#89 Centennial Maples, Centuries of Friendship

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 .

I am Wang Bolun, a student of Spanish at the School of Foreign Languages of Renmin University of China. As I write this introduction, there is a large, leafy tree outside my window, except that autumn is coming to Beijing, and perhaps he will turn yellow in a few days. I grew up in the southwestern part of the country, where the subtropical climate makes the trees always green, and the world is full of life with the green of the mountains for twelve months of the year. Trees are the life force of the natural world.

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Bolun ’s words:

My Story is about two maple trees in the Bussière Garden in Xishan, Beijing. A hundred years ago, the French doctor Jean J.A. came here and established this garden (combining Chinese and Western Styles) in Xishan, and planted them in front of the south room.

This room was the residence of Bussière’s daughter, and the open space in front of it was where Bussière had his salon back then. This was a high-end party in Beijing at that time and the people who came where mostly intellectuals, royal relatives, dignataries, foreign envoys, and so on. Chinese and westerners collided in the open space here, and the Bussière’s garden became a witness to the cultural exchanges between China and France.

A century has passed away, but the two maple trees are still lush and continue to witness the new story of China-France cultural exchanges under the canopy.

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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