A picture is worth a thousand characters (page 82)
From page 3:
The girl took off a small rucksack and got out her money.
Emil first saw the beautiful embroidery on the rucksack. It was of a riotously blooming flower he could not recognize. Like a fully open rose, but fantastical petals multitudinous like a chrysanthemum. Then he saw the Startalers, those gold heavy pieces of trans-imperial coinage, good from the Yapon Sea to the desert places, wherever gold and goods traded, wherever adventurers landed.
From page 55:
She thought of her mother’s rhododendrons at home, and of her father’s peonies as well. She thought of the banana leaves and bamboo that belonged to her great-great-grandmother Dowager Li in her Jiangnan garden of surpassing beauty.
I’ve mentioned flowers a few times, and here I want give a visual. Below find Tang Lili’s rhododendrons:
Wang Xiaolong’s peonies:
How the design of peonies looked on Wilhelmina Wang’s knapsack:
Compared to the chrysanthemum:
Compared to the rose:
How star-talers look:
Many thanks to our obliging illustrator Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836-1904):
Encore: