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The purpose of a flower party is to view the flowers, and tables for cards or mah jongg are considered in bad taste. Sometimes there is an open-air stage on which actors play the flower classics. At one party I attended, the little children of the house, dressed in flower costumes, danced a flower ballet of their own improvisation. Often someone who reads well is asked to read flower poetry.
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Flower picnics are also popular. The Lins give an orchard party when the fruit trees bloom each year. Friends make up travel parties and go from all over China to admire the azaleas near Ningpo. When the lovely lotus opens her tulip-shaped blossoms in the shallow bays of the water highways, families in every province give boat picnics.
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When I was preparing to attend the first flower festival to which I was invited, my mother-by-affection spoke to me about my dress, “One should honor the occasion by care in one’s costume.” Shun-ko said, “But according to an ancient rule of decorum observed by the refined of heart, it is impolite to outdress the flowers. The flower-party gown should be dainty, clean, delicate in color, and fashioned on simple lines. A new fashion, however lovely, is out of place at a flower’s party. The courteous hostess and her guests remember that it is to celebrate the flowers that people are gathered, and to wear a gown which distracts attention from the blossoms is rude.”
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VI
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I had been abroad for six months. Shortly after my return I needed a length of silk. I went to the place where Shih, the silk merchant, had opened a new shop just before I went away. The place was closed and appeared uninhabited. I made inquiry and I was told that he had gone back to his old address, where his father and his grandfather before him had done business.
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I found him there. When I had made my selection and my bargain, over a cup of tea, I asked why he had left the Big Horse Road. He replied that it was not a good location.
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“It is such a prominent place,” I said in astonishment.“Didn’t you find that you had more customers there than here?”
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“A merchant,” he informed me, “lives the major part of his life with his customers. The place was too prominent. Many came in just because it was convenient. They had long purses and they paid, but money is not everything.”
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The merchant’s son, a boy of fourteen and heir to the business, further enlightened me. “This place is better for the future of our house,” he said. “On the Big Horse Road there was one who came who let the breath of February blow in on a flowering plum tree which we had set on the counter for the delight of gentlefolk.”
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VII
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I had lost my way and I had need to ask a policeman for direction. I drew my car up to the curb and waited. The policeman was occupied. Dressed in the splendid uniform copied from the city of San Francisco in which the American-educated governor of the town had clad all his republican police, this one was busy. Using his teapot as a watering can, he was watering the phlox which he had placed around his stance on the modern concrete road.
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When he had finished, he gave me the information I requested. But before he signaled the permission for me to move on into the traffic he made a statement and asked a question: “There is no day in the year when flowers fail to bless China with their lovely charm,” and, “Is this also so in the Outer World?”
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Notes
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all peoples, all races or nations; the persons who make up all the different races or nations of the world.
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Hopei province，河北省．
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in their season, at the proper time; at the time when rain should have fallen.
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parched, dried and shiveled up.
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beige, natutral brown color.
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artificially irrigated plots, small areas of ground which the farmers had watered or irrigated with water drawn from wells, hence by artificial and not natural means.
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hamlets, small groups of cottages in the country.
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ledge, narrow horizontal surface projecting from a wall or cliff or other vertical surface.
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pack coolies, burden carriers who pack or carry the bundles on their backs.
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inland produce, agricultural or natural products from the interior of our country.
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foreign export, sending out to foreign countries.
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containers, baskets or bags holding or containing the produce that were carrying.
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