February Flowers - Couverture souple

After my marriage ends I move to a one-bedroom apartment five blocks from the university where I studied twelve years ago. The greyish building, stuccoed, slanting slightly to the right, is a conversion from a single-family house owned by a grocery store proprietor — now the landlord — and has six units. Mine is on the top but the view is blocked by a forest of half-built commercial high-rises. The landlord wants me to sign a one-year lease, but I have only agreed to a six-month term. I know her apartment building, like other shabby two- to three-storey buildings in the neighbourhood, will be torn down and replaced by another high-rise in less than a year.

I could have lived in the more modern Tianhe District like most of my friends but I like the narrow cobblestone alley in front of the building, where old people gather in the late afternoons under a spreading banyan tree to play mahjong or sing Cantonese opera. Across the alley is another identical apartment block. All its balconies are covered with laundry and flowers such as roses, chrysanthemums, lilies and hibiscus — Cantonese people like flowers and arrange them well, often in window boxes that decorate the streets and houses, bringing a little gentle beauty to the cityscape. Sometimes a middle-aged woman appears on a balcony, yelling in Cantonese at someone in her family to return for dinner.

I wake up every morning to the sounds of my landlord chopping meat bones in her apartment across from mine. She has lived in Guangzhou from birth. She loves to cook and has taught me how to make salt-baked chicken, beef stew clay pot and shrimp wonton noodle soup. On warm days she will prepare cold herb tea and save a cup for me. After trying many different cuisines from many different regions, I have acquired a taste for Cantonese food with its mild flavour and freshness.

On weekends I sometimes go to Shamian Island to read on the beach of the Pearl River. There, all the historical Western-style mansions are well maintained, with their white stone walls, wrought-iron banisters on the balconies shaded by banyan trees, and ornate wooden doors. The sight of them makes me think of the history in the nineteenth century when the Qing Dynasty government allowed European and American businesses to set up a trading zone here. High-rises stretch along both sides of the river. The five-star White Swan Hotel is busier than ever — now a hub for foreigners adopting Chinese orphans. I often encounter white parents on the beach, holding a Chinese baby girl they are planning to take home. Once a couple from Sweden approached me and asked if I could suggest a good Chinese name for their newly adopted baby.

After living in Guangzhou for over ten years, I have begun to fall in love with this city, not just for its amiable weather, but also for the relaxation, generosity, and down-to-earth nature of its people, which wasn’t how I felt when I first came here as a student. A decade has changed the city, and has also changed me in subtle ways that reflect my age and experience. I drawl involuntarily at the end of a sentence when speaking Mandarin — my mother tongue — as a Cantonese would; I start my Sunday mornings with dim sum and cup after cup of tea at a teahouse; I buy an orange tree for New Year and hang red envelopes on its branches to be blessed with good fortune, in accordance with the old local custom. I realise that I am becoming a citizen of my adopted city, adapting and assimilating.

I am an editor at a reference and textbook publisher. The job pays well but to me it is just a job. I go to work at eight, leave at five and never stay late. After work I often stroll to Tianhe Book City next to my office to check out the latest arrivals in the literature section. Some nights I go to a bar or coffee house with my coworkers or old college friends. We talk about work, fashion, politics, the economy, or other subjects that matter or don’t matter to us. Single again, I appreciate their companionship and enjoy spending time with them. But sometimes, when I hear them talking, my mind will stray to completely unrelated thoughts, often too random and brief to be significant — perhaps about a book, a childhood incident or a unique-looking person I just saw on the street. If I let my mind wander, I always end up thinking of Miao Yan, a college friend of mine. I have not seen her for more than ten years. Though for about eleven months we were extremely close — at least I would like to think so — I now feel I know little about her and her life.

One Saturday morning, my mother calls from my hometown, a city in another province.

‘So what do you plan to do?’ she says, after asking about the weather and the cost of living in Guangzhou.

‘I have a good job and a lot of friends.’

‘You aren’t a little girl anymore. You’re almost thirty. A woman your age should be settling down by now.’

‘Ma, I did,’ I say. ‘At least I tried.’

‘You didn’t even tell your father and me until after it happened. If you had just told us and listened —’

‘You just said I’m not a little girl anymore.’ I smile. We have had this conversation a score of times. I know she will never understand no matter how often I try to explain it.

