Plot

A story set in nineteenth-century China and focusing on the life-long friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid social norms imposed on women.

In 19th-century China, seven year old girls Snow Flower and Lily are matched as laotong - or "old sames" - bound together for eternity. Isolated by their families, they furtively communicate by taking turns writing in a secret language, nu shu, between the folds of a white silk fan. In a parallel story in present day Shanghai, the laotong's descendants, Nina and Sophia, struggle to maintain the intimacy of their own childhood friendship in the face of demanding careers, complicated love lives, and a relentlessly evolving Shanghai. Drawing on the lessons of the past, the two modern women must understand the story of their ancestral connection, hidden from them in the folds of the antique white silk fan, or risk losing one another forever.—Fox Searchlight Pictures

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, directed by Wayne Wang and takes place in the 19th century, has parallel time periods and there is around four or so time periods. First off there is these two girls, one of wealth and one of poverty, these girls are Snow Flower, who is of wealth, and Lily, who is of poverty. These girls have been born on the same day and in the same year. In present day there is two descendants of these girls and of the same class as their ancestors. Nina and Sophia are these other girls. In both time periods the two sets of girls have become laotongs, or old sames and in this bond between sisters they to learn this secret language of the women or nu shu. Nina and Sophia have not learned nor had the care to learn this language. In either time period the girls get separated, find love, are forbidden to see one another, and somehow they have kept the bond between them both. Sophia has the ancient fans of their ancestors and Nina finds them or well some of them. Nina also finds a book Sophia has been writing about their ancestors and that is how the story of Snow Flower and Lily come alive. Snow Flower has been away from her wealth because her father has wasted the money on a drug for a pipe he has been smoking. Snow Flower married a butcher and Lily had married a wealthy man. So they got switched in their classes. Sophia had been hit by a car in the beginning and had not woke until the end. Snow Flower dies near the end also. Plus the beginning is just like the ending... Looking at the changing world and how fast it goes by us.