20201207 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

The story plays with the analogy of zhang and mu. By infusing them into an imaginary “curtain,” the framed narrative engenders dialogic interplay between the narrator and the bridegroom, between the bride and the spectator, and between the public and private spaces. Zhang and mu mean different things, though they converge in the compound zhangmu. Traditionally, the word zhang denoted a canopy hung around a bed and was used to isolate an inner space in bedroom, so it can hardly be identical with the meaning of curtain. However, indirectly, it reached to the sense of “curtain” through a translation of Jerrold D. William’s (1803-57) Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, a fiction of early nineteenth-century England. In 1915 Liu Bannong translated the title into “Zhangzhong shuofa” and published it in Zhonghua xiaoshuo jie.[ Liu Bannong, “Zhangzhong shuofa,” Zhonghua xiaoshuo jie, vol. 2, no.3 (March, 1915). Zhou should (June, 1922).]

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

The “curtain lectures” refer to Mrs. Caudle’s poignant complaints and derision at her husband, mixed with familial trivialities and comic effects.

However, the overlap of zhang and mu was crucially related to a widely circulated myth about the Chinese origins of cinema, which was perhaps invented by Zhou himself. When Western-style movie theaters began to appear in late-1900s Shanghai, he was one of the earliest moviegoers. Like other Chinese at his time he also regarded film as a kind of “shadow play” (yingxi), meaning the performance on a screen. According to Zhou, the origins of “shadow play” can be found in the famous story in the Han Dynasty (206-24, B.C.), which tells of the Emperor Wu watching lady Li, dancing and singing, through a semi-transparent curtain.

Chen Han 陈涵

As the anecdote goes, to console his loss of the favorite lady, a sorcerer made a curtained room and asked the emperor to stay at a distance. In the night, called by the sorcerer, the spirit appears behind the curtain, amidst the candle-light, to perform as if she is alive.[ Zhou Shoujuan, “Tan yingxi” (On shadow play), in Ziluilan ji (Collections of violet) (Shanghai: Dadong shuju, 1922) 13-14. Its earlier version “Yingxi hua” appeared in the Free Talk (Ziyou tan), the literary page in Shenbao (June 20, 1919): 15.] Notwithstanding the historical merit of Zhou’s interpretation, what is significant here is that he reads history with a cinematic imagination, by which the terminology in everyday life changes - as occurred here the meaning of zhang (curtain) is substituted by that of mu (screen).

In the mid-1910s Saturday and The Pastime (Youxi zazhi) magazines often appeared Zhou’s “film fiction” (yinxi xiaoshuo) - his accounts of what he had seen in the movie theaters.

Chen Hui 陈惠

By the time he wrote this love confession, Zhou published a novella The Intimate Beauty (Hongyan zhiji), in which the hero recalls his lover on the “screen memory”: after he closes his eyes, he sees her beautiful image on a “snow-white screen” (xuebai de bumu) and hears her delicate voice; when he opens his eyes, they vanish and yet leaves a three-inch photograph in his heart.[ Zhou Shoujuan. Hongyan zhiji (Zhonghua tushuguan, 1917) 64.] However, “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” has no description of watching film, yet the narrative itself is framed by the curtain; what was shown on the “screen” was verbalized and the text was visualized. With both meanings of zhang and mu, the “curtain” can be changed into a “screen,” onto which is projected the inner space of a wedding chamber in which the author makes his confession.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

“In the Nine-Flower Curtain” was visually imagined and represented in terms of the spaces divided into the inside and the outside, with the beholder within the curtain and the imagined beholders without. When Zhou fulfills his promise to his friends that he will show them his “love talk” in the Pictorial Story magazine, he makes a written tableau in Diderot’s sense, in which the beholder is absent and yet always implied.[ Jay Caplan. Framed Narratives: Diderot’s Genealogy of the Beholder (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985) 16. ] Here, we refer to the notion of “beholder” not only because of the visual nature of Zhou’s fiction, but also because it helps my imposition of the complex “subjectivity” in this paper.

