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​The Beauty of Huayao
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A Whiteheadian Aesthetic of Collective Emotion,
Civilizational Memory, Unresolved Longing,
and Tragic Beauty in Chinese Folk Music

by Meijun Fan, PhD
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For the Chinese sensibility, beauty often carries a richness of historical meaning, nurtured by a civilization that has endured for five millennia. Many celebrated songs in contemporary Chinese music—whether Dao Lang’s Huayao or Jay Chou’s Blue and White Porcelain—interweave personal emotions with civilizational memory...In such works, time is not merely linear passage but a layered accumulation of cultural memory. This aesthetic stands in sharp contrast to some Western love songs, which emphasize immediate emotion—such as Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain - but not with a sense of collective emotion or civilizational memory. There is a tragic beauty in this larger, longer perspective. - Dr. Meijun Fan

“Huayao” (Flower Spirit/Enchantress) is one of the most representative works of the renowned Chinese singer Dao Lang. Rooted in the traditions of Chinese folk music, its delicate, winding melody—combined with the singer’s uniquely time-worn voice—unfolds a love story that transcends time and space yet remains forever “unfulfilled.” The lyrics carry not only personal sorrow but also a collective emotion inscribed in the memory of civilization.

​Drawing on Whitehead’s theory of organic aesthetics, this article examines the aesthetic qualities embodied in “Huayao,” with particular focus on its manifestation of the major form of beauty: a dynamic harmony of contrasts, suffused with tragic intensity. 
 
In Chinese history, the notion of the “flower spirit” (huayao) has deep roots. Ancient people believed that flowers, after long years of cultivation or through a special encounter, could transform into human form, most often appearing as young and beautiful women. These beings, whether as spirits or immortals, were thought to possess lifespans far beyond those of ordinary mortals. 

Dao Lang’s Huayao tells a hauntingly beautiful love story. The tale unfolds in Lin’an during the Southern Song dynasty (June 12, 1127-March 19, 1279), where a scholar and a young lady from a wealthy family fall in love. Yet, because of their unequal social status, their love is opposed by her family. The scholar is eventually killed, his blood staining his brown robe; the young lady, in despair, takes her own life with the yellow sash from her waist (“When you left, your robe was red with blood; the yellow sash still tied around my waist”). 

Yet love does not end with death. In the underworld, the King of Hell, moved by their devotion, permits them to reincarnate with memories of their past lives, in the hope that they might be reunited. But fate once more goes astray: the young lady is reborn in Lin’an during the Southern Song, while the scholar returns in Quanting of the Western Han (202 BC–9 CE). After further twists of destiny, she comes back as a woman of Tang-era Hangzhou (618–907), while he is cast still further back, to Yuhang before the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC): “The compass was misaligned, so you fell into Quanting; I wandered to Hangzhou, but you were born again in Yuhang.” 

Thus, though bound to the same land, the shifts of dynasties condemn them to be “in the same city but never in the same period of time.” Across three lifetimes, they remain unable to reunite. 

Why has such a story of love unfulfilled touched countless listeners around the world? What kind of beauty does it reveal? 
 
In my view, the beauty of Huayao is precisely what Whitehead describes as the harmony achieved through intense contrasts. 

Whitehead defines beauty as “the mutual adaptation of the various factors in experience” [Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1967, p.252], that is, a dynamic unity of diversity—one that preserves the distinctiveness of the parts while fulfilling the harmony of the whole. 
He distinguishes between two forms of beauty: 

The first is the secondary form of beauty, a minor form that is static, homogeneous, and suppresses difference—achieving unity at the expense of individuality. Such beauty lacks contrast and tension, is filled with “submission and confusion,” and easily lapses into dullness. 

The second is what Whitehead calls the major form of beauty, a higher harmony that is dynamic, diverse, and full of creative tension. It realizes the co-thriving of individuality and the whole through contrast, thereby maximizing vitality and creative potential. In this harmony, the beauty of the individual is preserved while the beauty of the whole is also fulfilled. 

