Some people say that Wang Anyi is the "Shanghai School writer" who knows Shanghai best after Zhang Ailing.
With meticulous brushstrokes, she depicts the dazzling light of Oriental Paris, and also outlines the coarseness and tenderness in the dark alleys.
From low alleys to skyscrapers, scenes of old Shanghai-style dramas are staged one after another.
Among the sentient beings, there are guys in foreign companies, unemployed college students, and dancers who have just debuted...
Among them, the most eye-catching is Wang Qiyao in "Long Hate Song".
She is a typical Daughter of a Shanghai Alley, but her outstanding beauty makes her like an oleander sticking out of the wall, unable to lock in the spring color.
Holding the pass of "beauty", prematurely walking to Vanity Fair, in the vanity of the stars and the moon, Wang Qiyao experienced 40 years of ups and downs of love and hate.
For Wang Qiyao, there are countless paths to happiness, but she chooses to take shortcuts.
Either cling to the powerful, or rely on love, in the end, wealth and glory are ultimately a big dream.
There's a saying that goes something like this:
Those tempting shortcuts are actually the most difficult detours.
Especially for beautiful girls, some roads seem to be shortcuts without profit, but walking down is an abyss of doom.
Give up growing up and use beauty as a passport
The alleys of Shanghai are like a net, catching the twisted heart of the girl.
This year, Wang Qiyao was 16 years old, and when Xiao he first appeared, she knew her beauty and put all her thoughts on beauty.
She went to the cinema to see "Gone with the Wind", raised her hands and feet, and emulated the elegant energy of the star;
She goes to the photo studio to take a small photo, imagining herself to be the female number one in the romance novel;
She learned to eat and walk like a cat, bringing the fashion of civilization drama into life.
Unconsciously, Wang Qiyao's beauty became more and more beautiful.
When she and her girlfriend Wu Peizhen walked in the alley, she could clearly feel the different eyes of everyone.
That gaze seemed to say, you are so beautiful, you must be a golden phoenix flying out of the alley.
Slowly, a warm expectation arose in Wang Qiyao's heart, she had no intention of studying, nor did she want to go out to work.
In a long sigh to the mirror, she staggered through time, waiting for the day when beauty would change her destiny.
Zhou Guoping once said:
If God gives you a beautiful face, you have to be mindful, it's a test for your soul.
Giving up growth, the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body focus on the skin phase, and naturally have no time to enrich their souls.
People who bet on beauty will neither humbly learn a craft for a living nor carefully hone their minds.
Compared with hard work, changing one's destiny with beauty seems like a shortcut. But this mentality of trickery eventually leaves us wasted our youth and achieve nothing.
Deeply mired in self-pity, Wang Qiyao, unaware of the passage of time, followed Wu Peizhen on the set with great interest and met the director and cinematographer.
She used "beauty" as an admission ticket, and at first it worked really well.
Not only did he successfully attract the attention of the director, but he also took an artistic photo of her and published it on the cover of "Shanghai Life".
Nowadays, Wang Qiyao is no longer a small housewife in the alley, but a well-known "Shanghai Shuyuan".
Wang Qiyao, who tasted the sweetness, ran for "Miss Shanghai" at the instigation of everyone.
Seeing that in the flower basket tied with a famous brand, more and more carnations were thrown by the judges, and Wang Qiyao won the third place in the dreamlike applause.
Since then, she has not even Wang Qiyao, but the "three misses" in the Shanghai fashion industry.
However, the laurel of "Miss Shanghai" is a floating cloud, eye-catching, but fleeting.
After the heat subsided, Wang Qiyao moved back to the lane from the alternative mansion.
She became sensitive and panicked, not knowing where to go after no one asked.
The writer Lily once said:
"Beauty is the priority ticket, but not the permanent pass."
Think of "beauty" as a stepping stone, and you may enter early.
However, with "beauty" in the big gamble of life, the chance of winning is slim, but the loss is complete.
Surviving on "beauty" is not a shortcut, but a dead end with no way out.
Give up the ego and use others as the backbone of life
Just when life was unsustainable, Wang Qiyao received an invitation to cut ribbons from a department store.
It seems to be a charcoal in the snow, but it is actually a bureau set up for her.
From the beginning of her admission, Wang Qiyao received more honorable courtesy than stars.
At the luncheon after the celebration, Director Li, a prominent figure in the military and political circles, also took the initiative to sit next to her.
Director Li was a soldier who did not smile, but was gentle and considerate to Wang Qiyao.
In the days that followed, he used incense carts and horses and gold and silver jewelry to make Wang Qiyao fall.
What makes Wang Qiyao even more addicted is the vanity of being complimented and flattered by Director Li's side.
Soon, Wang Qiyao lived in the "Alice" apartment opposite paramount and willingly became Director Li's outer room.
She said to herself: With Director Li, there is everything.
But as the old saying goes: the mountain will fall, and everyone will run.
In the autumn of 1948, after Wang Qiyao lived in the "Alice" apartment for half a year, Director Li did not say goodbye.
In a cage woven of Aya Luo and tassels, Wang Qiyao gave up herself and became isolated from the world.
Little did she know that war was raging and a new era was rumbling.
There was only one thing in her life: wait.
Waiting for Director Li to give her money, waiting for Director Li to take her to see a play, waiting for Director Li to take her to dance...
But now, Director Li couldn't wait any longer, the servants and guards ran away, and the "Alice" apartment became an empty building.
Soon after, Wang Qiyao was driven out and went to Wuqiao for refuge.
Napoleon once said:
There are not enough people to rely on, and the only way to survive is to rely on themselves.
