Mrs Spring Fragrance

Flowers and plants have an important place in Chinese culture, and individual flowers and plants can have their own symbolic meaning. For example, in the first story, "Mrs. Spring Fragrance," the title character talks about a walk she took that day, where the “daffodils were blowing” and “in the cottage gardens the currant bushes were flowering” (2). While daffodils symbolize a happy marriage, flowering plants and bushes signify infidelity, because the petals become scattered. While the Spring Fragrances do have a happy marriage, Mr. Spring Fragrance comes to worry that his wife is being unfaithful.

The individual meaning that flowers hold is used in “The Wisdom of the New.” When Pau Lin accuses Wou Sankwei of letting Adah Charleston take his heart, he asks his wife how he can speak of Adah in that way: “She, who is as a pure water-flower—a lily” (38). Lilies are considered wedding flowers in China and are given to women so that they may have sons. It is difficult to believe that Wou Sankwei would not have known the importance of what he was saying and the pain it would cost his wife.

In “The Gift of Little Me,” Chee A Tae refers to her missing baby as her “peach bloom” (58).