Notes on Buying Flowers
"The flower shop has two cats. One is a ragdoll, with long fur, looking clever; the other is a white cat with a face full of spots. The shopkeeper says they're from fighting."
The flower shop has two cats. One is a ragdoll, long-furred, looking clever; the other is a white cat with a face full of spots. The shopkeeper says they’re from fighting.
In October, Changchun is already full of humans in overcoats, with the occasional down jacket; it is expected that the proportions will soon be reversed. After lunch at noon—nothing more than small wontons—we walked through a nearly empty residential complex, hand in hand, to buy baby’s breath.
The shopkeeper was surprised that Chen only picked green grasses. Seeing us take a stem of fountain grass and a stem of baby’s breath—baby’s breath probably counted as grass in his eyes too—Chen then pointed to the flowers in the cooler one by one and asked about them. Only then did I learn what jasmine looks like. Seeing my surprised, thoughtful look, Chen took down a stem of jasmine and added this small flower to the grass and the even smaller flowers. Pure white and pure green—we should put them in a contrasting-colored vase when we get back.
Perhaps because we had too much free time, the shopkeeper assumed we were humanities students. He praised us endlessly. I immediately put myself in the mindset of an archaeology student, only to realize this was all laying the groundwork to get us to leave a good review on Amap. Heaven have mercy—my phone had long since died; and even if it had charge, I wouldn’t review!
After playing with the cats and admiring the flowers, while the bouquet was being wrapped, the shopkeeper mentioned that a student at Jilin University had recently fallen ill with leukemia, and so university leaders had come to ask him to make a flower basket to bring to the hospital. I sighed at the impermanence of life. Chen daydreamed about opening a flower shop, but the shopkeeper mercilessly punctured her fantasy: if it were so wonderful, why would he still be running it?
Looking at these flowers, I kept thinking of the potted plant I tended in middle school, and thus of Shen Fu and Chen Yun, unable to get them out of my mind. I asked if they had any asparagus fern? The shopkeeper said none in stock, and upon reflection I probably had no time to care for one anyway, not to mention the accumulated dirt in the dorm room was already plentiful enough. So I let it go.
On the way back to school, we kept chatting idly about Zhu Ying and evening fragrance—almost a linguistic-philosophical speculation. As we went out the door, the white cat had gone off to find other cats to fight with.