This is a story a friend once told me, a story she heard from her friend in Yangzhou—who had supposedly been told by his grandmother.
My friend had never been to Yangzhou, but whenever the place was mentioned, she would always picture scenes from ancient poems: "In the small building, listening to spring rain overnight, tomorrow morning in the deep alley, apricot blossoms are sold." She often imagined women adorned with flowers in their hair, holding flower crowns, whispering softly on bright spring days, weaving hopes for the future.
Every spring, she would go to admire the flowers and insist on buying a fresh flower crown to wear on her head, and the next day, she’d buy another one. The flowers were sold by an elderly woman, her face deeply wrinkled and her hands rough, yet she could weave dense, intricate flower crowns. My friend often wondered why the old woman never made one for herself. Maybe, she thought, the old woman had worn flowers when she was young but no longer had the courage to do so as she aged.
She often reminisced about the words passed down from her grandmother: "Wear flowers in this life, and be beautiful in the next." She wondered, what kind of person would wish for beauty in the next life? Perhaps it was those who felt they weren’t beautiful enough in this life.
From a young age, my friend believed she wasn’t beautiful. She was always too shy to laugh out loud, reluctant to take pictures, and too afraid to wear dresses, thinking that being unattractive meant she was undeserving. She even felt too insecure to show herself in front of others. This mindset accompanied her for many years, trapping her in a cage of self-doubt.
One year, just before the Qingming Festival, she went alone to the mountains to enjoy the flowers. The mountains were covered with tiny white blossoms, and as the wind blew, petals gently rained down from the sky, like a shower of flowers. She gazed at the falling petals and suddenly reached out to pick one, gently tucking it into her hair. In that moment, she felt a lightness she had never experienced before, as if the years of insecurity and confinement had drifted away with the falling petals.
Seeing herself in the mirror with the flower in her hair, she saw a different version of herself. She realized that "wearing flowers in this life, and being beautiful in the next" wasn’t really about seeking outer beauty in the next life. It was an inner awakening, a symbol of self-acceptance in this life. Perhaps, no matter how we look on the outside, everyone can seek their own unique beauty and freedom in their own way.
