Written on Water, page 2
But there were also occasions when I resented the days for going by too fast, like the time when I grew so much and so suddenly that I never got to wear my new foreign-style suit of scallion-green brocade, not even once. Whenever I thought about that outfit later, I felt a deep sadness and saw its loss as one of the greatest regrets of my life.
For a time, when I was living under the regime of my stepmother, I had to choose things to wear from among her hand-me-downs. I will never be able to forget a certain dun-red, thinly quilted gown. It was the color of chopped beef, and I wore it for what seemed like forever, looking as if my whole body was covered with chilblains, and even when winter had passed, the scars from the sores still remained—the gown was that hateful, that shameful. Mostly on account of the fact that I was ashamed of my own appearance, my life in middle school was unhappy, and I rarely made any friends.
After I graduated from middle school, I lived with my mother. My mother put forward a very equitable proposition: if I were to marry early, there would be no need to continue my studies, and I could use the money that would have been spent on tuition to dress myself in the latest fashions. But if I kept on studying, there would be nothing left over for clothes. After I went to Hong Kong for college, I was awarded two scholarships, and because I had saved my mother a substantial sum of money, I decided that I could finally indulge myself by having a few outfits made precisely to my specifications. And ever since then, I’ve been indulging myself in clothes.
When it comes to harmonizing color and tone, Chinese people have only recently learned the principles of “contrast” and “matching” from the West. The common, crudely simplified conception of contrast is red against green, while matching is green with green. But what most people do not realize is that the clash between two different shades of green is extraordinarily clear: the more closely the two shades encroach upon one another, the more unsettling the vision. The contrast between red and green can be delightfully provocative, but if the contrast is too direct, if the red is too bright and the green too saturated, the effect may resemble a Christmas tree in its utter lack of subtlety. In the past, Chinese people did pay attention to strong contrasts. There is a line in an old children’s song: “Red and green really fit / purple and red look like shit.” In the Golden Lotus, the servant’s wife, Song Huilian, is wearing a bright red tunic with which she matches a borrowed purple skirt. When the master, Ximen Qing, sees her, he is so disturbed that he digs through his trunks in search of a bolt of blue silk for a new skirt.4
Modern Chinese often say that people in times past had no idea of how to match colors. But the sorts of contrasts they used were never unequivocal. Instead, they were layered: sapphire blue and apple green, tender yellow and bright red, scallion green and peach red. We have already forgotten what they once knew.
The reticent charm and complex harmony of the past can now only be found in Japanese fabrics. That is why I love to go shopping in Hongkew; I regret only that the fabrics there are stored in bolts, like the scrolls of ancient paintings, so that one cannot examine them at will and must instead ask a store clerk slowly to unroll each sample.5 To make a mess of a whole store and still not buy a single thing is no small embarrassment.
The tailoring of kimonos is extremely elaborate, and the patterns printed across broad swaths of fabric are often buried underneath the folds. For these sort of patterns, using the simpler lines of the Chinese cheongsam would in fact create a far clearer profile.
Japanese printed fabrics, each bolt a painting. Every time I buy some fabric and bring it home, I unroll it again and again to admire the images before finally handing it over to the dressmaker. A small Burmese temple half obscured by the leaves of a palm tree, rain falling incessantly through the ruddy haze of the tropics. A pond in early summer, the water covered with a layer of green film, above which floats duckweed and purple and white lilac petals toppled from their stems. Perhaps a fitting scene for a short lyric set to the tune “Lament for the Southland.”6 Yet another bolt, which might be titled “Flowers in the Rain”: on a white background, big gloomy purple blossoms, dripping with moisture.
I even remember the fabrics I have seen but could not buy. There was a rich olive-green silk across which stole an enormous black shadow, laden with the wind and thunder of an approaching tempest. And another sort of silken fabric, pale aquamarine, shimmering with ripples reminiscent of wood grain and lake water; above which floated at regular intervals a pair of plum blossoms as big as tea bowls, iron-edged and silver-filigreed, like the multihued stained-glass windows of a medieval church, its translucent red panes set between leaded borders.
The most common colors on the market are the kinds you cannot name, the not quite blues, not quite grays, and not quite yellows that are used only for background and referred to as neutral colors, camouflage, “civilized colors,” or secondary colors. Amid these secondary colors, there are splashes of enigmatic brilliance and coy allure, like the sun of another world shining on one’s body. But I always feel that even these splashes are never enough, never enough, like Van Gogh, who always bemoaned that his colors were not strong enough, until he painted sunflowers suffused in the intense sunlight of southern France and was finally compelled to pile colors on top of one another in such staggering amounts that layers of oil paint began to protrude from the canvas, transforming painting into a sort of sculpture in relief.
For people who are too shy to speak, clothes are a kind of language, a “pocket drama” they can carry wherever they go. Surrounded by this dramatic ambience of our own making, do we become “people in cases”? (Chekhov’s “Man in a Case” always wears a raincoat and carries an umbrella in order to insulate himself completely from the outside world. Even his watch has a watch case. In fact, everything he owns has its own special case.)7
The transformation of life into drama is unhealthy. Growing up in the culture of the city, many of us see pictures of the sea before we see the sea itself; we read of love in romance novels long before we experience it in life. Our experience is quite often secondhand, borrowed from artificial theatricals, and as a result the line between life and its dramatization becomes difficult to draw.
