Free Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

bridge that led out of Puwei. I had never been in a palanquin before. We had four bearers, who tried to run in a manner that would minimize the swaying, but—with the curtains drawn, the heat of the day, my own anxieties, and the strange rhythmic movement—my stomach felt sick. I had never been away from home either, so even if I could have looked out the window I would not have known where I was or how far I still had to travel. I had heard about the Temple of Gupo fair. Who hadn’t? Women went there each year on the tenth day of the fifth month to pray for the birth of sons. It was said that thousands of people went to this fair. That idea was beyond my comprehension. When I began to hear other noises coming through the curtain—bells jingling on horse-drawn carts, the shouted voices of our bearers telling people, “Move out of the way,” and the calls of street vendors beckoning customers to buy their joss sticks, candles, and other offerings that could be placed at the temple—I knew we had reached our destination.
    The palanquin came to a stop and the bearers set us down with a hard thump. Madame Wang leaned over me, pushed open the door, told us to stay put, and got out. I closed my eyes, grateful not to be moving and concentrating on calming my stomach, when a voice spoke my thoughts. “I am so happy we’re still again. I felt like I was going to be sick. What would you have thought of me then?”
    I opened my eyes and looked at Snow Flower. Her pale skin had turned as green as I imagined mine to be, but her eyes were filled with frank inquiry. She pulled her shoulders up under her ears conspiratorially, smiled in a way that I would soon learn meant that whatever she had in mind was going to get us in trouble, patted the cushion next to her, and said, “Let’s see what’s happening outside.”
    Key to the matching of our eight characters was that we had both been born in the year of the horse. This meant that we both should long for adventure. She looked at me again, weighing the depths of my bravery, which, I must admit, were quite shallow. I took a deep breath and scooted to her side of the palanquin; she pulled back the curtain. Now I was able to put faces to the voices I’d heard, but beyond that my eyes filled with amazing images. Yao-nationality people had set up fabric stands decorated with billowing pieces of cloth, all much more colorful than anything Mama or Aunt had ever made. A troupe of musicians in flamboyant costumes passed by, on their way to an opera performance. A man walked along with a pig on a leash. It had never occurred to me that someone would bring his pig to a fair to sell. Every few seconds another palanquin veered around us, each, we assumed, holding a woman who had come to make an offering to Gupo. Many other women walked on the street—sworn sisters who’d married out to new villages and had reunited on this special day—dressed in their best skirts and wearing elaborately embroidered headdresses. Together they swayed down the street on their golden lilies. There were so many beautiful sights to absorb, all of which were heightened by an incredibly sweet smell that wafted into the palanquin, enticing my nose and calming my stomach.
    “Have you been here before?” Snow Flower asked. When I shook my head no, she rattled on. “I’ve come with my mother several times. We always have fun. We visit the temple. Do you think we’ll do that today? Probably not. That would mean too much walking, but I hope we can go to the taro stand. Mama always takes me there. Do you smell it? Old Man Zuo—he owns the stand—makes the best treat in the county.” She had been here
many
times? “Here’s what he does: He fries cubes of taro until they are soft on the inside but firm and crisp on the outside. Then he melts sugar in a big wok over a large fire. Have you had sugar, Lily? It is the best thing in the world. He melts it until it turns brown, then he throws the fried taro into the