#86 Devine Tree of Sanxingdui

简体中文

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.

Delighted to get this tree story from Chengdu workshops in May 2024 during my recent exhibition. A huge thank you to Geng Yitong （耿忆童） and her poet friend Huang Zi

This tree story is a lyrical response to visiting the largest archaelogical bronze tree sculpture found in China which is displayed in Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, North of Chengdu, Sichuan. It stands almost 4 m high the base is covered with carvings of sun and clouds with fruits and birds on its branches.

In 1986 a full scale excavation of Guanghan unearthed a site of a major city dating back to the Neolithic age . Upto this point it was believed the oldest civilisations (within China ) were concentrated around the yellow river, however this Neolithic city is from the upper reaches of the Yangzi river .

The Sanxingdui Museum displays artefacts such as stylised bronze masks from the Shu Kingdom 1200-1100BC and the Devine Bronze Tree. There are eight bronze sacred trees in the Shang Dynasty. One of them has been fully restored and is 396 cm tall. It is the largest single bronze artifact discovered in the world and is named Devine Tree number one.

*****************************************

Geng Yitong and Huang zi :

Sister said every time time ticks , they surround me

Waiting for the days, for the fruits to solidify and drop one by one

Sister said they surround me, also surrounded by a very thin hollow tree

So weak that the annual rings are withered

And yes, there are also birds and animals dancing on it

Dancing silently on branches holding the sun in their mouths

My sister said that since then, the umbrella that blocked the flow of time has broken and she has never dared to rain again.

My sister’s tears are heavier than the harvest of wheat

Heavier than floods, sacrificial words, and bronze

Every time time ticks, I hide in a hollow tree

When they forget the image of the Devine and the story of sacrifice,

they will come back and embrace me in their arms, holding me tight.

**********************

*************

The following selection of tree stories from #85 onwards focus on contributions from Story Tellers in China .

*************

#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

# 85 Flaky Bark Birch

# 86 Devine Tree of SanXingdui

#87 Chestnut of Xishan

**********************************************

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