L.C. Chu > Quotes

“But most of my clients are regular people who like good and interesting smells. Candy corn perfume is a thing thanks to me, courtesy of my Spookie Cookie Limited Edition Halloween Collection. Not a teeth-on-edge saccharine mess, though. The perfume had golden notes of caramelized sugar and champagne to evoke the smell of crushing dried maple leaves underfoot on Halloween night. I wanted the memory of kids calling trick-or-treat, fueled by the buzz of cheap candy and the exhilarating feeling of being out after bedtime.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Yuanyang
Qing dynasty. Yuanyang refused to convert to Catholicism when her husband chose to.
Heart note // Limit shame
Base note // Verbena”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Dachung
Tang dynasty. Perfumed the famous consort Yang Guifei, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China.
•Heart note// Heighten charm
•Base note// Beeswax”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“I finish dusting the leaves of my jasmine. I love white flowers with distinctive scents. Give me a powerful tuberose or sweet orange blossom any day.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Liqiu
Southern Song dynasty. Liqiu was the first Hua to have her feet bound.
Heart note // Lift gloominess
Base note // Benzoin”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“You’re manipulating me to make me do what you want.”
“People do it all the time,” Mom says. “They wear red when they want to be powerful, sit in higher chairs when they want to intimidate.”
“That’s not the same thing. What you do is immoral. It’s wrong.”
There’s the gotcha she’s been looking for, and her smug expression infuriates me because I’m trying to help her. I don’t hold back.
“You don’t think you do the same? You’ve got one kid in ballet and the other in sports. You tell your daughter she’s responsible for her brother. You don’t think you’re influencing the way they think? Their expectations? You don’t think calling Owen your ‘big smart scientist’ and Sophie your ‘pretty little dancer’ makes an impact?”
“How dare you?” She’s clutching the table as if to stop her hands from reaching for me.
“It’s not daring to tell the truth,” I say. “I accept that we manipulate people. I even admit I’m not completely comfortable with it. At least I’m open to understanding what it is I do.”
She paces again and then stops. “Eric said you told him not to tell me,” she says. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” says my mother. She stands and walks to the sink, hand resting lightly on the counter. “We are very cautious about who we trust with this information.”
Kelsey glares at her. “I didn’t make the cut?”
“As we said, this has nothing to do with you,” Mom says.
I groan internally. That won’t go over well.
My sister-in-law’s lips thin. “As you delight in telling me,” she says dryly. “Tell me, Meilin, what is it that you hate most about me? That I married your son? That I’m white? That I don’t kiss your ass and let you control me the way you need to control everyone else in your family? Do you have a magic potion for that, too? A perfume you wish you could hook up to the vents of my house so we’d finally fall in line the way you want us to?”
“Whoa,” I snap before Mom can answer. “That’s uncalled for.”
She bursts out laughing and then gives an exaggerated wipe under each of her eyes for the nonexistent tears, as if to demonstrate how downright amusing she finds this. “You, of all people, know better,” she says. “You left town to get away from her.”
“Kelsey,” says my mother, stepping in front of me. “You’re wrong. None of that is true.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kelsey tilts her head to the side.
Mom nods and looks her in the eye. “I would need to care about you much, much more to bother doing any of that.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“The brown leather corners have worn and faded to a pale sand. A few scratches score the front cover, embossed with a golden stylized peony, and the leather is patterned with darker blots from the fingers of busy women who gripped it with the loving, casual carelessness of familiarity.
It's as fat as a sleeping cat on a rainbow pile of Ana's chiffon scarves, and it's my birthright and my curse.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“I’m not the Lucy you wanted, okay? I’m not. I get it and I’ve accepted it, and you need to as well. Sorry I can’t actually perform like you need so the Hua name can mean something again. At least you made some money off me. Dad is right: That’s all you want from me.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Yitong
Qing dynasty. Yitong’s moli was in high demand after the Second Opium War.
Heart note // Reject numbness of heart
Base note // Jasmine”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Yanlin
Yuan dynasty. Witness to the end of the Song dynasty and the Mongol conquest under the Khans.
Heart note // Intensify gratitude
Base note // Lavender”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Jing
Yuan dynasty. Jing moved the family to Nanjing, away from the frontier capital of Beijing.
Heart note // Block insecurity
Base note // Juniper”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“I decide on the smell of night in the garden at my parents’ house. I put in black water and wet sand and rocks, then cover it with the butterscotch of a ponderosa pine. I consider adding an echo of Rafe’s cologne, that smoky light tobacco that’s nothing like a cigarette and instead is everything sexy. I find myself reaching for a pristine and chilly iris. Mom’s scent.
She’s writing away on one of the formula sheets. A discarded pair of gloves and a capped vial sit in front of her.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
In reply, she holds out the vial. I exchange it for my own and we dip in our blotters. It takes me a moment to absorb what my mother has done. It’s almost identical to my own, minus the iris. Instead— I close my eyes. Yes. She’s incorporated the Turkish rose note from the scent I wore in high school, a deconstructed version of a high-end perfume that I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on, and over it, a breath of citrus. Waipo’s lemon.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“You can't write without words, and you can't create perfumes without knowing scents and materials, so you need a vocabulary for what you're doing. An olfactory library."
"A library of flowers," says Ana.
"And spices and herbs and chemicals," Mom says.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“It’s jasmine, an intoxicating single-note floral. I wave the blotter and sniff again, the memory coming to me not in bits and pieces but fully formed. When I was sixteen, my mother told me to re-create the jasmine she grew in the small garden behind the house in all its different moods. Jasmine in the rain. In the sun. Playing up the indoles for the pungent smell of mothballs, and then its green notes. I’d done dozens of jasmines, refining and learning each time. The one my mother had chosen for my birthday was a light and sweet interpretation, something suitable for a girl.
Luling22 makes me gasp out loud. It’s a rich, spicy bomb, not typical of my mother, who prefers soft fragrances designed to stay close to the skin and respect the olfactory space of those around the wearer. This is the opposite, an amber overdose with notes of opopanax, civet, and vanilla. It’s said when Giorgio Beverly Hills was released, it was so overpowering restaurants posted signs asking people to tone it down. Luling22 could give that, Angel, and Poison a run for their money. It’s the 1980’s in all its lavish excess, and it pulls a surprised laugh out of me. If it were a relationship, it would be the love-bombing of a narcissist.
The more of them I smell, the more I’m convinced my mother is trying to tell me something— but don’t know what. There’s a tea scent with a breath of buttery pastry that reminds me of Sunday mornings, a leather that smells like a supple old handbag, and a powdery rose I recall from one of Waipo’s old cosmetic compacts.
I sit with Luling28 for a while, as it’s a feat of technical brilliance that brings me an unusual feeling of envy. I knew Mom was good, but this good? She’s combined the ozone of an approaching storm in the top notes with the petrichor of the rain-soaked earth, giving the entire story of a summer shower, with an epilogue of fresh leaves trembling with rain. I don’t know how she made the green linger, when its volatility means it should be one of the first notes to disappear.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Gourmand: Fragrance category featuring sweet and delicious edible scents such as vanilla, caramel, and chocolate.