There was a night, under the moon, when I strolled down a corridor in a school dormitory with a classmate. I was twelve and she was a couple of years older. She said: “I’m very fond of you, but I don’t know how you feel about me.” Because there was a moon, and because I was a born storyteller, I softly and solemnly said to her: “I . . . my mother aside . . . you are all I have.” At the time, she was deeply moved by my words. And I had even managed to move myself.
There was another incident of this sort that still makes me uneasy. It was even earlier. I was five years old. At the time, my mother was not in China. My father’s concubine was a prostitute, older than he, and known by the sobriquet Big Eight. She had a pale oval face shaped like a melon seed framed by a long drooping fringe. She made me a stylish skirt and jacket in lilac velvet in the very height of fashion and said: “Look how nicely I treat you! When your mother had clothes made for you, she always used odds and ends and old scraps. She certainly would have never parted with a whole bolt of velvet. Who do you like more, me or your mother?” I said: “I like you.” What rankles most when I think back to that time is that I was not lying.
Food
When I was a child, I would often dream of eating “cloud-layer cakes,” but when I finally ate the thin wafers they seemed to turn to paper in my mouth, and even worse than the astringent flavor was the melancholy sense of disillusionment.
I’ve always liked to drink foamed milk. When I drink milk I always find a way to gulp down the little white beads on the edge of the bowl before touching any of the rest.
In Dream of the Red Chamber, Grandmother Jia asks Xue Baochai what plays she enjoys watching and what things she likes best to eat.8 Baochai knows all too well that people getting on in years like their drama loud and lively and their snacks soft and sweet and answers accordingly, just to indulge her. I am just like old people in that I enjoy foods that are sweet and tender. I will have none of those crunchy, savory things such as pickled vegetables, preserved turnips, seaweed crisps. I can’t crack open melon seeds. I lack the dexterity needed to handle fine foods such as fish and prawns. I am instead a most complacent carnivore.
Shanghai’s butcher shops are really quite lovely: snow-white, sparklingly clean, with dark, rose-colored paper signs hanging from tiled walls: “stew meat XX yuan,” “filet mignon XX yuan.” Big, white, globe-shaped lamps hang from the ceiling, shrouded with black air-raid shades yet still positively bright and cheery on account of the red lining inside the fixtures. The shop clerks in white aprons gleam with ruddy good health, their plump faces grinning as they stand with one foot propped on a stool, reading the tabloids. Their eggplants are especially big, their onions are especially sweet, and their pigs are especially ripe for slaughter. A bicycle cart stops out front, and two pigs are brought inside, laid out neatly and as yet uncarved, with only traces of blood around their snouts and a light incision around their bellies, revealing the red lining underneath. I do not know why, but such a sight makes me not the slightest bit uneasy. It is as just as appropriate as could be, and as lawful, and as right. I would be quite happy to take up a post at a butcher shop, to sit behind the cash register and collect the money as it rolls in. These places are like mental sanitoriums, full of fresh air. It wouldn’t do to think too much about any one thing in particular.
Perfect Gentlemen
When sitting in a tram, I sometimes happen to glance up at a gentleman standing in front of me, looking as grand as could possibly be, elegantly attired, refined, clearly a breed apart. But only seldom are such men’s nostrils clean. Thus the phrase: “No man can be a hero in the eyes of those below.”
Little Brother
My little brother is very beautiful, and I am not beautiful at all. From when I was very little, not a single person in my family did not bemoan the fact that his little mouth, his great big eyes, and his long eyelashes had been wasted on a boy. The grown-ups in the family loved to tease him: “Lend me your eyelashes for a while, will you? I’ll give them back tomorrow.” But he would always refuse. Once, when everyone was talking about how pretty so-and-so’s wife was, he asked, “Is she as good-looking as me?” Everyone used to make fun of his vanity.
He was jealous of the pictures I drew, and when no one was looking he would tear them up or smear two big black marks across them. I can imagine the psychological pressure he felt. I was one year older than he was, I knew how to talk better, I was stronger and healthier, and he could neither eat the things I was allowed to eat nor do the things I was allowed to do.
When we played together, I was always the one who set the agenda. We were two stalwart and valiant warriors of “Jin Family Village.” I was called Moon and he was called Apricot. I wielded a fine sword, and he had two copper cudgels. And along with us came a whole legion of make-believe warriors. It was always around dusk when the curtain rose. Old Mrs. Jin was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for our last meal before going off to battle. We would cross the mountains by the light of the moon, ambushing the barbarians under cover of night. On the way, we would dispatch two tigers and steal their spawn. The tiger eggs would be like big embroidered balls, and when you broke open the shells, the insides were as white as soft-boiled eggs, except the yolks were round. My little brother quite often would refuse to obey my commands, and we would quarrel. He could “neither make orders nor take them.” Yet he was so lovable and such a pretty boy that I would sometimes let him make up a story of his own—“There was a traveler being chased by a tiger, so he ran and ran and ran, running like the wind, with the tiger roaring at his back . . .”—but before he could even finish, I would collapse into laughter and kiss his little cheeks, as if he were merely a plaything.