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

At this juncture, if we look beyond this story merely as a signal of style change in Zhou’s love story from the tragic to comical, we might be curious at the positivity of the male voice as well as the brightness of the private space. In view of the erotic-sentimental tradition of the male gaze in private space, what does this love talk mean historically? Not only does it relate to the transformation of gender roles as well as the legitimacy of the private space in Chinese literature.

This transformation occurred when this male gaze is empowered ideologically and technologically. Ideologically, it is imbued with the Republican ideal of nationhood and selfhood; technologically, it is, in this case, facilitated by the structural optical perception linked to the modern inventions such as photography and cinema.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

While depicting a tableau by freezing a moment in the past, Diderot disturbs his narrative by arranging the beholder as a part of the tableau. As Jay Caplan interpreted, the beholder is presented for the “psychological reason”: he functions as compensation to the loss which the family suffers as portrayed in the tableau.[ Ibid., 20-37.] In Zhou’s case, the beholder is called for the moral reason as his presence is neutralized to legitimize his love discourse in the private space. Especially the term qinghua “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” can be traced back to his short story published in 1913. It describes a young couple meeting and then whispering at a public place, unaware of someone who takes a snapshot of their intimate scene.[ Zhou Shoujuan. “Qinghua” (Love talk), Youxi zazhi 5 (1913).]

Chen Sha 陈莎

It reads like a joke, yet this reportage intriguingly justifies the privacy in the public space that is a controversy of the time. The beholder plays roles of witness, voyeurist, and more importantly, sympathizer. In portraying the photographic evidence with the story of the beholder, Zhou also becomes a sympathetic beholder.

The dialogic characteristic of this love discourse lies not only in the consumerism of literary pleasure as the core of the Butterfly periodical culture, but also in the collective ethos of Butterfly community. In explicating how a bourgeois “love community” is born from the literature of intimate sphere in eighteenth-century England, Habermas says: “Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already oriented to an audience.”[ Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger with the Assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge and Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991) 49. ]

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

Zhou’s pillow talk is more than a playful response to his friends’ voyeurist curiosity, it is fulfilled as a promise of love discourse. It might embody that “the ideas of freedom, love, and cultivation of the person that grew out of the experiences of the conjugal family’s private sphere were surely more than just ideology.”[ Ibid., 48. ]

As the pillow talk unfolds, a complex subjectivity emerges. Against its ideological and technological backdrop, it is rhetorically and aesthetically embodied by a double voice, the poetics of persuasion and linguistic theatricality. The latter part of the story talks more about his family history. “When I was six years old, I became an orphan.” With this pathological tone, Zhou narrates how his father dies at that time and how his widowed mother single-handedly rears up four children by her hard work as a seamstress.

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

This family story is particularly heart-rending, yet it is more than that. He goes on, “When my father died, it happened in the year of 1900. The capital Beijing was totally in chaos, and thus, unexpectedly, the familial disaster and national humiliation fell on a boy of six years old.” A sense of tragic sublimation is effectively rendered as the boy is depicted as both victim and victor in these historical disasters, owing much to the rhetoric that makes the familial and national disasters “happen” to meet, and “thus” they “both” fall on the boy. The sentences sound as if it happened simultaneously when his father died and Beijing fell, and this narration enormously affects the reader.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

However, strictly speaking, there is some slippage between fact and fiction: according to Zhou’s chronicle, his father died 22 days after the fall of Beijing.[ Wang Zhiyi, ed., Zhou Shoujaun yanjiu zhiliao (Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1993) 20.] The dramatic simultaneity not merely refers the narrative strategy mixed with sentimentalism and patriotism, it reflects his own trauma as projected onto the screen memory of his childhood. Compared with other versions about his father’s death, this expression is most theatrical.

Zhou’s childhood memory stores the collective traumatic experiences. The 1900 national catastrophe - the Boxers Uprising and the European Allies’ invasion in Beijing - becomes the emblem of national shame that had deeply imprinted on the Chinese minds. By such theatrical representation of his screen memory, Zhou’s love talk not merely appeals to his bride, the wedding chamber itself is transformed into a public space.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

Now the narrator is more aware of the presence of the public beholders. Aiming more at arousing collective pathos there inserts the scenario of his father’s death, which is also an intense moment for the author to test his rhetoric of theatricality. “When my father was dying, he was like a madman. Suddenly he jumped down from the bed and rushed out, raising his head toward heaven and shouting at the top of his lung, ‘My three sons, be heroes, join the army and fight!’ After these words, he returned to the bed and soon stopped breathing.”