Compared with the static harmony of the secondary form, the major form of beauty clearly incorporates elements of discord. For Whitehead, discord is not entirely negative; rather, it is the catalyst for the birth of new beauty: “Even discord is preferable to the gradual slow death of a monochrome uniformity… a discordant element aiming at a higher type is to be preferred to a monotonous perfection of a lower type” [Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1967, p.257]. Discord propels the cycle of “harmony—discord—new harmony” and thus serves as the foundation of progress. 

It is evident that, for Whitehead, beauty is relational—emerging from the mutual support and completion between whole and part, similarity and difference.  

This dynamic harmony runs through both the micro-processes of each “actual occasion” and the macro-processes of social and civilizational development. Static perfection leads to decline, for, as Whitehead notes, “even perfection cannot stand monotony of uniformity” (Adventures of Ideas, 1967, p. 258). Thus, difference and conflict are not threats but necessary conditions for sustaining beauty and creativity. The fading of old beauty does not signify nihilism; rather, it “signals a new adventure, a quest toward unrealized beauty,” preserving the limited achievements of the past within fresh acts of creation. The purpose of the universe is, therefore, the production of beauty, and all beings advance step by step toward this ultimate aim through their participation in the dynamic generation of beauty. 

Compared with the minor form of beauty—a static or simple harmony—Whitehead clearly ranks the major form, or dynamic harmony, as higher. This hierarchy of beauty is determined by the richness and complexity of aesthetic experience. For instance, the beauty expressed in Beethoven’s Symphony of Fate is more profound and layered than the song of a nightingale, occupying a higher aesthetic tier. To clarify this, Whitehead proposed six evaluative categories of aesthetic importance: harmony of individuality, endurance, novelty, contrast, depth, and vividness or intensity—all of which are essentially aesthetic in nature (Richad M. Millard, “Whitehead’s Aesthetic Perspective,” Educational Theory 11(4):258).

At the lowest level lies the harmony of minimal diversity; at the highest, the proper unity of maximum diversity. This is the maximization of beauty. The true aesthetic process, therefore, is an unending adventure. 

Whitehead points out that beauty entails not only harmony or the avoidance of “painful conflict,” but also requires contrast and intensity. In other words, beauty is not merely the peaceful coexistence of things without interference; it is the striving for higher and more intense forms of beauty built upon that foundation. As Professor Henning notes: “Intense aesthetic experience is achieved through complex experiential connections and patterns, which introduce contrasts that deepen and amplify experience.” (Brian Henning, Value, Beauty and Nature, SUNY Press, 2023, p.122). 

The aesthetic power of Huayao arises precisely from this Whiteheadian vision: within layers of “discord”—the differences and contrasts among various elements—it realizes a “dynamic harmony,” where “the many become one, and are increased by one.” 
 
The length of time:

“I have waited for you under the tree of time for so long,the world mocked me, slandered me, laughed at me until my hair turned grey.” 
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From the lyrics above, the “tree of time” and “grey hair” transform an individual’s waiting into part of the river of civilization, evoking a profound sense of historical weight. This is not merely a personal sigh but a reflection of countless dislocations and regrets across the period of time. Individual life is bounded by a single lifetime; yet when transformed into the “flower spirit,” waiting can extend across generation after generation, breaking through the limits of mortal existence. 

The depth of history: 

The lyrics repeatedly invoke the imagery of “missing one another”: 
“The compass was misaligned,you fell into Quanting,I wandered into Hangzhou, you were reborn again in Yuhang.” 

This fated misalignment condemns the lovers to be forever “in the same city but never in the same period of time,” unable to become life partners. Love, locked into a cycle of repeated absence, reveals a perpetual pathos of “longing without fulfillment.” 

Within Whitehead’s aesthetic framework, this “beauty of dislocation”—akin to the Chinese insight that a blossom is most complete when it lingers half in bloom, preserving its beauty in suspension—is precisely a major form of beauty. Its intensity arises from the layering of history, the clash of destiny, and the helplessness of the individual; its harmony emerges when these tensions are ultimately woven into the collective memory of civilization. In this sense, the beauty of Huayao is an integrity shaped through “the unfinished and the incomplete.” What it conveys is not the sudden release of intense emotions—anger, defiance, grief, or despair--but a long-term, poignant yet gentle harmony. 

