Chinese Version
05-07-2021, Friday, Sunny

When I was a child, my mother taught me how to enjoy flowers.

I grew up in a period where there was a serious shortage of material (before 1975 in China). The most basic enjoyments of today, such as using perfume or wearing colorful clothes, was similar to the Arabian nights in my childhood, because there was no perfume nor colorful clothes in our shops.

But from the flowers that my mother taught me, I enjoyed the magic of fragrance, the charm of bright colors, and the concept of beauty.

One day in the summer when I was a second grader in elementary school, my mother came back from work and handed me her folded handkerchief: “you smell it.”

I put my nose on my mother’s folded handkerchief and smelled it. I smelled a pristine and delicate fragrance that I had never smelled before, inhaling the smell brought a pleasant feeling penetrated into my soul. I cried out, “it smells so good! What is it?”

My mother was happy to hear it: “Open the handkerchief and have a look.”

I opened the folded handkerchief and saw a few thin branches with many yellow greenish small beads crawling on them. I asked my mother, “What’s this?”

My mother said with a smile, “This is Yuzilan (Chloranthus erectus). Our garden had this flower when I was little. Today I saw it in the garden in the bureau and picked a few branches back to let you smell it.”

Because I did not have any perfume in the 1970s, the yellowish little beads touched me with its clean and delicate fragrance. Since then, I have been sensitive to the fragrance of flowers and really loved sweet fragrant flowers.

My mother introduced the camellia to me too. The first time I saw a pink single-layered camellia flower, I thought it would be broken if I touched the petals with my fingers. Such feeling is the primitive and naive “passion for beauty”. The red camellia flowers were brighter than the red roses in our garden. How one could vary in different flowers impressed me at that time.

In the time when we were all dressed in gray, blue, green, brown and other monochrome clothes, and where there were no fashion shows, colorful flowers with elegant posture, like camellia, brought the beauty and fashion to me naturally without my awareness.

My mother said the magnolia is very noble. When I was little, I could only look up to the magnolia flowers on the tall branches and fell that they were untouchable. Now, while watching various magnolia, tall or short, I totally agreed with my mother on that the magnolia is very noble.

One winter, my mother brought a bunch of winter plum flowers home. The wax-like yellow colored winter plum flowers, glittering and translucent, were amazing to my innocent eyes. The winter plum flower also has a unique sweet fragrance. Winter plum became my most favorite flower of all. I learned of it in my hometown, then visited the flower in Chengdu, Beijing, and London with deep joy.

My mother also introduced sweetbay magnolia (han-xiao) to me. I still remembered that she pointed to the only milky white flower in cage of green leaves said: “The beauty of sweetbay magnolia appears right before its blossom, while it is still budding, very fragrant.” A small bud of sweetbay magnolia, in the center of lush oil-green leaves, presented its pure milky white simple beauty and its nearly perfect arc-shaped petals tightly hug each other. I fell in love with the rich in fragrance and pure in beauty white sweetbay magnolia flowers at first sight. Sweetbay magnolia

Han-xiao, the Chinese name of sweetbay magnolia, means holding a sweet smile without showing the teeth in a graceful way.

After growing up, as flowers quietly drew my attention and pleased my heart in many places under many occasions, I realized there is an eternal love between flowers and I, thanks to my late mother who taught me to enjoy flowers when I was little.

My late mother has passed away already three years in May. This Sunday is Mother’s Day. I dedicate this piece to my late mother who taught me how to enjoy flowers.

Little Episodes

My late mother (05-06-2017)

1. Chloranthus erectus

2. Camellia

3. Magnolia

4. Winter Plum

5. Sweetnay Magnolia