Flower in Chinese Dream Culture

"Flowers blooming into riches," "flowers fair and the moon full" — the Chinese hang so much of the good on the single word "flower." So the Meng Lin Xuan Jie reads flower dreams almost all toward joy.

Flowers are beauty and love. Flowers have long tied, in China, to beauty, youth, and romance — "fair as flowers and jade," "a face like a flower." "Picking a flower means a fair companion," "a flower entering the bosom means a lovely wife" both read the flower as a sign of marriage — a single bloom is often a metaphor for a love.

Each flower its own meaning. The Chinese love to assign flowers a "character": the peony, stately, is "blooming into riches"; the lotus, rising clean from the mud, means purity; the plum, blooming alone in the cold, means tenacity; the chrysanthemum, reclusion. So which flower appears in a dream often adds a further shade.

"Adding flowers to brocade" and full bloom. "A hundred flowers in bloom, all things smooth" draws on the joy of abundance and liveliness. The Chinese say "adding flowers to brocade," taking the flower as the ornament that makes good even better — a field of blooms is that joy upon joy.

Falling petals: a reminder that good times pass. The one reversing line is "flowers falling, guard against disappointment." What blooms must fall — the plainest truth. It isn't cursing you with bad luck; it reads more as a gentle reminder: treasure the good while it's here, and don't look back only once the petals are down.