Chapter 89 third quarter

From the English autobiography, to the Chinese autobiography, and then to the "Contrast Note" with the same autobiographical outline, it is really a strange and tortuous mental journey. People today like "nostalgia", and "Zhang Ailing's atmosphere" is obviously an important nostalgic label.Zhang Ailing likes to wear antique clothes left by the elders, likes people and stories of the old times, and also likes to write stories about the old times. The harmonious living atmosphere is what she is most familiar with and is best at. Those old and young living in the transitional era of old and new China, their steps have stepped into the new era, but the blood of ancient times is still flowing in their bones, especially those poor women, "Her emotions and desires have been given to this destined man, and she has loved him firmly, legally, and absurdly all her life. China's actual attitude towards sex is for men only. Women are scapegoats, and they use women's virtues to save the world .”

Zhang Ailing has eternal sympathy for women, and she also blames and exposes them, but she laments her misfortune and angers her indisputable condemnation, with deep sighs.Relatives of the father’s family, relatives of the mother’s family, grandparents, uncles, cousins, old mothers, and professors and classmates of the University of Hong Kong... She used exotic characters to shape the characters in her hometown, carefully depicting them one by one, turning the pages of the book, It's like opening an ancient scroll treasured in a brocade box and seeing continuous pictures, among which there is a cool and glamorous aura of agarwood.

Later, when she wrote Chinese autobiographical novels, she got tired of the length and betrayed the warmth.Perhaps it was because of Hu Lancheng's interference. She was a little suffocated when she wrote, but she was reluctant to lose the characters and stories in her memory, but because the focus was on the three emotional entanglements, the past events were not so detailed, so The characters are taken out of the background, without antecedents or consequences, just sketched silhouettes, as thin as the shadows of sails floating on the sea in a foggy day, vain and non-existent, completely uncertain.

At the end of the book, why did the farewell scene, which is full of color and color, be described lightly in only four or five hundred words; and the war scenes and character sketches that were created in the whole book in the book were explained in only the first two chapters.But she was reluctant not to write about such a good subject, and she still had to call out names with all her heart, and summarize everyone's stories in a few words, as if explaining what happened after her death. Eileen Chang once described the girls who asked and answered their homework on the eve of the big exam. They were so calm and relaxed when they asked, but the one who answered couldn't help but narrow their throats, with a hasty and sad tone—but she wrote in a hasty and uncertain way. It is also such a hasty and sad tone to explain the lives of those characters.

Moreover, there are memories interspersed with memories, and the chronological order is completely disrupted. If you don’t know Zhang Ailing’s life, you can’t understand what is written. You can put it together as you like; and blindly and deliberately sketch without explaining at all, and sometimes even emotions and anger are vague.Many details are unclear, and the truth will not be understood until after watching and watching.It's like a series of rings. After unraveling it, I found out that the answer was in English. She wrote , in English, but couldn't sell it; so she wrote it in Chinese again, but hesitated after finishing it, and wanted to destroy it; it was not until her old age that she regained her composure, overthrew it and started over again, and compiled it into "Contrast Notes".

In "Contrast Notes", she kept her memories of her ancestral blood, no longer concealed her admiration for her mother and aunt, she also showed her love for her younger brother, and her cherishment of Yanying's friendship, but completely erased Hu Lancheng's personality. human existence. Not only Hu Lancheng, but also Sang Hu, Lai Ya, and even her father, the most important men in her life, were all absent.The love protagonists who supported the main frame were ruthlessly removed from her photo album, and only faded into a desolate gesture in memory, which disappeared with a light wave.

But Ping Xintao was unwilling to let those figures disappear. He told the media just after Zhang Ailing passed away that Zhang Ailing had been writing while completing "Complete Works", and issued three related letters. The letter dated July 30, 1993 said: ""Contrast Notes" is too thick to add, and the book price is too high. I am afraid it will not be finished within this year. Let's publish "Contrast Notes" first." On October 8, I sent another letter saying: "I am glad to hear that "Contrast Notes" will be published after November...it must be finished as soon as possible, and I will not break my promise to readers."

The letter on December 10 said: "Absolutely not at the beginning of next year. I will send you a letter to let me know when I have some inklings. But you can't take it seriously. The content is more in-depth than "Contrast Notes" and "Whispers". Some readers will regard it as fried rice..." But the fact is that Zhang Ailing did not complete it until her death, and it seems that it was not found in the relics, because it was not until 2009, 14 years after Zhang Ailing passed away, that Ping Xintao published it. According to Song Yi Lang said that the manuscript written by Zhang Ailing in 1975 was found in her father Song Qi's box-so, did Zhang Ailing rewrite it in her later years?How different is the rewritten version from what we see today?Since she said she has been writing, why didn't Song Yilang and Ping Xintao see the manuscript, but took out the draft she wrote 20 years ago and told her to destroy it for publication?

These are mysteries. I don't want to believe that Eileen Chang, who values ​​privacy so much, will publish her autobiography, but Eileen Eileen once said: "If you suddenly ask a woman a question, her first answer is probably the official history, and the second is the novel." It may be understood in this way: "Contrast Notes" is her first answer, which is official history; but it is the second answer, so it is a novel. "Contrast Notes" began to be serialized in "Crown" magazine in November 1993. During this period, Eileen Chang revised it repeatedly, and added the subtitle "Looking at Old Photo Albums" by herself, and published it in June 1994 as a booklet.In 1995, he won the "Special Achievement Award of Literary Award" from Taiwan's "China Times".After Zhang Ailing heard about it, she went to the photo studio to take a "recent photo" and sent it to Taipei.

This is the last photo of Zhang Ailing, and it is also an amazing and inexplicable photo.She is very old and thin in the photo.The most special thing is that she is holding a roll of newspaper in her hand, on which "Chairman Kim Il-sung died suddenly yesterday" is printed in large bold characters. She also decided to put this photo on the last page of the reprint of "Contrast Notes", and added a narration: "Writing this book, I spent too long studying in the old photo album, and I came out to breathe. I watched the same headlines with everyone, and I had the immediate feeling of 'the end of the world is at this time'. Holding the newspaper is like a photo sent to the family by the kidnapper. It proves that he was still alive that day. In fact, this is not an imitation, there is a poem to prove it. The poem says:

Most people are old a prisoner of time, Get banned. It treats me well-- Of course you can tear up the ticket at any time. smile. "