莲 · lián
莲 · lián
Character · Stillness
What it means
Lotus — the flower that rises out of the mud and comes up clean. Untouchability by position rather than by nature.
莲：出淤泥而不染。是不由本质、而由位置决定的不可近。
Where the character comes from
The lotus is the only one of the four that grows in mud, and the only one whose virtue is that it does not get dirty. That is a different claim from bamboo's: bamboo is straight, lotus is uncontactable.
A phono-semantic compound; the traditional 蓮 is recorded from Han clerical script, 荷 is the commoner word for the plant.
- Official historyShuowen Jiezi艸部
- Literary noteZhuangzi
How it gets misread
Water lily 睡莲 → Lotus 莲
The lotus holds its flower above the surface on a stem and has a seed pod; the water lily sits flat on the water.
Before you ink
The seed pod, the split petals and the pad are all standard; a lotus without a pad often reads as a generic water lily.
Lotus and water lily are near-identical subjects with very different meanings. The lotus stands above the surface; a water lily floats flat on it.