In Act-II, Scene-II of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet famously says “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet.”
She is of course referring to family names being unimportant. The Capulets are sworn enemies of the Montagues, but she is saying that her name “Capulet” does not define her, just as Romeo is more than just his “Montague” family name. Their name has nothing to do with their love.
But does the same apply to a lily? Certainly not when the lily is located in a context framed by place, time and written text.
On May 31, four bouquets of white lilies mysteriously appear in front of the Center of Disease Control in Taipei. Two strangers approach the scene: the tourist slows down to enjoy the beauty and fragrance of four beautiful bouquets of white lilies; the local walks faster to leave this morbid scene.
The tourist and many expats living in Taiwan will completely miss the layers of symbolism in these bouquets. The meaning is a combination of place, object and words.
Each of the four bouquets had a four-character phrase, which combined to read: “your salary (as a government official) comes from the blood and sweat of the people; the people below are easy to abuse, but the heavens above are hard to deceive” (爾俸爾祿，民膏民脂，下民易虐，上天難欺).
Amidst recent rise of Covid-19 cases and deaths in Taiwan, local radio host Lucifer Chu sent the bouquets of lilies. In a June 1 article in the China Times, Chu claimed he was trying to get Premier Su to come out and face the public about the worsening pandemic condition. He accused Su of sitting idly by and watching people die one after another. [https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20210602000384-260102?chdtv]
According to a June 1 report in San Li, Premier Su Tsengchang denounced this action saying it is inappropriate to put a curse (詛咒) on hardworking people (https://www.setn.com/News.aspx?NewsID=947327] ).
In the same China Times article, Chu denied this was a curse, rebutting that Su’s Chinese was not good enough to understand the 16-character written statement, which has historical precedents as a warning to officials not to be lazy because the gods are watching.
Most recently, this phrase was publicly used by prosecutors during Ex-president Chen Shuibian’s trials for corruption over 10 years ago. But this phrase has older, more imperial origins, as explained in Terrence’s Time Machine blog (Terrence de shiguang ji, 2009-07-31). Emperor Meng-chang during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period and then Emperor Taizong Zhao Guangyi of the Northern Song Dynasty both issued this warning across their empires to remind officials to resist corruption and to love their people.
This message is clearly critical of the CDC and Premier Su’s recent handling of the rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths. Su was naturally offended by the accusation. But this does not explain why Su used the word “curse”.
Here we need to look more closely at the bouquets of lilies. To Taiwanese, the four bouquets are laden with death symbolism and even superstition.
First, there is the numerology. “Four” in Mandarin (si) sounds like the word for “death” (si), so the four bouquets, 4 messages, and each with four characters shouts “DEATH!!!”. This unlucky number is the source of widespread tetraphobia, or fear of the number four. That is why four is avoided on car license plates and phone numbers, and it is absent in many buildings just like many tall Western buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor.
Second, white lilies are the traditional funeral flower of choice in Taiwan. I once mistakenly presented a bouquet of white lilies to my young daughter after a music recital; I was reprimanded by my Taiwanese wife for the inappropriate and unlucky connotation.
Third, “white” lilies, not multicolored lilies, are used in funerals because white in Chinese culture is associated with death. The color of mourning clothes, especially for close family members of the deceased, is white, and funeral attendees paying their last respects will often also present to the mourning family a white envelope with money inside; usually gifts of money are enclosed in red envelopes if the occasion is celebratory, like during the lunar new year.
So, in this case, where is this death message directed?
Chu denies any intent to curse, or wish bad luck or death on the CDC employees. Perhaps the funerary bouquets are not directed to the CDC, but rather to the recent victims as a sign of condolence?
But this interpretation doesn’t hold up.
The funerary bouquets in front of the CDC is an emblematic scene, like a magazine ad where the word and image are designed to go together, to create a message that neither one can fully express.
Advertisers like Nike are masters of combining image and word to create a powerful message. Their 2019 Nike Air Max poster, for example, features a stylized pair of dangling running shoes facing each other in the shape of a pair of lungs with the caption “They keep you alive”.
The image is literally a pair of shoes but symbolically a pair of lungs – and the caption brings the message into an interconnected focus: “they” refers to the shoes and the lungs which are exercised by the shoes – so “they both keep you alive.” Clever.
The lily CDC scene, however, is not about health, but death. And while it is less clever than the Nike ad, it still operates on the same logic. The flowers and numbers symbolize death, but when combined with the critical message and local superstitions relating to death, an inescapable interpretation is a curse of death or misfortune. As a local, Chu knew this.
The tourist may believe the Lilies “even by any other name still smell as sweet” and are actually sentiments of condolences or even sympathy. But this is oblivious to the warning message on the flowers, their numerology, and traditional association in local beliefs. In short, she misses the context.
