By Nora Waln
FRAGMENTS FROM A FLOWER DIARY, by Nora Waln, from The Atlantic Monthly magazine, Vol. CLIV, No. 1, July, 1934, pp. 50-53.
Nora Waln, an American lady who came to China, married an Englishman, lived in Nanking, and who contributes to The Atlantic Monthly on Chinese subjects. Her book The House of Exile, describing her life in a Chinese family, has been very favorably received.
「Habits and customs differ, but all peoples have the love of flowers in common.」
—Chinese Proverb.
I
It was in northern Hopei. The clouds had failed to gather in their season, and the time of showers has passed without rain. Parched by the midsummer sun, the earth was a dull beige in color. We had traveled three days over plains, valleys, and hills and seen nothing green except in the artificially irrigated plots near hamlets.
The ancient stone-paved trail led up along a narrow ledge. We waited at the foot for a line of pack coolies to come down. They were heavily laden with inland produce which they were transporting to the coast for foreign export. The containers roped on their backs towered high above their heads. Yet, despite his burden, the foremost man swerved out suddenly to the very edge of the cliff, and, as they came on, each of the nine men behind him did the same.
When they had passed us, we began our climb. My pack coolie was before me. When I came up to the place round which the others had swerved, he had squatted down and was pouring the last of the contents of his drinking canteen into a crevice in the paving. There, through the dust between the stones, a wild rose had grown—a slender fragile tendril with five pale leaves and an open flower. A perfect flower, beautifully tinted, and sweetly fragrant. 「It is from such a one as this,」 my coolie said, 「that we learn fortitude.」
II
It was in the province of Kwangtung. The temple had once been beautifully furnished, but was now dirty and neglected. I chided the abbot concerning the dust on a Buddha's face. He did not answer me immediately. He led me across two courtyards and along a dark narrow passage.
At the end of the passage he opened a door and motioned to me to pass him and go through it. Beyond the door, I stood in a tiny garden above a deep ravine. All was neat and tidy there. No weeds grew in the rich, much-worked loam. A low wall of carefully placed rocks kept the garden from sliding down the mountain side.
In his garden, the abbot spoke to me, saying, 「The furniture on an altar is but the symbol of religion . . . in the face of a flower the heart of God is revealed.」
I had no answer. At my feet were tall white lilies, each with a golden heart. Over my head a magnolia was in bloom.
Lifting a clump of pansies with a careful trowel, the abbot planted them in an earthen pot, 「Take this home,」 he said.「If you are one who sincerely seeks the truth, by living with a flower you will find it.」
III
Bald-the-third, my serving matron, was stiff with anger. A filthy beggar had erected a mat shed against the wall of our residence at Nanking, and settled down to live just by the gate which led from our garden to the hill path.
He would have to go, she declared. Disease would be carried over the wall by every breeze. We should all be sick. Probably Small Girl would die of cholera.
Bald-the-third went out to clear him away. Sometime later I discovered her seated on the sewing-room floor hemstitching a sheet, an occupation she often uses to calm herself when she has been overwrought.
「Has the beggar gone?」 I asked.
「No—he is still there,」 she answered.
「Oh! He defeated you in argument, did he?」 I pressed her.
「I did not speak to him,」 she said. 「He has a sprig of jasmine growing in a broken pot, and has given it the least drafty place in his miserable shelter. He certainly hadn't much tea, but he was sharing what he had with the flower. I do not think that such a man will do us any harm. People can be too concerned regarding physical health and neglect the health of the spirit. I've sent him out a gift of rice and fish.」
IV
The Chinese love of flowers has been rewarded by genius in their cultivation. Certainly this is a transcendent capacity for taking trouble. Aided by their lovers' patient skill, blossoms open for their festivals all over the land despite the persity of climate which makes the weather below zero in some districts when it is swelteringly hot in others.
Flowers are coddled, nursed, and coaxed. They are fed religiously. There is a vast lore of wisdom passed orally from generation to generation concerning the whims and peculiarities of different plants—also a voluminous detailed gardening literature in which the observations of centuries are garnered. In the House of Exile library there are forty books, considered classics, on the culture of chrysanthemums only, and nearly as many relating to dwarf trees.
