As A Hundred Flowers explores the changing shape of the Lee family, it describes the power of a family to provide love, healing, forgiveness, and sanctuary in the midst of a chaotic and sometimes painful world. Importantly, the book highlights that a family is not limited to blood relations but can be found in any relationship that involves mutual care and loyalty. Wei and Song grew up before the Communist Party takeover, and their experiences reflect a world (and family structures) that no longer exists by the 1950s: Wei’s father practiced polygamy and Song’s parents sold the right to her hand in marriage to the abusive Old Hing. The book—and the Communist Party, which abolished these practices—illustrate that these circumstances do not necessarily make strong families.
Instead, A Hundred Flowers argues for the power of mutual affection to bind people together as family, even among those not related by blood or marriage. Song and Suyin both benefit individually from being adopted into the Lee family, but their inclusion enriches the whole family in turn. Song nurtures the garden that nourishes them all and mothers Kai Ying and Tao, even though she never had children of her own. Suyin—who runs away from her family when her pregnancy, the result of being raped by her stepfather, begins to show—becomes like a big sister to Tao, helping him to weather a turbulent and painful period of his life without judgment. Thus, the book suggests, when mutual affection becomes the standard for familial relationships, the idea of family expands in ways that create more resilient and powerful networks.
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Home and Family Quotes in A Hundred Flowers
[H]is grandson was alone somewhere in the hospital and there was nothing he could do but wait. Wei wondered if it was some kind of retribution for his years of self-absorption. He had always been too involved in his own work, never taking into consideration how it might affect those around him. Rather than going into business as his father had wished […] he concentrated on his art history studies, preoccupied with teaching and research. He was thirty when he finally married Liang, and […] Sheng came along unexpectedly almost ten years later. Through it all, Wei continued to work long hours […] He told himself that his work was a part of all their legacies, but was it? By the time he paused long enough, Wei had missed so much of Sheng’s childhood that he had little memory of what his son was like as a boy.
Now he sat down at his desk and flipped through the worn pages, the book opening naturally to the poems where the spine was broken. He read the first stanza of a poem aptly titled “Thinking of My Boy,” written for the poet’s favorite son.
Comes spring once more,
Pony Boy, and still we
Cannot be together; I
Comfort myself hoping
You are singing with
The birds in the sunshine…
Wei stopped reading, suddenly angered. He knew Sheng wasn’t where he could be singing with birds in the sunshine […] Two months [after his arrest] they received word that Sheng had been sent to be reeducated in Luoyang in the western Henan province […] more than a thousand miles away by train, another world away.
“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.
This young woman had eased her pain, made her feel human again. Then, for the first time, Song told a perfect stranger about her husband, Old Hing, calling him a violent monster, an angry pig, a festering tumor. Once Song began to talk, she couldn’t stop, even with the pain.
Wei felt suddenly vigorous and confident again as he hurried off to fetch Mrs. Lu. As he fought against the wind and rain, slowly making his way down the street, the line had returned to him again, Even so, the world intrudes. It must have been a line from some famous Tang dynasty poem he had long ago memorized. It bothered him even more that he couldn’t remember the lines that followed. When Wei returned home, he would scour his books of poetry until he found the poem. He’d spent most of his life avoiding the world, but ironically, it had landed right there at their doorstep.
By the time he returned with Mrs. Lu, the baby had already come into the world.
Cheng paused for a moment and looked her up and down. “Your husband is a lucky man to have a wife so devoted to him. Of course, I too am a family man, and I hate to think of your son so upset. You must be very lonely with your husband gone; perhaps we can find a way to make this situation work, while helping each other at the same time?”
It took a moment for Kai Ying to understand what he was saying […] She felt sick to her stomach and wanted nothing more than to run out of the hot, suffocating room. Instead, [she] steadied herself and ignored his question. She held out a red envelope, which contained a hundred yuan she had saved. She knew it was the way things were done, and hoped it would be enough for this vile man.
Wei pulled at his tunic collar and felt the room spinning, but he didn’t look away [… Kai Ying’s] dark eyes were unrecognizable, filled with something worse than anger: disappointment. […]
Outside came the singsong voice of the fruit peddler calling out “Bananas! Oranges! Mangoes!” […] He wanted to run out and buy all the fruit in the peddler’s basket as an offering, although he knew the sweetest fruits in all of Guangzhou couldn’t buy him forgiveness.
[…] Tao had stayed seated at the table. His grandson was no longer crying, but watching him with the distant gaze of a stranger. Wei hoped the boy would understand that he never meant for any of this to happen. But before he could say anything, Tao scraped back his chair and stood up.
“Tao, I’m sorry,” Wei said.
[…]
“I hate you,” Tao said, “I hate you.”
