Growing orchids will make you lose the whole spring; if I could choose again, I would never grow them

Haoshe Nongfu grew up in the countryside, and the mountains of his hometown were full of orchids, so as a child, whether herding cattle, gathering firewood, or walking to school, there was nowhere he did not smell the fragrance of orchids. That kind of scent can be remembered for a lifetime; once you have smelled an orchid, there is no other fragrance in the world, which is a very sad thing.

During his school years he learned to grow orchids, digging them up from the mountains and then cleverly digging some soil from the vegetable garden, because vegetable plot soil is fertile. After planting them in pots, afraid they would not grow big, he diligently gave them a little water every morning and when he came home from school. However, things did not turn out that way; his young heart was whipped by the day-by-day withering orchid leaves. So orchids were not so easy to keep alive after all.

Only later did I learn that the orchid is the gentleman among flowers, a nickname of course given to her by the ancients, by the ancients who loved her. Later I slowly sought out her gentlemanly posture, her gentlemanly charm, her gentlemanly fragrance. Yet a gentleman is always hard to pin down: her posture is very detached yet very transcendent, her fragrance is very near yet very distant...

Spring is the season for admiring flowers, but after growing orchids I no longer feel the fragrance of a hundred flowers or the brilliance of ten thousand blossoms. Peach, too seductive; plum, too rustic; wintersweet, too cold; peony, too vulgar. A single orchid is enough to make you feel that spring is nothing more than this, merely the embellishment of that one huilan orchid. It is too frightening.

Late spring has come; look at her shoots, observe her roots. If the shoots are plump and the roots strong, I will be happier than if I had drunk a glass of vintage from '82; if the roots have turned black and the shoots have faded away, that kind of pain is something the countless flower admirers could never understand.

If there is a chance to choose in the next life, never grow orchids again; she will make you unable to stop indulging in the thing you love.

If there is still a chance to choose in the next life, never grow orchids again; she will make you disdain the flowery world of spring.

If there is a choice in the next life, I would wish to transform into an orchid...