Lost 1945 - Zhang Ailing "clerical error" puzzle solving 丨 Cloud

Manuscript of Zhang Ailing's novel "Little Reunion". (Infographic/Figure)

"I forgot again"

Zhang Ailing has a bad memory, there are many examples, and reading the more than 700,000-word "Zhang Ailing's Correspondence Collection" recently published by Song Yilang and Crown deepens this feeling.

In the past, Zhang Ailing's bad memory focused on dates and numbers. The more famous "public case" is about the "Genius Dream" that gave birth to Zhang's golden phrase "Life is a gorgeous robe, crawling with lice". Until her later years, Zhang Ailing was still worried about the "unfair treatment" she encountered in the essay collection of "West Wind" at the age of 19, but scholars and Zhang fans have verified that whether it is the limit on the number of essays, the format of the essay and even the award, she remembered it wrong, and may not have clearly read the specific terms of the essay advertisement that year. The limit on the number of characters is less than 5,000, and she mistakenly thinks that it is 500; She ended up receiving third place in the Honorary Award, which she wrote as "Special Prize"; He even wrote down the more than 1,500 words of his award-winning article to more than 490 words.

Not long ago, I flipped through an old magazine at home and accidentally found the July 2004 issue of "Imprint", which contained a letter she wrote to the British Embassy in Washington on June 4, 1966. At that time, Eileen Cheung was interested in applying for a job-in-residence at a university, and she needed proof of academic qualifications, and she wrote to HKU requesting reissuance due to the loss of documents, but the HKU Registrar Office only proved that she was "two in and two out", not mentioning her excellent grades and scholarships and other honors, and several negotiations were unsuccessful. At that time, Hong Kong was still under British administration, so she wrote to the British embassy in Washington for help. In order to explain his situation, the letter of more than 1,000 words contains the following paragraph: "... I immigrated to the United States in 1955, married an American in the 60s, and obtained American citizenship. My mother, a naturalised British, died in London in 1958..."

I haven't read this letter before, and I was very interested, but I was really shocked to read this: she and Lai Ya registered their marriage on August 14, 1956, the year after arriving in the United States, and on August 18, she also wrote to tell Kwong Wenmei, how did it suddenly become the "60s"? Her mother, Huang Yifan, died in London on October 11, 1957, and on October 24, she accurately reported in a letter to Song Qi and his wife that her mother had "died two weeks earlier," but the letter to the embassy was written in black and white as "1958."

The photograph, which her mother took with her when she left China, returned to Zhang Ailing after her death. (Visual China/Photo)

The letter was translated by Chen Ziyu as Chinese, and Su Weizhen wrote the introduction, but neither of them found it, so there is no "clerical error" in the letter. Indeed, no one would have thought that Zhang Ailing was 46 years old in 1966, only middle-aged, and no matter how bad her memory was, she would not mistake the year of her mother's death and the year of her remarriage, and it was in an official letter to an official agency.

Therefore, when I saw so many "I misremembered" and "I forgot" in the collection of letters between Zhang Ailing and Song Qi, I was no longer surprised and inexplicable. Zhang Ailing lives largely on her remuneration in the United States, but she can't even figure out whether the manuscript fee fixed to her by Crown Press for a certain period of time is half a year or $2,000 a year. What is even more outrageous is that before she left Hong Kong for the United States in 1955, with the help of Song Qi, she advanced all the manuscript fees for the two scripts to the company of Denmao, but five years later, she forgot all about it, and only remembered that there was such a thing after Kwong Wenmei reminded her. It is inconceivable that a person who is most afraid of owing money and favors to others should forget such a sum of money.

In the past few days, looking through a collection of essays by book critic Liu Zheng, I saw an article called "Zhang Ailing remembered wrong", which recorded the errors in words, sources, plots, and Zhang Guan and Li Dai in Zhang Ailing's works, a total of 22 cases, which was eye-opening. I also read in Chen Zishan's "Zhang Ailing Cong Kao", saying that Zhang Ailing mistakenly recorded Lu Xun's translation of the Soviet writer Shuxue Jianke (also translated Zuo Qinke) 1926 short story "Guijia Women" as "Buns" in "Talking about Eating and Painting Cakes to Fill Your Hunger"; And the "buns" written by Zhang Ailing, Lu Xun actually translated as "meat steamed buns".

Chen Zishan and Liu Zheng are sharp-eyed, and they have a foundation of learning, but they still respect Zhang Ailing. Liu Zheng put it this way: "In terms of human affection, in terms of word choice and sentences, Zhang Ailing can be said to be a very careful person, but she does not seem to be very surprised by whether the quotation is accurate. In addition, it was easy to check the information at that time, and Zhang Ailing did not have the habit of collecting books, and it was common for some mismemorizations when quoting. In general, Zhang Ailing obviously does not have 'photographic memory ability', maybe some are just a poor memory; The clerical errors she left behind are really not few. ”

Liu Zheng explained that he didn't mean to write down these when he was reading, but he thought it was funny - Zhang Ailing would also remember it wrong! At the end of the article, a quote from Sontag's novel "The Volcano Lover" is quoted: "Genius, like beauty, everything, well, almost everything, will be forgiven." ”

Interestingly, he attributed the clerical error to memory and unverified information. On the contrary, Zhang Ailing said in "Comparison Notes": Freud, the grandmaster of psychoanalysis, believed that there was no clerical mistake or occasionally said a wrong word in the world, all of which were originally thought in their hearts and unintentionally revealed.

