Chapter 27 fourth quarter

Zhang Ailing left Shanghai for Hong Kong from Eddington Apartment on Jing'an Temple Road. She returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong in the summer of 1942, and she still lived in Eddington Apartment, but moved from the fifth floor to the sixth floor. It adds a bit of mystery to Jing'an Temple, which is already a place where dragons and tigers are hidden. As the name suggests, Jing’an Temple Road got its name naturally because of the ancient Buddhist temple that was said to have been built in the Three Kingdoms period. It is said that Sun Quan once dug a well here during the Three Kingdoms period, which could lead to the sea. Call this area "Yongquan Road"; foreigners call it "Bubbling Well", which means "well that can blow bubbles", transliterated as "Beringwell Road"; The Huihui built a racecourse on the Nicheng River and built a horse path leading from the racecourse to Jing'an Temple, so this road was named "Horse Race Hall Road". Temple Road".

Since the 1930s, it has become a bustling commercial and cultural center in Shanghai. In 1933, the Cirrus Dance Palace was completed and opened, and the Daguang Theater, known as the "No. 1 Cinema in the Far East", was rebuilt and completed; in 1934, The International Hotel opened; in 1935, the Promon suit company opened; in 1938, it was the Golden Gate Hotel, in addition to Hongxiang Fashion Company, Summer Park Cinema, Ping'an Theater, Marble Building, China Photo Studio, Kaisling, and once The Dahua Hotel, which hosted the grand wedding of Jiang and Song Dynasties... makes this place connect with Nanjing Road to the east into a "ten-mile foreign market".Among them, the most famous ones are of course the "Paramount" Ballroom and Hartung Garden.

However, these are not enough. What makes Jing’an Temple Road more colorful is that many celebrities have lived here——Yu Dafu, the founder of the "Creation Society", lives in Jiaheli, Hede Road, hundreds of meters away, and the author of "The Suicide of the Overlord of Chu" Guo Moruo often haunts Minhou Nanli, which is next to him. Zheng Zhenduo, the founder of the "Literary Research Association", has lived in Jing'an Temple Lane for a long time. Lane 750, Yuyuan New Village at the corner was originally owned by Kang Youwei. The "Crescent School" poet Xu Zhimo imitated the Indian poet Tiger My tatami room is also in Siming Village, Fuxu Road not far away... With such a glorious history and so many shining names, how can it be blamed for the bookworms of later generations looking for it again and again? Where is Fang Tanyi coming?

Among these place names and residences, the one that received the most inquiries was Eddington Apartment at the intersection of Jing'an Temple Road (now Nanjing West Road) and Hede Road (now Changde Road) where Eileen Chang lived.The English name of this apartment is Edingburgh House, usually transliterated as Eddington or Edinburgh, and now it is called Changde Apartment. In November 2004, I was in Shanghai. I asked a friend to meet at a teahouse at the intersection of Beijing West Road, Tongren Road near Jing’an Temple. It is said that it was rebuilt from the “green house” known as the most luxurious house in the Far East in the 1920s. Cheng is the former residence of architect I.M. Pei, and it is also the most complete ancient building preserved in Shanghai.

It was just catching up with the rain, and we were in a hurry all the way, very cramped and hasty.Passing by a small beige building on the way, I saw the house number and exclaimed in surprise: Isn’t this Changde Apartment?My heart was pounding, and I couldn't help jumping into the doorway. There was a fat aunt who was guarding the elevator. Seeing my strange wet appearance, she was dumbfounded. I smiled awkwardly: "It's okay, just take a look."Then he jumped out again, but he had already seen the famous elevator and the famous row of mailboxes. So I went to look for the Qishilin Cafe in my memory, which was a place that Eileen Chang used to go to.I was identifying the signboards of the row of cafes on the street opposite the apartment one by one. When I was almost desperate, I finally saw "ALWAYS COFFEE" at the corner of the street. I had read it in a book, and "Zhang Fan" verified that this is Keshilin back then.I was a little excited and wished I could sing in the rain.

Two days later, when I returned to Xi’an, the moment the plane landed, I thought of Shanghai, which was already far away. Those scenes that I felt embarrassed or embarrassed at the time suddenly had a kind of tenderness, and I was moved: My God, I I accidentally walked into the former residence of Eileen Chang, which I have been thinking about and dreaming about for many years, and left my own footprints on the road that is very familiar in my memory but has never been walked in my life. In the rain, it looks like a character in a novel of mine. The plot, and all of this, was not deliberately arranged or planned by me.What kind of opportunity and deep emotion is this.

I can’t help feeling a little bit regretful—I should muster more courage, maybe the ladder will take me upstairs, maybe the owner of the room will let me in, maybe I can go through the hall and room, and enjoy the bathroom carefully , the living room, and the balcony mentioned repeatedly in Zhang Ailing's works.Looking out from the balcony, the whole old Shanghai is in front of you, right? After that, I like to pay attention to other "Zhang fans" visiting Eddington's adventures to see if they are braver or more timid than me, lucky or more wronged.There are so many like: ——In 1987, Sima Xin, the author of "Eileen Chang in the United States", visited Eileen Chang's former residence. "The new tenant was very polite and allowed us to visit and take pictures on the balcony." His courage and luck were much better than mine many.

