The fragrance of medicine is everywhere

Author: Xie Zongyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: The gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides) is a gardenia. Many people know its elegant and fragrant scent. But its edible value is probably known to few. In my hometown, Anren County, there is a wild mountain called Gardenia Valley. For some reason, the valley is densely populated with gardenia bushes. Outside the valley, gardenias grow sporadically, scattered here and there. Botanists would surely say the soil and climate in the valley are particularly suitable for gardenia growth. But I prefer to think of it as the flowers gathering together because their interests align. Gardenias usually bloom in late spring. At first, some green buds slowly grow larger. Then one morning, a flower suddenly opens, swaying gently in the morning breeze with its pure white face. The next morning, thousands of gardenias burst into bloom. It's as if they are singing, all waiting for someone to start. The quiet valley suddenly becomes lively with the movement of countless flowers. Eating flowers and drinking dew is something done by immortals, but I don’t know which generation of ancestors in my hometown brought gardenias to the dinner table. A person who eats crabs needs courage, and a person who eats flowers needs poetic sensibility. I heard that one of our ancestors was a talented scholar who passed the imperial examinations, and I suspect it was him. Anyway, ever since gardenias appeared on the dinner table in my hometown, there has been a period every late spring when gardenias became the main dish for the villagers. By the time I was a child, eating flowers was no longer about elegance but simply because there was nothing better to eat. There was only one valley, and everyone competed to gather the flowers, making the supply insufficient. Besides, we didn’t just eat them ourselves; we also took them to the market to sell. Fortunately, not many people wanted to buy them. Most outsiders couldn’t stand the taste and only bought them for novelty. At first, when they heard flowers could be eaten, they eagerly bought some. But after tasting them, they found the flavor too and slightly bitter, so they stopped eating them. Back then, the villagers were so poor that anything that could be sold was taken to the market. Otherwise, why would they endure the hardship if they knew no one liked them? Often, they sold only a little and had to carry the rest back home. They couldn’t bear to throw them away, so they dried them and stored them in jars. During the New Year, when there was meat, they steamed the gardenias with meat. That was quite a delicacy. The blooming period of gardenias lasts about a week, and during that time, all the flower buds on the branches open one after another. So during this period, all the children in the village woke up early, going up the mountain before dawn with baskets. As a child, I was always too excited to sleep and often woke up late. My mother would usually wake me up from my sleep, and I would roll out of bed and stumble outside with a basket. In the dim light, the village was bustling with people, and dogs barked everywhere. Sometimes, I would wake up too late and find everyone had already gone, leaving the village quiet. If I wanted to go up the mountain then, I wouldn’t find many flowers. Because gardenias bloom at night, and the only time to pick them would be the next morning. Disappointed, I would carry my basket back home, throw it in the corner, pout, and complain to my mother a dozen times for waking me too late. I remember the blooming period was often on sunny days with a full moon at night. Sometimes, even without my mother waking me, I would wake up myself, see the bright light outside, and think I had woken up too late. Putting on my clothes and going outside, I realized the moon had deceived me. Returning to the house, I couldn’t fall asleep again, afraid I might not wake up if I really did. So I simply took my bamboo basket and went up the mountain. Under the moonlight, the valley looked like a dream, and the clusters of gardenias seemed like patches of fallen moonlight. On such nights, I felt the flowers in my hands even lighter. In a daze, I wondered if I was picking flowers or gathering moonlight. When my basket was full, it was still dark outside. When I came down the mountain, others were just going up. Someone exclaimed, "Wow! How dare you go up the mountain at this hour? Don’t you fear wolves or ghosts?" My heart sank: Yes, why didn’t I think about this when picking flowers? Since gardenias bloom at night, their centers store some dew. When I pulled the flowers from the stems, I would suck the flower tail with my mouth, and the whole mouth would be filled with a sweet taste. That flavor was unmatched by anything I later tasted in the city. Sometimes, when I picked flowers, I would include the stems too. This naturally slowed down my picking speed, but I didn’t care. I took the stems with the flowers home and gave them to my neighbor, Xiao Qing, to suck. Xiao Qing was three years younger than me and a girl, so she couldn’t go up the mountain to pick flowers. For several years, I brought the stems with the flowers back and carefully pulled the flowers from the stems, giving them to Xiao Qing to suck. I also gave half of the stemless flowers to Xiao Qing’s family for cooking. I thought she would marry me when she grew up. But later, when I was in high school, Xiao Qing was forced by her mother to marry a carpenter. Later, when I went to university and moved to the city, Xiao Qing’s mother regretted it. But I, on the other hand, thought she had done the right thing. It was better to leave a sense of purity. Otherwise, after being "civilized," how could my heart, already twisted and messy, still deserve Xiao Qing’s innocence? I admit I sound a bit sentimental, but it’s better to say I have a head full of twisted knowledge, while she doesn’t. We were not a match. There were so many flowers that we ate them every day. The taste was and slightly bitter, but the fragrance was overwhelming. During this period every late spring, the entire village was filled with the scent of gardenias, and the mountain paths leading to the village were also lingering with the fragrance, much like the poetic phrase "The horse’s hooves carry the scent of flowers as it returns." Even the villagers’ exhalations didn’t smell bad but had a faint grassy aroma. For the villagers, picking and eating flowers had already become a very utilitarian activity. But after eating the flowers, everyone’s mouths were filled with fragrance, and they felt both internally and externally, as if they had a touch of the aura of Taoist sages. Ten years later, I moved from the countryside to the city. One Valentine’s Day, I gave my girlfriend a bunch of roses. That night, I excitedly told her about picking and eating gardenias as a child. But before I could finish, she glared at me and said, "Are flowers meant to be eaten? What a disappointment!" Then she threw the roses I gave her on the ground and left. And because of this, we eventually broke up. The subtext of my girlfriend’s words was that flowers are meant to be looked at and appreciated. But in reality, cutting the branches and bringing them home to place in vases to watch them fade from fresh and beautiful to withered and dry is really a romantic act? I doubt it. We were disappointed by eating flowers, but what about those who eat chicken, duck, and fish every day? From this small incident, I realized that this so-called civilized society is full of hypocrisy, false morality, false romance, and false sentimentality.