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
Tao’s tiny body looks like a broken branch or a crushed leaf underneath the kapok tree. Kai Ying fears that he might be paralyzed or—worse—dead. Some things, she knows, lie beyond her healing skills. She watches, wide-eyed, as her father-in-law Wei yells for help from their only neighbor with a vehicle.
Kai Ying experiences success as a practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine, but as she regretfully reflects here, she cannot fix everything with a medicinal soup or tea. Loss, guilt, and fear lie beyond her abilities because growth only comes through enduring life’s trials, not trying to escape them.
Themes
Kai Ying and Wei sit for hours in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by a crush of humanity. Some people seem worried, others calmly make themselves at home. She can’t see a single doctor, but a poster of Chairman Mao glares at her from across the room. She imagines his accusatory voice demanding to know how she could have let her only son fall from a tree while she was asleep.
Mao Zedong, the despotic leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 until his death in 1977, cultivated a personality cult that placed him at the center of Chinese society. When Kai Ying imagines him scolding her personally for Tao’s accident, she reveals the way that the Party ruled and controlled people by fear of punishment.
Themes
While she waits, Kai Ying worries about her patients. She is an herbalist, adept at helping keep her clients’ energies balanced so they can maintain their health. She came to Guangzhou in 1947, when she was 19, to study herbalism with a family friend. She met her husband Sheng at Herbalist Chu’s shop, and she married him instead of going home at the end of her apprenticeship. Tao was born the following year. After Sheng’s arrest for writing a letter critical of Mao and the Communist Party, she returned to her work as an herbalist to support the family.
Kai Ying left her hometown as a teenager to come to Guangzhou, where she ended up meeting her future husband. Her journey to learn more about her trade ended up expanding her life more than she expected. And, importantly, it means she brings an outside perspective to the Lee family, which has remained rooted in one place and largely undisturbed for generations—at least until Sheng’s arrest upset its natural balance.
Themes
Kai Ying remembers that Auntie Song will stop by for herbs this morning. She’s a family friend and will watch the house and tell the other patients to come back tomorrow, even if she doesn’t know where Wei and Kai Ying have gone. They have been waiting for news for three hours. Wei sits, still and calm. Kai Ying knows that if Sheng were there, he’d be pacing and anxious. She tries not to imagine the worst or to dwell on past traumas, like her miscarriage three years ago or Sheng’s arrest the previous summer. But she grows more and more distraught. Wei quietly holds her hand.
Tao’s fall isn’t the first traumatic thing to happen to Kai Ying, and although she fights against dwelling on past trials here, it’s clear that they’ve made her stronger despite the pain they caused her. Sheng—and the financial support of his job—may be gone, but it’s clear that her work as an herbalist has kept the family afloat for a year. When she and Wei hold hands, they provide moral support to each other.
Themes
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Kai Ying considers Wei. He was a professor of Chinese art history for many years, only retiring after the Communist Party came to power and began persecuting scholars and intellectuals. At first, he felt certain that the Party, in distant Beijing, would leave the more cosmopolitan south of China mostly alone. His serene outlook and his tendency to find answers by looking for the calm in the storm contrasts sharply with his son’s approach to life. Sheng was a teacher, too. But, more impulsive than his father, he felt that answers could only be found by braving the storm. His grand dreams for China’s future and strong negative opinions about the Party scared Kai Ying, who worried that his dissident views would get him into trouble, as they did after he wrote the letter.
As Kai Ying considers Wei, she discloses to readers more of how the Communist Party takeover affected their lives for the worse. In its distrust of perceived disloyalty and dissent, it persecuted and silenced anyone critical of the Party, Chairman Mao, or their policies, and both Wei and Sheng fell victim to persecution, albeit in different ways. The differences between Sheng and Wei point towards one of the Lee family’s sources of strength—it brings together people with different, complimentary perspectives—and also establishes Wei’s quiet, retiring character. His tendency to avoid conflict presents a problem in the world of the book, since it keeps him locked in place. Without movement and struggle, he remains locked in the past, unable to act fully in the present.
Themes
Kai Ying squirms in her chair. She reaches out and fingers the worn sleeve of Wei’s favorite padded silk jacket. She marvels at how still and calm Wei seems as she peers into his face, looking for the similarities between him and Sheng. She imagines herself as the balancing point between their two temperaments. Then, she hears a quiet cough. She looks up and meets the eyes of a pregnant, acne-faced girl (later identified as Suyin) who can’t be more than 14. Kai Ying’s herbalist mind goes to work, planning out a regimen to clear the girl’s skin and provide adequate nutrition for her baby. But the sound of a desperate and mournful scream deep in a hospital corridor interrupts her thoughts and once more she finds herself fighting the fear rising in her throat.
This early in the book, Kai Ying respects and even envies Wei’s ability to be still; this is something to keep in mind going forward, since readers don’t actually know if Wei’s stillness is positive or negative. Crucially, as Kai Ying thinks about the gaping hole left in the family with Sheng’s absence, she catches sight of Suyin—the book not-so-subtly suggests that Suyin will play an important role in helping to make the family whole again. This brief moment also shows readers Kai Ying’s essential temperament: she’s perceptive and aware of the world around her, as well as kind, caring, and generous.
Themes
