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Hair-Pinning Days: Catching Cool Breezes & Hair-Pinning Days: Beautiful Moon

Summary: Hair-Pinning Days: Catching Cool Breezes

When Lily and Snow Flower turn fifteen, their hair is pinned to show they will be married soon. Snow Flower visits Lily during the Catching Cool Breezes Festival, the hottest part of the year when women return to their birth homes. As Elder Sister is about to deliver her first child at her in-laws’ house, and Beautiful Moon is with her sworn sisters, Lily and Snow Flower are the only women in the chamber. At night, Snow Flower and Lily try to get cool, stripping down to nothing but their slippers. Snow Flower wets her finger and writes in nu shu on Lily’s stomach, spelling out the first line of a poem, which Lily recognizes. As Lily writes the next lines of the poem on Snow Flower’s stomach, she admires how perfect Snow Flower’s body is. After the girls recite the rest of the poem together, which is about a scholar who misses his home, Lily thinks of how the poem is about how Snow Flower and Lily are each other’s homes.

Summary: Hair-Pinning Days: Beautiful Moon

After Beautiful Moon returns, the girls make clothes, shoes, and other household textiles with cloth sent by their future families. As it is still hot, Baba and Uncle set up a canopy outside the house so that the girls can sew outside. One day, they receive a letter from Elder Sister, who is miserable at her in-laws’ home. Lily feels grateful for the tradition of not moving into the husband’s home until just before giving birth. Lily and Snow Flower then notice Beautiful Moon struggling to breathe and brushing at her neck. Snow Flower goes to find help, moving as quickly as she can on her bound feet, while Lily notices a dying bee on Beautiful Moon’s embroidery, and realizes Beautiful Moon was stung. Lily tells Beautiful Moon that she loves her before Beautiful Moon stops breathing. 

Baba, Uncle, and Elder Brother eventually come, and Uncle is distraught as they carry Beautiful Moon into the house and set her on the table. Snow Flower tells Elder Brother to go get Aunt from her birth home. When Aunt arrives, she does not cry but stands over Beautiful Moon’s body for hours. After Beautiful Moon is buried, Lily can hear Aunt moaning in her bed. Lily and Snow Flower, believing Beautiful Moon is visiting them in the form of Aunt’s moans, make a flower tower to appease Beautiful Moon’s spirit. They burn it on top of Beautiful Moon’s grave while singing a song in nu shu. Though they feel protected, Aunt and Uncle continue to suffer.

Analysis: Hair-Pinning Days: Catching Cool Breezes & Hair-Pinning Days: Beautiful Moon

As Lily and Snow Flower prepare for their marriages, they become closer than ever. Their intimacy is shown in their comfort with being naked with each other, and of their use of writing nu shu on each other’s bodies to communicate. As Aunt has taught them, they are able to use context to decipher a poem, showing how the secret language has strengthened their friendship. However, Lily still sees Snow Flower as superior to her and entirely without flaws. Even though Lily is on the brink of marriage, this belief in perfection shows how naïve she still truly is.

As Lily, Beautiful Moon, and Snow Flower attempt to enjoy the last days of their childhood, it is the innocent act of trying to enjoy the outdoors that ultimately leads to Beautiful Moon’s death. Even after Beautiful Moon dies, Lily shows she has not yet truly grown up, as she and Snow Flower believe they can rid their house of Beautiful Moon’s spirit by burning a flower tower. As ever, Lily believes that if she follows tradition and cultural customs, she will be rewarded and find peace. For this reason, she is confused when Aunt and Uncle continue to grieve after the flower tower is burned. Lily, who has only known true love from Snow Flower and has never known the loss of love, cannot comprehend that a ceremony would not be enough to allow people to move on from the death of a loved one. Later, Lily will remark on her confusion at why a woman would mourn a daughter, as daughters are considered useless. This may also contribute to her lack of sympathy for Aunt, showing how Lily is more concerned with the worth her culture puts on others instead of her own care for them.

Beautiful Moon’s death shows how random and arbitrary the suffering of women can be. Within their culture, it seems that all women will experience suffering in one way or another. Most expect it to happen in the way of Elder Sister, of being forced to live with abusive or unkind in-laws. Even Lily, who was once ignorant of this reality, seems to accept it as fact, as she feels grateful she will not have to move into her husband’s home right away after marriage. However, Beautiful Moon is killed during one of the happiest times in her life, symbolizing how cruel life is to women in particular. Due to her bound feet, Snow Flower is unable to get help in time to save Beautiful Moon’s life, again showing how footbinding robs women of their power.

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