The Legend of the Orchid
In a Chinese city there was a young woman named Hoan Lan who enjoyed making his numerous worshipers suffer. For a smile from her, young Kien-Fu chiseled and worked with infinite patience the most beautiful pieces of jade and gold and presented it to her. The ungrateful woman, after adorning herself with all the gifts of the nobleman in love, laughed at him and despised him. Kien-Fu, in despair, ended his own life by throwing himself into the Red River. Many others died because they were despised by the young woman.
Then the mighty God of the Five Arrows, who saw everything and ordered everything, judged that it was time to punish so much evil, and made the flighty young woman fall in love with the beautiful Mun-Cay who was in love with another woman and despised the young Hoan-Lan. That's why she suffered a lot.
One day Hoan-Lan met a witch with crow's feet who said to him:
- Beautiful young woman, I know that you are very unhappy. Do you want revenge on Mun-Cay? Sell me your soul and I swear that although Mun-Cay doesn't love you, he won't love another woman..
The young woman accepted, but did not know that her beloved would be turned into a tree. And the witch said to him:
-This way your lover can never belong to another woman.
Young Hoan-Lan despaired and stood there hugging that tree until a genius felt sorry for her pain.
-You are forgiven and you will stop suffering, said the genie. Before the witch comes to take your soul, I will turn you into a flower. You will remain, however, a strange and exquisite flower, which gives the impression of what your evil life was like. Anyone who sees your petals will easily guess what your spirit was: capricious, fickle and cruel, and your constant concern for elegance.
- I grant you a good: you will not be separated from the good you worship and you will always live with your beloved.
Thus spoke the mighty genius, and as he spoke, hoan-lan's rosy tunicwas getting paler and becoming a delicate lilac color. The young woman's eyes shone like points of gold and her flesh took on the hue of mother-of-pearl. Her beautiful arms wrapped around the tree in her last plea.
And so the first orchid in the world appeared!!!