Indole: Chemical compound found in redolent white flowers such as jasmine, with an animalic quality.

Marine: Often created with synthetics, they evoke fresh scents such as sea breezes and the ocean.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“The list on the top sheet begins with limonene, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Waipo favors— favored— light citrus scents, and although she never would have worn perfume in the lab, it’s like I can smell her preferred fragrance— a Greek lemon orchard, the sour-sweet fruit warmed by the sun and placed against the saltiness of the wild indigo sea.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“All I want is for you to be happy. I didn’t want you back home because of the store. I wanted you. I wanted to be in your life, the way all the other women in our family were in each other’s.”
For some reason, her low, sad tone infuriates me more. It’s like she refuses to understand that this is not all me or my fault, and the unfinished fury from the fight we had the other day surges back up. “Yeah, well, I wanted my mom. I wanted you to want me for who I was, not for what I could bring the family. I wanted you to love me, not what I could do for you.”
“I do, Luling.”
“Call me by my fucking name,” I snap. This is the first time I’ve sworn in my mother’s presence, let alone to her face. “I’m Lucy.”
“You were named Luling.”
“It doesn’t matter what I was named. I chose something different.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua An
Yuan dynasty. Suffered through the Red Turban rebellion.
Heart note // Reinforce bravery
Base note // Camellia”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Changchang
Ming dynasty. Changchang collected porcelain from the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, and for years sought a gold-gilded cup said to be the only one ever made. She never found it.
Heart note // Boost hope
Base note // Agarwood”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“How have I never used the earthy sugariness of maple syrup in a perfume? Sugar and fire, with a line of icy water running through the fragrance to reference the spring sap. Or perhaps I would focus on the sugar shack, as the sap reduces in big copper pots standing over wood fires and the walls breathe out the scent of saunas.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Jingjing
Qing dynasty. Jingjing traded a moli perfume to Jesuit missionary and painter Giuseppe Castiglione in exchange for a portrait of her daughter.
Heart note // Enhance generosity in others
Base note // Ylang-ylang”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“The bottles are the classic Yixiang design, created by Hua Zhengyi in the early 1900's, a low, wide bottle reminiscent of old incense censers. The designs etched on the side all feature peonies, but subtle changes in the way the flower is depicted indicate which fragrance family the scent falls into: floral, ambery, woody, leather, chypre, or fougère. When I was younger I wanted to simplify it to amber, floral, woody, and fresh, the more modern standard scent families, but Mom refused.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Tingwen
Qing dynasty. Tingwen's favorite novel was Dream of the Red Chamber, and her personal scent was inspired by Lin Daiyu.
Heart note // Increases attractiveness to others
Base note // Osmanthus”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“What we see on the surface is nothing like the person below. Much like a perfume, you need to give time and warmth for a person to reveal themselves fully.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Hua Shihong
Ming dynasty. As a child, witnessed the inauspicious comet, which haunted her dreams for the rest of her life.
Heart note // End weepiness
Base note // Lotus”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Happy birthday!” I give Ana her gift, the new custom fragrance I’ve made her, which is Mom-approved, albeit after a few rounds of impassioned discussion and subsequent modifications. She takes it with reverence, then laughs when she sees what I’ve named it. “Rainbow Sprinkles?”
“You’ll see why. Oh my God, what are you doing? You don’t know if you’re going to like it.”
Ana has already uncapped the bottle and is spraying it liberally. “Shame on you for thinking so low of both me and you.” She breathes in and then sniffs her wrist, her eyes closed. “Oh, wild. I thought it would smell like a rainbow cookie— you know, the ones with the jimmies that melt into the icing and leave a little halo of color?”
“What do you smell?” I ask.
“I’ve been practicing,” she says proudly. “Your mom was helping me. I think there’s…” She sniffs again. “Coconut? Umm, yeah. It’s sweet, like baking. Maybe chocolate?”
“You told me you can bake three things,” I say. “Snickerdoodles, that huge cookie, and sugar pie.”
She buries her face in her arm, her neatly trimmed nails a vivid green. “Cinnamon?”
I nod. “It’s got notes from each of those desserts, but with some pine and some smoke, so it’s like you’re camping.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers