Orchid

Wuhan, China. Capital of Hubei province and often cited as the Chicago of central China, it's a vast city with buildings as high as the expectations of the millions of people who call it home. A little over ten million, if you must know, as of 2011. Six and a half million if you want to be picky and exclude those not in the urban centre of the city. But that's not why we're here, is it? Nitpicking won't get you very far in life, nor will excluding people on the basis of just where in the world they are from or where they’re living now. That approach is more than a little childish, don’t you think?

As the centre of politics, economy, culture, finance, education and transport for all of central China, it's come a long way considering it didn't exist until 1927, not as Wuhan at least. Up until then it was three separate cities; Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankou. See where Wuhan comes from now? See, in 1927 China was in the middle of the great revolution and the KMT party (that’s Kuomintang, the more you know after all) selected Wuhan as it’s new capital as it shifted it’s attention from the Pearl River basin to the Yangtze River basin; one of the two rivers running through Wuhan. The number of wars fought in and around Wuhan and all their details are enough to write books on. Several people have, actually. Compounding it in to just a few short paragraphs would be a mean feat. The three cities had seen multiple power struggles over the time they had existed; from the third century battle of the three kingdoms to as recently as the troubles in the late sixties, it’s a city born from chaos, rebellion and open war. Despite all these past troubles, it has risen to prominence and kept it’s head above the water when it would have been oh so easy to go under. It’s inhabitants still feel the effect of the past though, still see smaller struggles in their every day life. They grow strong there though; strong and maybe just a little fabulous. What more do you expect of city dwellers? They’re either going to be soulless or magnificent. With three and a half thousand years of being torn down and rebuilt, the citizens of Wuhan fall in to the former.

It’s not just the way Wuhan came about though that makes it such an outstanding city, nor is it just the current state of international and national importance tied up in one city. It’s the geography, it’s the climate and, most importantly, it’s the people too. You'd be surprised at how hot it is, especially considering all the rivers and lakes cutting in to the city's landscape. Atually, it’s earned itself a reputation as one of the three furnaces of China. It's humid and it's unforgiving; summer is impossible if you don't grow up there. Though, the spring and autumn aren’t so bad and winter is fairly mild. Or at least it isn’t inclined toward heavy snow. Summer calls for as many fans as you can find, as little clothing as is legal and socially acceptable and trying to avoid moving if at all possible. Cold drinks are your best friend and come night time, it would be insanity to consider anything more than the thinnest sheet you can lay your hands on.

Why the history lesson though? What’s the point in going to all the trouble of understanding one city out of millions across the world? Well, Wuhan is the birth place to this story’s protagonist and the start of said story. Surely a little background is important in a setting like this, right? We’re going off track though; let’s try putting ourselves in to a memory, in to the shoes of someone else.

April, nineteen eighty six. In all honesty, history records nothing all that remarkable happening in this month. Later in the year, Wuhan would be twinned with Manchester, foreign students would start to enter university campuses and the city would see itself named a city of historical and cultural importance by state council, but other than that? It was a fairly quiet year overall. One thing that did happen though; a child was born. Sure, at first the child was deemed just one of many others, but time would prove them wrong. This child would go on to be something special. Zhou Mi, or Mimi to those closer to him, was (in the eyes of many) the perfect baby; he slept through the night, wasn’t all that sickly, wasn’t a fan of crying and didn’t seem overly curious about items clearly put out of his reach for a reason. But maybe that was the problem; he was too quiet, too well behaved and just not curious enough. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong per se, just that he was just…a little odd. His parents would learn to miss this quiet baby as he grew older, matured and moved on in to things a little more interesting.

Zhou Mi was born to break hearts.

As a young child, the city was something of a haven. Going back as an adult, he would see the things he used to miss; the chains under tables that kept bags, the locks on taxi doors, the way people would tighten their grasp on their possessions in busy places. The subtle things that didn’t trigger too many suspicions in the innocents, the problems and the bitterness that took the sparkle out of the world. All he saw were the bugs floating in the hazy breeze as people rushed here and there, darting from shadow to shadow or lazing in an oppressive heat at the height of long, uncomfortable summers. Then there were the blaring horns as traffic built up at the end of the day and people tried to make their way home, either under their own steam or in one of a million different vehicles. Night markets had this habit of almost bursting at the seams with too many new smells and the crush of bodies surging for whatever deal they could get their hands on; a kind of chaos that Zhou Mi would later thrive on, rule even. The soft breeze as leaves and petals fell, a little too old to hold on to trees much longer. The snap in the air and the sting of the first snowfall, turning in to ice overnight and crunching underfoot as he clung on to a slender hand, keeping him from ending up on his bottom. Little things were magical when seen in the eyes of the youth. Isn’t that always the way though? Children have a habit of seeing the world through rose tinted glasses, no matter how many times the adults in their lives try to take them way. They don’t want to lose that way of seeing things; nobody wants to end up jaded after all. The best memories are built when you see the world through children’s eyes, the greatest things are realised with their purity of thought and what they say or do will stay with you forever. They end up creating points for you to go back to, memories and images to latch on to when times are hard and the idea of living in the present is just oh s painful. You create your own too, growing older gives you a different perspective, different positives to focus on, though none of these checkpoint memories are any less important than any others. Some will always stand out a little more than others though.

Like the orchid growing in the kitchen window, a little above the sink. It’s pot balances precariously and it tilts right over, out in to the wild world to be beaten at by the elements. If you asked him, he would say he didn’t remember seeing the awful things that happened outside that window when he thought back on it. All his mind eye can see are the large, flat green leaves that glow when the sun hits them at just the right angle. So thin and so delicate, just like the pretty white and purple petals that seems to hang on for dear life, ready to drop from those delicate stems without a moment’s notice. It was always a fragile looking plant, small and dejected when he brought it. He had been with his mother, days before starting school full time. She had insisted that it was on the very edge and there was no point, but he begged and made wild promises. About how he would be the best in his class, top student in the whole school and maybe even the city when he was a little bit older. He swore blind he would always work harder than the rest of the boys and girls and make Wuhan even more famous one day, if she would just buy that one little plant that everyone else over looked. The one plant nobody else wanted.

She caved in the end; she always did when it came to her little gentleman. He was diligent and attentive; learning how to prune the dead bits of the plant and making sure it had enough water, enough room, the right light and occasionally food. It gave off the sweetest of scents when it recovered, coming back from the knife’s edge to flower and grow almost a little too quickly. No, if he though about it carefully, it wasn’t quite the sweetest scent, but one of the sweetest. The woman who taught him and helped him care for it so diligently will always have the sweetest scent. It’s unmistakable, though; an orchid can only smell one way in this memory, just like the waxy leaves and how soft the petals were to the touch. Almost like silk. The whole plant seems to quiver in the midday heat, forever thirsty and forever being tended to by the long, delicate white hands of a housewife who has seen one too many wrongs in the world, seeking some semblance of escape. In this memory, the small boy sitting at a kitchen table is its greatest worshipper, although he is supposed to be paying attention to his homework as his mother will remind him on more than one occasion that evening alone. He’s just a boy though and he’s still firmly holding on to those rose tinted glasses, no matter how often he’s told by an often absent father figure that the world is a cruel place. It must be cruel though, mustn’t it? Otherwise there would be more family time and his father wouldn’t have to work so much. The idea that there are terrible people in the world who look to harm others for the fun of it wouldn’t cross a child’s mind. In fact, pain doesn’t enter this child’s world at all. His father insists the mother mollycoddles him, but she insists that his standards are too high. That a child needs to be allowed a childhood and shouldn’t grow up too quickly. Wouldn’t they rather have their son happy and stable than all too aware and paranoid? Besides, it was time to eat and discussion about their perfect, little gentleman would have to wait until he went to bed.

