This is the 33rd article to share in August and a half Fly
Yesterday I read a biography of Ms. Zhang Ailing, and the characters that have been floating in my mind for many years gradually emerged.
In 2005, when I was studying at a university in Shanghai, my roommate was a "Zhang fan" who dragged me along to visit one of Zhang Ailing's former residences in Shanghai, Changde Apartment.
At that time, there were no smartphones and AutoNavi maps, and we walked around with paper maps of the city, and finally found them.
The buildings of the Republic of China period stood quietly, in stark contrast to the bustling and noisy Shanghai at that time.
The burning clouds in the sky are exuberant and hot, and the apartment on the ground is quite magical.
The impression is that it is a small building, the entrance door is also small, and it has the natural color of the age.
The gate was closed and it seemed impossible to visit. With a quick glance, the roommate snapped and took a few photos and left with regret.
Later, I borrowed Zhang Ailing's novels from the library, and one of them had the cover of the widely circulated black and white portrait.
Ms. Zhang Ailing is dressed in a cheongsam, with her left hand back to her back, her right hand crossed her waist, a pair of cold eyes slightly oblique, indifferently looking at the upper right sky, there is a kind of natural insight.
That summer vacation, I read a lot of Novels by Zhang Ailing, and I only felt that her writing was gorgeous, cold and fierce.
The dark side of human nature described through love in the book is something I can't empathize with, and most of the protagonists she portrays make people feel cool or vicissitudes after reading it.
After so many years, the things I saw before will not be forgotten.
The characters in those novels have more or less found shadows in Zhang Ailing's biography.
The war that White Fringe encountered in Hong Kong's Repulse Bay in "Love in the Fallen City" was the war that Zhang Ailing encountered when she was studying at the University of Hong Kong.
In "The Book of golden locks", Cao Qiqiao becomes a distorted personality due to misfortune, and obstructs the marriage of a pair of children in every way, which can read Zhang Ailing's dislike for the feudal old-style family.
In "Half Life", Gu Manzhen was locked in the details of his sister's private house, and there was probably also Zhang Ailing's dark experience of being locked in her father's bungalow for more than half a year when she was 16 years old.
Zhang Ailing's life has been more wonderful than the characters of any novel she has written.
Zhang Ailing said that it is necessary to become famous early.
She was indeed a talented female writer who made her debut in the school magazine during her secondary school years. At the age of fourteen, she wrote an imaginative work such as "Dream of the Modern Red Chamber", and her father personally made six sections of her book.
The young genius benefited from the profound family culture, her grandfather and grandmother were Zhang Peilun, a famous minister at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and Li Jujun, the eldest daughter of Li Hongzhang, and her father Zhang Zhiyi's huge study was her childhood spiritual paradise, and her favorite book was "Dream of the Red Chamber".
In the 1940s, Zhang Ailing, who became famous by writing, was in the limelight in Shanghai for a while, which was also a brilliant decade in Zhang Ailing's life.
The peak of literature in adulthood is inseparable from the hardships brought to her by life.
At the age of 16, she ran away from her father's house to join her mother.
Her mother's living conditions are not rich, and she still needs to bear Zhang Ailing's tuition, and her life is overstretched, and the trivial daily life gradually blurs the family affection.
Zhang Ailing said that asking my mother for money was at first a kind and tasteful thing, because I had always loved my mother with a kind of romantic love... In her predicament, I reached out to her for money for three days and two days, and suffered for her temper, and suffered for my own forgetting, and the embarrassment of those trivialities ruined my love little by little.
Because she experienced the lack of money and powerlessness in her mother's house in her early years, she understood very early on that money is a good thing. After she became famous, in terms of money, she was indispensable to her aunt and good friend Yan Sakura.
Although he was born into a wealthy family from an early age, he became famous at a young age and became famous. But throughout the second half of Zhang Ailing's life, many times she was trapped by the problem of money.
After middle age, he went to the United States to develop, because he did not have enough sources of income for a short time, and lived in a new York literary camp (a charity for writers).
After marrying Laiya, who was 29 years older than her, Within a few years Laiya became seriously ill, and in order to earn a living and treat Laiya, she wrote about eye bleeding when she wrote a script in Hong Kong.
Not only money, but also war.
The turning point in life brought about by the war was almost the fate of everyone in that era.
When she was young, she was admitted to the University of London with excellent grades, but because of the war, she had to take an admission letter from the University of London to study at the University of Hong Kong.
With excellent academic performance at HKU, she was very contentious to receive a master's degree from Oxford University, a full scholarship. Because of the war, she could not take shape, she had to return to St. John's University in Shanghai to study, and finally graduated for financial reasons.
Suffering can destroy a person, and it can also make a person.
If life is full enough, who has time to sigh for others?
The collision of ideals and reality is insightful thought.
The ten years after returning to Shanghai were the golden age of Zhang Ailing's novels.
Most of the "Agarwood Crumbs", "Jasmine Tablets", "Love of the Fallen City", "Heart Sutra", "Half Life" and so on were born during this period.
Mention Zhang Ailing, have to get Hu Lancheng, a fate in Zhang Ailing's life.
Zhang Ailing said that there are two women in every man's life, one is a white rose and the other is his red rose. Maybe every man has had two women like that. Married to a red rose, over time, the red changed a touch of mosquito blood on the wall, the white is still 'bright moonlight in front of the bed'; married to the white rose, the white is a grain of rice sticky on the clothes, but the red is a cinnabar mole in the mouth of the heart.
It should be the feeling of life that this relationship brought to her.
Hu Lancheng is really a scumbag today, pedaling N boats, not to mention, but also received a lot of money from Zhang Ailing (although it was the other party who took the initiative to give it). Because of Hu Lancheng's identity as a traitor, this relationship also made Zhang Ailing receive a lot of criticism.
It is said that the authorities are fans. Zhang Ailing probably finally realized the unreliability of this person. Under the calm lake where the world is stable and the years are quiet, there are many flaws that are vulnerable. It's just to cajole yourself.
In 1953, Zhang Ailing's father died.
In 1957, Zhang Ailing's mother died in London. At that time, Zhang Ailing was poor in the United States, and she did not go to see her mother for the last time.
Zhang Ailing died in 1995 in an American apartment. In 1991, his aunt Zhang Maoyuan died. In 1997, his younger brother Zhang Zijing died.
Zhang Ailing experienced two marriages in her life and left no heirs.
The younger brother never married.
The aunt married her first love in old age and left no heirs.
The family is not living the consummation of ordinary people in the end, and people can't help but sigh.
There are many women in the Republic of China who have left their names in the history of Youth, Zhang Ailing, Xiao Hong, Lin Huiyin, Yang Dai... Most talented women have money - the original family economic environment is favorable, and the economic base determines the superstructure.
Between the old and the new, an insurmountable gap has emerged. Different family atmospheres affect people's lives.
Zhang Ailing's life has not received worldly happiness, which is related to the lack of love in the original family.
Lin Huiyin chose the latter between Xu Zhimo and Liang Sicheng, and harvested an ordinary and happy family life.
Works have nothing to do with personality, and history will give a fair answer over time.
Zhang Ailing's place in the Chinese novel industry is irreplaceable. (Xiao Hong is also, "The Legend of Hulan River" is really well written)
Life is as short as an ephemera.
We seem to be busy, and it is amazing that we can have one or two commendable achievements at the end of our lives.
Zhang Ailing spent a long time studying "Dream of the Red Chamber" in her later years, and finally wrote a book "Nightmare of the Red Chamber".
She said in the preface that one hates the begonias without fragrance, the second hates the anchovies with thorns, and the third hates the dream of the Red Chamber.
This legendary talented woman liked to read Cao Xueqin when she was young, and this is still the case when she lives alone in her old age.
From Cao Xueqin's words, she should be able to find a sense of pity for the same fate.
After all, their experiences are so similar, they have experienced the prosperity and decline of a large family, and the desolate tone behind the gorgeous words, only lonely people in the same way can deeply understand it.
Writer Yu Qiuyu once commented on Zhang Ailing: She died very lonely, just like she lived very lonely. But literature does not reject loneliness, it is she who tells history that there is still a corner of twentieth-century Chinese literature that does not have much fire. It is in this corner that the Shanghai charm of a distant year will last forever.
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Source: August 100 Fly (biewailou)
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