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

Permeated in the narrative of his family history are the characteristics of theatrical rhetoric: The period of his childhood is frozen, and his voice pretends to be childish; heavily emotionally charged words such as “tears,” “sorrow,” “bitter” are frequently appear between lines. Ordinary episodes are intensely represented with emphasis on the theatrical manners, gestures to deliver emotions at the highest pitch. The sentiments attached to the episodes tend to be collectively identified, such as his father’s death linked to the national calamity. There is excessive use of the adverbs to accumulate the force of persuasion and theatrical effect. No less noticeable is the role played by the narrator himself, who seems never hesitant to use the rhetoric of excess.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

Perhaps no modern readers would feel comfortable at the author’s praise of his mother for her traditional virtue; she twice cuts off a piece of flesh from her arm and cooks it as a medicine for her ill mother and husband. “From now on, we should remember what she did and do our best to be filial to her. We should erect, in our hearts, a stele for her filial piety, and a monument for her widowhood; by this means we can make her late life a happy one.” When he repeats this to his bride as a family legend and spiritual heritage, the use of rituals to enhance his language performativity nonetheless turn the persuasion into the grotesque. But we need to be cautious at the accusation of Zhou’s promotion of the “feudal rites” (fengjian lijiao), for the rituals are only used as symbolic value serving the new social structure and ideology in the early Republican era.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

According to the author’s love gospel, love must be mutual; this idea is embodied here through the narrative process itself: the act of telling the bride about his past as a token of trust aims to ask her to understand and trust him. While informing her of his intellectual paths in order to invite her to embrace his spiritual world, the pillow talk reveals its cultural meaning. Among other things, the story reveals himself as a human being who is promising yet ordinary, enduring yet fragile, and at the same time his family economy as unstable as unpredictable, indicating that they live in a hard time. It means that while sharing his bitter past and hopeful future, she must take up her duty and responsibility for him and his family.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

Zhou’s rhetoric of persuasion also implies that the bride is also at the center of a nuclear family, who must be subject to the new ethics. As the narrator further describes how he becomes a nationally famous novelist, due to his talent, diligence and proliferation in the “time of fiction in its full swing.” His jubilant voice echoes that of the beginning of the story while talking about how his family economy is drastically improved and afterwards the Zhous moves from the shabby old city area to the decent French concession. The narrator continues: “Ah, my phoenix lady, I have fully told you about my past. Having heard of this, you can understand what I have achieved so far is due to my bloody struggles with the hardships and difficulties, not to mention my mother who experienced as harder as thousands times than mine.”

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

The sentimental imploration conveys the bourgeois ethics no less than a “modern apocalypse”: this is a hard time yet it is promising and fair: everyone can get what he deserves by God’s gift as well as hard work.

Inscribed with such allegorized trauma, the pillow talk implies a fatal bond between the individual, family and country, and thence elicits the “community of love.” Under the persuasion she is more than a wife and a lover - she is treated at the same time as a citizen. By the device of double curtain stated above, the narrative space is imbued with the authorial anxiety before the private and public beholders, indicating that the private realm by no means becomes autonomous without being identified with peoplehood and nationhood.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

A Republican subjectivity is embodied in this domestic space by a speech act of persuasion, and it is the sentimentalism that naturalizes all social relations, blurring the private and public boundaries, and it ultimately functions in identifying them with the nationhood. In a sense, this peculiar love talk using the first person genre amalgamates diary, love-letter, autobiography and confession and displays a particular revelation of the community of love.

