The novel’s opening chapters utilize an alternating first-person narrative structure to establish a world defined by the rigid hierarchies of class and gender. By juxtaposing Little Flower’s traumatic entry into servitude with Linjing’s life of insulated privilege, the narrative explores how patriarchal norms shape the perceptions and anxieties of girls at opposite ends of the social spectrum. The girls’ parallel victimization, though unequal in severity, sets the stage for the theme of Class Hierarchy Distorting Intimacy and Loyalty. Little Flower’s perspective is consumed by physical hunger, loss, and fear, while Linjing’s is dominated by jealousy over her mother’s affection and her maid’s superior embroidery skill. Despite this experiential chasm, the structure reveals how girls in different class positions are pawns in a system orchestrated by adults. Little Flower is sold to secure her brother’s future, and Linjing’s body becomes a political bargaining chip in her father’s career ambitions. Because Little Flower and Linjing are pitted against each other in a world defined by power imbalances, they struggle to develop an authentic connection.

Little Flower and Linjing’s potential intimacy is also thwarted by how their elders and supervisors determine their worth based on their physicality. These chapters introduce the golden lilies as a complex and contradictory emblem of The Patriarchal Control of the Female Body. For Little Flower, bound feet are initially presented as a “priceless gift” (3) from her mother—a physical manifestation of love and the sole currency she possesses to purchase a better future and a reunion with her family. This worldview is violently disrupted when her feet are forcibly unbound, an act of petty tyranny by Linjing stemming from her own loss of status. The decision to cancel Linjing’s foot-binding, driven by her father’s desire to secure an alliance with a modernizing viceroy, highlights how female bodies serve as instruments of male ambition. Whether bound or unbound, the girls’ feet are not their own; they are assets to be cultivated, sacrificed, or destroyed to serve the strategic interests of the patriarchal family. This situates the girls’ bodies within the larger socio-ideological conflicts of late Qing China, where tradition and modernization were in fierce contest. Not long after Little Flower’s arrival at the Fongs’ home, she and Linjing learn that the size and appearance of their feet is directly correlated to their worth and to their relationships with figures of power in the household and beyond.

The narrative contrasts two emergent models of female relationships, one built on competition and the other on mutual aid. The dynamic between Linjing and Little Flower is immediately antagonistic, driven by the class hierarchy that empowers Linjing to be cruel and by the patriarchal pressures that make her view another female as a rival for maternal affection. Linjing’s resentment over Little Flower’s embroidery talent culminates in her vindictive decision to order Little Flower’s feet unbound, declaring, “If I can’t have them, neither can you!” (26). This act demonstrates how privilege can be weaponized to enforce status. In stark opposition, a nascent solidarity forms between Little Flower and Spring Rain, fellow muizai. Their bond is forged through shared vulnerability—Spring Rain comforts Little Flower, shares a meager pork bun, and teaches her the survival skill of masking her emotions. This alliance, rooted in their common experience of powerlessness and hunger, offers a fragile counter-narrative to the hostility that characterizes the relationships among the high-status women in the Fong household.

In an attempt to withstand Linjing’s cruelty, Little Flower begins to use her embroidery as a way to survive. The recurrent references to her embroidery talent throughout Part 1 establish the theme of Craft and Labor as Pathways to Autonomy. After Little Flower’s hopes of returning to her family are disappointed she must find a new path to freedom and security. Her belief that her golden lilies will guarantee a reunion with her mother is twice shattered: first by their unbinding, and again by Cerise’s brutal revelation that her mother’s identity was intentionally obscured, making any future search impossible. This cruel truth transforms the meaning of her mother’s parting words from a promise into a deception. Little Flower’s subsequent attempt to escape is swiftly neutralized by a physical barrier and by Spring Rain’s warnings about the dangers beyond the compound walls. The only viable hope that emerges is collective. Spring Rain’s proposal that they escape together in the future reframes the pursuit of freedom as a long-term, strategic alliance born from shared knowledge of their confinement. In the meantime, Little Flower will have to rely on her own innate skills—rather than her appearance or physicality—to set herself free.