In heat, plants are sheltered in the coolest places in the homestead, and shades are erected for blossoming trees, vines, and flowers which are stationary. I have seen people sit all through the breathless tropic noon fanning a drooping flower. In cold, plants are housed in paper shelters, their roots set in loam warmed by subterranean air pipes heated by buried charcoal.
These are constructed to-day exactly as decreed by a ruler of the State of Wei who lived more than two thousand years ago. He ordered that they should be so simply designed that even the poorest and the stupidest of his people might make one. In the most severe weather, florists clothe buds in little paper coats perforated with breathing holes.
Although they perform an infinite amount of toil in bringing their flowers to perfection, florists charge astonishingly low prices. A florist once explained this to me. He told me that a country in which flowers—a necessity for the refinement of the heart—were priced so as to make them a luxury was a country which had yet to learn the first principles of civilization.
V
According to Chinese legend, a flower presides over each month of the year, celebrating her anniversary on the fifth day after the rise of the new moon. It is usual for a minstrel, when he knocks at a homestead gate on a flower birthday, to ask to come in and sing the flower's ballads. Many tea shops have a story-teller as an attraction to patrons; and, passing on a flower's day, I have often heard the blind man entertaining the laborers, who gather round him when the day's toil is done, with the flower's fables.
Narcissus is hostess of the first month, violet of the second, peach blossom of the third, which is a favorite month for weddings. In China the peach blossom is the wedding flower as the orange blossom is in America, and in ancient times marriage was celebrated with a festival at the season of the flowering of the peach orchards. Peony gives her name to the fourth month, but rose presides over the month. This is because 「the peony is the millionaire's flower, symbol of riches and power; but the lovely rose belongs to everyone, as she graces cottage and palace impartially with her beauty.」
The gentle jasmine is hostess of the fifth month. The lotus, symbol of purity because she grows out of the mud and is not soiled, reigns over the sixth month; balsam, famous for healing virtues, over the seventh; cassia flower, so small but so fragrant, over the eighth; chrysanthemum, beloved of scholars, over the ninth. Bright cheerful marigold is hostess of the tenth month; camellia of the eleventh; the flowering winter plum, whose petals are like the snowflakes, of the twelfth.
And that no flower shall feel neglected, just because there are not enough months for all, a Birthday of All Flowers is celebrated on the twelfth day of the second month.
On All Flowers' Day it is polite to make 「flower calls,」 taking gifts of seeds and slips to one's friends. Every flower birthday is an appropriate occasion for a party. It is not even necessary to possess a garden to give a blossom tea. I know a Chinese lady in Peiping, an invalid with neither the means nor the strength to achieve a garden, who has a blossom tea every year. A branch of her neighbor's wisteria extends over her courtyard wall, and each spring, when the wisteria flowers, she asks her friends to come. One year the wisteria did not bloom. She had her party, gay as the previous ones, in memory of the blossoms.
Wealthy families, who can, often give parties which are magnificent flower shows. These usually begin in the morning and last until well into the evening. After sunset the homestead is lit with silk lanterns placed to show each plant or flowering tree to the best advantage. Good manners permit one to go for as long or as short a time as one chooses.
Chinese people do not like to cut their flowers, and seldom do. The flowers displayed at a party are growing, either in pots or in the ground. Poetry and art through the centuries have endowed each tree, vine, and plant with a symbolic significance, and the cultured are guided by this in their arrangement. In the home of a scholar one is certain to see the 「three friends」—that is, the bamboo, the pine, and the plum—grouped together.
The purpose of a flower party is to view the flowers, and tables for cards or mah jongg are considered in bad taste. Sometimes there is an open-air stage on which actors play the flower classics. At one party I attended, the little children of the house, dressed in flower costumes, danced a flower ballet of their own improvisation. Often someone who reads well is asked to read flower poetry.
Flower picnics are also popular. The Lins give an orchard party when the fruit trees bloom each year. Friends make up travel parties and go from all over China to admire the azaleas near Ningpo. When the lovely lotus opens her tulip-shaped blossoms in the shallow bays of the water highways, families in every province give boat picnics.
