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 feels grateful to have Tao at home. But he has changed: he’s no longer boisterous and fearless. Instead, he has become quiet and watchful. His hospital-shaved head and sunken cheeks remind her of Sheng, and she worries about what he may be suffering at the labor camp. It’s been six months since his last letter arrived. She tries not to think about what might keep him from writing.
Earlier, Kai Ying felt relieved that there were no physical signs of Tao’s fall in the courtyard, but now she realizes that even without outward signs, the experience has changed Tao. And much to her dismay, she realizes that the adversity of his imprisonment will change Sheng, too, in ways that will make it impossible for her to cling to the past.
Themes
During the day, while Kai Ying sees patients, Wei entertains Tao with stories. She hopes this time soothes Wei as much as it does Tao; since Sheng’s arrest, Wei has become increasingly downtrodden and withdrawn. She avoids looking at his eyes, as she’s afraid to find the anguish and defeat she saw when he attacked the kapok tree. She feels grateful when she hears them laughing upstairs.
True to her role as a healer (both in general and in the context of her family), Kai Ying hopes that Tao’s recovery will also bring some relief to Wei. Readers should recall from the first section that Wei realized, far too late, how little attention he gave to Sheng when he was a boy. Wei tries to make up for this mistake by lavishing attention on Tao, but his ongoing sadness suggests that this isn’t enough to make him feel better.
Themes
Kai Ying pulls the first of Sheng’s two letters from her pocket and rereads it for the hundredth time. In it, he explains that the police held him for weeks in Guangzhou before deciding to send him north to a reeducation camp near Luoyang. It leaves much unsaid; Sheng cannot risk saying anything that might make his punishment for opposing the Communist Party worse. Some people sent away to the labor camps return as shadows of their former selves. Some never return.
Sheng’s letter points towards the brutal repression of the Chinese Communist Party; in many ways it simply replaced one brutal and repressive regime with another. Sheng must censor himself in his letters, highlighting how the Communist Party keeps people from connecting honestly with each other—Kai Ying knows, for instance, that Sheng certainly isn’t telling her everything he’d like to. And further, it remains to be seen what state Sheng will be in when he returns—if he returns at all.
Themes
Kai Ying remembers the spring of 1956, when Chairman Mao and the Communist Party poetically announced the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which asked intellectuals, artists, and others to offer suggestions for ways to improve China and the Party itself. Sheng was excited at the opportunity to try to improve China’s future. Kai Ying worried that the campaign was a trap designed to draw out and punish dissenters. At first, most people acted cautiously, keeping their thoughts to themselves. But after Mao and China’s well-respected premier repeated the request in 1957, people began to voice their opinions, calling out the Party for its abuses. Then, when Mao and the Party abruptly grew tired of the criticism, they cancelled the campaign and arrested those who spoke up—including Sheng. Kai Ying wonders what his letter said and how the authorities traced it to him.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign illustrates how the Chinese Communist Party failed to live up to its stated goals of freeing and elevating the Chinese people. Instead of listening to input and justified criticism of its sometimes dangerous and harmful policies, it rejected all feedback. This highlights the government’s power and reach—and how it abuses that power. And it’s the country’s citizens and their families that suffer the most, as illustrated by Sheng’s imprisonment and the toll his arrest is now taking on his family.
Themes
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In his first letter, Sheng described the flat, northern scenery and wrote about missing the kapok tree. He talked about his 14-hour days in a stone quarry, and the cramped barrack where he lives. He sent his love to Wei and Tao and promised to take the family on a trip to White Cloud Mountain when he returned. The second letter had arrived in February. It was brief, just a short, bitter announcement that he was too far away to come home for a visit during the New Year furlough. Since then, although Kai Ying and Wei have sent letters and packages, they have heard nothing back. Not knowing if Sheng has received her letters, or even if he’s still alive, torments Kai Ying.
The kapok tree even provides a model of strength and resilience for Sheng 1,000 miles away from home. But although he can draw strength from his memories of the past, he still must find his strength in the present. And the harsh irony of the Party granting its prisoners leave for the holidays after moving most of them too far away to reach their families in time underlines the cruelty of his punishment—and the way it purposefully affects not just the accused but his whole family, too.
Themes
