K, so, if you guys are totally familiar with Norse myths you know that Yggdrasil is called the world tree, and it connects Niflheim, Asgard and Midgard together, right? In Chinese culture, we have lots of world trees that kid of do the same thing, too! In fact, we have more than one world tree. We have the Jian Mu, 剑木 with the word "jian" (剑) meaning sword, and it pretty much symbolizes the fact that this tree is the axis of all worlds, so on and so forth. There's also the Da Tao Mu tree, (大桃木) and once you get to the top you'll see heaven and guards who are well, guarding its gates. They destroy people who they think are so not worthy of entering heaven.
Anyway, the tree I'm focusing on today is called the Fusang Tree, and it's written like this: 扶桑. It translates to leaning mulberry tree. It can also be called Fumu, (扶木) which means "leaning tree." The ten suns used to bathe and chill in the east near the tree, too. To be more precise, we gotta go to the Shan Hai Jing.
So, according to this book, the tree waas like, wayyyyyy high, and its trunk reached about like, 300 li (150 km) and its leaves were like the mustard plant's leaves. Oh and the tree was located in the Tang valley. The suns also liked to chill on the branches of the tree, and the one that was gonna rise was always on the topmost branch. Errytime one sun came back, another would go, and they would be carried by crows.
In an account from another book called the Huainanzi, the sun is said to rise from the Yang Valley, and daybreak occurred when the sun was in the tree, and first dawn occurred when the sun flew past Fusang. Oh, and the suns bathed in this pool called the Xian Pool.
Some peeps wrote that the Fusang tree reached the heavens, and it also reached the Three Springs of the Earth. (I honestly have no idea where they are, but it sounds like three fountains/rivers/lakes to chill and shiz.)
But this Han dynasty/Six Dynasties record called the Shizhouji which is basically, "A Record of Ten Mythic Islets," said that Fusang wasn't just a tree - it was also a place in the middle of the Blue Sea (yup, that's verrrry specific). It was also like, thousands of miles wide, and there was a palace for an immortal there. On that island, there were supposedly like, many Fusang trees and they produced huge-ass fruit which were like, 100 000 feet high (30km, approximately) and the biggest piece was 2000 wei wide. (A wei is the length of a person's arms, so yeah. Like, sort of if you stretched both arms out. Yeah. That's a wei.) The tree would also bear fruit once every like, 9000 years. It'd be red and savoury and stuff. Immortals' bodies would turn gold when they ate this drug - uh, I mean, fruit. Yes, fruit. They'd also float in the air. (I am not sure if the authors really meant fruit 'cause it seems kinda trippy.)
The book also said that the trees grew in pairs, and shared the same root and leaned towards each other, hence their name.
Some other stories say that there were heavenly chickens (Seriously now!) on this tree and they crowed at midnight. Also, the crows, which were in the suns would follow them into the tree everytime they crowed. Soon after, the roosters of the mortal world would crow, which kind of explains why they crow in the wee hours of the morning.
