The Grape Seedlings

There was a young man in Hangzhou who had been troubled lately.

His wife had just come back from a trip to Xinjiang, and she’d shipped him boxes of Xinjiang grapes — along with a few grape seedlings. The grapes were huge and sweet, and now he could even grow his own. So what was there to be troubled about?

Well — the bigger the grapes, the heavier the pressure. The climate in Hangzhou is nothing like Xinjiang’s. Could these little seedlings ever bear fruit as glorious as their brothers and sisters back home? He scoured the internet and crammed every growing technique he could find.

One evening, his wife came home to find him hugging the seedlings — and crying. She was stunned. “What on earth happened? The seedlings are already planted. Why so heartbroken all of a sudden?”

He sighed. “Do you know what matters most for growing grapes? Sunlight and temperature swing. We’re in Hangzhou, and we don’t even have a greenhouse — there’s no way to recreate Xinjiang here. So the grapes they bear will never measure up to their brothers’ and sisters’. They’ll just be small — never as big, never as sweet as before. The poor things. They didn’t get to choose where they’d grow, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t raise them into what they were meant to be.”

His wife comforted him: “I’m sorry this has weighed on you so much. But it’s all right. Look how carefully you’re tending them — whatever they bear will still be grapes, not sesame seeds. And since you’ve truly done your best, they will still grow sweet, and they will still grow up. They may have changed places, but a grape is still a grape.”