CHAPTER III 

 CHINESE LITERATURE ON THE LYCHEE 



No ancient civilization has produced so many valuable works 

 dealing with agriculture and kindred subjects as the Chinese. These 

 books should receive greater attention in the modern advance of 

 science. The lychee has long been a favorite with artists in China 

 and no fruit has inspired more enthusiastic eulogies by the poets and 

 none other has been made the subject of so many special treatises. 

 No fewer than nine special monographs, a list of which is appended, 

 have been written on this fruit, the most celebrated being that of 

 Ts'ai Hsiang (^H) l fig. 1. It is a noteworthy fact that the 

 lychee was the first fruit to be so treated by Chinese writers, as is 

 shown by the fact that Ts'ai Hsiang' s monograph was the model 

 that inspired Han Yen-chih (?$jjjiO to write the first special treatise 

 on the orange in 1179 A.D., one hundred and twenty years later. 



It is not surprising that there is so little reference to the lychee 

 in the earliest Chinese historical documents, as it is distinctly a 

 southern plant and even at the time when Confu cius compiled the 

 classics (about B.C. 500) the Chinese dominions did not extend far 

 south of the Yangtze river. 



That the lychee flourished in the southern part of China 

 before the time of Christ is evidenced by the fact that in a book by an 

 unknown author, to which Pei Wen Chai (flf^tSf) 2 refers, it is 

 recorded that Wu Ti ($;#) of the Han Dynasty (m)> B.C. 



1 TS'AI HSIANG (^g), Li Chih P'u 



The author has had access to three copies of Ts'ai Hsiang' s work: 

 (1) A rubbing 1 , the gift of a Chinese friend, indicating that the work at some 

 future time must have been carved on stone j (2) A copy on silk which has 

 been in the possession of a. Chinese family for many generations; and (3) 

 The copv in Ku Chin Tit Shu Chi Cheng (&Wfa$k1&\ Po Wu Hut Pien 

 Ts'ao Muh Tien (*), section 273 (JgHtf-trt-H*), U Chih 

 P 1 (IKMR) pages 1-5 (fS- 



2 PEI WEN CHAI (&) Kuang Ch'un Fan? P'u 

 section 60 (JfcftrHfe), page 4 



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