Glossary / Divine Weapons / Banana-Leaf Fan

Banana-Leaf Fan (芭蕉扇)

Divine Weapons · section 10

What the Banana-Leaf Fan is

The fan belongs to Princess Iron Fan, and its job in Journey to the West is to end the Flaming Mountains so the pilgrimage can pass. The fan is the only thing that works. Getting it from her takes a whole episode of negotiation and theft.

The mechanism is a sequence, not a stroke. The first wave puts the fire out, the second raises a wind, the third brings rain, and forty-nine more cut the root so the fire cannot return. The fan does not cancel the fire but runs it backwards.

It is a plantain leaf, which is an enormous leaf, and the scale matters. The fan is the size of a wall because the job requires the size of a wall. It can also be shrunk to the size of an apricot and carried in the mouth, which the episode depends on.

Why a fan is the most dangerous object in the story

Banana-Leaf Fan is the standard translation, and some versions use plantain. Banana is common and it is loose: the plantain is a different genus, grown for fibre and ornament rather than fruit. Both English words carry the leaf.

The fan is often confused with the other fans of the classics, and there are several. This one is identified by the Flaming Mountains, and a fan mentioned with fire is usually this one.

It is not the same as the Five-Fire Seven-Bird Fan, a different divine weapon. Both are fans and both elemental, and adaptations merge them. One raises fire, the other puts it out.

How the fan travels into later fiction

In cultivation fiction it appears as a treasure that solves an elemental problem. A character facing a fire-law enemy or a volcanic realm needs this fan. The sequence transfers: fire is answered in stages.

It is the template for the specific solution. Some treasures in the genre do not make a character stronger but remove one named obstacle, and this fan is the ancestor of that category. It is not single-use; the leaf keeps working.

In adaptations it is usually given a wind law rather than a fire law, which is closer to the original than it looks. In the text the wind comes second, after the fire is out, and the rain comes after the wind. A fan credited only with wind keeps the middle of the sequence.

Characters used above

The prose on this page names these in English. Here they are written out, in the order they came up.

What readers confuse it with

Five-Fire Seven-Bird Fan 五火七禽扇

A different divine fan that produces flame rather than extinguishing it. The two get merged because both are fans with elemental jobs, but they do opposite things.

Fan of Mountains and Rivers 山河扇

Another borrowed fan treasure, this one conjuring terrain. Fans in the genre are elemental objects by default, and this is one of the more common names.

Flaming Mountains 火焰山

The problem the fan was made for, and a permanent one: the fire is not natural and returns while its cause remains. The forty-nine extra waves separate ending the fire from suppressing it.

Common questions

What does the Banana-Leaf Fan actually do?

It ends a fire on a massive scale, in sequence: the first wave puts it out, the second raises wind, the third brings rain, and forty-nine more cut the root so it cannot return.

Who owns it?

Princess Iron Fan, in Journey to the West, and getting it is a whole episode of negotiation, deception and substitution. She gives a false fan first, and the real one must be taken.

Is it a weapon or a tool?

In the original it is a tool with a weapon's power: it solves a problem rather than killing anyone. Later fiction weaponises it: a fan that can put out a mountain can obviously hit a person.

Why is it called a banana-leaf fan?

Because it is made from an enormous leaf. The plantain is not the banana, and the loose word is used for both. The size is the point of the name.

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Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary