China Folk Music-Daolang Chapter

To understand “Flower Spirit” one must first be familiar with a poignant love story that has been passed down for thousands of years in Hangzhou,Zhejiang province: In the Southern Song Dynasty, east of Qiantang in Hangzhou, there was a down-and-out scholar who one day passed by Lin’an and by chance met a wealthy young lady. The two fell in love at first sight and pledged their lives to each other. However, their affair was soon discovered by the lady’s father, who was furious and ordered the scholar to be killed, staining the scholar’s brown robe with blood. After the scholar’s death, the lady was heartbroken and resolutely chose to commit suicide for love. The King of Hell was moved by their love and allowed them to be reincarnated, but the person in charge of their reincarnation misaligned the compass, causing the scholar to be reborn in Hangzhou during the Tang Dynasty, while the lady was mistakenly reborn in Hangzhou (Quan Ting) during the Western Han Dynasty, a thousand years apart. The two grew old alone, and upon reincarnation, the lady was reborn in the Tang Dynasty Hangzhou of the scholar’s previous life, while the scholar was reborn in the Sui Dynasty’s Yuhang County a hundred years earlier. Despite being reincarnated in the same place twice, they were never in the same time, forever searching for each other…