Although the latter half of this monologue is basically dominated by historical references, Zhou’s strategy of using stylistic conventions such as verbal ornaments or rhythmic parallelism shifts to an appeal to cultural convention, such as ritual and tradition. Tradition is used as both value and form. Like the scars left on the mother’s arms, ritual is infused into the narrative to such an extent that the procedure of writing is culturally encoded.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

Compared to the characteristic of pursuing modern fashion in the first half of the story, here Zhou reveals more of his cultural conservatism. Rooted in the traditional “Teaching of Affection,” his love discourse aims at solving complex problems in a modern society; what separates Zhou from his contemporaries is that he does not intend to make his philosophy of love a perfect, unified one. In the “community of love” lies a paradox. Habermas says: “The jeopardy into which the idea of the community of love was thereby put, up to our own day, occupied the literature as the conflict between marriage for love and marriage for reason, that is, for economic and social considerations.”[ Habermas, 47.]

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

As shown by Zhou’s own love story, he never forgot his first lover named “Violet,” and thus we come to realize that behind this pillow talk is the rueful truth: for him this is a “marriage for reason,” not a “marriage for love.” As he says to his bride, since he failed in the first love, he never had intention of making a family, and he married her in order to make his mother happy. Probably this loving experiment with baihua is a compromise for better communicating with the bride who is almost illiterate.

Guo Lu 郭露

Eileen Chang and the Modern Essay

Nicole Huang

Abstract

In her preface to Honglou mengyan (Nightmare in the Red Chamber), Eileen Chang (1920-1995) recalls that the meanings of Liuyan, the title of her essay collection published in 1944 in the Japanese occupied city of Shanghai, derives from an English saying “written on water.” She further elaborates the implications of the metaphor: she does not expect her writing to endure-it should be like words written on water, or 'flowing words,' as 'liuyan' would mean literally, lingering momentarily and eventually elapsing; but she also hopes that her writing will be endowed with the spirit of 'rumors' or 'gossip'-a second literal meaning of the word 'liuyan'-flowing freely and swiftly, reaching a wide audience.

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

Chang's use of a language of self-reflexivity provides a window through which the curious reader/critic can look into the rather intimate process of a creative work in the making, so much so that the creative mentality of the woman author becomes a text which is first to be deciphered. The invention of the title is characteristic of Chang's long-term effort to negotiate the boundaries between different genres of writing, and in this case, it is the distinction between critical/academic writing and the personal essay that is being questioned. Here, the mechanism behind the naming of her writing is more than just a clever pun. The title not only suggests a new style of essay writing, it also indicates a corresponding way to highlight the generic identities of this reinvented literary form.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

While words are described as flowing like water, and the essay genre is compared to a fluid construction of 'gossip' or leisurely talks, Chang's naming of her own writing here offers more than just commentaries on the practice of literary writing. More importantly, the renaming of the essay genre should be understood as the woman writer's commentary on the state of cultural production during a particular time in modern Chinese history that is characterized by enormous turmoil and disruption which resulted from the war and the occupation.

I argue that Chang's experience of the time, the space, and the particular historical milieu of occupied Shanghai is channeled into her attempts to redefine the generic identities of the modern essay. The choice of the essay form is central to Chang's aesthetic vision.

He Changqi 何长琦

The writer's self-positioning in the realm of urban culture of 1940s Shanghai is exemplified in her appropriation of the genre. The essay is made into an important discursive site where the woman writer overtly challenges the literary conventions, searches for alternatives in both literary writing and practices of everyday life, and promotes herself as an important cultural figure.

The modern essay also serves to contribute concrete forms to a life that appears void of any structure; in other words, Eileen Chang uses the form of the modern essay to construct an intelligible universe where one's imagination and fantasy can anchor. Detailed descriptions of everyday experience, that is, representations of cultural meanings of the material world, manifests not only a dynamic inner life but also a new social identity in formation.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

My paper highlights two aspects of life that are conceptualized in Chang's essay writing, one is the space of a modern apartment as a liminal site in urban landscape, and the other is the discourse of fashion as a vital form of material consciousness. I argue that the essay genre not only becomes an open-ended and ongoing process for the woman writer in her entry into the existing order of the literary world, it also becomes the testing ground where the boundaries between the literary world and the larger social realm become unstable and ever-shifting. Not only life styles can be read as texts, a woman writer as an individual can become a concrete historical subject within the space allowed by the modern essay. Life is woven together with work, the boundaries between the private and the public are further blurred, and biographical contingencies become important textual devices in constructing a legend of a new era.