But it was also in "Comparison Notes" that Zhang Ailing left another famous "clerical error": the documented photo with Li Xianglan at a "cooling party" in Shanghai on July 21, 1945, was annotated as "I met movie star Li Xianglan at the garden party in 1943". And as if following Zhang Ailing's Freudian thinking, so far two scholars have tried to analyze whether Zhang Ailing's "clerical error" of "one wrong two years" is only because of poor memory, or there is another meaningful reason behind it.

1945

Cool Club/1943 Garden Fair

"Comparison Notes - Looking at Old Photo Albums" is Zhang Ailing's last work, and it is also her only autobiographical graphic comparison collection. The "Figure 41" in the book is a photo with Li Xianglan that has been treasured for nearly 50 years, she wrote: I met Li Xianglan in 1943 at the garden party, and I wanted to take a photo together, she was too tall, the two would stand side by side, and someone asked her to sit down, and Li Xianglan stood aside.

Zhang Ailing and Li Xianglan (right) in Shanghai in 1943. (Visual China/Photo)

"The book "Aftermath" mentions that my grandmother's clothes made of quilts from a quilt, and this is the one. It was my aunt who dismantled it and preserved it. Although it was said that 'Chen silk was like rotten grass', the tailor actually did not frown, took it without saying a word, and did it according to Yan Ying's design. The beige thin silk is sprinkled with light ink spots, hidden dark purple phoenix, very picturesque, and similar patterns have not been seen elsewhere. ”

"1943", this year is very wrong, the correct time and place is: July 21, 1945, Shanghai Xianyang Road No. 2, sponsored by the magazine monthly "cooling meeting". According to the August 1945 issue of the magazine, which published the article "Na Liang Huiji", with the picture in addition to this picture of Zhang Ailing and Li Xianglan, there is also a group photo: Li Xianglan and Zhang Ailing in the same posture, but also Zhang Ailing's aunt Zhang Maoyuan and girlfriend Yan Ying, an unidentified Ms. Chen, and two long-robed men - Chen Binyong, the president of the declaration agency during the Wang pseudo period, and Jin Xiongbai, the director of the Ping Pao. According to Shao Yingjian, a Chinese scholar studying in Japan and now a researcher in Japan, in the book "Zhang Ailing's Legendary Literature and Rumored Life", Xianyang Road is the road name of today's South Shaanxi Road from 1943 to 1945, and its more familiar name is "Alpei Road" for old Shanghainese. No. 2 Xianyang Road, at that time, was Jin Xiongbai's private residence garden.

In 1994, the year before Zhang Ailing's death, she remembered the skirt that her grandmother changed into from the face, from texture, color, pattern, pattern, to origin, style, design, tailor, all of which were clearly remembered, why did she remember the time and space of the photo wrong? What kind of information does this 1943, this "clerical error", reveal?

Shao Yingjian believes that knowing Zhang Ailing's life, this mystery is not difficult to solve. For Zhang Ailing, 1943 to 1945 was the most glorious day in this life, writing "Legend" and "Rumors" in just two years, and leaping to the pinnacle of the literary world when she first emerged, "In the brain database, this is a perfect archive, without details, the whole piece is displayed on the screen of memory." "—This statement is very tempting: the stage of life in which the fire cooking oil and flowers are brocade, and the memories are mixed and unorganized.

As for Shao Yingjian's point out that Zhang Ailing's writing of "cooling meeting" as "garden party" seems to me to be a clerical error, just like some people say that going to a "theater" or "movie theater" to watch a movie, there is no substantive difference. But researcher Shao bit the difference between the two words and found his answer - interestingly, he himself also "made a clerical error", and after checking several versions of the "Comparison Notes", Zhang Ailing wrote "garden tour meeting" instead of "garden party" - he checked from the old "declaration" that on July 8, 1944, Wang pseudo "Shanghai Press Association" held a "citizens' garden lecture" attended by thousands of people from all walks of life in the central square of Hartung Garden, including red star singing and movie business card screenings.

