White Bauhinia in Hong Kong: Continuation of the Love Story of the City of Dreams

Author: Yu Qing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: The charm of a unique woman and the taste of life, filled with the romance of golden years. The days spent in that extraordinary city, and how Bai Liusu went to Hong Kong with Fan Liuyuan. This book is a sequel to Eileen Chang's famous novel "Love in a Fallen City." Eileen Chang's novel "Love in a Fallen City" tells the story of Bai Liusu, a daughter of a declining aristocratic family, and Fan Liuyuan, the son of a wealthy overseas Chinese businessman, who fall in love and get married during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, when the city is on the brink of catastrophe. The engagement announcement was published in the newspaper, and after several twists and turns, Bai Liusu became Fan Liuyuan's legitimate wife. Fan Liuyuan no longer played around with her and saved his witty remarks to tell other women. Yu Qing's "Bai Liusu in Hong Kong" continues along this storyline. It's a bit like a sequel to "Dream of the Red Chamber," each with its own writing style. Of course, the portrayal of Bai Liusu can't be limited to this interpretation. In "Bai Liusu in Hong Kong," Fan Liuyuan falls in love with a female waiter at the Shanghai International Hotel and divorces Bai Liusu. Shortly after moving to England, he is abandoned by this Shanghai lady. He married twice in England—once to a former colleague who taught at the same school as him, and once to Angela, a British girl with African ancestry. After both marriages failed, he harbored his longing for Bai Liusu and spent his later life in solitude and depression as a librarian in a school library. Abandoned by Fan Liuyuan, Bai Liusu, with a little savings and some property left by him, helped by Qi Zhiyuan, made money through stock and real estate trading, growing from small to large by chance. Her third husband was this much younger Qi Zhiyuan. After Qi Zhiyuan's death, Bai Liusu, who lived to be over eighty, still lived in the Mid-Level Road area but enjoyed taking her maid Xiao Xiang to Youmaidi to eat radish cakes and listen to Cantonese opera. She remained a wealthy woman living a prosperous and ordinary life, with a face as round and white as glutinous rice dumplings, characteristic of a Shanghai woman. Yu Qing fully utilizes her imagination to continue the love story set beneath the gray walls of Shallow Water Bay in Hong Kong for decades. The ending of Fan Liuyuan and Bai Liusu also seems to align with the development of their characters' destinies. Therefore, readers can no longer help but sigh and reflect on the fate of the novel's protagonists.