—— Li Yanwei, who wrote "Eileen Chang's Shanghai Stage", once researched the places where Eileen Chang lived. When she arrived at the door of Room 60 on the seventh floor of Changde Apartment, she rang the bell and came out, "an elderly and delicate old lady with hands She held a hot water bottle in her pocket. I explained why I came, but she hesitated for a moment, and let me in anyway." The luck is also really good.She described the situation inside the door: "The hall is a long and narrow one, but it also has a certain width, because there are doors on all sides, and the light is not dim. , the demeanor of being ready to entertain guests at any time... On the left side of the hall, there are two bedrooms with bathrooms. These are the bedrooms of Eileen Chang and her aunt. They are still used as bedrooms... On the balcony, looking out with the railing, it is The surrounding high-rise buildings block the sky, but in the past, from here, you can see the bustling half of Jing'an Temple Road and the distant sky..."

——Chen Danyan, who wrote "Shanghai's Wind, Flowers, Snow and Moon", also entered the room once, "I stood in the bathroom she used to look at the old bathtub, the old hot water faucet on it, and the surrounding walls. There are small cracks on the tiles that are pasted... Those old pipes hidden deep in the wall have not flowed a drop of hot water for fifty years, but until now, they still emit 'buzz... …The sound of Hehehe shook the whole building. Zhang Ailing said it was a hollow and sad sound... There was an old lady who accompanied me on the balcony. She was a young doctor in Eileen Chang’s time and also liked to watch " Gossips." An elevator worker, a woman with two thin blue moth eyebrows, proudly told her: "People always come to ask Zhang Ailing and so on. Look around, take pictures, look like the real thing. I didn't even tell them."

——However, in the last two hours of leaving Shanghai, Taiwanese female writer Xiao Jinmian finally found the "Eileen Chang's balcony" that she never forgets: "At this moment, looking out from this balcony, there is only a little bit of Hartong Garden in the front right. Right across the road, inside the old thick wall is the 'Public Security Bureau'. The Qishilin coffee shop next door is currently a health and epidemic prevention department." What she saw was obviously different from what I saw. ——In 1990, Mr. Chen Zishan, an expert on Zhang Ailing’s textual research, finally boarded this famous balcony. It makes the world in front of me shrink by a whole lot, after all, today is not what it used to be."

——One day in November 1994, the film crew of Taipei's "Shadow of a Chinese Writer" filmed a young Eileen Chang in the apartment in Edinburgh. An actress from Shanghai Film Studio wore "Eileen Chang" clothing in the 1940s, with aloofness and melancholy , a glimpse, is a short revival. ——Ms. Chunzi, who worked so hard to write "Map of Zhang Ailing", said that she wanted to find Zhang Ailing's balcony, "I was afraid of disturbing others, and stood at the turning of the stairs, hesitating in fear. The elevator worker came. I looked at him with a kind face and went He explained the purpose of his visit. It happened that there were no guests, so he led me to the street and showed me Zhang Ailing's balcony." This luck is similar to mine. ——I heard that there are worse ones. A newspaper editor specially hired a taxi to take her around Zhang Ailing’s former residence in order to catch up with the manuscript, but she couldn’t tell the address. Passed by the Changde apartment and didn't know that this was the Eddington apartment back then...Maybe she can't be blamed for not being there, but because she is too utilitarian and sincere, that's why she entered Baoshan and returned empty-handed, right? ——Li Li said in "Floating Flowers and Flying Catkins" that when he first went to Changjiang Apartment (another apartment where Zhang Ailing lived before leaving China, formerly known as Carlton Apartment), he once fell in front of Zhang Ailing's former residence, and then I thought to myself: Is it because the patriarch grandma didn't like to be disturbed, so she punished her deliberately?When I went to the Eddington apartment again, I was a little timid, “It’s time to go west, and the access control here is much stricter than that of the Yangtze River apartment. The door is locked, and visitors can’t enter unless they ring the bell... I stood on the road outside the door. While taking pictures, two young women walked by, and heard one of them muttering in a low voice: "... Zhang Ailing's." ——Li Li missed it in this way, but her cousin did not give up and continued to pursue the exam all the way, and he found Zhang Ailing's household registration in Eddington apartment: No. 60, No. 10, No. 195, Changde Road District 13 Bao 14A 29 households; the head of the household is aunt Zhang Maoyuan, whose ancestral home is Fengrun, Hebei, with a "university" education, a "business" type of business, a service place of "Xin Sassoon Foreign Firm", and a family status of "unmarried"; niece Zhang Ailing's The category of occupation is "other"—it can be seen that "writer" was not considered a profession at that time, and of course it was also "unmarried"—the form was filled out around 1945 when the Anti-Japanese War ended, and the Shanghai Municipal Government established standardized household registration within the city. ... After I returned to Xi'an, I wrote an article about my trip to Shanghai and published it on the magazine "Love Fashion" edited by me. I originally wanted to send the sample to the owner of Room 60 in Changde Apartment, and asked him to allow me to go next time. It is not presumptuous to pay a visit in Shanghai.But after thinking about it, I have already seen so many pairs of eyes for me, and so many pens have described and prepared in detail, and the owner of the house is not Eileen Chang after all, so why bother to follow the map and seek the sword? Not far to the west from Changde Apartment is Jing'an Temple. After entering the door and turning around, the phrase "why come here" behind "Jing'an Ancient Temple" is shocking, as if asking for Eileen Chang.