I even remember the fabrics I have seen but could not buy. There was a rich olive-green silk across which stole an enormous black shadow, laden with the wind and thunder of an approaching tempest. And another sort of silken fabric, pale aquamarine, shimmering with ripples reminiscent of wood grain and lake water; above which floated at regular intervals a pair of plum blossoms as big as tea bowls, iron-edged and silver-filigreed, like the multihued stained-glass windows of a medieval church, its translucent red panes set between leaded borders.

Eileen Chang, Written on Water