Nine Creeks Kapok

Nine Creeks Kapok

　　Every autumn, the cotton bolls burst open, stretching as far as the eye can see in a vast silver sea. The cotton fields are uniformly white everywhere—except for an eight-and-a-half-acre plot at Sunjiapings in Jiuxi Township, where each opened cotton boll bears tiny red dots. This phenomenon has persisted for thousands of years. Puzzled by this, people transplanted the cotton seedlings from this plot to distant or neighboring fields, and vice versa. When the cotton bloomed again, they observed that the transplanted cotton lost its red dots, while the cotton moved into this plot developed many tiny red spots. Thus, this cotton came to be known as "Red Cotton."

Jiuxi Red Cotton is renowned for its snow-white color and long fibers, but it is especially cherished for the many tiny red dots scattered across it. How did these red dots come to be? A legend from Jiuxi Township offers an explanation:

Legend has it that during the Tang Dynasty, there was a household named Guan in Sunjiapings, Jiuxi. Most residents of the village were poor, with only one wealthy family—the Guan family, known as Guan the Arhat. Guan the Arhat owned hundreds of acres of fields, forests, and mountains, and the poor families in the village were all his tenants.

At that time, the Guan family had a child bride named E’er. E’er was clever and exceptionally bright, but the Guan couple disliked her for no reason and treated her cruelly.

E’er’s hardest task was picking cotton. Behind the Guan family’s house, along the riverbank, lay an eight-dou-five-sheng (approximately 1 acre) cotton field. When the cotton bolls burst open, the field turned a brilliant white—but E’er had to pick it all by herself. Guan the Arhat set strict rules: first, the cotton must not be picked when dew-covered; second, no “sesame cotton” (cotton with bits of leaves or weeds attached) was allowed; third, the cotton must not get rained on; and fourth, birds must not be allowed to peck at it. To avoid picking sesame cotton, she had to be extremely careful not to let any leaves or debris stick to the cotton. To prevent rain damage, she had to work quickly—especially before sudden weather changes, which made the task even more stressful... In short, E’er’s work was incredibly demanding. She had to manage the entire eight-dou-five-sheng field alone, and no matter how fast she worked, she could never keep up. She would head to the fields as soon as the dew dried and work until just before the next dew formed. By the time she finished one section, another would already be covered in white; when she moved to the next, the previous area would be a dazzling expanse again. She ate in the fields, worked in the fields, and day after day, week after week, E’er eventually fell gravely ill from the exhausting labor.

Even when she was sick, E’er was forced to work in the fields. As she picked, she suddenly blacked out and collapsed. Some local poor villagers happened to pass by and helped her up. When E’er regained consciousness, she burst into tears. The villagers took turns expressing their anger at Guan the Arhat’s cruelty, which only made E’er cry harder. After the villagers left, E’er struggled back to her feet to continue picking. But soon, she blacked out and fell again. As she woke up, she thought, “Rather than enduring this torment, I might as well die. Only in death will I find peace.” But then she thought, “I can’t die without leaving a trace. I must leave behind proof so people know I was tortured to death by Guan the Arhat.” So, she bit her finger and let her blood drip onto every cotton boll.

When E’er died, the poor villagers confronted Guan the Arhat, pointing to the blood on the cotton. Unable to argue back, Guan the Arhat burned all the cotton from that eight-dou-five-sheng field.

Yet the following spring, new shoots sprouted from the old cotton roots. When autumn came and the cotton bloomed again, each boll still bore numerous blood-red spots.

And so it continued, year after year. Thus, Jiuxi Red Cotton became famous.