Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Hundred Flowers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Redemption
Journeys and Growth
Suffering, Strength, and Resilience
Home and Family
The Promises and Failures of Communism
Summary
Analysis
Kai Ying hears footsteps on the second floor while she inventories her stock of herbs. She’s the only one at home, so she wonders if they belong to the ghosts Wei told her about. She feels a little silly, but she goes looking for them nevertheless. When she comes to Wei’s room, she goes inside and opens the curtains. In the bright daylight, she looks closely at the room for the first time. Like much of the villa, it’s worn down and neglected, a shadow of its former, grander self. She tries to imagine what it would have looked like when Wei was a boy, before the Communist Party takeover, before he lost his university work and Liang. Suddenly, she realizes how lonely he must have been here over recent years. Before she leaves the room, she opens a window to let in fresh air.
Kai Ying’s evident wish to see the ghosts really seems to say more about her desire to see Sheng and Wei again. The lives of the family members are so deeply entwined and so rooted in the villa that no one can be fully excised. Even though he’s physically absent, Wei’s presence remains in his room, in much the same way that his father remains part of the family through the portrait that hangs on the living room wall. In Wei’s room, Kai Ying reflects on how much more his life has been changed by the Communist Revolution than hers. And in putting herself in Wei’s place, she feels a sudden flash of empathy and understanding, which pushes her closer to forgiving him.
Themes
Sheng writes a hurried letter to Kai Ying, which he will give to Wei during their visit. In it, he explains that the leader of his work team dislikes him and started intercepting and destroying his letters to and from home out of spite. Sheng was desperate over the silence from home until another inmate told him what was happening. He says he would have made a different choice if he had realized how hard the distance would be, and he asks for her forgiveness. He worries about her constantly. Only the thought of returning to her and Tao gets him through the long arduous days and terrible conditions. He reminds her of their trip to Zhaoqing as newlyweds, how they got stuck on separate boats crossing the lake and how sweet it was to reach the other side and be reunited. He begs her to hold on to hope.
Sheng’s letter underlines the distance the Communist Party has placed between him and his family as it answers some of the family’s biggest questions, like why they haven’t heard from him in months. It turns out that Sheng shared their suffering, unsure at first what the sudden silence from home signified. Sheng’s punishment makes him reflect on the importance of his family; it seems that, like Wei, he didn’t fully appreciate the importance of those connections until he lost them. But despite his pain and suffering, he clings to hope that his and Kai Ying’s love—that the connections among all the family members—will be strong enough to carry them through this time.
Themes