Although he did not specifically mention the singing red star and the celebrities attending the meeting, Shao Wen determined that the red star was "very likely" to be the hot Li Xianglan, Zhang Ailing, who was already a celebrity in the maritime literary circle, and "logically" should also be present. He deduced from this that Zhang Ailing and Li Xianglan first met on this occasion: "... The first time we met in sound and tangible was at this garden party. The impression on it is indelible. As the years went by, the later impressions were shallow and flattened, leaving only this notch. Years later, in Zhang Ailing's brain inventory, all the fate with Li Xianglan was merged into this time. ”

He further said that when Zhang Ailing stood on the balcony of the apartment (Eddington Apartment, now Changde Apartment), she could see the corner of Hartung Garden. Hartung Garden is also considered to be Zhang Ailing's neighborhood. Zhang Ailing also mentioned this legendary garden twice in the "Serial Set" serialized in "Vientiane" in 1944. "Jin Xiongbai's private house garden and Hartung garden, although the scale is not the same, but there should be a local similarity: both are Western-style houses with flower bed lawns. Just by the background of the photo and the Western-style upholstered chair, in Zhang Ailing's memory, unconsciously, the garden of Jin Xiongbai's private residence was replaced by Hartung Garden, and the 'cooling party' was also transformed into the 'garden party'. ”

It's Yefiyeh. One thing is certain: Zhang Ailing has never mentioned it, and has not seen any information to show that she visited the "garden party" in Hartung Garden, so Mr. Shao's hypothetical exposition is full of reasoning and more like a fiction rich in imagination. The mysterious mystery of oblivion is a convincing analysis by Professor Wong Xincun, head of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. In a brilliant essay, she discusses the photo of Zhang Ailing and Li Xianglan, taken three weeks before Japan's surrender, in a brilliant essay, and proposes a meaningful "maybe."

"I don't remember a single thing in this year"

"Picture 50" is a photograph of Eileen Cheung before leaving Hong Kong for the United States in 1955, with delicate makeup and a sideways face. Eileen Cheung recounts a boat ride from Hong Kong through Honolulu, a skinny young Japanese who proudly filled out her entry form: 6 feet 6 and a half inches tall and weighed 102 pounds. She laughed at the youth's carelessness and wrote 5 feet 6 and a half as 6 feet 6 and a half, making a Freudian slip. "I'm thin and look very tall. That was the shocking record of this customs officer. ”

"Comparison" includes photographs of Eileen Cheung before she left Hong Kong for the United States in 1955. (Infographic/Figure)

In "Picture 41", Zhang Ailing's "carelessness" mistakenly recorded as "1943" with Li Xianglan is considered by scholars to be the most important photo of her Shanghai period. Professor Huang Xincun's analysis of a paper entitled "Light and Shadow: Eileen Chang's Japan and East Asia" begins with this photograph. Taken on July 21, 1945, just three weeks after the end of World War II and the surrender of Japan, "its peculiar composition and incongruous visual style are also impressive." Viewers familiar with the background of the photograph even see it as a visual allegory depicting the crumbling Japanese-Chinese ensemble on the eve of the collapse of the Japanese Empire. ”

Professor Huang's analysis of the photos, around the different expressions of Zhang Ailing and Li Xianglan, the strange composition of the photos, the different dressing styles of the two, especially Zhang Ailing's obedient sitting posture, deviating from the downward line of sight of the lens, and various details. "Eileen Zhang's facial expressions and body may suggest resistance or contempt, but more importantly, she clearly understands how to turn the gaze on her from the camera lens into a help to deepen her own image," she said. ”

I am more interested in what kind of mood Zhang Ailing, her aunt, and Yan Ying had when they went to this "garden party" three weeks before Japan's defeat? On August 15, Japan surrendered unconditionally, the situation changed suddenly, and Hu Lancheng, who was once a key member of the Wang puppet government, was wanted by the Nationalist government and fled in a hurry, how did it bring shock and panic to Zhang Ailing?

It suddenly occurred to me that I should revisit "Little Reunion". What happened in the long summer of 1945 is described in the book. Moreover, at the beginning of the eighth chapter, Zhang Ailing's words when she wrote Jiuli were simply a pre-annotated "clerical error" of herself:

From this time until the end of World War II, for most of the year, there was a kind of chaos in her heart, and a layer of white wax sealed it, a sense of calm and security on the surface. What happens during this time is always treated as if it was the previous year or the next... I don't remember a single thing during the year, which can be called a lost year. ”

"When she first met him, she knew that he would flee after the war, but she became confused at the end of the day, also because it was her 'lost year', and she lost her soul."

Lost in her soul, she eliminated 1945 in her heart.

"Perhaps Zhang Ailing herself does not want to believe that this photo was taken on the eve of Japan's defeat." A sentence written by Huang Xincun in the "Notes" of the paper made people tremble. Yes, there was no 1945, only 1943, only the previous year or the next. Although it was half a century since 1994, when The Book of Comparisons came out, she remembers a mistake called Freudian.

There is a lot to say about memory and forgetting. Zhang Ailing left a defective memory a year before her death, whether it was retrograde amnesia caused by damage to the hippocampus of the brain, or active amnesia of emotional memories, it is no longer a problem. Of course, the secret discussion is not for "disenchantment", as Huang Xincun said, only to "restore a historical Zhang Ailing" and "more complex Zhang Ailing".

Subconsciously shield the unbearable past, delete the dark block on the memory chip, ourselves, many ordinary "people", why not?

I agree with the statement that what ultimately constitutes a person's life is not experience, spirituality and any events, but the memory, description and interpretation of all these experiences.

Matsuo Basho has haiku: The temple bell / stops, but the reverberation of the flower / continues to echo

Yu Yun

Editor-in-Charge: Xing Renjian