Xiao Er, one more cup of coffee (Parisian Art Cafe)

Author: Huang Renda
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: These people are doing the same thing in famous cafes, sitting there drinking coffee, gossiping, and exchanging glances; the friends they want to see are nowhere to be found, because they are lost in the crowd. If you are lucky enough to have spent your youth in Paris, it will follow you for life; Paris is a moving feast. — Hemingway
I sat in Café Double Deux, staring at the white paper on the coffee table. I could feel my fingers twitching; I needed to write.
Next, I wanted to write about myself. The rising thought was: What is the meaning of being a woman? — Simone de Beauvoir
What Paris is annoying: its delicate and gentle senses, its tendency to call the beautiful pretty, and to call the pretty beautiful. What is appealing: the terrible loneliness — a silent loneliness that fills the remaining soul with a surge of sorrow — Camus.
Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sartre, Hemingway. Their footsteps in Paris.
Paris is one of the few cities in the world that refuses to change. I am delighted to see her stubbornness; change is not a trait I like to see. In 1972, influenced by France’s "June 68 Revolution," I traveled far to Paris with a group of "angry youth" to pay homage. Even though most of my time was spent studying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, I still faintly tasted the vicissitudes and stubbornness of Paris.
Yes, we could only taste the invisible Paris at that time; the visible Paris was too luxurious for us poor kids. Sitting in a café cost 1.2 francs per cup, while standing at the bar cost 0.7 francs. Do you have to guess whether we were sitting or standing? In the student-packed Latin Quarter, we often had to prove we were on the "Left Bank" (you know, newcomers to Paris often struggle to distinguish between the Left Bank and the Right Bank), then searching for the traces of the stones that students dug from the roads to resist the riot police. Of course, they were gone. We walked past the bookstore owner who looked a bit like Einstein. Books were something we could never afford — after standing through a round of reading, we went back to the bar for coffee, but this time we could only have a small cup.
But Parisian cafes are really interesting. It’s hard to imagine how Parisians (in this sense, all French people) would live without cafes. Some say the street lamp posts in Paris are very individualistic, as if each one hides a small story behind it. I say: Yes, yes, that’s a café, Hemingway, Shakespeare’s bookstore! I agree, really. My friend Renda arrived in Paris three years later than I did, and I’m very happy that he finally decided to publish these books. Of course, I suggest that it’s even more enjoyable to explore it in person. If that’s the case, Renda’s book can serve as a guide!