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Delighted to begin the first of the Tree Stories from Chengdu May 2024 workshops. A huge thank you to the individual contributors and especial thanks to XLY MoMA Museum and Sansheng Community Centre of Jinjiang District and the Foreign Affairs Office of Chengdu Municipality for supporting and facilitating these workshops.
Our very first Tree Story comes from Nana Aiying (艾英那娜) when she was horse riding on holiday some years ago the sight of red flaky bark flickering in the wind caught her eye.
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Nana’s words:
In April 2014, I went to Song ping gou for a trip
It was snowing heavily in the mountains and I was getting colder .
As I rode in the distance I saw a group of red butterflies fluttering in the woods.
I whipped my horse and darted over.
But it wasn’t butterflies , it was the peeled bark dancing slowly in the mountain breeze.
The thin bark flickered and danced like a small fire in the sunlight. I found a good angle and pressed the shutter . I felt a little warmer .
This is the surprise the red birch brought me , what an experience !
The forest seemed to be alight, appearing as if it suddenly burst into flames making the whole mountain forest warm
Some tree trunks had   pine flowers and fungus.
The bark (it is said) has multiple medicinal function such as clearing heat, dampness and detoxification and can also be used as decoration .
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The following tree stories from #85 onwards focus on contributions by Story Tellers from China .
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#1 Teardrops After a Storm

#2 Pomegranate Tree

#3 Trees are like Humans

#4 Old Ash – A Real Survivor

#5 Tree Rings of Life

#6 A Very Weird Elf

#7 Old Crabapple of Wenhua Dian

#8 Standing Fast

#9 Feeling Good – Tree Song

#10 Forest Breath – Tree Story

#11 Protective Peach – Tree Story

#12 Bee Tree (Part 1) Sycamore

#13 Winter Apples

#14 Ancient Yew Trees

#15 Once I Counted Birds

#16 Family Oak

#17 When the Trees Say Everything

#18 Strawberry Tree

#19 Mother Oak and Baby Oak

#20 My Leylandii

#21 Chestnut Repotted

#22 Native Birch

#23 Ethan’s Tree

#24 Holding Trunk of Time

#25 Our Mother’s Legacy

#26 It Blossomed

#27 Always Trying To Hold Each Other Up

#28 Wollemi Pine

#29 Barrow Willow

#30 For What We Might Become

#31 Sheltering Beech

#32 Millennium Monkey Puzzle

#33 Monterey Cyprus

#34 Struggle On, Struggle On

#35 Like A Chestnut

#36 Head and Shoulders Above

#37 An Dair Sean 

#38 Trees for the Forest 

#39 The year 1710 

#40  I Feel at Peace 

#41 Chongqing Cedar

#42 Unusual Bauhinia

# 43 Bamboo – Munro

#44 St Anne’s Oak

#45 Angie’s Umbrella Tree 

# 46  Berna’s Umbrella Tree

#47 Hawthorne , it gives and it gives

#48 Apple Tree Swing

#49 Forest Bathing 1

#50 Forest Bathing 2

#51  Mulberry -when Swiss watches were almost made in Waterford

#52 Prunus Kanzan , double blossom Cherry blossom

#53 Oak We absolutely love it！

#54 Pre-Famine Timber

#55 Slogged Apples

#56 Ash  Determined to stay put

#57 Best Apple Tart in Headford

#58 Apple Tree of Clonmel

#59 Horizontal Arbutus Unedo

#60 Euonymus Zones

#61 How big they can get

#62 Autumn Maple

#63 The Magic of Moss

#64 Gallipoli and the Sycamore

#65 Liquid Amber 

#66 Hardmount Chestnut

#67 Silver Birch – a gentle lovely ending

#68 Keeping Black Bird Company

#69 Tulip Tree

#70 Itea Iliciafolia

#71 Silver Birch Moonlight

#72 The Shape of it

#73 The Missing Gorilla

#74 The Tree House

#75 Bat Burglars

#76 The Perfect Conker

#77 Ginkgo Biloba and Sweet Gum

#78 Ash The Horse Whisperer

#79 Healers

#80 Fairy Ash

#81 Under the Oak 

#82 Date Palm 

#83 Willow – Branching out 

#84 Tree Bee Hive 

 

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Open Call for your just a minute Tree Story on video 

Memory Palace of Tree Stories is a socio-ecological art practice which invites you to tell a story or share information about trees . It is a creative-led social enquiry of how we can live well for both personal and collective wellbeing. Your story can be any kind of tree story , a personal tree story, an ecological tree story , an environmental tree story, an historical tree story or even a botanical tree story. I do hope you can contribute a comment on how we can live better with the greater community of life.

 

The year 2024 we continue to gather your stories in the form of one minute videos and we are really looking forward to hearing your tree story . I can be contacted directly on this platform or on the contact page on this website.

Niamh Cunningham

Niamh Cunningham