Troy Terwilliger’s Reviews > Snow Flower and the Secret Fan > Status Update

The Taipings swept Southern China, capturing the city of Nanjing in 1853 and making it their "Heavenly Capital" for over a decade. However, the movement imploded from the inside due to internal corruption and paranoia among its leadership. The traditional Chinese gentry and elite—alienated by the Taipings' anti-Confucianism—united with regional imperial armies and Western forces to crush the rebellion in 1864.

Lily is being really condescending… social comparison… social dominance orientation…

As they say, “a miserly woman always nurses revenge.”

Both Lily and Snow Flower being born under the Sign of the Horse is everything in this book. In Chinese folklore, Horses are famously independent, energetic, high-spirited, and—most importantly for these two—stubbornly headstrong.

They are talking about choosing fabrics and threads—tools they will use for their nu shu writing and embroidery. Snow Flower says this, she is inviting Lily into a lifetime of shared creation. In their culture, embroidery and secret writing are how women record their histories, sorrows, joys. By “making memories," Snow Flower is treating every stitch and word they share as a permanent monument to their love.

In their world, every color, every stitch pattern, and every paired symbol (like mandarin ducks for fidelity or pine trees for longevity) carries an exact, coded meaning. For two seven-year-old girls, standing before those rows of silk is like looking at a blank canvas of their entire future adulthood.

Just as I pair specific luxury fragrances or dark fruit notes to encapsulate the mood and memory of a book, Lily and Snow Flower are purposefully selecting these physical threads to bind their future memories to a tangible medium. They are intentionally curating the sensory pieces of their bond.

"This is a joining of two hearts that cannot be torn apart by distance, disagreement, loneliness, better marriage position, or by letting other girls—and later women—come between you."

The matchmaker bases Lily's entire worth—and her future laotong alliance with Snow Flower—on how perfectly she molds herself to this torturous expectation. The pride Lily later weaponizes against Snow Flower is being forged right here in the blood and bandages.

For Lily, who has been raised under total emotional suppression where every word must be measured, Snow Flower’s spontaneous burst is intoxicating. It shatters the stiffness of their arranged meeting.