Eileen Chang - Whispers

Author: Eileen Chang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: Let's go! Let's go upstairs! I wrote a play, there's a character who takes his children along to visit relatives, and gets into a fight with them. He jumps up angrily and says, "I can't take this anymore. Let's go! We'll go!" His wife pleads, "Where are we going?" He gathers his wife and children together and says, "Let's go! Let's go upstairs!" At mealtime, a call, and they'll come down. Chinese people learned "walking out" from the play Nora①. Undoubtedly, this bold and desolate gesture has left a deep impression on young Chinese. The number of such missing person ads in the newspapers is astonishing: "Since you left without saying goodbye on the evening of the twelfth, your grandmother is bedridden, your mother's old illness has returned, and the whole family has been crying all day. Please come back as soon as you see this ad." It's the same act of "walking out," but how is it "walking into the wind, embracing the sun and moon"? How is it "walking upstairs"? According to common understanding, perhaps becoming a vase is going upstairs, becoming a wife is going upstairs, dreaming...