transmissible from person to person.

“In contrast, the seasonal coronaviruses that we get, probably at one point were a pandemic, and they’ve just become these seasonal colds that we don’t really care about because we’ve evolved immunity to them.”

In terms of the three ingredients that make a pandemic, when it comes to COVID-19 there’s not much we can do to stop the coronavirus from infecting us, because that’s based on the biology of the virus and us as humans.

With physical distancing and masks, we are somewhat able to pull that second lever of not allowing the virus to transmit as much.

But the big thing that stops a virus becoming a pandemic — that is, a large-scale outbreak affecting multiple countries or continents — is the third factor: immunity.

“Herd immunity can be achieved through natural infection or vaccination,” Dr Short says.