When I was preparing to attend the first flower festival to which I was invited, my mother-by-affection spoke to me about my dress, 「One should honor the occasion by care in one's costume.」 Shun-ko said, 「But according to an ancient rule of decorum observed by the refined of heart, it is impolite to outdress the flowers. The flower-party gown should be dainty, clean, delicate in color, and fashioned on simple lines. A new fashion, however lovely, is out of place at a flower's party. The courteous hostess and her guests remember that it is to celebrate the flowers that people are gathered, and to wear a gown which distracts attention from the blossoms is rude.」
VI
I had been abroad for six months. Shortly after my return I needed a length of silk. I went to the place where Shih, the silk merchant, had opened a new shop just before I went away. The place was closed and appeared uninhabited. I made inquiry and I was told that he had gone back to his old address, where his father and his grandfather before him had done business.
I found him there. When I had made my selection and my bargain, over a cup of tea, I asked why he had left the Big Horse Road. He replied that it was not a good location.
「It is such a prominent place,」 I said in astonishment.「Didn't you find that you had more customers there than here?」
「A merchant,」 he informed me, 「lives the major part of his life with his customers. The place was too prominent. Many came in just because it was convenient. They had long purses and they paid, but money is not everything.」
The merchant's son, a boy of fourteen and heir to the business, further enlightened me. 「This place is better for the future of our house,」 he said. 「On the Big Horse Road there was one who came who let the breath of February blow in on a flowering plum tree which we had set on the counter for the delight of gentlefolk.」
VII
I had lost my way and I had need to ask a policeman for direction. I drew my car up to the curb and waited. The policeman was occupied. Dressed in the splendid uniform copied from the city of San Francisco in which the American-educated governor of the town had clad all his republican police, this one was busy. Using his teapot as a watering can, he was watering the phlox which he had placed around his stance on the modern concrete road.
When he had finished, he gave me the information I requested. But before he signaled the permission for me to move on into the traffic he made a statement and asked a question: 「There is no day in the year when flowers fail to bless China with their lovely charm,」 and, 「Is this also so in the Outer World?」
Notes
all peoples, all races or nations; the persons who make up all the different races or nations of the world.
Hopei province，河北省．
in their season, at the proper time; at the time when rain should have fallen.
parched, dried and shiveled up.
beige, natutral brown color.
artificially irrigated plots, small areas of ground which the farmers had watered or irrigated with water drawn from wells, hence by artificial and not natural means.
hamlets, small groups of cottages in the country.
ledge, narrow horizontal surface projecting from a wall or cliff or other vertical surface.
pack coolies, burden carriers who pack or carry the bundles on their backs.
inland produce, agricultural or natural products from the interior of our country.
foreign export, sending out to foreign countries.
containers, baskets or bags holding or containing the produce that were carrying.
foremost man, the leader; the carrier who led the procession.
swerved, turned aside.
squatted, seated himself on the ground with his knees drawn up and his heels close to or touching his hams, the back part of his thighs.
canteen, a small vessel or flask used by soldiers or travelers for carrying water.
crevice, a narrow opening or crack resulting from a split or crack in the stone paving.
fragile, easily broken; of delicate make-up.
tendril, the slender, leafless spirally coiling organ of climbing plants, serving as a means of attachment to a supporting body or surface.
tented, colored slightly.
fortitude, passive courage; firmness in confronting danger or in enduring trouble.
Kwangtung， 廣東省．
chided, rebuked; blamed; found fault.
abbot, the head man of a temple; the monk who has charge of a temple.
much-worked loam, well-looked-after soil. Loam is mixture of clay and soil.
lilies， 百合花之類． A lily is any plant, flower, or bulb of a genus （Lilium） of herbaceous plants having scaly bulbs, whorled or scattered leaves, and showy flowers.
magnolia， 木蘭屬（如玉蘭）, any of a genus （Magnolia） of trees having aromatic bark and large, often fragrant, white, pink, or purple flowers.
pansies， 蝴蝶花，that well-known garden plant （Viola tricolor） and flower.
Bald-the-third, an old amah or serving woman that Nora Waln took from the House of Exile to be her serving matron after her marriage to her English husband.
