In the spring of 1923, Chinese fringe flowers bloomed in Qingxi Town like a thin blanket of snow. While washing clothes by the stream, Shen Jingtang, an adopted daughter, met a stranger from Beiping. He told her that the indigo on her hands came from dyer's knotweed, that the birthmark on her wrist wasn't a birthmark, and that her parents had not died in a fire.
Overnight, her past became a mystery, her marriage a trap, and her life a piece on someone else's chessboard.
From the watery towns of Jiangnan to the Shanghai Bund, from the cellar of a dye house to a prison in the French Concession, she learned to dye cloth, shoot a gun, and lie. She also learned to love someone. Someone took a bullet for her, someone went mad for her, and someone planted a Chinese fringe tree behind her, saying, “When the flowers bloom, I'll come back.”
This is the story of a woman who waited twenty-three years for spring.
The sentences are vivid and the story is exciting, waiting for updates [Thoughts] He stood between the two of them, his tone as stiff as a brick thrown at them. So apt 👍