Eileen Chang: Half a Lifelong Romance

For some reason, this edition of Eileen Chang's Half a Lifelong Romance isn't available in North America though it should be.

I'm a huge fan of Chinese writer, Eileen Chang, who was at her writing peak in the early 1940s in occupied Shanghai. I've read just about all of her fiction and non-fiction and when she has a new piece translated or re-issued, I am compelled to read it.

So I ordered this UK edition of this novel. It's really wonderful. Though Chang wrote in both Chinese and English, I prefer her work in English translated by a native English speaker (this book translated by Karen Kingsbury) where the language is more fluid and natural.

Plus, as was the custom of the day, Chang herself chose English-equivalent names for her Chinese characters and it's very difficult to read a novel with characters named "Good luck," "Gold Root," "Gold Flower," etc. Most contemporary translators just use the Chinese equivalent (which if one isn't familiar with Chinese can be a bit daunting at first but one gets acclimated to it quickly enough).

Half a Lifelong Romance is classic Eileen Chang: embedded in the deep emotion, pain and psychology of her characters, China and all its political upheavals linger in the background, never making up more than hints or flavours in the story. It's all about human affairs: love, duty, commitment, betrayal. I've written before about the fact that during her lifetime in China, Chang was severely criticized for writing non-politically (when being non-political itself was a terribly politically charged stance), and this novel, too, shows us Chang's deep interest in love and families.

Though it has to be ordered from Amazon.co.uk (possibly some aggregator site can find second-hand copies of it somewhere closer), it's well worth it. It's a really fascinating novel and I've enjoyed it immensely.

It tells the story of a doomed romance and all the complexities of early 20th century Chinese families, the pressures that class and morality forced upon smart hard-working women.

Eileen Chang is a very interesting figure. One of the most popular contemporary writers in 1940s
Shanghai, she was forced to leave her beloved city in the early 1950s (the Communists disliked her for a whole host of reasons) where she moved to Hong Kong and then the US, never to return to her homeland. Yet for the rest of her life (she died in 1995), she set all her books there, longing, perhaps, for those streets and familiar smells that were lost to her forever. Towards the end of her life, she was revered, particularly in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and her career got back on track soon after her death. She continues to be one of the most famous writers in the Chinese-speaking world to this day.

Amy Tan and Eileen Chang

One of the first novels about China that I can remember reading is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. I loved it. Then again, I was only  15 or 16 when it came out and I remember getting a hold of a copy of it at the public library. I had had no experience or thought of China and in the town where I am from, China is about as far away as one can be culturally.

So the book opened up a new world for me and at that impressionable age, attracted me to all things Chinese. Later I would live in Shanghai and Hong Kong for years, learning Mandarin and writing a good deal about contemporary Chinese literature.

I largely forgot about Amy Tan: I read A Kitchen God's Wife years after my first encounter with her but I hardly remember it. China was always portrayed rather tragically by Tan. When the film version of The Joy Luck Club was released, I saw it in the theater but was disappointed because it fell so far short of the book.

All of this to say that I picked up her latest book last week and have been reading it. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about it. And I'm not sure if it's just my critical abilities have developed a lot since I was 15 or if it's a flawed book though I'm reading it actively and will finish it. One problem I often have with "historical fiction" (a term I am using loosely), particularly told in the first person, is that the narrator is too often a modern figure, "translating" an older culture for us in the modern world. So the limitations of that modern point of view underline all the analysis and editorializing about the historical period. The narrator of Tan's new book (The Valley of Amazement) seems like a kid from the 1970s USA trapped in the world of 1920s Shanghai: her insights, her feelings. It's also clearly told from an adult's point of view since the insights are uneven: the things she understands are odd (the complex machinations of her dragon-like mother who runs a brothel are crystal clear for a 7 year old). Her voice is irritating. Maybe that's what Tan intends since she (Violet) is supposed to be a spoiled child but it's when we move out of her voice into another character's the the book gets interesting.

There are sections which are absolutely riveting. When Violet, the main American character, is "tutored" by an ageing courtesan, the story comes alive. It's fascinating all the rules and complex courting rituals that courtesans followed in order to be successful. And make no mistake, it was merely a matter of survival, no hedonistic impulses were part of the equation (for the woman, at any rate). The amount of research that must have gone into this is something I can't stop thinking about as I read these long sections about clothes, fashion, envy, increasing one's reputation, attracting men, sexual prowess.

What strikes me is how similar the rules of our "celebrity culture" are similar to the world of being a good courtesan.

It's the main character's voice that I find hard to bear. Why is she so obsessed with her mother's love? This seems like a modern invention, particularly given the fact that in traditional Chinese society, parents never tell their kids "I love you" (True, Violet is half-American and her mother is completely American but Violet has grown up in China with her mother as just about the only influence from American culture and not overly warm, etc.). This deep-seated insecurity seems very much like a modern invention to me (not that Chinese kids didn't want their parents' love but they didn't obsess over it). Tan thanks Lisa See in her acknowledgements, a mediocre writer whose work suffers from many of the same flaws as this one does.


