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
The train arrives in Luoyang just after dawn. As Wei steps down, he notices the dry, cold, mountainous terrain. He pulls his padded jacket tighter around himself. Tian descends behind Wei, scanning the platform with desperate hope in his eyes. For a second, Wei hopes that Ai-li will appear, bringing a happy resolution to Tian’s sad tale. But of course, she doesn’t. Tian leads Wei to the street.
It seems that both Wei and Tian are romantics at heart, and neither can give up all hope that Tian will get a fairy-tale happy ending. But, of course, they live in a world where bad things happen all the time and people must learn to muddle through as well as they can on their own—or with the support of their chosen families.
Themes
Luoyang has been a place of darkness and desolation in Wei’s imagination, so he is surprised to discover that it’s just a city like any other. A woman, passing by with her child, makes him homesick for Tao and Kai Ying. Tian takes Wei to a noodle shop, ordering for him because he struggles to follow the sing-song tones of the local Mandarin accent. Tian learned Mandarin when he moved to Luoyang years earlier.
Wei expected Luoyang to be a hellish, nightmare landscape but it is a town like any other, suggesting that bad things happen everywhere, and the Communist Party’s abuses reach every corner of the country they control. The differing accents remind Wei of just how far he has traveled from home. But the care Tian shows towards Wei softens Wei’s loneliness just a bit, highlighting that the nourishing relationships of family can be found or forged in many ways and places.
Themes
After lunch, Tian takes Wei to the public security bureau to ask about Sheng. Wei once again feels overwhelming gratitude for Tian, who did not judge him harshly about the letter or Sheng taking the blame. Many people wait at the bureau. At the counter, Clerk Hu gives Wei a form to fill out and tells him to return the next day; it will take time—days, weeks, maybe even months—to locate Sheng’s file. Wei tries unsuccessfully to intimidate the clerk until Tian guides him from the office. By the time they arrive at Tian’s old boardinghouse, it’s cold and dark. Wei teeters on the edge of despair, trying not to think too far into the future, trying to concentrate on just the very next step. He falls into a deep, dreamless sleep on his narrow cot.
To redeem himself, Wei needed to take on the difficult journey to Luoyang alone—to show Kai Ying and Sheng that he feels sorry for what happened and also to prove that they can trust him to fulfil his responsibilities to the family going forward. But his isolated and sheltered life leaves him unprepared for the task he set himself. Luckily, he has Tian as a guide and support while he develops the strength to take care of himself. Wei’s journey to Luoyang thus highlights the necessity of movement to a person’s growth, as well as the necessity of relationships to support a person through life.
Themes