For the Chinese sensibility, beauty often carries this richness of historical meaning, nurtured by a civilization that has endured for five millennia. Many celebrated songs in contemporary Chinese music—whether Dao Lang’s Huayao or Jay Chou’s Blue and White Porcelain—interweave personal emotions with civilizational memory, embodying both the “length of time” and the “depth of history.” In such works, time is not merely linear passage but a layered accumulation of cultural memory. This stands in sharp contrast to many Western love songs, which emphasize immediate emotion—such as Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain or The Weeknd’s Save Your Tears. 

The intensity of emotion: 

In Huayao, through a series of poignant and beautiful imageries—the wandering tears upon the rings of time, the fragrance of rouge in the wind, the riverbank, the cold moon, the vast waters, the tree of time, the kite chasing the sunset at the horizon, the midnight lantern, drifting sand, ruts in the road, autumn rain, weary birds, the flowered wall, and the fading yellow—we see how deep feeling/emotion can press against the boundary of life and death, transcending time and space. For its pursuit, one could ascend to the heavens or descend to the underworld, making the impossible possible. It cannot be restrained when it comes, nor stopped when it goes. If it cannot be attained in this life, it can be hoped for in the next; if not in the next, then in eternity. 

This fully echoes what the Ming dynasty dramatist Tang Xianzu (Sep.24, 1550-July 29, 1616) inscribed in the preface to The Peony Pavilion: “Passion arises without knowing its cause; once it begins, it runs deep. The living may die, the dead may live again. If the living cannot die, and the dead cannot live again, then it is not the truest passion.” 
Such ultimate and genuine passion, in its intensity and purity, surpasses the outpouring of momentary emotion and is sublimated into a civilizational archetype of feeling. The finitude of individual life is broken open by the imagey of the “flower spirit,” turning waiting into an eternal posture spanning generations. 

Dynamic Harmony: 

In Huayao, dislocation and regret do not culminate in despair; instead, through an integrity of “sorrow without destruction,” the song embodies what Whitehead calls the major form of beauty. The continual temporal and spatial displacements in the lyrics—from Lin’an of the Southern Song to Quanting of the Western Han, from Hangzhou of the Tang to Yuhang before the Qin—create an eternal void in personal love. Yet through narrative prolongation and cultural “gaps,” tragedy is sublimated into a form of harmony on the level of civilization. This harmony is not a simple resolution but a dynamic balance achieved amid conflict and contrast. As Whitehead observed, “even discord is preferable to the gradual slow death of a monotonous uniformity” (Adventures of Ideas, 1967, p. 257). Huayao uses such “discord” as a catalyst for beauty, transforming layers of historical displacement and repeated emotional loss into “the proper unity of maximum diversity.” 

This beauty is not a static harmony suppressing difference, but one that deepens and expands life experience by acknowledging pain, preserving tension, and integrating cultural memory with artistic restraint. In this way, Huayao achieves the maximization of beauty within imperfection. 
 
Whitehead affirms: “The teleology of the universe is directed toward the production of Beauty” (Adventures of Ideas, 1933, p. 265). Huayao is an artistic enactment of this process: through its weaving of historical dislocation, emotional tension, and civilizational memory, it realizes the dynamic harmony demanded by the major form of beauty. Its power lies not in offering a perfect resolution but in revealing, within enduring absence, humanity’s and civilization’s persistent striving for beauty. 
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As Whitehead further noted, “Beauty is the mutual adaptation of the various factors in experience, a dynamic unity of diversity.” Rooted in the historical consciousness and tragic spirit of Eastern civilization, Huayao offers us an aesthetic experience that transcends the individual and integrates time and space. It demonstrates the universal persistence of art’s pursuit of beauty, which across cultures responds in its own way to the ultimate aim of the universe—the production of Beauty.