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

In her perface to Honglou mengyan (Nightmare in the Red Chamber), Eileen Chang (1920-1995) recalls that the meaning of Liuyan, the title of her essay collection published in 1944 in the Japanese occupied city of Shanghai, derives from an English saying “written on water.” She further elaborates the implications of the metaphor: she does not expect her writing to endure – it should be like words written on water, or ‘flowing words,’ as ‘liuyan’ would mean literally, lingering momentarily and eventually elapsing; but she also hopes that her writing will be endowed with the spirit of ‘rumors’ or ‘gossip’ – a second literal meaning of the word ‘liuyan’ – flowing freely and swiftly, reaching a wide audience.[ See Chang, Nightmare in the Red Chamber (Taipei: Huangguan, 1977). The book, containing Chang’s essays on authorship, themes, structure, character portrayal, and linguistic construction of the most renowned vernacular narrative of pre-modern China Dream in the Red Chamber (Honglou meng), is representative of her literary and artistic pursuits during her American years (1955-1995).]

Hu Jin 胡瑾

Chang’s use of a language of self-reflexivity provides a window through which the curious reader/critic can look into the rather intimate process of a creative work in the making, so much so that the creative mentality of the woman author becomes a text which is first to be deciphered. The invention of the title is characteristic of Chang’s long-term effort to negotiate the boundaries between different genres of writing, and in this case, it is the distinction between critical/academic writing and the personal essay that is being questioned. Here, the mechanism behind the naming of her writing is more than just a clever pun. The title not only suggests a new style of essay writing, it also indicates a corresponding way to highlight the generic identities of this reinvented literary form.

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

During the writing process, the essay writer creates a structure of both containment (language captures the sentiments of a particular moment) and opening (language is unlimited because it lacks definite meaning or substance); and during the reading process, the immediacy and the transitoriness of the messages conveyed in these linguistic structures are first to be comprehended.

While words are described as flowing like water, and the essay genre is compared to a fluid construction of ‘gossip’ or leisurely talks, Chang’s naming of her own writing here offers more than just commentaries on the practice of literary writing. More importantly, the renaming of the essay genre should be understood as the woman writer’s commentary on the state of cultural production during a particular time in modern Chinese history that is characterized by enormous turmoil and disruption which resulted from the war and the occupation.[ For a standard historical account of cultural activities in occupied Shanghai, see Ke Ling, Zhuzi shengya (My Writing Career) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1986); also see Poshek Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).]

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

Eileen Chang launched her writing career during the early 1940s, and her most important works, including the essays collected in Written on Water and the short stories collected in Chuanqi (Romances), were completed between 1943 and 45. Chang’s fictional writing has been subjected to abundant critical scrutiny since the late 1960s and early 1970s when scholars such as C.T. Hsia and Shui Jing started to reclaim the significance of Eileen Chang and promote her as one of the finest and the most original writers in the scene of twentieth century Chinese literature.[ See Shui Jing’s Paozhuan ji (Casting a Brick to Attract Jade) (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1969) and Zhang Ailing de xiaoshuo yishu (The Fictional Art of Eileen Chang ) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1973), as well as C. T. Hsia’s Aiqing, Shehui, Xiaoshuo (Love, Society, and Fiction) (Taipei: Chunwenxue chubanshe 1970), both published in Taipei. The three books were published in the midst of a renewed infatuation with the woman author shared by readers in Chinese-speaking communities outside of mainland China after 1949.] But the study of Chang’s essay writing is a different story.

