Shanghai Old News

Author: Li Qingrui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The backdrop of the dream is the Qing Dynasty—all dynasties in which I am most fascinated by the Qing Dynasty. Its coolness and slender, strange charm have always inexplicably drawn me. The smaller backdrop is Shanghai or Suzhou, on an autumn evening with drizzling rain. Suzhou is the hometown; let’s not speak of it. Why Shanghai? Shanghai is a kind of atmosphere. Qing Dynasty Shanghai, specifically, the Shanghai of the Guangxu era, subtly exudes an aura; extravagant, delicate, gorgeous and flamboyant, full of romance and elegance. All these vibes seem to directly come from the Qing Dynasty Riverside Scene at the Capital. In that famous painting, I am a petty woman standing by the door: wearing colorful hairpins to buy breakfast for men, dragging embroidered shoes to knit socks against the neighbor’s door, or chasing a rolling toilet lid. My grandfather’s memory of Shanghai was like this: neon lights flickered and danced, and if you counted carefully, there were seven colors. Horse-drawn carriages, rickshaws, and occasional horseless carriages moved faster than the wind, squeezed together more densely than crops in the fields. The stone gate towers were carved with patterns, and one of them was even a gourd flower. The loudspeakers sang from morning till night, and the women inside should have had a lazy cat-like face. The balconies were covered with vines, and a sea of green jumped down from the black iron railings, decorating my grandfather’s youthful dreams. Skyscrapers and women in qipaos complemented each other, all living under the same sky. Old shops lined the streets one after another: Zhejiang-Ningbo snacks, Guanshan peaches and jujubes, Min-Guang foreign sugar, two-ocean delicacies, feathered woolen fabrics, harral burlap—my illiterate grandfather’s head spun from all the names. The "Ten Li of Shanghai" were actually much more than ten Li, compared to foreign cities. Shanghai was proud of having nothing in short supply: horse racing tracks, ballrooms, gambling dens, opium dens, churches, brothels—all mostly named with some unimaginable names.