Around 600BC in the Spring-Autumn era, a coalition army led by the Duke of Qi appeared on the border of Chu state, whose emissary quickly appeared on the scene to challenge the army’s presence “our respective circles are north and south; we have no entanglement with each other; for what cause do you come?”, and was informed by Qi’s chief minister Guan Zhong “Your tribute reeds have not been entering and the material for wine filtering has been lacking”, plus some other obscure, quickly dismissed charges that do not concern us here; however, the Chu emissary readily conceded that his lord had been at fault in not presenting the King of Zhou, the common overlord of both Qi and Chu states, with the sacred reeds that grew in his region


and promised remedy, upon which the two sides agreed on holding a friendly ceremony at which the two lords and their follower noblemen smeared a sacrifice bull’s blood on the lips as the sign of shared allegence, and they parted in peace.

Even though the non-submission of the Chu tribute reeds was merely a pretext (the real target of Qi’s expedition as the state of Cai neighbouring Chu but this too need not concern us here), the diplomatic non-incident still shows the importance of the reeds. But filtering wine was such a big deal? Surely there was more to it?

To see the real function of the reeds, we need to go to Europe, in particular the old Celtic land of Cornwall, where the Crying of the Neck ceremony is still held at harvest time

in which the last harvested bundle of grain in a field gets tied up to make the corn doll (or harvest maiden/grain mother etc)


which is used in celebration before it is burnt. That is, the bundle of straw represents a fertility divine.

In various areas of China as well as Korea, some kind of reed is used to make a doll representing a divinity in certain shaman ceremonies


with the doll receiving wine – the bundle of reeds absorbs wine poured on it, representing the god drinking the offered liquid.

another photo comes from a large scale musical about Hubei Chu culture 

which does not show the wine pouring itself, just some of the objects used – note the costumes in the right figure were made of reeds. 

Unfortunately, I could find no photos of this particular act in Korea; instead we have an actual wine filtering ceremony using a grass bundle of some kind

some kind of derivation from the Chinese original; in particular, the Korean ceremony is held at a time of the year for the Chinese Dragonboat Festival, and in fact something like dragonboat rowing is held as part of the Korean ceremony

what links Corwall with China/Korea is the Sumerian goddess Inanna


 

 

shown in ancient reliefs, statues and seals, including on the right a necked knot made from reeds that constitutes her symbol; the goddess’s resemblance to the Celtic corn goddess is clear, as is the link to the sacred reeds tributed from Chu to Zhou

In other words, the worship of an idol representing grain field fertility, made from bundled stalks/reeds, was a practice that originated many thousands of years ago, probably in central asia, before the primitive agricultural people spread to Europe and East Asia, where remnants of the practice existed long after.