Jiang Hao 姜好

Since the most popular essays by Chang were written during the same period as her fictional writing, namely, between 1942 and 45, and some of her essays conveniently provided the concrete historical and biographical background against which the plot in her fictional writing was possibly designed, Chang’s essay writing has so far been read as the best commentaries to her fictional writing, particularly to the short stories collected in the acclaimed Romances.[ Wu Fuhui, among many others, argues that Eileen Chang’s essays are only interesting when read together with her short stories. He uses the essay entitled ”Jingyu lu” (Stories from the Ashes) as an example, arguing that the essay should be read as providing the necessary historical context to our understanding of Chang’s highly acclaimed novella Qingcheng zhi lian (Romance Among the Ruins). I disagree with Wu because the emphasis of the essay clearly lies elsewhere: it presents a social gallery of figures – a group of female college students, all from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, whose brilliance of personality is brought out by the war. The novella, however, focuses more on the falling apart and the reconstructing of the beauty legend. Here the generic distinctions between fiction and essay are instrumental in piecing together the meanings of these two literary texts. See Wu’s preface toZhang Ailing sanwen quanbian (A Complete Collection of Eileen Chang’s Essays) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 1995).] While such an approach to Chang’s essays can provide a coherent discussion of Chang’s literary writing as an entirety, it may overlook the specificities of the essay genre in the Chinese context and may also downplay the cultural significance of such formalistic experiments.

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

Chang’s experiments with the modern essay serve to position her at a critical moment of literary transformation in modern China. While women writers had actively participated in both fictional and poetic writing since the early decades of this century, the essay genre had been monopolized by male writers. Three major essay traditions had already been canonized when Eileen Chang took up the essay as a vital means of representation. The ‘minor essay’ (xiaopin wen) tradition, represented by Zhou Zuoren and Lin Yutang, is characterized by a light and relaxing tone, a simple and elegant diction, political disengagement, wit, and a leisurely mood.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

The ‘miscellaneous essay’ (zawen) tradition, represented by Lu Xun and several generations of followers, including a group of leftist writers residing in Gudao (Isolated Island) Shanghai (1937-41), highlights intellectual sharpness and rhetoric eloquence, advocates active engagement with reality, and maintains the belief that literary writing should be employed as a powerful tool for social criticism and political intervention. And finally, the ‘refined essay’ (meiwen) tradition, represented by Zhu Ziqing and many writers from both the Literary Studies Circle (Wenxue yanjiu hui) and the Creation Society (Chuangzao she) since the 1920s, advocates linguistic experiments, whose goal is to create a language of refinement and elegance, and imageries that embody highly aesthetic and sensual qualities.[ Most standard literary histories published in China do not attempt to distinguish between different styles of modern essay writing. The zawen (the miscellaneous essay) tradition is often highlighted as the mainstream style for its definition of literature as social and political critique. These standard literary histories do acknowledge the lyrical qualities of xiaopin wen and meiwen but fail to situate the practice of these alternative essay writing styles in their cultural and intellectual contexts. See Wang Yao, Zhongguo xinwenxue shigao (History of the ”New Literature” in China), Tang Tao and Yan Jiayan, Zhongguo xiandai wenxueshi (Modern Chinese History), and Qian Liqun et al., Zhongguo xiandai wenxue sanshinian (Thirty Years of Modern Chinese Literature).]

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

Most of the women writers in 1940s Shanghai experimented with essay writing. In fact, women produced a larger quantity of essays than any other literary genre. In addition to Eileen Chang, many women writers of the period, including Su Qing (1917-1982), Guan Lu (1908-1982), Pan Liudai (1922-?), and Shi Jimei (1920-1968), also discovered the generic fluidity embedded in the essay form. Compared to their experiments with other literary genres, such as fiction, drama, and poetry, it is in women’s essay writing of the period that the discourses of female gender and sexuality, issues of the domestic sphere, and the structures of social institutions such as marriage are most vigorously challenged and thoroughly reformulated. The essay genre is the most powerful literary form adopted by women writers such as Eileen Chang in their efforts to constantly redefine the boundaries between life and work, and to meticulously weave the space of private life together with the space provided by literary writing.

