Three Variations on the Lotus

Introduction to Three Blooms of the Lotus

An ancient scroll glows in lamplight, and the lotus blooms across three autumns. Shen Qiulian's soul is like a lotus leaf boat, carrying an unfinished bond from the misty rains of the Qing Dynasty toward the ancient river of stars.

In the Forbidden City at the end of the Qing Dynasty, she is an embroiderer beneath the willows by the palace walls. The thread at her fingertips holds the lingering warmth of the memorials the Guangxu Emperor reads late into the night. She witnesses the splendor of Emperor Qianlong admiring lotus flowers in the imperial garden and hears the faint click of Emperor Shunzhi's prayer beads as he renounces the world. Yet amid the winds of dynastic change, even her farewell dissolves into dust. Then, in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, she becomes a songstress in a Chang'an tavern. The notes she draws from her pipa are the moonlight Li Bai wrote of in his drunkenness, and the unspoken Zen teachings beneath the lotus seat before the Buddha. Further back, in the Shang and Zhou eras, she is a shamaness before a priest's altar. When her fingertips touch the cracks in a tortoiseshell, she sees an emperor descending on clouds, his eyes holding a river of stars bound to hers across three lifetimes.

From the love, hatred, joy, and sorrow of mortals to the trials and cultivation of immortals, from a single green lamp before the Buddha to a lotus petal beneath the Emperor's seat, Shen Qiulian searches in every lifetime for the figure who transcends time and space. Every change of dynasty brings a reunion and parting that tears at the heart; every change of identity conceals a clue planted by fate. When palace bells from the Qing Dynasty ring across an ancient altar, and the Zen chants of Buddhism and Taoism blend into the river of stars where immortals dwell, this bond spanning three lifetimes and a thousand years will finally reveal its most moving answer when the lotus blooms for the third time.