That orchid would grow up with the boy; off cuts going to friends he met along the way. Although the plant never left it’s windowsill, it would still manage to travel the world. There were so many people it went to, most of the child plants didn’t last all that long, but some of them he would stumble across years later, the owners coming back in to his life in ways he never expected.

There was the slightly older boy, part of a school exchange from Mundanjiang, with a love and talent for dance that he had never seen before. Their passion and knowledge was an inspiration to anyone, especially to someone who had never really experienced something all consuming before. Mimi would lose their name among the many others over the years, but he would never forget that sparkle in their eyes or the way their every feature came to life when you got them on to the subject they loved the most. Zhou Mi was not a natural dancer, despite their attempts to teach him during the time the family hosted him. They said it was confusing; he held himself with all the pride and grace of someone who could dance, but he was just so awkward when he tried to do anything much beyond posing. He wasn’t utterly hopeless, but he was just a little too gangly by then. The summer that year was exceptionally foul; thunderstorms were an almost daily occurrence and leaving the home was almost impossible most days, but the bond they formed in those few short weeks would not be utterly forgotten.

And then there was the pretty girl with the violin from a music school in Sichuan who came to meet one of the upper classmen. She had been so young and looked so delicate, but yet her talent was unlike anything he had seen or heard before. And it wasn’t just the violin either, it was her voice! Oh, her voice…it was something sent from the heavens, he was so sure of it. She made him sing for her once and told him that he needed to sing more. Apparently she thought he had the prettier voice, but he denied it. How could he possibly have the prettier voice when she sounded like an angel? It was obscene, blasphemy even! And yet she insisted on him joining her vocal lessons at least once a day, often claiming she wouldn’t sing for him again if he didn’t grant her this one little request. He didn’t forget her words when she left, the upper classman going with her, but instead he pursued more of a musical direction, much to his parent’s delight. They had seemed a little offended that h had spent so little time on this one subject. Without that one girl, he may well have never sung in public.

Then there was the grandmother who lived below them and liked to cook for him on weekends when mama needed a break. She smelt of lavender and liked to hug him for a little too long in his eyes, but she made the most wonderful mianwo, not that the boy was really meant to have it that often. He would go to her after school most days to be tutored, though they probably didn’t spend as much time on it as they should have done. Maybe it was lucky he was brighter than he acted. It wasn’t just the sweet treats and the tutoring though, it was her past. The grandmother had been young starlet in her early twenties, until she married. She had been a beautiful, elegant young woman only ever seen in the most exquisite designs by the highest rated fashion houses. Retiring from the public eye, her name fell in to obscurity but her knowledge did not fade in the slightest. Mimi’s eye for the right cut and fixation with the right kind of label could clearly be traced back to her.

Little shoots, hand picked from the delicate plant went with these people and many others when they left his world, much as he would take his own off shoot from the mother plant when he left his mother’s side eventually, though it wouldn’t be for many years yet. Though he didn’t always remember the names, the faces would stay with him forever. The impact they had would change his life for the better in so many ways. In fact, it was the grandmother that encouraged him to go to Beijing; I’m sure you can guess how well that went down when it was first proposed. However, at sixteen, Mimi was headstrong and determined. He had his mind made up and short of locking him in his room there was no stopping him.

The Orchid is considered by the Chinese to be symbolic of the innocence of childhood and refinement. Most of the child plants would wither and die long before the parent plant sitting on that window sill would. Bitterness and age would cut off the inner child for so many, but for the boy who was eternally fascinated with it, that purity would last longer than most. The parent plant would thrive so long as he kept his rose tinted glasses. Coincidence? Maybe it was, or maybe it’s more than just a symbol of innocence. It’s hard to say with some things.

AUTHORS NOTE

Okay, so I took a few artistic liberties with timing and background and so on in regards to mentioning Liyin and Hangeng. Obviously I don't own anyone and I'm not making any money off of this (mores the pity). It's all unbetaed, so all mistakes are entirely down to me not checking enough.

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Orchid

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