THE girlhood of Mannia was like the blossoming of the plum
flower in cold January, growing on hardened,
twisted branches
without leaves, thriving in the cold air between the end of
winter and the coming of spring, solitary and without its
flower companions, and destined to retire and enjoy its own fragrance and dream its hours away within the hard bark
of its branches when the peaches and pears and other spring flowers begin to bloom.

The two months' visit of Mulan had been like an exquisite dream to her. It came when she was fourteen and could
bestow on Mulan all her budding instincts of motherhood and the unexpressed instincts of an elder sister. For
Mannia never had sisters. She had never before slept in the same bed with another girl and talked at night as girls
talk. She was naturally timid and not at ease with boys. She was brought up as a lone child until she was ten when
her younger brother appeared, but the brother died at the age of five, a year after Mulan returned to Peking. Mannia's
uncle had no child, either girl or boy, and had adopted one. Her grandfather, a younger brother of Grandmother
Tseng, had spent his fortune and died poor, leaving two sons, Mannia's father and uncle, to struggle along with the
help of their aunt. Families are like trees: some are prolific, and others gradually die in spite of all human care. This
Sun family seemed to be dying out, its blood running thin.

As fate would have it, a year after her brother died Mannia's father died also, in the early spring. This made the
grandmother think of what was to be done to carry on the family name of the Suns.

Mannia was the only blood descendant to continue the incense and candle offerings in the ancestral temple. The
grandmother was worried and was unusually kind to Mannia.

Mannia and her mother were asked to move into the Tseng home and keep the grandmother company. They had a
few farms and a

-82-