#87 Pagoda Tree, St-John Perse & Beijing Western Mtns

简体中文

The next four tree stories #87 – #90 are from RUC- CW Mount West Series. They emerge from a special collaboration between Xi Shan (Western Hills of Beijing ) and Renmin University Creative Writing team and the World Literature Centre .

Curator and cultural event planner Chen Lijun talks about the poet St-John Perse and a pagoda tree in front of his former residence.

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Lijun ’s words

In the 1910s, the French poet and diplomat St-John Perse resided in a Taoist temple in the woods of Mount West in Beijing, China. He wrote a poem there titled Anabase, which is characterized by lighthearted imagination and profound reflection on his era. In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for this work. A pagoda tree, symbolizing nobility, faith, and kindness in Chinese culture, has been planted at the entrance of the poet’s former residence to honor the poet. On a nearby hill local villagers have also erected a pavilion dedicated to Sino-French friendship in his memory. Anabase was translated into English by T.S. Eliot, another Nobel laureate in literature. The poet wrote: “And the earth in its winged seeds, like a poet in his thoughts, travels…”

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Acknowledgements: Special thanks to RUC -CW Mount West Series whose initiative inspired these tree stories.

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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 #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 Flickering Flame Barch Birch

#86 Devine Tree of Sanxingdui

#87 Pagoda Tree, StJohn Perse & Mt. West Beijing

#88 Encounter

#89 Centennial Maples, centuries of Friendship

#90 French Chestnut in Bussiere’s Garden

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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