Because his father’s stories about it are one of the most important memories Tao clings to after Sheng’s arrest, White Cloud Mountain represents Tao’s wish for the past to return, and his desire for things to return to normal. But White Cloud Mountain has always been barely visible at best—something Tao could glimpse on a clear day from a second-story vantage point. Tao’s fall from the kapok tree while trying to see the mountain dramatically indicates that it isn’t just impossible to return to the past, but that it’s dangerous to try to do so.
A Hundred Flowers suggests that looking too much toward the past, as Tao and Wei tend to do at the beginning of the book, blinds a person to the present moment, in which life must be lived. Only by living through present trials and difficulties can a person thrive and find happiness in the joys of family and community at home.
White Cloud Mountain Quotes in A Hundred Flowers
Kai Ying would never forget the sight of her pale little boy lying on the courtyard pavement, his leg twisted beneath him. A broken branch, she thought, a crushed leaf. He wasn’t moving. At that moment, she realized he might never move again and a feeling of terror overwhelmed her, stopping her abruptly and rooting her in place. […] She stood there while her heart raced so fast her whole body shook. He can’t be, she thought, he can’t. And try as she might, Kai Ying couldn’t think of one tea or soup that could bring the dead back to life. Her father-in-law, who was usually calm and in control, turned back to her, his eyes wide and frantic, his hands waving wildly in the air as he yelled for her to get help from Neighbor Lau, who had the only flatbed pedicab in the neighborhood.
What Tao would never tell anyone, including his father, was what he really felt the day he fell from the kapok, how for just a moment he was flying instead of falling, and how happy it made him feel. Even now, he envisioned soaring through the gates and beyond the Ming garden wall, high above the narrow, crowded alleyways where he used to run and over the wide, tree-lined streets that led to far-off places he’d never seen. Tao felt so certain that if he had just kept on flying, he’d have reached White Cloud Mountain.
“Do you want to hear the story of Huoyi and Chang’e now?” his grandfather asked.
Tao turned around and shook his head. “There’s no moon,” he answered.
“There’s still the story.”
“It’s not the same without the moon.”
His grandfather stroked his whiskers. “But we know the moon is still up there, beyond the rain and clouds.”
What good was the moon if you couldn’t see it? Tao thought. If it wasn’t there to help his ba ba to find his way home again? But, he nodded and limped back to the table and sat down, no longer caring which version of the myth his grandfather was going to tell him.
White Cloud Mountain Symbol Timeline in A Hundred Flowers
