Looking for Eileen Chang

Author: Xi Lingxue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: "Her life, though filled with hardship, was once brilliant and colorful—born into chaos, she endured torment in her youth. Suddenly, God piled before her all the beauty a woman could wish for: talent, fame, wealth, even love. It was like oil boiling and flowers blooming in full splendor. Yet, one by one, these gifts were taken away, leaving behind double the sorrow and suffering, wandering and drifting. When she reached her mostbeautifulprime, it was also the end of her path. Thus, she had no choice but to choose death to avoid it—no tragedy in life is greater than this." Putting down the clipping, my tears flowed, so aggrieved, uncontrollable. Outside the window, the rain was like silk threads, with swallows flying urgently through the downpour. The sky was ashen, the rooftops ashen, the pigeons' backs ashen. Oh, this was Shanghai as depicted by Eileen Chang, but it had been half a century since she left. It was an old newspaper from September 1995. In the news section, it said that the celebrated Eileen Chang was found dead in an apartment in Los Angeles on the morning of the 8th. The police estimated she had been gone for about six or seven days. Los Angeles? How could it be Los Angeles? She was the daughter of Shanghai, yet she walked alone in such a distant, lonely foreign land, no one told, she had decided to quietly end her life. Alas, joy in life, fear of death—was she truly tired, bored, was she? I opened the window, letting the wind blow in, letting the rain fall in, letting Eileen Chang's lonely spirit fly in. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how many people loved and mourned her, how unwilling they were to see her leave like this. I remember as a child, my grandmother told me that after death, people would walk the paths they had lived all their lives again—to pick up the footprints of their past lives, so they could be reborn, reincarnated. Shanghai left Eileen Chang so many deep memories, so many footprints; she must return to collect them, right? When she flew over Shanghai's sky, would she see me, see this Suzhou woman who came to Shanghai in search of dreams for her?—From seeing Eileen Chang's Love in a Fallen City in my teens to finally being able to buy all her works in my twenties, I loved her for ten years straight, never changing. In this era of fan culture, fans fight tooth and nail every day to see their idols. If I have an idol, it is Eileen Chang. It was for her that I became obsessed with Shanghai's romance, revered the TV series Shanghai as scripture, hung the beauty photos of Ruan Lingyu in my room, mindlessly played Zhou Xuan's Night in Shanghai on the radio again and again, and gave up my job assignment to come alone to this foreign land. Yet walking on the streets of Shanghai, I never saw her. Not even in a dream. Born decades too late, what a regret. I wore flat shoes, a white shirt, a soft fabric long dress, and braided hair, always holding a sixteen-bone ink-and-landscape bamboo paper umbrella. In the rain, two orioles sang beside green willows; in the clear sky, a line of egrets flew toward the blue. Shanghai saw me as a stranger, and I saw myself as an outsider. Since I was already out of place, I might as well go all the way. Zijun laughed at me for living in Shanghai while thinking of Shanghai, but the Shanghai in my heart and the Shanghai around me were not...