The story is two-pronged: One part involves Snow Flower and Lily, two girls who grow up together in 19th century China. They're more than just best friends: They are laotongs, or "sworn sisters ...

Wang renders Lily and Snow Flower’s tale with none of the attention to class specifics and precise character detail found in See’s novel.

Whenever Nina/Lily and Sophia/Snow Flower are together they look like two women waiting uncomfortably outside an office for the same job interview.

The central story turns on Snow Flower and Lily, who were paired as laotong — the formal name for such arranged friendships between girls — when they were just children in the early 1800s.

Emotionally overwrought and fleetingly campy, any revelation Snow Flower has into the strange rituals of 19th-century China tends to pale next to its excessive lily gilding.

While going through her things at the hospital, Nina finds the manuscript of a book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which relates the story of the lowly born Lily and the high-born Snow Flower ...

On March 18, 1911, the Utah Legislature declared the sego lily as the state floral emblem. It was selected after polling schoolchildren about their preferences for a state flower.

Lily Collins has earned herself several memorable roles over the years, and one gig is finally earning its flowers decades later, and amid scrutiny related to Disney's plans for a live-action Snow ...