11/06/2025
On the third day of the third moon month, after a six-thousand-year wait, the deities residing in the palace of the Jade Emperor and his wife, Xi Wangmu, feast on the peaches of immortality. The peach tree grows in Xi’s garden, in China’s fabled Kunlun Mountains, and it only covers in leaves once every thousand years. The fruit takes roughly three thousand years to ripen. Everyone who eats the peaches lives for at least three thousand years and their bodies become weightless and strong to an otherworldly degree. For this reason, members of the Eight Immortals are often represented holding a peach, while the white-bearded god of longevity emerges from a peach. These mythical attributes have persisted for millennia in Chinese culture. Peach stones carved in the shape of locks were traditionally worn by children to scare off disease-carrying demons. Peach branches placed above a home’s main door were thought to prevent malevolent ghosts from entering. And the sacred wood of peach trees was made into lethal swords that Daoist masters used to kill demons.
From Giovanni Aloi, Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art (Getty; 2025)
