Three Friends of Winter
The Three Friends of Winter is an art motif that comprises the pine, bamboo, and plum. The Chinese celebrated the pine, bamboo and Chinese flowering plum together, for they observed that unlike many other plants these plants do not wither as the cold days deepen into the winter season. Known by the Chinese as the Three Friends of Winter, they later entered the conventions of Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese culture. Together they symbolize steadfastness, perseverance, and resilience. They are highly regarded in Confucianism as representing its scholar-gentleman ideal.
History
The Three Friends of Winter are common in works of art from Chinese culture and those cultures influenced by it. The three are first recorded as appearing together in a ninth-century poem by the poet Zhu Qingyu of the Tang dynasty. Artists such as Zhao Mengjian of the Southern Song dynasty and other contemporaries later made this grouping popular in painting.The earliest literary reference to the term " Friends of Winter" can be traced back to the Record of the Five-cloud Plum Cottage from The Clear Mountain Collection by the writer Lin Jingxi of the Song dynasty:
Outside China
The Three Friends are known as in Japan. They are particularly associated with the start of the Lunar New Year, appearing on greeting cards and as a design stamped into seasonal sweets. They are sometimes also used as a three-tier ranking system; in this context, the pine is usually the highest rank, followed by the bamboo as the middle rank, and the plum as the lowest.In a Korean sijo poem by (, a famous singer at the court of Sukjong of Joseon, two of the friends are brought together in order to underline the paradoxical contrast with "peach and plum of springtime", a reference to young ladies from the Chang Hen Ge:
In Vietnam, the three along with chrysanthemum create a combination of four trees and flowers usually seen in pictures and decorative items. The four also appear in works but mostly separately with the same symbolic significance. They are known as Tuế hàn tam hữu in Vietnamese.