Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles

Author:Nina Mingya Powles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

Tender Gardens

Seventh Lunar Month

light summer ~ season of scorched hydrangeas

‘The Chinese were in fact very friendly, very nice to each other. Not what you’d expect.’

In the white-gold kitchen, the lights above the table are glinting. Pink and purple sweet peas in a vase on the table flutter in a breeze coming in from the open window. I feel my friend’s body become tense next to mine. I look out the window, because I can’t look at him or anyone else. The heads of blue hydrangeas are swelling and pulsing in the manicured garden. Lily pads tremble on the surface of the hot, brown pond. Dusk is beginning to fall.

I am staying with a close friend and his parents in southern England during the summer. Over breakfast, I had asked his mother about the flowers in her garden: hydrangea, peony, azalea, nasturtium. There are flowers I recognise but don’t know the names of; she points to each one and tells me their names, giving me the vocabulary to write about plants with precision for the first time. Azalea, clematis, dahlia, allium. I recognise that in doing so she is giving me a gift. She notices trees and flowers wherever she goes; she knows all their names. Two years ago, in spring, she visited Hong Kong – her first time in Asia. Hong Kong was so much greener than expected. ‘So much green.’

Her words were partly meant with good intentions, but I don’t know how to carry them within my body. Possible responses circle around my head and I can’t sort through them all. Would she think of my mother as a Chinese? Does she think of me as half a Chinese? If yes, how did she think I would respond? If not, then what am I to her? Instead of asking these questions, I say nothing.

Afterwards, in the car on the drive back to London, my friend pulls over beside a red letterbox – one of many features of the English landscape that seems toy-like, unreal – and presses his forehead against the steering wheel.

When I was last at my own parents’ house, I read a book of theirs called A Field Guide to the Birds of China. On page 18, the beginning of a chapter titled ‘The Avian Year’, the rhythms of certain lines leapt out at me:

China lies north of the equator

And in the long days of the northern summer

The birds are migrants descending in winter

According to the ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar, which is an agricultural calendar, each lunar month can be divided into two jiéqi – solar terms. Each solar term can be divided into three micro-seasons. These micro-seasons mark a single event in the life cycle of plants and animals. This means there are seventy-two small seasons within one lunar year. Every five days brings a new season.

When I first learned about the seventy-two seasons, I obsessively translated and wrote down the most poetic ones I could find. I discovered that I was born during the month

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