Pear Blossom Tea

Pear Blossom Tea is a drink made by steeping dried pear flowers in water, and its changing place in Mr Auslander’s life gives it significance beyond its practical use. It first becomes an unexpected remedy for his recurring constipation, then a repeated comfort associated with health, seasonal renewal, and the approach of death. Later, the same tea is connected to Rong Jinzhen’s stomach problems, making its benefits sharply dependent on the person who drinks it.

Collection and Use

Mr Auslander’s interest in pear blossoms began with collecting them, at first simply because he was bored. He came to value their colour and delicate texture, dried them under the eaves, and kept the flowers in his pillow or on his desk. Their fragrance seemed to extend the season of their flowering: preserving the blossoms let him keep something of their brief appearance close at hand. This practice made the flowers familiar before they became a drink.

During the silent period before his death, when an illness affecting his throat had largely taken away his ability to speak, Duckling brought him a cup of pear blossoms steeped in water each morning. The old man associated the flowers with calm and with relief from the pain that troubled him. The tea thus belonged to the quiet routine of his care, even before he understood it as a remedy for his digestive complaint. His limited mobility and long experience of illness shaped that routine: he spent much of his life seated, and the drink became one of the few forms of comfort he could rely on.

Accidental Remedy

One winter, Mr Auslander’s constipation returned and resisted his usual measures. He repeatedly drank cold water, hoping to provoke a response, but only felt worse. One evening, returning from town with medicine, he drank a bowl he believed to contain plain water. It had been left by the front door, and he did not notice until afterward that dried pear petals had soaked in it and gone down with the liquid. He feared the unfamiliar drink might harm him, but before he had finished preparing his medicine, he felt the pain he had been waiting for and then obtained relief.

The importance of the episode lies in its reversal of expectation. The flowers had entered the bowl accidentally, perhaps blown there or disturbed by a rat; Mr Auslander had not knowingly tried them as a treatment. The drink was followed by an outcome different from his usual pattern. In earlier episodes, relief from constipation had been followed by severe inflammation and diarrhoea, but this time he recovered without those further symptoms. An ordinary household accident therefore altered his understanding of the blossoms: what he had been collecting for their appearance and fragrance now seemed to have medicinal value.

Routine, Faith, and Final Wishes

After this experience, Mr Auslander began brewing pear-blossom water as other people might make tea, and he came to enjoy it more the more often he drank it. Each year, when the trees flowered, gathering the blossoms brought him a particular satisfaction. He interpreted the discovery as an instance of divine providence rather than as a mere accident. The drink’s meaning consequently joined practical relief to religious hope: during years of pain, he dreamed of pear flowers opening in sunlight and moving through wind and rain, and hoped that he might die and depart with them.

As death approached, Mr Auslander could no longer rely on speech to communicate. He called Duckling to his bedside and used paper and pen to set out what should happen to the flowers after his death. His requests grew more precise over successive days: first, he wanted pear flowers placed in his coffin; next, he specified eighty-nine flowers to match his age; finally, he asked for a number equal to the days in eighty-nine years. The progression turns the blossoms from a drink associated with daily care into a measure for a final ritual. It also connects the old man’s wishes with the counting Duckling had practiced over the years, as Mr Auslander had asked him to count the flowers that fell from the trees and recorded the totals.

Effects on Rong Jinzhen

Pear Blossom Tea has a less benign place in Rong Jinzhen’s later household. Rong Jinzhen’s family initially notices his quietness, habits, and frailty; his father explains that the boy’s stomach problems resulted from drinking the tea Mr Auslander had favored day after day. In his view, a drink that might suit an old man was unsuitable for a growing child. The household therefore treated Rong Jinzhen’s stomach trouble with medicine, while he could manage only a small bowl of rice at each meal and often began belching after a few mouthfuls.

This account does not erase the old man’s experience, but it complicates the idea of the tea as a universal cure. For Mr Auslander, it followed an accidental episode of relief and became part of a sustaining seasonal practice. For Rong Jinzhen, the same habitual drink was identified as a cause of illness. The contrast makes the tea an object whose meaning is formed through particular bodies and circumstances, rather than a remedy with one stable effect.

Narrative Significance

The tea gathers several kinds of time into one humble object. Dried blossoms preserve a season beyond its natural duration; the annual collection gives Mr Auslander a recurring pleasure; and the instructions for the coffin turn that cycle toward an anticipated ending. The mistaken bowl also becomes a hinge in the story, shifting the flowers from collected keepsakes to an everyday drink and then to a hoped-for medicine.

Its later association with Rong Jinzhen adds a counterpoint to Mr Auslander’s faith in the remedy. What one character receives as comfort and providential relief is remembered in another household as part of a child’s illness. Pear Blossom Tea therefore carries both care and risk, and its changing role links the old man’s final days to the life that continues after him.