On the Love of the Lotus
- Poetry of Zhou Dunyi

Peony is often considered as the flower of China, symbolizing nobility, wealth and status. Peony is often associated with the empress.

Lotus flowers are regarded as noble and clean in traditional Chinese culture. Zhou Dun Yi personified lotus into a gentleman, expressing his belief of being righteous in the dark bureaucracy and the society. This essay is also well known today, being taught in almost all schools. People still use “washed by ripples yet not voluptuous, came out of mud yet not contaminated” to praise individuals with admirable characters.

Thanks to the great influence of the Mary Sue genre, young people’s impression of White Lotus Flowers is totally different from the traditional view of lotus. When you hear the younger generation talking about White Lotus, they are definitely referring to a certain pretending-to-be-innocent girl. Most of the time, White Lotus girls are the female leads in the Mary Sue genre. To get a general idea, imagine the cliché female leads from Korean dramas, who are extremely poor yet attract countless rich guys because of their “kind hearts”. They always get bullied from others yet forgive them every single time, trust even their love-enemies, and believe the world is all kind. They are so unrealistically innocent and stupid to the point that they seem fake.