All I can add is that my 'Orient' Pear has done well, the fruit tastes better than other pears I grow but is no where near the best I have tasted elsewhere. My problem is that it had been Fire Blight resistant up until this hot and dry summer. The stress of too many months of no rain and triple digit daytime highs was just too much. My tree looks like every other European Pear, same leaves, same type of branching (non weeping). Are you sure you have the cultivar 'Orient' and not an Oriental or Asian Pear?

I live in a high wind area,so all of my trees are staked. Even the older ones . My 'Orient pear' did weep for the first 2 years.And the top was bent over due to wind . So I took a 12ft. piece of 1.5 inch PVC pipe capped one end and filled it with sand and capped the other end. Then drove a T-post into the ground and tied the PVC to it and the tree. I took some twine and tied the weeping branches to the main scaffold to make them stand upright. My wife said it was an eye-sore so I found some Pink paint and painted the T-post and PVC.End result: all the side branches @ 45 degree angles main scaffold about as big around as a baseball bat. I removed the PVC this spring but still had to keep it tied to the T-post due to wind .

I have a young tree of what was labeled as "Orient" and it too is long, skinny, and drooping in its main branches, though not the leader. I haven't quite figured out how to deal with it but had pondered a similar method of temporary support (and it sits where the look won't matter).

I also had on several supposedly resistant pears what appeared superficially to be fireblight. They too had been heat and water stressed, plus transplant stressed. But the blackening was not on the tips and those blackened leaves have now dropped on most trees with no other sign of problem. I'm thinking now that it probably was not FB.

I've had an orient for 3 years. Its growing slowly, its in way too much shade, only 7 ft tall or so. There's no weeping. Maybe if it got more sun & grew faster it'd weep.

OK I'll add this on the subject. Whether it is an Orient or not If I were you Id plant a better variety. Orient's main attributes are relitivley low chill and FB resistance. If your heading is acurate and you live in Z6 I would probably plant Potomac, Blake Pride, Harrow Sweet or something more along those lines as those will produce much better quality fruit and still offer some FB resistance. Just my thought.

Thanks to all who shared their thoughts on this post. Perhaps it is a good candidate for a bit of grafting. It has a few branches that look like possibilities. Ted