Translated by Jan Walls, West Lake, a collection of folktales

One Mid-autumn Festival evening, during the reign of the Tang Emperor Minghuang (713-756), a bright full moon hung in the sky, illuminating the world below.

In the middle of the night, the monk Deming (Virtue and Intelligence) who was in charge of the stove in Soul's Retreat Monastery got up to make some rice porridge when he heard a string of drip-drop, drip-drop sounds. He thought it was strange, and when he looked out of the window, he only saw the moon, shining bright. Where had the rain drops come from? He opened the door and went out to see, and when he looked up, he saw millions of little pearl-like objects falling down from the moon and showering onto the mountain peak by the monastery. He stood there and watched until they stopped falling, then he climbed up the peak to look for them. Whenever he found one, he would pick it up, and in this way he went on looking and picking. The little pearl-like objects were all round and solid, about the size of soybeans, and they were of many colors. They were beautiful! He went on picking and picking from mid-night until early morning, when he had picked up a big bagful of them.

That morning, Monk Deming brought all those pear-like things to show them to the old monk Zhiyi (Wisdom First), and asked him what they might be.

Monk Zhiyi looked at them carefully and replied,“ There is a large laurel tree and a crude man called Wu Gang in the Moon Palace. Wu Gang chops at the laurel tree all year round but it always grows back again. Sometimes, if he happens to chop too hard, the laurel seeds may fall off. Perhaps these are laurel seeds from the tree in the Moon Palace!”

Monk Deming was happy to hear this: “Master, let's plant these seeds so that people can view the laurel trees and enjoy the fragrance of laurel flowers like in the Moon Palace.”

Therefore, they planted all those colorful pearl-like things on the mountain slopes in front of and behind the monastery. In ten days, these seeds had actually sprouted. In one month, the tender shoots had grown into small trees over one foot tall and they had sent out tender green leaves.

How fast these laurel trees from the Moon Palace had grown! They grew one foot each month and more than ten feet a year. By the time of Mid-autumn Festival the next year, they all had grown into big tall trees. Each tree was densely laden with small blossoms of orange, pure white, dark red and every other color. Monk Deming then named the different trees according to the colors of their flowers, calling them the golden laurel, silver laurel, cinnabar laurel, and so on. From that time, there have been laurels of all varieties surrounding West Lake.

Today there is a mountain peak by Soul's Retreat Monastery called“ Laurel Peak" and it is said that this is the place where the laurel seeds fell from the Moon Palace.

Translated by Jan Walls, West Lake, a collection of folktales