Better Not to Meet: Selected Prose of Yu Junjian

Author: Yu Junjian / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Not long ago, my grandmother wrote to me, saying that the old house my grandfather left at the intersection of Henan Road and Zhaojiabang Road in Shanghai had been demolished. My grandmother is my grandfather's third wife and is not related to my father by blood. But whenever I come to Shanghai, I always take time to visit her because, after all, she accompanied my grandfather through the last years of his life. I remember a few years ago when I visited her, I often met the elderly neighbors in the lane and they would warmly greet me: "This is the grandson of Grandpa Yu." But in recent years, these old people seem to have disappeared, and the lane has become much quieter. My ancestral home is Haimen Island across from Chongming, but I have never lived there. Even my grandfather came to Shanghai at a young age to "make a name for himself." I was born in Guilin, which was my grandfather's "mistake." During the War of Resistance Against Japan, Guilin became the rear base, and my grandfather went there to serve as the director of the Joint Committee for the Relocation of National and Private Enterprises to Guangxi. Later, he returned to Shanghai, but he left his "original wife" and his only son—my father—in Guilin. However, in Guilin, our family was still considered Shanghai people. This was because Haimen dialect is very similar to Shanghai dialect. To Shanghai ears, it sounds like the speech of the countryside, but to the people of Guilin, it is absolutely authentic Shanghai dialect. From a young age, I always felt particularly "Shanghai." By the time I was four or five years old, my first trip away was to "go back to Shanghai." When I returned to the kindergarten in Guilin, I could tell the children about the Bund in Shanghai, the skyscrapers on Nanjing Road, and even draw trolley cars with two braids on the blackboard. The teacher had the whole kindergarten come to see it and praised me: "Children from Shanghai are really different." When I was ten years old, I lived with my aunt and her husband, Uncle Jiang Min, on Shouning Road. In the summer, I would run around the lane barefoot, a habit I had picked up in Guangxi. An elderly couple downstairs didn’t like it and cursed me as a "rude country bumpkin." I actually got angry and thought, "I’ve been living here and going to school with the older boys in the courtyard to paste big-character posters and sing model operas, and even lined up to welcome the 'comrades and brothers' from Albania." How dare you not recognize me as a Shanghai person? As I was thinking this, I rushed to their door and broke their pot. Shortly after this "heroic" act, I was struck with another heavy blow. That was when I went to a pharmacy to buy cold medicine for my neighbor's child. The old man behind the counter asked me how old the child was, and I blurted out, "A six-year-old boy," influenced by my mother's Haimen dialect. The old man stared at me for a long time and finally said, "What kind of boy? The Shanghai people don’t understand what you’re saying." After I started working, I came to Shanghai again. A colleague asked me to deliver something to Huashan Road. That night, relying on my childhood memories of living near Huaihai Road, I rode my aunt’s new bicycle and set off. Perhaps because it was dark, when I rode to Yan’an West Road, I suddenly couldn’t find the intersection with Huashan Road. In desperation, I asked a middle-aged woman who looked relatively kind for directions. She pointed me in a direction without hesitation. But the further I rode, the darker the road became, and the fewer people were around. I looked up and saw the sign for West Suburban Park. When I arrived back at my aunt’s house at nearly eleven o’clock at night, the whole family was already sweating from anxiety. This was because, in the 1970s, when social order was not stable, West Suburban Park was still considered the wilderness of Shanghai, and I was only a teenager. Strangely enough, many of the beautiful memories I have of Shanghai have faded over time, yet I vividly remember these few incidents where I was mocked by the Shanghai people. I often ask myself, am I too petty? P15-16