Night Shanghai

Author: Chen Zishan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-03-01
Features: "Shanghai at Night, Shanghai at Night, you are a city that never sleeps; with lights twinkling, music playing, and songs and dances in harmony. Wine doesn’t intoxicate, but people get drunk on their own; lost in the chaos of the world, youth fades away." This book collects the portrayals of Shanghai by renowned Chinese and foreign writers such as Lin Yutang, Mao Dun, Yu Dafu, Cao Juren, Eileen Chang, Bai Xiangyong, Ai Ying, Ye Lingfeng, Shao Xunmei, Lin Huiyin, Dong Leshan, and Leo Ou-fan, accompanied by profound and symbolic cartoons by Gu Jianying and Xie Fu. Their perception and nostalgia for Shanghai are vivid, lively, and everyday—in fact, whether reminiscing or looking ahead, Shanghai is always endlessly fascinating.
Excerpt: Only Shanghainese know what a "tingzijian" is. In the 1930s, almost every Chinese film featured scenes of tingzijians. Lu Xun’s "Jiejia Ting" likely drew attention to the "symbol of bitter solitude" inherent in the rented living spaces in the concessions. At the beginning of the 1920s, foreign adventurers of all kinds flocked to the Huangpu waterfront, starting from scratch, some legally, some illegally. The rapid increase in Shanghai’s population was so swift that it couldn’t even be considered good or bad. A tingzijian was originally a storage room, akin to an attic, or a place for servants to live. Mostly located on the top floor, facing north, they were exposed to wind in winter and scorching sun in summer. Only one wall had a window, or sometimes none at all, relying on a thin door leading to the balcony for light and ventilation. The space was always less than ten square meters; if one was nearly ten square meters, it was called a "houxiangfang," which commanded a higher rent. Civil servants, workers, teachers, writers, performers, small business owners, actors, "elastic girls," half-opened businesses, itinerant workers, and even disreputable men and women of the foreign concessions, as well as the marginalized widows, widowers, and orphans who slipped through the cracks of the law—were all fortunate or unlucky enough to live in tingzijians. Most were unmarried couples, but standard five-member families and even three-generational households were common. After all, "jie" and "jia" together meant concessions, and the concessions were the foreign quarters, where countless opportunities lay waiting. Shanghai even imitated the newly invented "radio." It looked like the arch of a church, and from within, a sharp, soft female voice would sing: "Shanghai, oh Shanghai, was originally a paradise, but joy without sorrow, living in grand mansions, playing mahjong during the day." The tingzijian was never far from the grand mansions. Leaning by the window or standing on the balcony, one could see the mansions block the blue sky like stage backdrops. Above the torn sky, clouds drifted leisurely, exuding a kind of grandeur and compassion.
Musicians in the tingzijian, having swallowed a youtiao, would hum and compose: "Rumble, rumble, haha, rumble, we are the pioneers breaking new ground, fearless of mountains and rivers, thousands of them, fearless of..." Everyone found it inspiring. In truth, the single men and women, unmarried couples, and five-member families in the tingzijian all regarded their limited lives as boundless futures, for Shanghai, this stage of fame and fortune was always dazzling with success. When one claimed to be "capable of bending and stretching," it was often when they were almost bent beyond recovery. The yarn hanging on the balcony dripped endlessly, faded. Bamboo poles stretched across the sky, dividing it into grids, and biplanes slowly moved from one grid to another. It seemed war was inevitable.
The radio played on, "A grand feast, oh, a grand feast, guests are coming, oh, red men, green women, so joyful, oh, ah, ah, ah." Before them, the red was the daylily and cockatoo flowers on the brick railing, and the green was the scallions or the evergreen in the broken basin. The balconies of Shanghai households were also used as storage spaces. All the rarely used, useless, or sickly items were sprawled in corners like beasts. What seemed most carefree were the clothes and sheets fluttering in the wind, like fluttering national flags, exuding a sense of modesty amidst opulence. "Shanghai at night, Shanghai at night, you are a city that never sleeps."
At noon, households were busy cooking and preparing meals. Coal stoves were placed on small flat surfaces at the turn of the stairs, looking like temporary arrangements. Ten or twenty years would pass like this. The light from the tiger window or a five-watt bulb, blackened by smoke, looked like rotten pears. By its dim glow, frying, stir-frying, steaming, and boiling were all in order. Added to this were the homemade pickles, sauces, preserves, and wines, as well as the preserved meat and salted eel hanging beneath the eaves. If guests came, four dishes and one soup, plus cold dishes, were laid out calmly on the table. The Shanghainese were greedy and discerning, even if they lived in a tingzijian, even the likes of "fake phoenixes and fake phoenixes," would draw curtains, gnawing on bones, calm and composed. Even if they slept through the night, they would roll out of bed, put on a coat, and slip into slippers to go out for snacks—only to the most famous ones, even if it meant walking further. The more cultured would bring the food back in containers, carefully climbing the stairs. Then, with clinking bowls and spoons, they would hunch over the small glass table under the apple-green lampshade, savoring every bite. The baby next door would cry out in the middle of the night, the sound of shuffling mahjong tiles would echo like wind and rain, and the chicken coop at the corner of the balcony would stir for a while before settling down again.
When relatives from the countryside came to Shanghai, they were overwhelmed by cars and grand mansions. Sleeping on the floor, they awoke to the rooster crowing at dawn and couldn’t help but sigh, "After all, they are Shanghainese."
However, life in the tingzijian was hard. Confined and cramped, with shabby furniture that bumped and scratched, without which, life was neither sleep nor sustenance. The walls were cracked, covered entirely with old and new newspapers. When bored, they would stare blankly for hours—Hu Die arrived in Moscow, the bell telephone had unexpected effects, 606, 914, Roosevelt was re-elected President of the United States, the dish "zhegu cai," the medicine "Xiao Zhilong," the restaurant "Huoshao Hong Lian Si," Gandhi’s sixth day of fasting, "Midnight Song" (children not served), Monkey King Zhang Yipeng, Mermaid Yang Xiuchun, aviation (patriotic aviation), and the dreaded "Ruan Lingyu’s soul returned to the sky of parting"—even the frames hung low on the ceiling were considered high, with many small photos scattered, some with clear hierarchies, but over time, they became loose and tilted. Some had faded and dulled. After all, they were the best among the family’s relatives. The portrait of the late father and mother was drawn in charcoal, relatively inexpensive. The corner painter deliberately enlarged the small photos, whether natural or artificial, all indicating the person in the picture was dead.
For every five-member family, there would be a wedding photo. Perhaps their circumstances were good at the time, or perhaps they had to endure just to maintain appearances. The men wore sharp suits, their hair slicked back, the women draped in wedding veils, holding bouquets of flowers—chrysanthemums had become popular. The photos were black and white, yet somehow solemn. Wedding photos were the finest treasures in the tingzijian.
The following year, mooncake boxes, sealed rice barrels, wicker baskets, wire baskets, leather bags, and thread bags filled the underfloor space, forcing them to be haphazardly arranged. Yet, it was clear they had painstakingly organized them daily. Even the thin ropes were straightened and hung separately. They weren’t reluctant to throw anything away, but everything was still useful.
Perhaps only those who had lived in a tingzijian could truly be called "classically trained Shanghainese." And those who spent their entire lives trapped in a tingzijian were nothing more than Shanghainese in name.