Nanking， 南京．
Small Girl， 小姐．
cholera，霍亂，billious disorder with diarrhea and vomiting.
hemstitching, ornamenting the head of a hem or border of a garment or sheet by drawing out a few parallel threads and fastening the cross threads in small groups.
sheet, the broad piece of cloth used for bedding. Sheets keep the mattress and blankets from being dirtied.
overwrought, overexcited; overworked mentally.
pressed, kept on urging her; kept on asking her.
sprig of jasmine, small shoot of the jasmine plant.
least drafty place, the place where no current of air can harm the plant.
transcendent, of supreme merit or capacity.
persity, difference.
swelteringly hot, so oppressively hot with the heat that people suffer under it.
coddled, treated with excessive tenderness; pampered.
coaxed, treated gently, by flattering or fondling.
religiously, with religious care; scrupulously or conscientiously.
lore of wisdom, body of traditions and facts on the subject; supply of experience and knowledge together with sagacious judgment.
orally, by word of mouth.
voluminous, running to many volumes or great length.
garnered, gathered for preservation; stored.
House of Exile. Nora Waln wrote The House of Exile, published by Little, Brown and Company of Boston, U.S.A., in 1933. 「The House of Exile」 is the name given by Nora Waln to the home of the Lin family. Of the home life of this family she has jotted down the most intimate details.
dwarf trees, trees whose growth has been stunted so that they are not up to their natural size.
shades, a shelter or roof that has been erected to ward off the rays of the sun.
breathless, unstirred by wind; dead.
subterranean, underground.
perforated, pierced through with holes.
ballads, simple songs; sentimental song of several verses sung to the same melody.
patrons, customers who frequent the shops.
blind man, the story-teller or entertainer is usually blind and makes a living out of singing ballads and telling stories.
millionaire, rich person; possessor of a million of money or more.
slips, cutting from a plant for grafting or planting.
invalid, a person weak and infirm, especially one in chronic ill health.
symbolic significance, meaning which is regarded by general consent as naturally typifying or representing or recalling something by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought.
the cultured, persons trained and refined in matters of understanding and manners and taste.
mah jongg， 麻雀，the Chinese game for four played with 136 pieces called tiles.
in bad taste, bad conduct; unbefitting the occasion; not conforming to good taste or conduct.
open-air stage, a stage in the open air, out on the grass lawn, not one confined within the four walls of a hall.
ballet, an artistic dance performed as a form of entertainment.
improvisation, getting up; composition; making up.
picnics, an excursion or outdoor pleasure party in which the members partake of refreshments carried usually by themselves.
the Lins, with whom Nora Waln stayed in the House of Exile.
Ningpo， 寧波，in Chekiang province.
mother-by-affection, not her real mother, but Shun-ko of the Lin family. Nora Waln came to love Shun-ko very affectionately, so she came to call her her mother-by-affection.
decorum, the usages required by decency or good manners.
outdress, be more prettily dressed; be dressed in more beautiful colors so as to outdo the flowers.
out of place, not in good taste, unbefitting; in bad taste.
distracts, takes the attention away from.
rude, offensive; insolent; in bad taste.
abroad, away from China; in some foreign country.
a length of silk, a piece of silk long enough to make a dress.
Big Horse Road， 大馬路．
location, place to carry on business.
long purses, more than enough money; purses for holding money which are long and therefore can hold more than the usual amount of money.
the breath of February, the cold wind of February.
gentlefolk, persons of gentle, or good, family.
San Francisco, the main seaport in central California, the western-most state of the U.S.A.
watering can, vessel for watering plants.
stance, stand or platform on which the policeman stands.
Outer World, other countries of the world; the world outside of our country.
Questions
1. How do the incidents told in sections I, II, and III illustrate the opening quotation?
2. How do the Chinese show genius in the cultivation of flowers?
3. What are the flowers of the different months?
4. What customs are observed on All Flowers' Day?
5. How do sections VI and VII further illustrate the opening quotation?
6. Do you see any significance in the selection of the rose in section I to teach fortitude; in the selection of white lilies with golden hearts, a magnolia, and a clump of pansies in section II; the jasmine in section III; the flowering plum in section VI; and the phlox in section VII?
參考譯文
【作品簡介】
《花事記憶》，作者諾拉·沃恩，載於1934年7月出版的《大西洋月刊》雜誌，第154卷，第1期，50—53頁。
【作者簡介】
諾拉·沃恩，女，美國人，丈夫是英國人。她曾到訪中國，住在南京，給《大西洋月刊》提供有關中國的稿件。著有《寄廬》一書，描繪其在中國家庭的生活，廣受好評。