For centuries, Chinese culture has embraced the lotus flower for its extreme beauty as well as for its usefulness and spiritual connotations. The only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously, the lotus's pure velvety blossoms drape over broad leaves. When cultivated on a large scale, lotuses are often seen covering lakes and ponds, their red-tipped, pinkish, white petals drifting almost imperceptibly along the body of water. An emblem of summer and fruitfulness, the lotus also symbolizes purity. Although it grows from the mud, and every night closes to sink underwater, at daybreak the lotus rises and opens again; dirt never tarnishes its vibrant colors.

Almost every portion of the lotus has a purpose: the roots are edible, the dried yellow stamens can be used cosmetically, the seeds are both medicinal and sweet, even the leaves have been used by Chinese grocers to wrap up goods for taking home.

Spiritually, the lotus is extremely significant. As the legend goes, "when Buddha attained Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, compassion for his fellow beings took possession of his mind. He saw them, as it is told, like lotus stems and buds in a lake, some immersed in the mud, others coming out of it, or just appearing above the water, and still others beginning to blossom." (Anesaki: Buddhist Art)

And so, for all these reasons, the lotus emerges time and again throughout the thousands of years of Chinese art. Ancient and contemporary artists alike have employed the flower's design in paintings, architecture, carpets, drawings and embroidery.