Farewell to Spring

Of all the wild flowers in Yanyuan, the campus of Peking University, the most luxuriant would be the February orchids. They are originally very fragile, with delicate stems and plain, tiny flowers. Yet, after blossoming into an expanse, they become the dominant color of spring. Each February in our lunar calendar, they push through the earth and leap into an amplitude of both dark and pale purple, mysteriously nebulous. They creep around houses, alongside roads and ditches, and seem to immerse and season everything. Whenever, there is a breeze, their flowery surface would ripple out, its shades of purple twirling and rolling, as if aspiring to reach further out.

No one had ever planted the flower, but it flourished year after year. During my childhood living on the campus of Qinghua University, it took up the space around our house and the ban of the creek nearly. People did not care about it, nor did it long for their concern; it just kept on blossoming. Its constant changing shades of purple threaded through several decades of my life, with only the exception of a few years in Kunming when it was replaced by the white osmanthus. My life afterward has been bound to Yanyuan, where the February orchid has always maintained its presence in the radiance of spring.

People rarely go near Edgar Snow’s grave behind the hill, so the place has become the domain of the February orchid. The flowers swarm from the roadside to the slope, and among the trees. The strip that has a dark shade invites toning down, another patch looks almost pale white. The fair petals stand out in relief among the darker ones forming tiny bright spots, while the dark expanse gradually shades off in self-restraint. I do not usually frequent this trail, but in the spring I would always go there a few times to see my tiny friends.

As a matter of fact, there is a large stretch of February orchids near my house. The gardens of my neighbors are all unique each in their own way. Some have brought tulips back from Holland, some have transplanted flowers and grass from nearby nurseries. The owner of one house does not tend to his garden because he is old and his son and grandson live abroad; this provides the February orchid an opportunity to flourish unchecked. When spring comes, it grows into a thick carpet o flowers against a wall of pines. The tiny flowers squeeze into the crevices of the pines and even the staid trees seem to smile down at them indulgently.

“How profusely do they blossom!” I murmured to myself. At the back of my house, when spring comes round, they dominate both sides of a meandering stone-paved lane which leads to my back window. Though not a big patch, they cheerfully emanate the radiance of spring. Unexpectedly, some one came once to clean up the yard and burned the withered grass according to regulations. The February orchids disappeared the next spring. They could not stand regulations. The weeds, on the other hand, continued to grow like mad. I wanted to write to the February orchids, asking them to come back to their native garden. Of course there was nowhere to send such a letter. I transplanted a few stalks from nearby, but it didn’t work.

Many people do not know what the February orchid looks like; even its pictures in Chinese textbooks look like the classic orchid. The orchid has always been known as the “gentleman” among flowers, with its elegance and faint aroma. The February orchid shares the word “orchid,” otherwise it has nothing in common with the “gentleman” orchid, and it does not aspire to kinship. It simply creeps out of the earth in silence, adorning the spring, then fades away unnoticed. Once I asked an art student to draw this wild flower, and suggested that it be done in water color in an impressionist style. The young man gave me a sketch of a lone February orchid in bloom and added on a “postmodern” touch—a battered bamboo basket on the side.

“This is not typical of the February orchid,” I commented in my heart. February orchids come in droves. Frail an lowly, they nevertheless shimmer and shine with a life force which overwhelms the beholder. And they bloom on stubbornly, something which I did not realize until this last spring.
Ill and lazy, I had not ventured out for quite some time. Spring flowers of various kinds come and go quickly, so I had missed some of them. Yet the February orchids had stayed on, as if waiting to ask me: “Are you better?”

Later, after another bout of illness, I walked into the garden one day. Suddenly my eyes meet an expanse of green which had see no flowers, but green extending to the wall of pines, like an immense painting now rolled over to be stored for the coming year. I know spring is over.

Pacing up and down in the world of green, I suddenly realize the loyalty and tenacity of the February orchid. It begins to blossom with the first tender breath of spring when “the maiden of thirteen first learns to embroider,” and lasts until late in the season when drizzles and gusts of wind bring on melancholy. It greets spring, ushers it in and sees it off. When the February orchids finally disappear, I know that spring is over.

Everyone likes to welcome spring. Who would like to send it away? The loyal and tenacious February orchid does not reject this task.