Feast of Flowers

The early morning of March was still chilly. From a dilapidated small building came the sounds of chopping vegetables, the sizzling of frying dough, and a woman's shrill voice scolding her child.

Hua Jin pushed open the door. A boy in a blue school uniform and carrying a backpack stood in the hallway with his head bowed. He didn't even look up when he heard the door open. The woman who was yelling, however, saw Hua Jin come out and smoothed her messy, curly hair. "Xiao Hua, going to work so early?"

Hua Jin exchanged a few pleasantries with her. Qin Jie kept pulling at her hair and the frayed edges of her sleeves. Her child stood silently beside her, like an inconspicuous potato.

Noticing Hua Jin's gaze on her child, Qin Jie paused in smoothing her hair and began to list the child's shortcomings.

"Qin Jie," Hua Jin interrupted her, checking her phone, "I'm going to miss the subway. Talk tomorrow." She quickly walked downstairs. The motion-sensor lights in the stairwell didn't flicker once with her hurried footsteps.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she heard Qin Jie start scolding her child again.

Hua Jin finished breakfast at a roadside stall. As she walked out, she saw Qin Jie's son walking slowly towards the roadside, his head drooping. He walked so slowly, like a snail reluctant to crawl out of its shell.

The street was jammed with cars, carrying a sense of listlessness in the gray morning, a weariness that nonetheless had to struggle for life.

"Be careful," Hua Jin quickened her pace, grabbed the boy's backpack strap, and pulled him back. At that very moment, a car turned the corner, only two or three steps away from the child.

The little boy looked up at Hua Jin, his expression dull and bewildered. After a long moment, he whispered, "Thank you, Sister Hua Jin."

"You're welcome." Hua Jin smiled. What woman in her twenties wouldn't like being called "sister" by a child?

"Pay attention to the traffic when you walk. Safety is important." Hua Jin straightened the boy's upturned collar and watched him leave. Then, rubbing her slightly aching knee, she turned and walked in the opposite direction.

In this bustling city, no one could stop. They wanted to survive, to take root here, to have a better life. Some came, some left, but the city always stood here, becoming more and more prosperous, the city of dreams for countless people.

Getting off the crowded subway, Hua Jin saw a street performer. The hurrying pedestrians had no time to stop. Hua Jin fumbled in her coat pocket, pulled out some change, and put it in the box in front of the performer.

"Thank you," the little girl performing whispered her thanks.

She was a young girl with a baby face, her eyes clear and full of hope. Hua Jin put her hands back in her coat pockets and smiled gently. "You're welcome. Many people are rushing to work in the morning, so they can't pay attention to other things."

She pointed to the staff walking towards them. "It seems that street performances aren't allowed here. Why don't you find another place?"

Although she was just performing for a living, the girl was grateful to Hua Jin for gently calling it a "talent show." She gave Hua Jin a grateful smile.

Hua Jin returned the smile and followed the crowd out of the subway station.

Shivering in the cold wind, she hurried towards her workplace.

"Xiao Hua Hua," Tan Yuan greeted Hua Jin, opening the door from inside. "It's windy today. Are you cold?"

"Not really." Hua Jin rubbed her hands, took off her coat, folded it, and put it in the locker. Then she tidied up the shop. The shop was filled with embroidery and lacquerware, many of which were exquisite pieces handcrafted by Tan Yuan's parents and served as the shop's signature attraction.

The two elders didn't manage the shop much anymore, so Tan Yuan was the boss, and she was more or less the second-in-command. They got along quite well.

"I received a custom order for a carp embroidered ornament last night. You know I'm not good at carp embroidery, so I'll have to trouble you with this." Tan Yuan slumped back onto the table and yawned lazily. "Young people these days are obsessed with worshipping koi and pandas. There are so many interesting embroideries in our Shu embroidery circle, but these two are the most popular."

She turned to look at Hua Jin, who was carefully wiping a koi playing with lotus fan screen, as if it possessed some mystical power that could bring wealth.

"Shh," Hua Jin placed the fan screen carefully and turned to Tan Yuan. "Xiao Tang Yuan, the mystical power of the koi is something a mundane person like you can't comprehend."

"Yes, yes, yes," Tan Yuan nodded. "Actually, you shouldn't be called Hua Jin. You should be called Hua Jin Li (Hua Koi)."

"If the police wouldn't mind the trouble, I'd rather change my name to Hua Jin Li Xiong Mao (Hua Koi Panda). Cat and fish, auspicious!" Hua Jin sat down on a chair. Their shop was small, but it was exquisitely decorated and had a certain style.

Custom-made items were more expensive, all hand-embroidered, using the best colored embroidery threads and Shu brocade. Unfortunately, in modern life's fast pace, few people were willing to spend a lot of money on custom embroidery. To keep up with the times and escape poverty, they also sold small Shu embroidery-style pendants, lucky bags, scarves, shawls, and other items.

