Chapter 12 third quarter

Finally with my mother.How different the Eddington apartment where my mother lived was from my father's house—it was the room that later made Hu Lancheng feel "military", "modern, fresh and bright, almost irritating", and "luxurious enough to make me uneasy"—— The bright and clean living room, the exquisite and warm bedroom, the refreshing and elegant study room, the bathroom with a tiled roof, the kitchen with a gas stove, and the large balcony and the glass doors on the balcony, everything makes Aileen love her Joy, feeling fresh and happy. The long rope of memory was cut and reconnected by the saw of time. Eileen Chang, who lives in Eddington Apartment, seems to have returned to the year when she was eight years old. When her mother returned to China for the first time, she took her hand and walked in the garden, giving pointers. She walks, sits and stands, makes fun of her poor English pronunciation, teaches her not to stare at people when she speaks, and not to spread her legs too far apart when walking. The clothes should be light green and pink. primary knowledge...

Now ten years have passed, how much Shanghai has changed in these ten years-not to mention these ten years, how many major events happened in Shanghai last year alone.In this turbulent 1938, in this year, the All-China Film Industry Association Against the Enemy was established, and the film red star Zhou Xuan married her first husband, Yan Hua, and joined Guohua Film Company in the same year; But soon after Hu Die and Pan Yousheng got married, they both moved to Hong Kong to escape the war; the famous Peking opera actress Mei Lanfang also took advantage of the opportunity to lead a troupe to perform in Hong Kong, so she stayed in Hong Kong and left the stage for a while; The film's Li Minghui retired from the film industry after starring in "Phoenix Seeking the Phoenix"; "Night Run" starring Zhang Ailing's favorite movie star Tan Ying was finally released after half a year of censorship and deletion. "Wang Lao Wu" starring Lan Ping (Jiang Qing's stage name when he was an actor); in this year, the 20-volume "Complete Works of Lu Xun" was published; Yue and Xiao Shan went to Guilin, and together with Xia Yan and others organized the Guilin branch of the All-China Literary and Art Circles Against the Enemy Association; Zhao Puchu took over as the director of the Shanghai National Salvation Association of Cultural Circles, a member of the Standing Committee of the Refugee Committee of the Shanghai Charity Alliance Relief War Zone and director of the shelter unit; Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun were invited Went to the National Revolutionary University in Linfen, Shanxi, and met Ding Ling for the first time there. In the summer of the same year, Xiao Hong broke up with Xiao Jun and returned to Wuhan with Xiao Jun’s son and Duanmu Hongliang. During this year, Soong Ching Ling organized "Defend China's Great Alliance", publicize the anti-Japanese war to people from all over the world and overseas Chinese, and collect medicine and other materials...

Zhang Ailing didn't catch up with all these commotions. She just stayed at her father's house and was busy getting sick, getting angry, and trying to find a way to escape.But now it is better, now she can return to the embrace of Shanghai, and she can hear and see hand in hand with this city, with a caring heart, and everything she sees is kind and lively, lively and fragrant. Jing'an Temple Road, where Eddington Apartment is located, is the starting station of the tram.The tram goes east through the bustling Nanjing Road, along the way shops, restaurants, bookstores, cafes, stock exchanges, dance halls... until the final stop, the Bund of Guangdong Road.Eileen Chang has always liked to listen to the running sound of the tram "Klinker", as if sleeping on the rails - the tram later became an important prop in her novels.

In addition to the sound of the tram, there are also the ringing of the bell in Jing'an Temple, the ringing of the bell in the Ping'an Cinema diagonally across, the squeaky singing in the Paramount Ballroom behind you, and the sound of clappers selling wontons downstairs, all of which will be heard in the quiet night. Even in her dreams, she will remember with peace of mind: I am at my mother's house, and I am finally with my mother. Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s was the acme of prosperity, the beauty of the beauty. The whole world is in turmoil, in destruction, and there will be even greater destruction to come.However, a little peace in troubled times is extremely rare and precious.

Time spent with my mother is precious.Since then, Zhang Ailing has written many articles to record the apartment life from different angles, but all the words related to her mother are always written with incomparable tenderness.In the article, she said that she had a quirk that she had to hear the sound of the tram to fall asleep-in fact, I think it was because the sound of the tram reminded her of her mother, and she felt that she was still living in the same room with her mother, so that she could fall asleep peacefully.Living in the apartment with her mother was the happiest time of her girlhood, so even trivial things like food and clothing are novel and interesting, and they can be called full of color and fragrance.

"When I lived with my mother in Shanghai, I went to eat at my uncle's house across the street every day, and brought a bowl of vegetables. When amaranth was in season, I always held a bowl of amaranth with black oil, purple red and dark green silk. The fat and white garlic cloves are dyed light pink. Crossing the street under the sky, it is like holding a pot of common and unknown Western potted plants, small pink flowers, spots of dark red moss green same jagged edges and large pointed leaves, Zhu Cuili Phi, but the flowers are not fragrant, not the warm scent of amaranth." "In Shanghai, next door to our house was the Chesslin Cafe, which was newly moved to Tianjin during the war. Every day, bread was made at dawn, and when the alarm of smell was raised, a fragrant and awe-inspiring aura came through the air. It's the softest alarm clock, it's like making noise at the wrong time, it wakes people up in vain, it makes people helpless like an annoying spring scene. With this neighbor, it is really a kind of harassment."

