Yen’s favourite colour is green. She loves green because it reminded her of nature. The great, simplified mass that managed to cling obstinately to the human environment like wet paint dots. This simple fact is key to understanding her in the context of her profession because she could rarely had the chance to use the colour green. Flowers, after all, are not green, so neither should fake flowers be.
Of course she could have been a florist, it would be less ironic for a nature lover to handle real plants instead of manufacturing plastic flowers. Except every withered flower, every cut stalk pained Yen too much and she would much rather see them preserved for all eternity.
Perhaps because of the eternal shelf life, she much rather preferred them to reference reality instead of advertising its fraudulence through gaudy displays. This is also one of Yen’s primary sources of pain in her profession, aggravated further by the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations.
The branches and branches of new year flowers sprung from every department store. Yen thought that these flowers, perhaps, had been stowed away in a dark warehouse all year round and had already accommodated its vibrance to that environment. Which explains why when they were brought out to the light again, their garish colours were ill-adjusted to the natural world.
Yen hated those hot pink cherry-blossoms growing under the brown branches. Yen hated the strange purple flowers that smiled madly at the customers. Yen detested the crude notion of placing colourful pom-pom balls on the branches in place of flowers.
Most of all, she hated the hands that created those fake flowers. She would have liked to create them herself, except she could not possibly be responsible for all the artificial flower needs in the world.
Every new year, Yen would purchase a new pot of green plants to add to the corridor of her HDB. It could be a form of therapy. This piece of information is key to understanding her.
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