Chapter 73 third quarter

Lai Ya's health and economic oppression are the two major embarrassments Zhang Ailing faced after marriage. Her life and mental state can be roughly described in four words: exhausted.What's more painful is that her writing also encountered bottlenecks, and the publication of her works was extremely difficult."Pink Tears", which she valued very much, was rejected by the publishing house, which is undoubtedly a denial for Eileen Chang. She can bear all kinds of hardships that life brings her, but she can't bear to have her creation questioned——she was a genius since she was a child, and became famous at the age of twenty-three. Everything is gone forever?

Ever since she heard the news of her mother's death, Ai Ling had been seriously ill, and it took her more than two months to wilt before she had the courage to sort out her mother's belongings.And this time, the creative blow made her fall ill again, unwilling to eat or talk, she had to rely on vitamin B injections for support, and it took more than a month before she gradually recovered. Laiya looked at his depressed wife and didn't know how to comfort her. He always hoped to give her a surprise, at least on her birthday.He knew that Chinese people are used to celebrating birthdays on the lunar calendar, and birthdays on the lunar calendar are different from the Western calendar every year.

However, the most difficult thing is to be careful, and he finally calculated clearly that Ailing's birthday this year should be October 1st.He solemnly recorded this day in his diary.It is this diary that allows us future generations of "Zhang fans" to have evidence to rely on, and can accurately calculate Zhang Ailing's birthday-October 1 in 1958 in the Western calendar is exactly August 19 in the Chinese lunar calendar; August 19 in the lunar calendar is September 30 in the Western calendar—from this we can see that Zhang Ailing's birthday should be September 30, 1920 in the Gregorian calendar, while it is August 19 in the lunar calendar.

In some biographies, Eileen Chang's birthday is written as September 19th, based on the form Eileen Chang filled out when she enrolled in Hong Kong University. However, a reporter from "United Daily News" once estimated that her birthday should be September 30th. Eileen Chang wrote back: " Gregorian calendar birthdays are only for filling in the form", obviously not sure.It is very likely that she filled it out according to the lunar calendar at that time, and only knew that the eighth month of the lunar calendar should be the ninth month of the Western calendar, but she could not specify the exact date, so she wrote September 19 by hand.She has always been sloppy in these daily details, and it is very possible to just fill in the day when filling out the form.

As a Westerner, Lai Ya was able to calculate the Chinese lunar calendar and the Western calendar clearly, which is really well-intentioned. It was raining on October 1st. In the morning, a member of the FBI came to investigate the debts owed by Laiya, and they didn't agree to leave until noon.Laiya was so impatient, she finally waited for him to leave, and then she took a long breath, solemnly took out the birthday cake and a bouquet of red roses prepared in advance, and said loudly: "Honey, I wish you a happy birthday! I wish you a happy birthday! Your love is beautiful every day!"

Ailing was stunned, she didn't know that today was her birthday, and she didn't expect that Laiya would remember it and made such careful preparations for her.She smiled, but her eye circles were a little wet, and she kept saying, "Thank you, honey, I am very happy." They had lunch together and discussed the afternoon program with great interest.Laiya said: "Don't worry, I have planned everything." God is also helping them. After lunch, the sky cleared up.Laiya and Aileen went out for a walk arm in arm, and went to the post office to mail a few letters. The path was full of fallen leaves and the sun was warm. They went home after a walk, and after a short nap, Lai Ya brought out meat pies, green beans and rice made by herself, and had dinner with Zhang Ailing affectionately.Then they each put on the most decent clothes and went to the cinema to watch a comedy "Without Delay" starring Eddie Griffith. Ailing laughed so hard that she cried.

That night, Aileen told Lai Ya that this was her happiest and most memorable birthday in 38 years! Laiya prayed silently: I hope I can give her the most satisfying birthday celebration every year, and I hope I can spend one more day with her! In mid-October 1958, under the sponsorship of Hu Shi, Eileen Chang applied for a half-year residency at the Huntington Hartford Foundation in Southern California, where she could overlook the vast Pacific Ocean. During the literary camp, Lai Ya still likes to socialize as before. She often goes to the hall after meals to chat and play cards with fellow campers, and have a small gamble. Aileen is more reclusive than before, hiding in her room all day writing or watch TV.

One night, Laiya walked into Ailing's studio and said mysteriously, "We have an old friend here, come out and meet her." Ailing immediately declined, no matter how much Lai Ya tried to persuade her, she refused to go out.Laiya originally wanted to trick her and give her a surprise, so she had to explain the answer: "The friend I'm talking about is a little goat." Aileen ran out happily, stroking the horns of the little goat happily. Laughing and playing with it for a long time. Laiya shook her head helplessly, and said affectionately, "What a child." Judging from the letters she wrote to Song Qi and Kuang Wenmei, she began to write her autobiography during this period.

I guess that Eileen Chang was at a low point in her writing at that time, and the copying of the script made her enter a bottleneck, and she could no longer write a new story of her own.She was also aware of this, so she overcorrected and went to the other extreme, wanting to write absolutely "her own words". She began to review her early records and essays, such as "Whispers", "Children's Words", "Amber Records", "Double Voices", "Gorgeous Fate", and the unpublished "Story of a Foreign Land", and then practiced them. Chisel to start writing memoirs.In pursuit of truth, even the structure and techniques are abandoned, regardless of how complicated the characters are and there is no "drama", and whether the readers want to watch it or not, just write it down and write it completely.Even if she edited it after she finished writing it, or didn't publish it, or destroyed it, she would always finish writing it first, and relive her life like a self-tortured one.

It is the first of a trilogy of autobiography.At the beginning of the chapter, Pipa was only four years old. She wrapped her small body in a green velvet curtain and looked into the room: On the sofa chair in the living room, a pair of young ladies like twin sisters were sitting, hooking each other's shoulders and playing with each other. Jewelry, with a low smile.No matter how much she tried to get their attention, they just refused to look at her or pay her any attention... That scene was very much like a scene in a silent movie, the light was dim and magnificent, and people couldn't help but associate it with ambiguous words like "lesbian".But maybe that is Eileen Chang's superficial consciousness.Her aunt and mother, she and Yan Ying, more or less have a tendency towards same-sex love.

The book is full of her admiration for her mother, as she said to Song Qi later: "From the point of view that the mother and aunt in it are children, it is too idealistic and not real." ——This is how she loves her mother romantically, and writes her memoirs, stories from the age of four to eighteen, in an ideal style. Father, mother, younger brother, He Gan, even stepmother, father's concubine...these people are all far away.They once hurt her, but they also gave her love. Those old habits that she once hated are far away, and she knows how to miss them: rattan-heart hardwood furniture, scrolls surrounded by brocade, thick velvet curtains that always hang down, and even the scent of opium in the curtains that lingers all day long. Spring returns to Du Yu's Dream of Red Mansions, sobering up with the fragrance of opium. She doesn't know where to go to find her childhood again?Even though it was full of scars and bumps, it was still the blood world she was familiar with, deeply remembered, and truly owned. From "Whispers", "Tongyan Wuji", to,, and then, until the "Comparison Notes" before her death, she took the trouble to recall and recount her childhood life over and over again.It seems to be painting a picture of memory. Every time you smear, increase or subtract a stroke, it will only make the color thicker and richer. After all, she will never forget her father's home. She no longer has a home. Looking at those trivial and distant memories, I can't help feeling that Zhang Ailing is pitiful.The deeper and more vividly she recalled, the lonelier she seemed.