Kai Ying saw it all so clearly now, the guilt that had to be consuming Wei each day as he retreated more and more into himself. As difficult as it was, Kai Ying understood why Sheng had taken her father-in-law’s place when the police came; Wei would have never been able to survive outside of the villa, much less at a reeducation facility. But why hadn’t Wei told her the truth? Why did he allow her to suffer for over a year, not knowing if there really was a letter, letting her believe that Sheng was the one to jeopardize everything they had? And how was she ever going to forgive a man who would let his pride betray his family?
“I’ve been such a fool,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“My father used to say that the only fool is the man who can’t admit he’s one,” Song said. “Can’t you see Sheng knew what he was doing? It was his choice.”
“And my weakness,” Wei said. “I stood by and allowed him to be taken away in my place.”
“He knew what he was doing,” she repeated.
“I should never have put him in that position!”
“You know nothing about your own son […] and that should be your biggest regret. You’ve lived in the past for so long you can’t see what’s right in front of you. You make a mistake, an unintentional mistake. Who in this life hasn’t crossed that bridge? […] Sheng would never have allowed them to take you. He’s young and strong, he’ll survive.”
Wei told her Sun and Moon had worked for his family ever since they were young women. Before then, they’d been silk workers from the village of Shun-de. When Wei was a boy of nine or ten, Sun and Moon were already middle-aged, and had been working for his family for over twenty years. “They were as different as the sun and moon,” her father-in-law said, and laughed. “There was hardly a time when they didn’t disagree about something. They would have argued about the time of day if they’d had the time!”
When Wei was not yet fifteen, Moon fell ill. Sun devoted herself to taking care of her until she died, six months later, Afterward, Sun stayed on until she became too old, but she was never the same.
For as long as he could remember, his ma ma had always been the one to teach him about what was right and wrong […] Even when he was a very little boy, she reminded him it was important that he always be able to take care of himself. Tao had wondered why, when she and ba ba and ye ye were there to take care of him. “Because there will be a time when we aren’t […] Not now […] “but a very, very long time from now.”
[…] Tao wanted to tell her that he wasn’t ready to take care of himself yet. Instead, he pressed his lips together and held the words in […]—I’m still a little boy and it hasn’t been a very long time like you promised, so why are both ba ba and ye ye gone?
He was secretly happy Suyin was waiting for him after school. She wasn’t so sickly-looking anymore and her skin had cleared. Walking next to her, he realized she was almost as tall as his mother and thin all over. […] She usually wore a dark cotton tunic and pants and he recognized one of his mother’s sweaters that she was wearing.
Tao liked walking home with Suyin; it made him feel older. He liked the way she nodded at him without saying a word, without making a fuss the way Auntie Song did trying to help him with his books or forcing him to put on his jacket as the days grew cooler. Suyin kept things simple and to the point. If he didn’t feel like talking to her, she never pushed.
“Ready to go?” she said.
Tao nodded that he was.
Dongshan appeared different now that she was actually living there, the villas behind the tall walls no longer a mystery. They were filled with families and problems just like in Old Guangzhou. But instead of the multitude of voices screaming all at once from the crowded apartments, there was a quiet seething just below the surface in Dongshan. Upon closer scrutiny, she saw the cracks in the stone walls, the big houses crumbling slowly behind them in need of repair or paint or new tiles. All Suyin’s illusions of grandeur had suddenly disappeared. She would never be the same wide-eyed schoolgirl walking down the street for the very first time, and the thought brought both a sigh of relief and a moment of sorrow.
But rather than remain antagonistic, Wei decided to change his tactics and thanked the clerk politely. “Yes, of course, I understand,” he said, almost cordial.
“I see you’re learning,” Tian had said, leaning in close and teasing him.
It surprised Wei how easy it was to talk to Tian, who had been a stranger to him less than a week ago.
Wei cleared his throat and said, “Have you heard the saying, ‘The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher’? It seems I’ve been the pitcher most of my life. I’ve forgotten how to be fluid. It feels as if I’m finally learning now,” he said.
Tian smiled. “You remind me of my own father,” he said, “although I’m afraid he never did learn.”
For the very first time since Tao had fallen from the kapok tree, she paused in front of it. It seemed as if an entire lifetime had passed in the five months since. […][Now] the tree stood skeletal, the branches remaining bare until […] the spring. […] Although Kai Ying knew it was foolish, she still dared to hope that they would all be together again by then.
Kai Ying stepped closer to the tree. At least let her hear from Wei again soon, she thought. The gash that her father-in-law had left in the trunk was a scar now, slightly deeper in color and hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. Kai Ying’s fingers graced the smooth wound. She thought of it as just another example of nature’s genius; the kapok tree had healed itself.
From the kitchen, she heard Tao’s and Suyin’s voices and smiled.
