The original text, 嚴父共慈萱, literally means “stern father and compassionate mother,” which is the ideal model for a patriarchal family in traditional Chinese culture. Here, xuan 萱 [day lily], is used to refer to the mother. In classical Chinese, chunxuan 椿萱 [Chinese toon and day lily] is a synonym for parents. Chun 椿 was an extremely long-lived tree which was said to have lived in remote antiquity. Chinese people wished that their fathers could be as long-lived as Chun, thus using it as a byword for “father.”
In China, xuan 萱, also written as 諼, was also called wangyou cao 忘憂草 [Nepenthe]. Xuan’s meaning of “mother” originates from a custom in ancient China that when a person was going to travel far away from home, that person should plant some xuan/daylilies in the place where his/her mother lived, as Xuan was believed to have the ability to relieve the mother’s worry for her traveling child. Consequently, the place where a mother lives was called xuantang 萱堂 in classical Chinese. And the term “chun xuan bing mao 椿萱併茂 [both chun and xuan are flourishing]” means “both of my parents are healthy.”
