Fleur de Lis and Snow Flower are laotongs, sisters-souls of girls born the same day whose feet were bandaged the same day and whose eight characters match. It is rare to have laotongs. These are girls who come together from their earliest age and who sign a contract that swears loyalty to the end of their lives. They were written on fans (fan) or handkerchiefs messages to secret writing, bare shu, calligraphy that only women know.
This novel is Fleur de Lis who tells the first-person. It was a little peasant girl whose perfect bound feet and his relationship with Snow Flower (daughter of very good families) assured him a good marriage in the largest family in the district. But what she did not know, and that his family and Snow Flower hid him for ten years, is that Snow Flower's family has been deprived and Snow Flower had a wedding with a butcher. Even if they eat meat, butchers are a target profession contempt. While Fleur de Lis rises socially, Snow Flower only deprive ...
I almost cry with grief on hearing the foot bones break, I almost cry when Snow Flower accepted his fate with resignation, I almost cry when Fleur de Lis locked herself in a bubble and n has not wanted to see beyond his house and did not understand what Snow Flower said in his pain (and my reader has understood the sentence as soon as it was written). I pissed against the two, one for not understanding, the other not to explain.
Turning the last page of the book where the writer quickly spoke of his study tours and research, I read showed Indian Wedding Sharon Maas. And oddly, it would have been my own choice if I wanted to compare this reading to one that has touched me the same point. I intend to read Lisa See.