To Bloom in Adversity

“When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.” —Jung Chang 

I read Wild Swans back in Standard 5. I was 11 years old. I read it discreetly because the book was in the adult collection, meaning it wasn't by recommendation that I found it, nor did anyone expect that I would have been interested in reading it.

I was though.


          My mom recommend the book to my eldest sister, if I remember it right. And they had this little book club about it. I was at that time, eager to participate in those whispers and secretive discussion so I thought maybe, maybe if I can prove myself worthy, in some ways I know how (reading difficult books), then I could show them I'm ready for some mature secret talk.

          I didn't expect that reading Jung Chang's work changed me. I started craving for more history sort of reads. It got me hooked on China-based stories. That was the year I started following documentaries about Mao, bought the copy of Private Papers of Eastern Jewel and hid it behind other novels on my shelf.

I cannot describe the exhilaration. It's exactly as quoted in Disney's Mulan:

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.

          Most story couldn't satisfy me as that biography could. Their lives were harsh. Maybe there were others who had experience worse tragedies but it's not those tragedies that made me cling on to the story of their lives. It's the very small sort of happiness that shaped them to become such a treasure to one another.

          I came not even close to that. I would like to think that I can count my blessings in more than tens, while my grief uncountable. Most would have almost the same thing as me.

          But these girls, especially the older generation, it's like of all the millions things people could experience in life, she had one tiny bit of happiness. Just one. Then it passed. But she lived on, grateful for that one.

          I don't know how to quite put what I felt back then or now. I just, it felt like everything I felt up to this point, was just my petty argument against life.

Life may not have been my friend, but I think he was never an enemy.

Now that I've been reminded of that, I'm just feeling... relief.