Chapter 62 Several Questions about "Shanghai Flower"

——Preface to the English translation At the beginning of the first round, there is a preface, followed by a wedge.This "Return to the Internal Preface" describes the book's exposure of the cunning of prostitutes in Shanghai, a commercial port, without being obscene.In the wedge, the author Hua Yeliannong dreamed that she was walking on the sea, and the sea was covered with flowers—a very simple analogy, the word "Shanghai" is reversed on the sea, and flowers are synonymous with common prostitutes.In his dream, plum blossoms that are hardy to cold, chrysanthemums that are proud of frost, konggulans that can endure loneliness, and lotus flowers that emerge from the mud and are not stained are not as good as the lower varieties that drift with the tide, cannot withstand the tossing of wind and waves, and the gnawing of pests, and soon sink. He was so sad that he also fell into the water, but fell from a high place and fell on the Lujiashi Bridge at the junction of the Chinese border in the Shanghai Concession.He woke up and found himself on the bridge—rather than sleeping on the bed, it can be seen that he was still dreaming—going off the bridge and knocking down a young man who was rushing up, and turned to the main text.

Wedge is clearly sympathetic to some prostitutes, which is obviously different from the point of view of the shady novel in the preface.That foreword should be a statement of exhorting goodness and punishing adultery, which is typical in traditional Chinese novels, if the subject matter involves lust.The genre of this opening speech is a self-prologue and wedge that follows step by step, without its charm and novelty.This section is so different in style from the rest that it will bore foreign readers and leave it unfinished before it begins; its only function is to lead sinologists astray in search of hidden myths or philosophies.This little-known masterpiece was published in 1894 and was discovered by Hu Shi and other May Fourth Movement athletes in the middle of 1920, and it was out of print for the second time.I couldn't help but worry about whether it was popular overseas, so I finally had the courage to delete the first few pages.

The postscript is also omitted for the same reason.The author is the worst at describing landscapes.Scenery is always written in formulas, but here is a long description of the fun of mountaineering, without having to climb to the top, to explain why many of his subplots have no ending, although it is not difficult to infer. In the postscript, there was a visitor who asked about Shen Xiaohong and Huang Cuifeng's fate.He said their story was over. They are always inseparable, so that Wu Xuexiang recruits a husband and teachs children, Jiang Yueqin starts a business and starts a family, Zhu Jinhua is obscene and lowly, Wen Junyu is poor and miserable, Xiaozan Xiaoqing flees away with money, and Pan Sankuang and Er return home in glory; Huang Jinfeng's widow is not as good as Huang Zhufeng's wife; Zhou Shuangyu's noble wife is not as good as Zhou Shuangbao's sons and daughters; Too much work.

Please wait for the initial results to be completed, and then print and submit for teaching. Promised to make another sequel, the content disclosed is worth noting that it can help us understand the book.In the forty-seventh celebration of Wu Xuexiang's pregnancy, Ge Zhongying apparently admitted that she was pregnant with his child.But it turned out that she married someone else in the continuation book, presumably a poor man with a lower social status, otherwise she would not marry.But even if Ge Zhongying was tired of her, with his wealth, he would never let his children live outside.If another legitimate family is arranged for the child, and the birth mother is still raised, it is a Western custom to remarry a mistress who has fallen out of favor, but it does not exist in China.If he had suddenly fallen ill and died prematurely—as it seemed to be the case—his relatives would certainly negotiate with her to adopt the baby.She refused to give up on her son, and she recruited a good son for him, so that his background would be innocent, which showed her character.

The mysterious person whose private meeting with Mrs. Qi's servant Xiao Zan was broken up is obviously Xiao Qing, the eldest sister of Mrs. Qi Furu's sister Su Guanxiang, since Xiao Zan and Xiao Qing elope in the sequel.Nu Qiguan, who is good at opera, is competing with Guanxiang for favor. She sees clearly that it is Xiaoqing, but she refuses to tell the master.Concealing it on her behalf, taking into account the face of her rival, she seems to be too a saint.But of course it was because they were outnumbered and did not dare to hold grudges.The depth of the scheming was not revealed until the postscript.

Zhou Shuangbao married Nanhuodian Xiaokai Ni customer, and he had all kinds of weddings, "treating him as a courtier", of course he is not a courteous wife—or should he still be regarded as a courteous wife even though he married a prostitute? At that time Tongxing married early, although his father was still alive and still in charge of the shop, the book did not mention that he was young.Of course, maybe he was dead Mrs.But we know that Zhou Shuangyu married a dignitary as a concubine in the continuation book, so we can conclude that guest Ni also made the king have a wife.Shuangyu's motive for blackmailing the Zhu family was partly because she was out of breath and Shuangbao married Ruyi.The issue is a little confusing: because Zhu Shuren couldn't keep his promise to marry Shuangyu, she forced him to fall in love with her.Although we later found out that it was purely for extortion, we still had the impression that she was unwilling to be a concubine.After extorting 10,000 silver dollars, in addition to the redemption, the rest is used as a dowry, which is enough for her to marry anyone as a wife, if it is not too expensive.And still being a concubine, it can be seen that it is not a fight for fame, but that she wants to marry someone she likes immediately and is married very well, so she said this.

Hu Shi pointed out that the poems in the book and an obscene story in classical Chinese were deliberately interspersed.In order to show off the beauty of the author's rhetoric in other aspects.Almost all of the novels in that novel are puns on ancient Chinese idioms, such as "Blood Flowing", the original text refers to the large number of casualties on the battlefield.Unfortunately, other puns don't quite translate like this one.Those Four Books wine decrees also quoted scriptures, and they often subtly referred to something else.The advantage of the two poems is that the allusions are used smoothly and naturally, and the translation is bound to be cumbersome, and the effect is just the opposite.These are my only omissions.In order to maintain the rhythm and not let the literary spirit be interrupted, I deleted it and then added it, hoping that there will be no traces.

I have been familiar with this book for a long time, but it was only when I was translating it that I realized that the night Luo Zifu and Huang Cuifeng made love, she got up from another man's bed to make love.It’s nothing to be in a brothel, but it’s still shocking, because of the strong family atmosphere of Changsantangzi—Moer’s "mother" doesn’t show up, he’s just called "the family", but he can be a man or a woman—especially after going through After Cuifeng's affectation.There are also a few instances of extreme subtlety like this, which I have added more recently, at the risk of intervening.

(January 1984)