Life in the world, life depends on their own hard work, dreams rely on their own realization, glory by their own struggle, is the most reliable.
Put your life and life's dreams into the hands of others, then the quality of life can only be decided by others.
Unfortunately, Wang Qiyao never understood this truth, she would rather rely on others to go with the flow than dominate her own life.
Six years later, she returned to Shanghai and opened a small clinic in Nongkou, Ping'an.
But she had no intention of running a business, and all day long she either played cards with her friends or was drunk alone.
The reason why he was so indulgent was because Wang Qiyao knew a rich young master named Kang Mingxun.
Like the previous relationship, Wang Qiyao once again became a climbing vine, hurriedly delivering her body and mind.
In The Second Sex, De Beauvoir says:
The misfortune of a woman lies in being surrounded by almost irresistible temptations, and she is not asked to work hard, but is only encouraged to slide down and reach bliss.
This kind of misfortune was vividly embodied in Wang Qiyao.
She is always surrounded by temptation, abandoning her self-promotion and choosing the shortcut of "relying on others".
But after walking for so long, this shortcut did not take her to bliss, but instead pushed her into the abyss one at a time.
When she learned she was pregnant, she was abandoned again.
Cummingson cried and said, "I can't help it," and disappeared into the sea of people.
Abandon sobriety and think of old dreams as rebirth
Although suffering can create a person, the premise is that people must soberly reflect on suffering.
If you cling to your own opinions and linger on old dreams and refuse to wake up, then no amount of suffering will wake up a person.
Just like Wang Qiyao, she has suffered a lot, but she still clings to the old dream of "Shanghai Shuyuan" and looks forward to a man serving the whole world for her.
Soon after, Wang Qiyao met Mr. Cheng, the suitor of the year.
Mr. Cheng is an infatuated person, he loves Wang Qiyao deeply, and he takes care of her until she gives birth without hesitation.
The appearance of Mr. Cheng made Wang Qiyao mistakenly think that he was still magnificent.
She is blindly confident that Mr. Cheng's admiration for her will escort her for the rest of her life.
Unable to see the living situation, she was childish and reckless, and while she was grateful to Mr. Cheng, she broke the connection with other men.
In the end, her actions deeply stung Mr. Cheng and forced him to leave.
Their relationship went back to square one. In fact, back to the original point, there is wang Qiyao's life.
She took her daughter back to the alley, and lived with her head bowed in the gossip of her neighbors.
Yu Feihong once said: "The best way for a woman is to recognize reality itself." ”
Sometimes, life is a mess of constant changes, and if you want to live happily, you need a sober wisdom.
See clearly your own situation, have the courage to accept the arrangement of fate, and move randomly, in order to seek benevolence.
Time took passing, Wang Qiyao's era had long since disappeared, but she did not want to wake up, let alone admit it.
In the great waves of the times, many people ride the wind and waves, daring to call the sun and the moon for a new day. Only Wang Qiyao locked himself in the alley, painstakingly guarding the glory of forty years ago.
When her daughter Vivi grew up, she went to the United States, and she was the only one left in her life.
She occasionally attends "Old Shanghai" themed parties, wearing her favorite cheongsam and sitting in the corner.
Whenever she saw young people dancing with their teeth and claws, Wang Qiyao dreamed of returning to the runway when she was 19 years old.
Her cloudy eyes shone with sparkle, shimmering, as if there were thousands of styles.
At a party, a young man named "Old Kela" was deeply attracted by Wang Qiyao.
At the age of 26, he was obsessed with the old Shanghai style, and when he heard that Wang Qiyao was once a "Miss Shanghai", he fell in love with him.
In the face of the "old Kela"'s desperate pursuit, Wang Qiyao accepted it in a confused way.
She couldn't see this deformed love at all, it was difficult to have results, and she thought that Heaven intended to complete her and make her born again.
After living together for a while, "Old Kela" proposed to break up, and no matter how hard Wang Qiyao pleaded, he still left.
The tragedy of love is repeated in Wang Qiyao' body, and the root cause is still the self who has lost his mind.
A period of relationship, can not be good, Wang Qiyao is always escaping from reality, confused and repeating his mistakes.
To see the world soberly may be devastating. But the shortcut of "escapism" is more difficult to take, it repeatedly brings people back to the original point, and happiness is even more out of reach.
At the end of his life, Wang Qiyao died in the pursuit of wealth and death.
This dramatic scene takes place the day after the departure of "Old Clalla".
On this day, "Old Kela" asked his friend Long Foot to go to Wang Qiyao's house and return a few keys.
Unexpectedly, Longfoot mistakenly thought that Wang Qiyao was hiding a gold bar, so he saw cai qi and strangled her to death.
A generation of "Shanghai Shuyuan" ended their lives in such a sloppy way, which made people sigh endlessly.
Wang Qiyao's "Long Hate Song" has been sung for a long time, and her swaying posture is a unique style of old Shanghai, but her eyebrows are not uncommon in the current life.
In reality, the "Wang Qiyaos" use beauty to open up the situation of life, give up growth, rely on others to achieve their dreams, and finally stumble through their lives in confusion.
The shortcut they choose is actually the longest detour in the world, so long that they can never reach the end of happiness.
Instead of being a "smart person" who takes shortcuts, it is better to be a down-to-earth "honest person".
Work hard at the age of effort, rely on yourself at that age of independence, never be tempted, always be sober.
As Liang Wendao said: "A woman must have the ability to live a good life on her own, and it is very important to have things that others cannot take away." ”
May you harvest this ability on the broad road of life, live out yourself, and harvest happiness.
Author | Jin Shanyue should have nothing to dwell in, but to be born with his heart.
Image | Stills from "The Long Hate Song"