Stories in poetry

A Branch of Silk Plum Blossoms

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · A Novel of Craft and Society in a Historical Setting · Complete · 36 chapters · 7 reads

Gu Qing’s silk plum blossoms look real, but have no fragrance. She wants to rent the roofed stall in the western market, while the old plum tree beside the wall, her grandmother’s companion for years, is to be uprooted because the old house has changed hands. She arrives with a branch of imitation blossoms and discovers that both the tree’s fate and the price of her craft are harder to negotiate than she expected.

Written with AI assistance, this original book expands on Wang Anshi’s “Plum Blossoms” and this site’s original short story “Spring Breezes Are Not for Sale.” The characters, commercial affairs, geography, and chronology are fictional; this is not a biography of the poet. It preserves the original story’s central choices concerning saving the tree, the scentlessness of silk flowers, and a grandparent and grandchild viewing lotuses.