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

In the following sections, I will argue that the woman writer’s experience of the time, the space, and the particular historical milieu of occupied Shanghai is not only mirrored in her representation of individual experiences of the war, the occupation, and the everyday, but also in her attempts to redefine the generic identities of the modern essay and to reinvent a kind of prose language that most vividly captures the transitional as well as eccentric nature of the essay genre. I will also argue that the choice of the essay form is central to Chang’s aesthetic vision.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

The female writer’s self-positioning in the realm of urban culture of 1940s Shanghai is exemplified in her appropriation of the genre. I will analyze Chang’s essay writing of the period to demonstrate how the genre was made into an important discursive site where the woman writer overtly challenged the literary conventions, searched for alternatives in both literary writing and practices of everyday life, and promoted herself as an important cultural figure. The uniqueness of this body of literary texts lies in the fact that it presents a version of women’s literature set within the context of the wartime occupation while interacting with urban commercial and print culture in 1940s Shanghai.

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

Essay and the aesthetics of liminality

How, then, does Eileen Chang write the experience of war and turbulence into the transformed form of the modern essay? While the sense of impending massive destruction is omnipresent in her essay writing of the 1940s, the representation of the specific historical situation is not delivered through any direct social and political reference to the immediate present; instead, the presence of history is often concealed under the masquerade of an aesthetic vision put together by a meditative inward gaze, an orchestra of city sounds, and an imagined border of the urban civilization endangered:

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

Alone I sit next to a candle, thinking about the past and the present. What I have been busy doing for the last two years will probably be shattered soon. …… I should have a sense of it.

I was alone on the dusky balcony after Su Qing left. Suddenly I saw a tall building far away, on whose edges hung a great swatch of rouge-like redness. At first I thought it was the reflection of the setting sun on the windows, but on second glance, I realized that it was a full moon, rising crimson above the city. I thought to myself, “so this is what they mean by turbulent times.” In the evening mist, the borders of Shanghai were gently rising and falling in the distance, resembling layered mountain peaks, although there are no mountains surrounding our city.

Li Haiquan 李海泉

I pondered the fate of many people, including myself. I began to have a melancholy sense of what we call destiny. Such intimations normally connote self-involvement and self-pity, but I now think that they might suggest something altogether more broad. When the peace and security of the future finally do arrive, they will no longer belong to us; at the present moment each of us can only strive to comfort ourselves……[ See ”Wo kan Su Qing” (The Way I Look at Su Qing), in Tiandi yuekan (Heaven and Earth Monthly) 19 (April, 1945).]

This impressionistic silhouette of the city is none other than the dramatic presence of modern history itself. Here, history is visualized, flattened, and inevitably spatialized. The image of the city and the force of history intermingle into one performative moment, instantaneously captured by the ‘I,’ the woman writer, who sits on the balcony of her private home, looking out into the distance, watching the border of the city rise and fall, observing the currents of history come and go, as if the entire setting was a mere act in a long and winding chuanqi (romance) play.

Li Lili 李丽丽

History in Eileen Chang’s representation becomes a narrative which rejects any deep structure or profound meaning. Characterized by chaos and reversal, history appears to be no more than a shadowy presence in our consciousness:

In this era, the old things are falling apart, while the new ones are still in formation. Before the high tide of the era arrives, all certainty is but an illusion. We feel that everything in our everyday life is out of order to a terrifying degree. An individual belongs to a certain historical era, but our present era is sinking like a shadow; therefore we feel we have been deserted. In order to prove our own existence, we want to grasp onto something that is real, something fundamental. We then seek help from our ancient memory, the memory of human beings who have lived through various times in history.

Li Lingyue 李凌月

Looking back helps us regain more clarity and closeness than we might gazing far into the future. We then have a strange feeling about the reality that surrounds us. We begin to suspect that this is an absurd and antiquated world, gloomy and bright at the same time. Between memory and reality, there often arise unbearable discrepancies, resulting in a perplexing but subtle agitation, an intensified but indefinable struggle.[ See ”Ziji de wenzhang” (Writing of One’s Own), in Written on Water, 1944. This translation is based on an earlier version by David Wang. See Wang, ”Fin-de-siècle Grandeur: Contemporary Women Writers’ Vision of Taiwan,” Modern Chinese Literature 5.4 (1992) 45-65.]