Spring has arrived in East China. Sweaters and skirts, rather than bulky jackets, have become common dress for girls in the city.

Pink, purple and yellow daisies twinkle in the grass, next to the nameless little blue flowers in the shape of stars, which children pick and put on pine needles to make "star trees."

Wild strawberries have ripened on the Purple Mountain and by the streams, giving off a scent that planted ones can never match.

It is a good time for gathering. Besides the strawberries (watch out for thorns), the popular shepherd's purse is plentiful. This wild herb, which tends to grow at the bottom of pine trees, is still tender now, but will soon turn tough when it blooms in early April.

It has been a custom for many Nanjing families to head to the outskirts of the city to gather the herb in late February and early March.

The picking, however, is rarely easy. The delicate herb is good at hiding in the grass and one family can labor for an entire day without finding more than a quarter of a kilogram.

Impatient children, fed up with the search, often begin to dream of red bayberries, juicy fruits that ripen in April and are sold in baskets woven from the branches of the trees from which they were picked.

Kite flying is also a popular Spring activity, and almost every family here has a kite hanging on the wall itching to fly after a winter of disuse. The deserted Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) palace is probably the best place for kite flying, but they are visible everywhere, flying above Nanjing's streets, and crashing on its roofs ...

Spring is welcomed in a subtle manner in this 2,000-year-old town. There are few bars, but hundreds of tea houses.

Compared with the residents of fast-paced large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, Nanjing's people have relatively little pressure to release, but much leisure to taste life.

At the tea houses, they enjoy plum blossoms in Spring, lotus in Summer, chrysanthemum in Autumn and narcissus in Winter.

Following the year's last snow, which melted only a fortnight ago, the 10,000 plum trees in the Plum Wood surrounding Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum are now in full bloom.

Visitors here sample tea, play chess and take part in qushui liushang, an ancient Chinese game, in which participants make poems and drink wine.

This relaxed sort of celebration is light-hearted, but under the footsteps of visitors and under the fallen petals of the blossoms, lies one of China's legends - Sun Quan, king of the Wu Kingdom (AD 222- AD 280).

Sun Quan, who lived in an era of heroes, is widely held to be a representative of the virility hidden in the gentle accent of the region south of the Yangtze River.

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-98), founder of the Ming Dynasty, built his resplendent tomb in the Plum Wood by the side of Sun Quan. Zhu was reportedly quoted as saying that he wanted to enlist Sun as his spiritual guard.

In the end, the body of the first Ming emperor, was never buried there because he dared not lie in his own tomb after death, for fear that enemies might defile his body.

No one actually knows where Zhu Yuanzhang is buried to this day.

The story goes that, when the emperor died, all 13 of the city's gates were opened and thirteen coffins were sent out in different directions, each with a funeral procession of 10,000 soldiers.

Another important figure of Chinese history who also chose the 1,000-year-old Plum Wood as his burial ground was Wang Jingwei (1883-1944), former vice-president of the Kuomingtang.

Wang has come down in Chinese history in notoriety. Like Henri Philippe Petain who co-operated with Nazi Germany to head the Vichy Government in occupied France, Wang betrayed his nation by surrendering to the Japanese invaders and establishing a puppet "National Government" in Nanjing during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45).

Although Wang's wife had five tons of steel mixed into the cement to make the tomb inviolable after Wang's death in 1944, the tomb was bombed and damaged with 150 kilograms of TNT in 1946, reportedly on a secret order from Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975).

Today upon the site of Wang's tomb stands a teahouse, where heavy history is only one topic of conversation and is often accompanied by talk of love affairs.

Many who come to meditate on the past in the Plum Wood become pleasantly distracted by the smell of a secret fragrance wafting in the warm Spring sunshine.

Here butterflies fly hurriedly before naughty children, who tread on the dazzled shadows of misty plum branches.

There are 230 kinds of plum blossoms in the Plum Wood, and even more in other areas.

"According to the World Horticulture Association, plum blossom is the only kind of flower for which China owns the right of nomenclature," said Guo Lichun, a senior horticulturist at the Plum Wood.

Visitors to the park know more than a little about the flowers. "This is the Royal Pink, the most common type. And you see this one? It's called tiaozhi - one half of the blossom is pink, and the other half is white. This is the Jade Butterfly," explained one passerby, eight-year-old Zhang Jingxue.

It was shocking to hear a child recite so much knowledge about a flower, but Zhang's mother didn't understand how such knowledge could be considered extraordinary.

"Why not? It's a part of life," said the mother.

Not all the plum blossoms are pink or white, as many think them to be.

Generations of Chinese intellectuals and horticulturists have reared complex varieties that go by names like the light green lu'er, the dark purple zhusha, the multi-colored caiyi.

It is interesting to discover that none of the most beautiful trees have plums, while the inconspicuous ones produce both sour and sweet fruit.

It is difficult, given the baby-like texture of the delicate petals, to accept that many of the trees in the Plum Wood are more than 300 years old.

Zhang Jingxue and his mother were busy looking for a "grandpa-tree," which has witnessed 600 springs.

In about one month's time, the plum blossoms will wither. Ripening of the plums signals the end of spring in regions south of Yangtze River and signals that the region will soon be enshrouded in drizzle.

But the leaving of spring is the coming of summer, and there are the lotus blossoms to look forward to.

Then the lakes will ripple with the oars of boats, and the clear laughter of girls will ring out as they collect the flowers.

(China Daily 02/26/2001)