Wolfram Eberhard and the willow tree

 

My Dad was bilingual. He told me a story involving a non bilingual person who named his house something like the Willow Villa. Dad said the Chinese educated people laughed until their teeth dropped.
In the Chinese beliefs,a house of willow means a brothel. I finally found out the following.

 https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Chinese-Symbols-Routledge-Dictionaries/dp/0415002281

Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought (Routledge Dictionaries) Revised ed. Edition

by Wolfram Eberhard
Wolfgang Eberhard's Dictionary of Chinese Symbols:

The willow, much valued as firewood, is a symbol of spring. As spring is the season
of erotic awakenings, the phrase ‘willow feelings and flower wishes’ means sexual
desire; ‘looking for flowers and buying willows’ means visiting a prostitute, ‘flowers and
willows by the wayside’ are prostitutes, and ‘sleeping among flowers and reposing
beneath willows’ is a term for visiting a brothel.
The waist of a beautiful woman is compared to the willow, her eyebrows to
the curve of willow leaves. A young girl is a ‘tender willow and fresh flower’ while
a woman who can no longer claim virginal freshness is described as ‘faded willow and
withered flower’. A woman’s pubic hair is ‘in the depths of willow shade’.