Silence on the other end. Then, ‘A friend of your father’s called him yesterday. His son was just relocated from Beijing to Guangzhou. He’s thirty-four, also divorced. No children. He’s an engineer.’ My mother clears her throat and her voice becomes soft. ‘I think you should meet him.’

‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘I don’t understand —’

‘I’m fine. I can take care of myself. Tell Baba not to worry. Nowadays, no one cares if you’re divorced or not.’ I sit down on the bed and look at myself in the full-size mirror — sleeveless black turtleneck sweater in the latest fashion, whitish low-cut jeans with yellow seams on the sides, dark brown ponytail which is shining in the sunlight from the window, and two big silver earrings dangling above delicate but well-shaped shoulders. I am startled by how much I look like Miao Yan, except for the ponytail.

‘China isn’t America,’ my mother finally says.

‘How’s Baba?’ I ask.

Next day I spend the whole morning cleaning my apartment. Like other big cities, Guangzhou has too many cars and too few trees. If I don’t wipe my desk for two days, a thin film of dust accumulates. While organising my books, I put on the phonograph an old recording of Paganini I bought at an antique store a year ago. I used to play the violin but haven’t done so since I graduated from college. Among the books is a collection of poems from university students, a few of mine included. Even after all these years I still remember some of the poems I wrote then. They tend to have a melancholy tone, obviously written by a much younger woman.

The biggest task is tidying my wardrobe. Even if I changed my clothes twice a day for a month, it would still leave a lot unworn. I got into the habit of shopping in my senior year at university, at first purely for job interviews, but over time it became an indulgence, resulting in my overstocked walk-in wardrobe.
The white box is lying in the corner like an ice cube. It contains a black dress with straps made of shiny material, and a flower-patterned silk blouse. They used to belong to Miao Yan but are mine now. I dust the box and put it back.

In the afternoon I visit the university’s Alumni Admin­istration Office. I am applying for graduate school in the US and need transcripts for my application. As I wait in the lobby for the documents to be signed and sealed, a woman in her early thirties joins me. She is wearing a crimson pants-suit with a pearl necklace, looking as though she has come straight from an interview. She says she needs her transcripts to get to Canada, where she is emigrating with her husband and five-year-old daughter.

‘I’ve been taking cooking classes,’ she says, shrugging like a Westerner. ‘I hear chefs make more money than librarians. Who’d hire me as a librarian in Canada anyway?’

‘Did you study library and information science?’

‘Yes, from eighty-nine to ninety-three.’

‘I was a first-year student in ninety-one,’ I say, thinking about how different the university was back then. Now it is like the centre of the city. The buses to downtown run around the clock and every week a seafood restaurant opens nearby. Students ride their bikes while talking on their cell phones.

The woman walks elegantly to a long table, pours water from a glass jug into a small paper cup, and sips it.

When she sits, I ask, ‘Do you know Miao Yan?’ My heart is pounding suddenly.

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘You were classmates.’

‘Oh, that tall girl! She’s from Sichuan, isn’t she?’

‘No. Yunnan.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ She looks at me with curiosity. ‘How did you know her?’

‘Just coincidence. Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?’

‘Not really. We were never close. She was always on her own. I doubt she was friends with any of her other classmates.’

The administrator calls her name. She stands up, smoothing her jacket and pants. Before going inside she turns abruptly at the door. ‘Now I remember. She moved to the US a few years ago. I don’t know how she did that. Anyway, someone said she met her at a boutique store in San Francisco’s Chinatown last year. Believe it or not, she owned the store.’

I thank her and wish her good luck with the emigration.

That night I can’t sleep. The past fi...

"An exquisitely beautiful book about that uncertain border between girlhood and womanhood, between passion and desire, a country only too familiar to all women. Fan Wu’s story swept me away."
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"A first novel whose psychic terrain is the hinterland between girlhood and womanhood, lust and love, tradition and progress . . . subtle and deftly paced... [it is] ultimately a story about sheer awakening."
—The Observer (UK)

"An original and unforgettable story. Just like the flowers referred to in the title, Fan Wu’s novel is brimming with passion, vitality, and hope. The girls in this book are the daughters and granddaughters of The Good Women of China, and are products of the society both modern, expansive, and communistically introvert."
—Xinran, author of The Good Women of China

"February Flowers enters the past as it was lived, in real-time and without the props of hindsight. . . . Compelling."
—Financial Times (UK)
From the Hardcover edition.