Some artistic young people were willing to spend some money on these traditional art pieces, buying them as accessories.

For many ordinary people, they didn't care whether the embroidery they bought was Shu embroidery, Xiang embroidery, Su embroidery, or Yue embroidery. As long as it was beautiful and the price was right, they might buy it. Hua Jin and Tan Yuan were well aware of this. To run the shop well, they had to keep up with the times aesthetically while preserving the characteristics of Shu embroidery.

Tan Yuan's parents were traditional artisans. They didn't understand what "keeping up with the times" meant, but with the increasing number of young customers in the shop, they didn't say much.

Hua Jin sat at the embroidery frame, working on the unfinished "Fame and Fortune" piece. Tan Yuan lit incense in the shop, adding a touch of antiquity.

Embroidering in the shop not only aroused customers' curiosity but also made them believe that the items were hand-embroidered, not machine-made and then sold at high prices under the guise of hand embroidery.

In recent years, with the renewed interest in traditional art among some young people, some unscrupulous businesses had started selling "feelings," touting ordinary machine-embroidered pieces as hand-embroidered, deceiving some customers into thinking that traditional embroidery was nothing special.

Tan Yuan's mother, Gao Shulan, who was also Hua Jin's master, often sighed helplessly about these things. However, the world was vast, and many things wouldn't change because of one person's will. The only thing they could do was to stay true to their original intentions and imbue each piece they created with its unique character.

There were usually no customers between eight and nine in the morning. Hua Jin embroidered for a while, then heard footsteps at the door. Looking up, she saw a middle-aged man in a grayish-white coat standing outside, peering in. His neck was drawn in, his arms hanging unnaturally behind his back. He looked nervous.

Putting down her needle, Hua Jin got up and went to the door. "Welcome! Please come in and take a look if you need anything."

The man forced a smile. Hua Jin noticed him wipe his hands on his trousers before stepping lightly into the shop. He moved cautiously, as if afraid of damaging the floor or the items in the shop.

His eyes scanned the shop. Seeing that Hua Jin wasn't staring at him, he continued to look around. The shop had fashionable yet retro handbags, exquisite Shu embroidered high heels, round fans, ornaments, capes, hats—everything imaginable, even a miniature phoenix coronet and wedding robes.

"Do you… sell quilt covers?" the man asked in accented Mandarin, turning to Hua Jin. "The kind of red dragon and phoenix quilt cover."

In this day and age, quilt covers came in a wide variety of patterns, and machine embroidery could satisfy all sorts of demands. A hand-embroidered dragon and phoenix quilt cover was not only time-consuming and laborious to make but also considered old-fashioned by many. Even newlyweds didn't use them anymore, so the shop naturally didn't stock them. "Sorry, we don't have dragon and phoenix quilts."

The middle-aged man didn't seem surprised by Hua Jin's answer. He nodded and turned to leave.

"Please wait a moment." Seeing the man sweating profusely even in the March weather, Hua Jin turned and poured him a glass of water from the water dispenser. "Do you really need a dragon and phoenix quilt?"

The man was dressed rather shabbily and felt out of place in such a well-decorated shop. Seeing the pretty shopkeeper pour him water, he thanked her profusely, embarrassed. His eyes were filled with sorrow, and wrinkles lined his dark forehead. His rough hands, holding the paper cup, trembled slightly.

Perhaps he had been distressed for a long time, and seeing a kind stranger, he felt the urge to confide.

"More than twenty years ago, when I married my wife, I told her that when we had money, I would buy her a dragon and phoenix quilt. But all these years, we've been working hard to pay for our child's tuition, house repairs, and my parents' medical bills. Now she's seriously ill, and I remember all the promises I made to her that I haven't kept." The man in his forties squatted on the ground, covering his face with one hand and sobbing. He didn't look good crying, and the frayed edges of his long-sleeved shirt peeked out from under his coat.

"I'm a good-for-nothing, useless and cowardly…" the man's voice was hoarse. "I finally managed to scrape together some money to bring her to the city for treatment, but the doctor said it's terminal cancer. How could this happen, how could this happen…"

His face weathered, he recounted his wife's virtues, how useless he was, and how he had searched all over the city but couldn't find the dragon and phoenix quilt his wife wanted.

Seeing a grown man cry like this, Tan Yuan looked helplessly at Hua Jin, but Hua Jin was looking down, and she couldn't see her expression.

"From your accent, you must be from a southwestern city. Maybe we're even from the same hometown," Hua Jin looked up and handed the man a tissue. "If you really need it, I can make one for you."

The red dragon and phoenix wedding quilt was once a popular item in Shu embroidery.

All sorts of misfortunes happened in the world. Seeking treatment for illness was common sense for most people. But ordinary people probably didn't know how difficult it was for a poor family to bring a seriously ill family member to a big city for treatment.

Feelings and humanity were sometimes fragile in the face of money. It was precisely because of this that simple emotions were so precious.

ʕ◉ᴥ◉ʔ

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