I am a big believer that one can like popular fiction and still be a "good" reader but I am not really getting this book. Oddly though it has hooked me (often I won't even finish books I am enjoying). And it makes me wonder if I should re-read The Joy Luck Club to find out if it's as good as I remember. Or perhaps it's better if I leave it and let it remain in the past.

But where Tan shines is, oddly, when she reaches back and shows us this world from a Chinese point of view (not a Westerner's point of view). In these beautiful passages I am reminded of Han Bangqing's novel (translated by Eileen Chang), The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai. It's a much more interesting book (though perhaps less so to contemporary North Americans since the narration is not exactly what we are used to).

In general, if one wants to get a real insight into China, read Eileen Chang. Her narrators are truly complex and fascinating. Lust, Caution is at once suspenseful, erotic, and complex. Love in a Fallen City is painful, beautiful and gives us Shanghai of the 1920s in a much more believable, less individualistic way that reflects a truer reality of the city. (even the reality of today though the book was written in the 1930s and 40s).

I've written about Eileen Chang before but I come back to her writing again and again, always finding something new, always enjoying my time in the worlds she creates.

I've often heard people say to me that they're not interested in China. I guess on one hand, I can understand that since all we hear in the media is negative stories about it: how dirty it is, how corrupt, how chaotic and crowded, etc. All of this is true. But China is an incredibly complex, amazing, and yes beautiful place with thousands of years of history. I find it endlessly fascinating (and yes also frustrating, nationalistic, self-centered), particularly these visions of Shanghai in the early part of the 20th century.

Space, Imagination, Memory, Mortality: Charles Simic in NYRB

Charles Simic rarely disappoints me. And I'm not talking about his poetry necessarily but the pieces he writes for the NYRB. Yes, he veers dangerously close to old man nostalgia at times but more often he presents a provocative starting point and then attempts to create a universal experience from a series of personal details.

In this piece, for example, he considers how memory and physical space are tied together, most specifically, how certain buildings in New York are associated with memories from his past: scenes from his early marriage or a disastrous first date. In the end, the piece is about Aristotle's pronouncement that memory is nothing objective or static but resides in the same place as imagination does. But I take it one step beyond perhaps.

I've never lived in a city long enough to have long-standing associations with buildings. When I return to the place where I grew up, too much time has passed and space doesn't have the emotional resonance since there is absolutely no connection to my life today. The two cities I know better than any others - Montreal and Shanghai - represent different times in my life, but one is a living breathing city for me (Montreal) since I live here and experience its changes on a daily basis, while the other (Shanghai) is frozen in my memory. Though I've been back there several times since leaving, I always end up comparing what I see with what I remember.

A familiar corner: I lived right behind this building for years. 

This all leads me to a particular fascination of mine: how physical space and literature intersect. I love knowing that in this building here, a novel was set, that the author spent time thinking about this particular spot or front door or window sill. The Binerie on Mont-Royal where much of Le Matou is set. The Bagel shop on Fairmount where Mordecai Richler characters have stood. Mavis Gallant's Sherbrooke Street. Perhaps this is my way of creating memory in a city where I didn't spend my youth (I had the same tendency to connect space and literature in Shanghai and wrote for a magazine there on a similar topic).

Simic ends his piece with a tiny impression, the lack of any noise, as he considers a building in which he once lived. Fire seems to have been fated to destroy it. But, no, all these years later, there it stands, still reeking of his past though he sees no trace of himself there. This is a sign of our modern condition: for it is in Nature that we like to feel our mortality. In a forest, looking up at a mountain range in order to feel the sense that once we are gone we will be completely forgotten. (For some this is a terrifying feeling; for some, it's oddly comforting). Yet for modern urbanites like Charles Simic, one can sense this same sensation by standing in the shadow of an old brick walkup with rusted out mailboxes and dilapidated fire escapes.

It's a much more humane route to revelling in our mortality and one that doesn't feel as bleak and lonely as considering the same idea in nature, away from the masses of people where we so rarely find ourselves these days. 

Emotional vs Logical Readings

I've been thinking about how there are countless ways to react to a book. We can love people in our lives though we find them loaded with faults and we can know someone who seems to be a saint but find them insufferable. So it goes with books.

Two weeks ago I read Lisa See's book Shanghai Girls. While reading this novel, a rational list of faults kept getting checked: overuse of cliches, oversimplistic historical analysis, often flat one-dimensional characters. Yet I was completely transfixed by it. I read the book in just two days and was fascinated by the sweep and scope of the story. But my rational mind kept yelling at me to STOP and that the book was a waste of time. And in many ways it was.

The novel tells the story of two sisters, born and raised in Shanghai, and how the civil war and Japanese invasion in particular, change their lives forever. From a wealthy and influential family, they soon realize the harsh realities of life when their father loses all his money and they are forced to flee the city. Eventually, they end up in Los Angeles where they have to adjust being at the bottom of the heap both economically and culturally. They experience 1940s prejudices and live under the watchful eye of an authoritarian patriarch who keeps all their money and gives them very little control. Yet slowly they flourish in their forced marriages, both breaking out and learning to adjust to their lot if not quite happily then with some resignation.

