📝📝: The elegance of magnolia flowers, fragrant in the street

I spent an entire semester doing image research, and I began to find myself using images less and less as a medium for storytelling. As soon as I picked up the camera, each image seemed to me like a performance, and the subject was In the process, the body is lost. American writer and cultural critic Susan. Sontag (Susan Sontag) even believes that the moment we press the shutter, the subject is already dead [1] .

Using words as the carrier of stories is not necessarily the best way, but through words, readers can know that there is a gap between the imagination in their minds and the actual state. Rather than "How is it different from the photo?" I want to hear "It looks different from what I imagined." The high resolution of the image takes away the brilliance of the subject, and the subject in the photo is the reference As a result, the subject loses its subjectivity in the real world; however, the "low-resolution" description of the subject in the text makes the reader always apply a blur filter to recognize the object described in the text. That is, under the capture of words, the object will always retain its subjectivity.

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At Exit 1 of Shilin MRT Station, seven days a week, after about 6 o'clock in the evening, there is a short curly-haired grandma with a hunched body, carrying a plastic bag with two or three plastic basins, which will be sold at the door of Watsons. Magnolia. At the intersection of Shilin MRT Station, many stores have recently entered, including: Gu Kee Tea, 50 Lan, Tea Soup Club, Lao Lai Tea House, Wutong Hao, and Jiguang Xiangxiang Chicken. The fragrance overflowed and mixed with the perfume smell left behind by pedestrians. Only, the magnolia flowers of the grandmother were placed out of place in the noisy street.

Bailan, also known as Magnolia, is commonly known as Magnolia in Taiwan. This type of plant can be seen in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, South China, and Southwest China. When the magnolia flower has not been picked, the white stamens are surrounded by verdant green leaves, like a scaled-down version of the wild lily, and like the lily, it has a faint floral fragrance. This smell evoked my impression of taxis. When I was a child, I often smelled the fragrance of magnolia flowers on the taxis, and the "Taxi smell" dedicated to that space was branded in my memory.

Shilin MRT Station Exit 1 is a section of the road that I always pass on my way to teach at home, so every week before going up the mountain for tutoring, I can see grandma picking up magnolia flowers, and when going down the mountain, I still watch grandma sitting there quietly. . Different from the "flower seller" in my impression, florists who saw magnolia flowers when I was a child often sold magnolia flowers along the street. However, Grandma always sits there quietly, waiting for people to come forward to buy it, like a devout believer who devotes herself to befriending passers-by; she concentrates on picking up the magnolia flowers soaked in the water basin, and hangs them with wire.

One day, in December, the pedestrians on the road were all dark coats, heavy scarves, and hats. On that day, I was still going to tutor. When I got off the MRT, I shivered unexpectedly. The cold wind even left a reddish blow mark on my face. My allergic rhinitis even forced me to buy a pack. Paper towels are on the body. Even at the intersection of the street where the perceived temperature is close to 12 degrees Celsius, Mamma still appears at Exit 1 like a full-time student. That day, I didn't pay much attention to my grandmother because I was rushing up the mountain; however, when I went down the mountain that day, I was watching my grandma picking magnolia flowers.

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The cold wind was biting to the bone, and the magnolia flowers with stamens needed to be soaked in water. I watched Mammy's fingers turn red from the freezing of picking magnolia flowers; one after another, one after another. People on the street were wearing warm clothes. However, Grandma only wore a thin floral shirt and a sky blue jacket. The cuffs were even wetted by the water in the basin. I don't know where the idea came from, I decided to give the hot Ohuatian in my hand to my grandma. At the moment, I think that my grandma needs this warm little thing more than I do.

I sat on the ground beside me and chatted with Mamma. Grandma speaks only Taiwanese and speaks as cordially as my grandma; in fact, we talked like that for at least twenty minutes. During the process, I talked about how grandma had been selling magnolia flowers at Shilin MRT Station for at least six or seven years. Because she was old, she would not greet her by the roadside, but chose to move a small stool and sit aside. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening, and I was in a hurry to go home and gave Ohuatian to my grandma. My grandma's hands were so cold that I was surprised. Although Grandma was a little embarrassed at first, she accepted it after some persuasion from me. Before I left, my grandmother and I bought two bunches of magnolia flowers, two bunches of four flowers totaling 100 yuan.

This kind of price is slightly higher, usually the price of magnolia flowers will fall at the selling price of "1 bunch of 20, 3 bunches of 50" [2]. An artist once said: "The beautiful things in the world will perish in a very short life." The life of Magnolia seems to follow this trajectory, and her pure whiteness will fade away after a very short 24 hours. The one hundred yuan expenses disappeared from my world in a day, along with her taste.

Fortunately, this memory is always in my mind, and the fragrance is always preserved; just like when I took a taxi for the first time when I was a child, I smelled the fragrance of magnolia flowers hanging in front of the air-conditioning vent, which impressed me as deeply.

Postscript: Recently, due to the severe epidemic situation, grandma will not come out to sell flowers occasionally.

[1] Canran Huang (translation) (2010). On Photography, translated from On Photography. Taipei, Wheatfield Press. (Susan Sontag, 1977)

[2] Du Yaolin (2017). This is how the magnolias you bought came from—the magnolia industry that supports hundreds of disadvantaged families. Retrieved from: https://www.twreporter.org/a/white-champak-vender