It was really hard to express my feeling when I was reading this sentimental story by a Chinese writer Xi Xi. The story is to examine the world from a feminine perspective
“A woman like me is actually unsuitable for any man’s love”. I am a curious cat, so for the first sentence of the story I wander that what kind of woman she is and why she is unsuitable for a man’s love. The entire story is full of sadness and desperation, indicating that the narrator cannot escape her Fate of love. After reading it, I always ask myself should we bend to our Fate?
The story depicts that a woman is sitting in a café and waiting for her boy friend Xia to show her working place. However, the mood of the narrator is too complex. Because her job is not as same as Xia assumed at first. She is a cosmetician, not for the bride but for the dead, which is unacceptable for the common people, even for Xia. It is the very time that she decided to tell him the truth. The conflict in her mind tortures this sensitive girl. She knows well that when she gives away this secret, she will lose her beloved friend just like her Aunt Yifen who lost her boy friend after telling him the horrified job. Yet, if you really love a person, you will choose to tell him the truth. Apparently, she has fallen in love with Xia deeply, and cannot help controlling her feeling and telling truth to him, which becomes the rooted reason of her sadness and dilemma. In this sense, she has to tell Xia what kind of her job she takes.
The conflict does not only exist in the woman’s inner soul, but also exists in the outer world where the narrator describes as a dog-eat-dog world. For a woman like her, sensitive and sentimental, the world for her is a tragedy. Her job could not be respected and understood. Ironically, everyone needs it for his or her final chapter at large. Maybe for this reason, no one wants to make friends with one who always contacts with the death, for they are afraid that she will bring doom.
I think that the moment when the narrator decides to take Xia to her working place, she begins to lose him. The scene when she is waiting for him in café reminds me of a famous drama Waiting for Godto. The meaning of such waiting is meaningless. Godto will never appear, and Xia’s love will withered as well. When she disappoints with this world and loses the confidence with her friend, she has to shift her emotion to those sleeping friends. Only in recounting her feeling to the death could she gain the peace of mind and forget the fickly world. She is another Aunt Yifen. The narrator always says. In this sense, she has to follow the step of her aunt, and her aunt’s unfulfilled love also implies that it is a forlorn hope to regain the love from Xia once he knows the truth. Flower, the beautiful thing, symbolizes the different meaning for the two persons. For Xia, it means eternal love; while for the narrator, it means eternal parting.