The characters do change and develop and the relationship between the sisters is really the emotional glue that holds the story together. But the book is clearly written from a modern-day point of view and the author puts words and ideas into Pearl's head that are clearly her own early 21st century perspective. This is galling and irritating at times. There are other problems as well, but the overriding issue was that I continued to read and, in fact, enjoyed reading, though I was having so many critical issues with the book. Why?

While reading this book, I came across Ruiyan Xu's 2011 novel The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai. As soon as I started into this book (immediately after finishing the See novel), I had the opposite reaction: my list of critical check boxes were all flying through without a hit, excellent character development, complex, multi-layered story, believable dialogue, etc. And acknowledging the complexities of life and trauma. The story opens just before a huge explosion in a Shanghai hotel severely injures Lijing, a successful (and wealthy) stock broker. As he comes to in the hospital, his wife is told that he has lost his ability to speak and soon it becomes clear that it's his ability to speak Mandarin which has been compromised. He can still speak English, minimal and difficult though it is. Soon an American brain specialist is sent to China to work with Lijing to recover his Chinese and this is really the heart of the story: the interaction between the doctor and the patient.

Even in a brief description the Xu novel is apparently more interesting and more complex. Yet I had such a hard time connecting to this work. I did, and I ultimately finished the book though it took me a good week to do so. But it made me think about this reaction which should be (a loaded phrase, I realize) the opposite. Shouldn't the critically complex and more interesting work be more appealing to the one that got my back up? Or maybe should misses the point.

One interesting aspect to both works: Shanghai Girls is told from the perspective a Chinese woman but it's told by an American writer who's only distantly Chinese (her grandfather was half Chinese or something). Lost and Forgotten is told (largely) from the point of view of a white American (and the fact that she's white is important) though the author herself is Chinese American and came to the US as a young girl. This is something I've noticed a good deal of the last few years: authors telling a story through the guise of someone who may not reflect their background or culture. Of course this has always been done to some extent but I think of Daniel Allen Cox's book Krakow Melt which s told from the point of view of a Pole (though Cox is a Montrealer) and Clark Blaise who wrote an entire collection of short stories (The Meager Tarmac) from the points of view of Indians or Indian-Americans. It seems to me that this would have been quite difficult 15 or 20 years ago since writing about "other" cultural points of view on the part of Western writers would have been seen as terribly colonial. 

But the bigger question is why we can connect emotionally to works that critically we react against? This doesn't happen all the time (or perhaps often even) though when it does, it underscores the fact that reading (or watching a movie, etc.) is at its heart an emotional experience and no matter how much rational thought we bring to the experience, emotions win out.

What I started reading in 2012....and what I will read soon...

So it's been awhile since I last wrote anything here. The holidays wore me out! And we're back now after closing up shop for a couple of weeks. I couldn't stand the thought of another "best of 2011" reading/book list, so I decided instead to start 2012 with a list of books I am reading or soon to read. Always better to look forward!

The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai: This novel, set in Shanghai in 1999, tells the story of a high-powered Shanghai business man who is injured in an explosion and loses his ability to speak Mandarin. Having spent his very early years in the US, he returned to China at age 10 and managed to forget his English, only to have it return after he is severely injured. Screaming allegory aside, the book is an interesting exploration of the frustration that is a part of losing the ability to speak, not only for the victim but for all those around the victim. The US doctor sent to work with the patient, Lijing, complicates the frustration and Lijing's recovery. The setting captures the mood of late 90s China and Shanghai in particular.For me personally, since I lived in Shanghai at this time, the references to some of the sights and sounds and places of the city in 1999 really made me nostalgic!

The Beggar's Opera by Peggy Blair is the story of a crumbling marriage, a murder in Havana and a Cuban detective who is losing his grip on reality. The flavor of Havana figures solidly in this interesting tale and the Canadian suspect is the ultimate innocent abroad. This one makes me crave Cuba in January...

Some other books:

Dirty Feet by Edem Awumey. From the mRb review: The short but dense novel recounts the story of an unlikely and undefined relationship between two migrants in Paris, both haunted by memories of their respective homes. The protagonist Askia suffers the somewhat typical fate of many immigrants: though he is well educated, he drives a cab and lives in squalor. He is also on a mission to find his lost father, who is believed to be living in Paris. One day, he meets the mysterious Olia (who happens to be his fare) – a Bulgarian fashion photographer who claims that she has photographed Askia’s father and offers to help locate the missing man.


Mister Blue by Jacques Polin. From the press release: This tender and perceptive tale explores the textures of solitude, compassion, language, fear, and the imagination. Meet Jim: a writer suffering from vivid dreams and bouts of writer's block. Meet Mister Blue, a dignified and prophetic cat and Jim's sole companion that spring on the Ile of d'Orléans...until the day they discover a copy of The Arabian Nights in a cave along the beach.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but the books I'm either halfway through or have on my nightstand to read in the next couple of weeks. I did surprisingly little reading over the break: mainly I watched movies, Japanese anime (which I'm kind of obsessed with lately), walked the dog and hung out with friends...man, time off is just what I needed before our final push to Festival time!