栀子花开六瓣头

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A shower in May suddenly stops and cloud clears away soon after it pours down in Beijing.Pushing open the door I step outside and see the shower turns every place muddy. The scene reminds me of the line “I climbed to the hall, sat on the steps, and drank the rain-washed air” in Han Yu’s poem , but the rain-washed air here does not relieve summer’s heat and is short of the faintly sweet smell I remember so well since childhood ---Beijing is a cosmopolitan city without gardenia flower.

I miss the air scented with flowers in May in the south of the lower reaches of Yangtze River: After rain old women quietly sit on the curb of the wet streets, in their front a small towel-covered basket spreading all around an exquisite fragrance that makes you know they are selling gardenia flowers. Occasionally a lady in Ports and carrying a laptop comes over and squads down before a basket to pick one or two flowers and pins them in her hair in a way so elegant and graceful as if she were a beauty painted by a traditional Chinese artist. A flower was sold for 50 cents last year but I don’t know the price this early summer.

In his poem Han Yu depicts the banana leaves are huge and gardenia flowers thick. It is true that gardenia has thick and white flowers, its petals being plump, fair and fragrant as the beauty Imperial Concubine Yang using too much powder and perfume after bath. Scarcity enhances value. Man of the world somewhat slight gardenia for all its generosity with too much fragrance. Thus neither it is put in a vase filled with clean water nor classified as one of the top-grade flowers in florist’s. Sometimes my mother and elder sister take home a number of gardenia flowers and leave them in a water-filled footbath. Huge white and fresh flowers float on the surface of the water and a stronger sweet smell permeates the room at night.

Wang Zengqi, a famous essayist, once commented, “ Gardenia flower is large and thick. Its sweet smell is not gone even if you try to brush it off. As a result literati disdain it for its humble character. In poetry it is not but rarely mentioned just to make readers focus interest on other top-grade flowers. But in the folk ditty in the south of the lower reaches of Yangtze River, gardenia flower always associates with lovesickness:Gardenia flower has six petals when blossoming,My lover asks me to meet him when dusk’s approaching,So hard to pass the rest part of the endless long day,I pull the window, watching how slow the sun is moving.All the flowers I have ever seen are duopetalous rather than monopetalous and each petal smells fragrant.

Once I dropped in a shop and bought a box of cake stuffed with bean paste. One ingredient listed on the wrapping was gardenia yellow. I thought the cake could smell of gardenia’s fragrance but the ingredient turned out to be a man-made colored powder. The fruit of gardenia is a natural coloring matter called gardenia yellow. Anything it dyes is tinged with reddish yellow. In the Han Dynasty thousand of acres of land were planted with gardenia and the clothes that were dyed yellow were innumerable. The fruit I have ever seen with my own eyes is small, flat and elliptical with edges and corners around. It gradually turns golden in late autumn.

Gardenia, inexpensive, delightful and adaptive, roots and easily grows in the vast land and adored by ordinary people. However the flowers Chinese literati favor are attractively thin, delicate, suitable for those who appreciate them when spitting half a mouthful of blood and supported by two maids. In contrast with them gardenia seems shamelessly healthy. But Wang Zengqi expounds his idea in writing “ Gardenia says, ‘Damn you! I just would smell so sweet, pleasantly sweet! It’s none of your damn business! ” What a good scolding gardenia gives.

A few days ago, I visited a neighbor at his invitation to see his potted flowers. One plant that had long green leave but did not come into bud looked familiar but I couldn’t tell its name. My neighbor said, “ It is gardenia.” Obviously I was incompetent in identifying the plant when it was not in bud.

Seeing him cultivating the flowers so finely and carefully, I smiled, remembering the first part of a Chinese proverb: Goods are precious when taken away from their original place. But my smile froze when I remembered the second part: Man is devalued when leaving his hometown.

北京五月, 忽放豪雨, 又霎时云散雨收。我推门出去, 满目泥泞, 是升堂坐阶新雨足, 却缺了一抹记忆中的、淡淡的解暑之香――北京，是一座没有栀子花的城市吧。

但我想念我的江南五月。雨后街道湿漉漉的，老妇人坐在马路牙子上，前面搁一个小篮子，篮子上覆一块干净的湿毛巾，是栀子花，不消叫卖而香扑十里。自有女子蹲下身去，挑一两朵，任是身穿宝姿、手提笔记本，此刻拈花插发的手势也是袅袅婷婷，入得画。去年的价钱还是五毛一朵，今年初夏，我就不知道了。

韩愈诗里芭蕉叶大栀子肥，栀子花也真是腴白，花型大，花瓣肥厚，是肉嘟嘟的杨贵妃，出浴后扑了太多粉和花露水，扑鼻香。稀缺的才是资源，栀子花香得太慷慨，世人就有点看它不上，轮不着它静水插瓶，也不是花店的上宾。我妈妈姐姐有时买几朵回来，不过拿脚盆蓄水养着，大朵白花水灵灵浮在水面上，入夜香得更甚。

汪曾祺说：“栀子花粗粗大大，又香得掸都掸不开，于是为文雅人不取，以为品格不高。”诗词里不过偶一提及，是敬陪末座，江南小调里却有风情：“栀子花开六瓣头， 情哥哥约我黄昏头， 日长遥遥难得过， 双手扳窗看日头。”是相思总与花争发呢。我见过的栀子，全是复瓣的，都是千瓣芳菲。

偶尔去陌生店子买一盒豆沙酥，配料上有栀子黄的名目。我以为能嗅到栀子的清芬，原来是色素。栀子果实是天然染料，染出微泛红晕的黄，叫做栀子黄。在汉代，栀子花一种千亩，染了多少件黄衣裳。我倒是见过栀子果实的，小小扁扁呈椭圆形，一圈都是棱棱角角，秋后渐渐变成金色。

栀子，廉宜，随和，粗生野长在民间。而中国文人喜欢的花，一向要纤细较弱，适合吐半口血，由两个丫头扶着去赏的，因此栀子简直健康得可耻。但汪曾祺替栀子花立言，“栀子花说‘去，我就是要这样香，香得痛痛快快，你们他妈的管得着吗！’”骂得真爽。

前段日子，有邻居约我去他家玩，看他一盆盆的花草。有一盆还没含苞，只是绿叶长长，十分眼熟，他说：“栀子啊。”我居然认不出，可见我没有识花于未开时的巨眼。

看他栽种得这种精细，我微微一笑，想起物离乡贵，再一动念，笑不出来――下句，正是人离乡贱。■