"My mother used to be very happy when relatives brought her toad cakes. It was a semi-hollow shortbread, slightly sweet, about the size of a palm, in the shape of a fat trapezoid, with sesame seeds sprinkled on a moss-green base. , the shade of green is an impressionist portrait of a frog. The green velvet is actually seaweed powder. It must be a local product of the coastal provinces, and it is not packaged, and it is packed in an empty biscuit tin. I have never heard of it elsewhere. something like this." ——"Talking about eating and painting cakes to satisfy hunger"

When she was at her father's house, she never did housework or took a bus. Now, she has to learn everything from scratch, washing, cooking, grocery shopping, taking the bus, and saving money... She has a strange The feeling of returning to the field with a corner.The previous understanding of the countryside was that during the festivals, people in the fields would send wheat and rice to their homes, just like Wu Jinxiao in the movie delivering New Year’s goods, or Grandma Liu delivering vegetables and fruits. Grandma Liu ate eggplants in the Grand View Garden, but she couldn't taste the eggplants; Zhang Ailing couldn't see the eggplants in the garden, but saw "wild interest" in the vegetable market-such a complicated, oily purple.In addition to eggplant, there are fresh green peas, ripe peppers, golden gluten, and carrots that are plump like a baby's face.

One day they bought carrot stew.Aunt Zhang Maoyuan said: "The first time I came into contact with carrots was when I raised 'Called Youzi' when I was a child, and I fed it carrots. I still remember that my grandma (referring to Li Juou) always cut carrots in half, and then halved everything else. , stuffed in a cage, roughly cut into small pieces like that. Otherwise, carrots have never been included in the dishes we eat. I don’t understand why ‘Called Youzi’ eat this.” Zhang Ailing listened to it, and felt that it was infinitely interesting, as if making a fuss. She always has such a romantic mind, discovering the beauty and goodness of the new life from every word, every word, every moment and every place.Even when washing spinach, there are beautiful discoveries-after washing the spinach and pouring it into the oil pan, there will often be one or two pieces of broken leaves stuck to the bottom of the bamboo basket, which cannot be shaken off.The oil was sizzling in the pot, but she was not in a hurry, and held up the bamboo basket to the light with great interest, watching the green branches and leaves fluttering on the square grid made of bamboo slices, and asked her mother with a smile: Does it look like lentil flowers on the fence?

Huang Yifan looked at her daughter with a headache, more and more discovering the astonishing naivety she showed in daily life and dealing with people. She tirelessly told her and pointed her out: don't walk recklessly, but know how to look at the road; People's eyes should not look around in panic, but look at the tip of the other person's nose or between the eyebrows; remember to close the curtains after lighting the lamp, and don't laugh suddenly for no reason; look in the mirror to study the facial expression, don't always frown or bow your head; If you don't have a genius for humor, don't tell jokes; and don't point the spout in people's faces, but in the direction where no one is sitting...

She told her a story about "eyes": a rich family chooses a concubine, and there are many women, and their lives "raise their heads". The woman raised her head once, then lowered it immediately, out of pettiness; the third woman, Yang Zhi, rolled her eyes again and again, raised her head slowly, but her eyelids drooped, then turned her eyes again, and bowed her head back. For coquettishness, for knowing how to watch. Ailing laughed: "It's like what Meng Yulou wrote in the book: the fragrance is soft when walking, and it's full of beauty when sitting down." The mother glanced at her and said: "I want you to look in the mirror to practice eye expressions, not to learn to wink, but to remember how to look at people is not impolite. You must sit upright, but you can't sit like a piece of wood. Yes, the shoulders should be slightly forward and backward, but you can't twist your body..." Say ten thousand sentences, but I don't know if a thousand sentences will reach her ears; even if she listens, she will remember less than a hundred sentences in her heart; and when she puts it into action, there will be no more than ten sentences left. Teach her to use gasoline to scrub clothes, but she only cares about playing, deliberately slowing down her hands and feet, letting the gasoline evaporate as much as possible, because she likes the clean and bright atmosphere of the room, so in the end she had no choice but to use her help, so as not to waste it. Sometimes Huang Yifan couldn't help sighing to her: "I regret that I took care of your typhoid fever in the past. I would rather see you die than see you live and make myself suffer everywhere." Ailing lowered her head in shame, but secretly smiled—even her mother's reprimand was warm, because she was caring. In order to reassure her mother, she worked hard to learn how to cook and wash clothes with soap powder from her mother. Only then did she discover that there are many procedures for washing a handkerchief: rubbing should not be too hard; rubbing should not be too hard ; How to make the soap evenly and foam, but not waste; rinse until there is no trace of soap foam to be considered clean; Rust; it can be pasted wet on clean tiles or window panes, like a painting; a piece of glass is pasted with a handkerchief to form an embroidered window, and when it is dry, the handkerchiefs are torn off one by one, just like starched Straight and dry. She uncovered a handkerchief, and through the pane saw her brother coming.