After we got a stepmother, most of my time was spent away at boarding school; I could go home only infrequently and had very little idea of what sort of life my little brother was living. Once, when I came home for vacation, I was astounded to see him grown tall and thin, wearing blue cotton overalls that were none too tidy, and reading a stack of comics rented from a bookstall. At the time, I was reading Mu Shiying’s Nanbei ji (Poles apart) and Ba Jin’s Miewang (Annihilation) and was of the opinion that his reading habits were greatly in need of revision. 9 But he merely flitted in front of me before slipping off somewhere else. Everyone at home proceeded to give me a detailed account of his many ignominious deeds, his failure to attend classes, his disobedience, and his lack of ambition. I was even angrier than they were and railed against him in like manner until even they urged moderation.
Youth.
Youth: filled with laughter, clamor, sincerity, and anguish. When you still have it, you’re not aware of it. Once you become aware of it, it’s already quickly ebbing away.
Later, at the dinner table, over a very trivial matter, my father slapped my little brother across the face. I gave a violent start, hid my face behind a rice bowl, and felt my tears come pouring down. My stepmother began to laugh. “Well? What are you crying about? It’s not like he was scolding you. Will you look at that! He’s the one who got hit, but you’re the one that’s crying.” I dropped the bowl, ran to the adjoining bathroom, and bolted the door behind me, sobbing silently all the while, standing in front of the mirror and staring at my own distorted face, watching the tears roll down, just like a close-up in a movie. Then I clenched my teeth together and swore to myself: “I want revenge. One day, I shall have my revenge.”
The bathroom window overlooked the balcony. With a popping noise, a little leather ball slapped against the window glass and bounced back onto the balcony. My brother was playing kickball out there. He had already forgotten everything that had just happened. He was used to this sort of thing. I did not cry anymore. All I felt was a chilling wave of sadness.
Snob.
(1) How rich people look at the poor;
(2) how the half-breed looks at the Chinese;
(3) how foreigners look at the Chinese.
A Maiden of a Respectable Family.
A Passion for Philanthropy.
An American lady of the type of Mrs. Roosevelt.
WRITING OF ONE’S OWN
Although I write fiction and essays, I usually pay very little heed to theory. Recently, though, I suddenly feel as if I have a little something to say, so I have written it down here.1
I have always thought that literary theory comes after literary works. That is how it has been in the past, that is how it is in the present, and in the future I’m afraid it will remain the same. If we desire to enhance writers’ awareness of their own craft, it would naturally be of some help to extrapolate theory from literary works themselves in order to use this knowledge as a gauge for further creation. But as we go about this process of gauging our creations, we must also remember that, in the process of literary development, work and theory are like two horses sharing the same yoke, jockeying back and forth as they drive each other forward. Theory is not a driver seated on high, brandishing a whip.
These days, it seems that literary works are impoverished, and so literary theory is impoverished as well. I have discovered that literary writers tend to favor the uplifting and dynamic aspects of life over the placid and static, not realizing that the latter are the foundation of the former. That is, they concentrate for the most part on struggle and neglect the harmonious aspects of life. In reality, people only engage in struggle in order to attain harmony.
An emphasis on the uplifting and dynamic smacks more or less of the superman. Supermen are born of specific epochs. But the placid and static aspects of life have eternal significance: even if this sort of stability is often precarious and subject at regular intervals to destruction, it remains eternal. It exists in every epoch. It is the divine aspect of humanity, and one might also say, of femininity.
Very few works in the history of literature plainly sing in praise of the placid, while many emphasize the dynamic and uplifting aspects of human life. The best of these works, however, depict the dynamics of human life unfolding against a backdrop of inherent placidity. Without the grounding of stability, uplift, like froth, has no substance. Many works are forceful enough to provide excitement but unable to offer any real revelation, and this failure results from not having grasped this grounding.
Struggle is stirring because it is at once grand and sorrowful. Those who struggle have lost their harmony and are in search of a new harmony. Struggle for the sake of struggle lacks resonance and, when transformed into writing, will never produce great literary works.
I find that, in many works, strength predominates over beauty. Strength is jubilant and beauty is mournful, and neither can exist without the other. “Life and death are so far apart / I make my vow to you / and take your hand / to grow old together.”2 This is a mournful poem, but how very affirmative is its posture toward human life. I do not like heroics. I like tragedy and, even better, desolation. Heroism has strength but no beauty and thus seems to lack humanity. Tragedy, however, resembles the matching of bright red with deep green: an intense and unequivocal contrast. And yet it is more exciting than truly revelatory. The reason desolation resonates far more profoundly is that it resembles the conjunction of scallion green with peach red, creating an equivocal contrast.
