The Hundred Flowers movement marked a turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China. How did it begin? While Mao has been credited with sole authorship of the Hundred Flowers, this chapter exposes the plural and deep roots of the blooming of 1957. It traces the gradual coalescing of the political and literary fields, as “let a hundred flowers bloom” spread from a nineteenth-century novel to a twentieth-century campaign slogan. From 1949 to 1956, before they were Mao’s, the Hundred Flowers were captured and appropriated by a growing field of writers, philosophers, scientists, poets, and politicians. In the process, a literary trope became a central term in political discourse and political discourse became a field of creative play. This chapter argues that practices of literary circulation shaped and powered the birth and transformation of the Hundred Flowers.