Budding History: On Nationalism and Cherry Blossoms
Through myth-making and symbolism, the natural world comes to stand in for potent human ideals.
Through myth-making and symbolism, the natural world comes to stand in for potent human ideals.
Mangoes—revered and prized by almost every culture in which they are cultivated—are a migrant fruit.
It took me years before I realized that I’d built my notions of beauty from the stories of a distant land.
I added it to the list of things off-limits: questions about the past, the wars, why my grandparents had fled China for Taiwan. Why eventually they left that place too.