Chapter 2 The process of discovering "Border Town Revisited"

Song Yilang / Text How was "Revisiting Border Town" discovered?This matter was handled by me. First, I would like to introduce myself.My name is Song Yilang, I am the son of Song Qi (Lin Yiliang) and Kuang Wenmei.According to my family members, my parents and Eileen Chang became friends as early as the 1950s.I was too young at the time so I don't have any memories.In the autumn of 1961, Eileen Chang first visited Taiwan and then Hong Kong.During my stay in Hong Kong, Eileen Chang lived in our house for a few weeks. Eileen Chang in my memory was a tall and elegant lady from Shanghai.In 1968, I went abroad to study, and then settled on the east coast of the United States. I have never seen Zhang Ailing since then.

In 1995, Zhang Ailing passed away, and my parents told me that Zhang Ailing left a will and bequeathed all property to them.I didn't think much of it then; in 1996, my father passed away.In December 2002, my mother had a stroke.In January 2003, I returned to Hong Kong to take care of my mother for a long time. After returning to Hong Kong, I found that there were boxes and boxes of Zhang Ailing's materials in my home, including letters, manuscripts, daily observations, quotations, signatures, certificates and so on.But those materials have not been sorted out, so I don't quite understand the content

In 2007, Ang Lee's movie "Lust, Caution" was released. I re-read the information about Eileen Chang at home, found out the part about "Lust, Caution" and provided it to the media for publication. I gradually understood Eileen Chang. The general status of the data.During this period, the University of Hong Kong requested information on "Eileen Chang, "Lust, Caution" and the University of Hong Kong". At that time, I found only one page describing the campus of the University of Hong Kong from a pile of thirty-four pages of very chaotic materials. In November 2007, my mother passed away, and I began to formally and carefully organize Zhang Ailing's materials.When I re-read the 34-page manuscript, I found that it was actually a complete travel note──"Revisiting Border Town".In the article, the author mentioned that she had just arrived in Taiwan by plane, and a person in a suit asked her: "Are you Mrs. Richard Nixon?" I remembered that I had read the English version in Zhang Ailing's materials: "You are Mrs. Richard Nixon?" 〉It turned out that the English travel note was "A Return To The Frontier" published in the American magazine "The Reporter" on March 28, 1963.I carefully compared "A Return To The Frontier" with "Revisiting Border Town", and found that the latter was not a direct translation from the English version, because it added a lot of new words.

<A Return To The Frontier> aroused great repercussions in Taiwan's literary circles at that time, mainly because Zhang Ailing went to Taiwan for a short-term tour. She met Wang Zhenhe, Bai Xianyong, Wang Wenxing, Chen Ruoxi and others. "Return To The Frontier" is not very good. Perhaps everyone has too high expectations for "Grandma Grandma", but a short-term trip of only one week is unlikely to inspire any high-spirited ideas, and English writing also does not show Eileen Chang's real skills in Chinese. . After my mother passed away last year, I am now the executor of Eileen Chang's literary legacy, and I am responsible for whether "Revisiting Border Town" should be published.The first consideration should be the author's wishes.In Zhang Ailing's materials, there is no mention of "Revisiting the Frontier Town", so I can only speculate: "A Return to the Frontier" was published in 1963, and "Revisiting the Frontier Town" is inferred to be 1963. It was not until after 1982 that I began to write (because the article quoted the part about Longshan Temple in Lukang from "Guanghua Magazine" in November 1982).Eileen Chang may have known about the Taiwanese readers' reaction to "A Return To The Frontier" back then, and she was so worried about it that she restored the original meaning in Chinese 20 years later.So I'm leaning towards publishing.

The second consideration is literary value. The original manuscript of "Revisiting the Frontier Town" is a bit confusing, probably because it is still a first draft, unretouched, and unsuitable for publication.I am not an expert in literature, so I handed it over to the Crown editors, because they have worked with Zhang Ailing for more than 40 years, and they must know the standards of "grandfather and grandma".Based on literary value and historical value, their attitude towards publication is affirmative.These are the reasons why "Revisiting Border Town" was made public.

(*Press: "Crown" April 2008 issue.)