Chapter 3 The second dark day

From 1922 to 1928, when Eileen Chang was 3 to 9 years old, she grew up in Tianjin, my hometown.I am a poor village boy in the suburbs, and she is a rich lady in the city.Tianjin is a "treaty port", and there are foreign "concessions" that humiliate the country and lose power, including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and Italy. The "concession" has "extraterritorial legal rights", and there are the most wealthy residences. The abdicated emperors of the Qing Dynasty, the old and the young, and the rich and powerful merchants of the official family gathered in one place.That "life" is full of luxury and extravagance - I, a village boy, can't even fly the "wings of imagination" to the outer edge of that realm, so I dare not make a false statement and pretend to be an expert.I mention this because I want to ask a few doubts——

One, Eileen Chang lived a super-high-end life since she was a child, and she was extremely wealthy-at that time, the family had a car and a driver.Her father is a "rich young man", eating, drinking and having fun, sensuality, whoring, adopting a concubine..., a libertine.Her material enjoyment must be considerable, but is her spirit happy? Second, Tianjin is the birthplace of her novel career, which is already clear, but besides her "noumenal" temperament, was she influenced by her parents?If so, what was it? Third, according to the biographies, the biological mother Huang had long since left for a foreign land, and her father Zhang Tingzhong wrote a review of "Modern Dream of Red Mansions" for her. "Is it one or two?If there are similarities and differences, what are they like?

Fourth, Zhang Tingzhong is already a "Republic of China", with a long history of family studies, a strong foundation in ancient studies, and also served as the English Secretary of the Railway Bureau, so he was a "new" figure at that time-in this way, Zhang Ailing said that she was influenced by ancient Chinese The poison is too deep, and he will be proficient in English in the future. Doesn't this prove that he has the influence of his father? Generally speaking, the "spiritual composition" of a person is very complicated. Innate spirituality, upbringing, relatives and friends, social environment... This is a topic that is difficult to formulate in "chemical analysis". ——My words are trying to speculate: she started writing "Modern Dream of Red Mansions" at the age of fourteen or fifteen, assuming that the semantic flavor of her father's memories did not distort her essence, then I don't think this means that she—or It does not fully represent her thoughts, opinions, and sexual feelings; there is at least her father's "world" mixing and controlling it.

Because, from the review of those six chapters, it is not clear that although she was dissatisfied with Gao Xu, she did not have much superb and profound understanding and ideals—she did not leave the "love center" mode of thinking of one man and one woman, but only joined After learning some social phenomena of the local (Tianjin, Shanghai) "Ten-mile foreign market" at that time, weaved this small book. By saying this, I don't mean to belittle or belittle this talented girl writer-and this is just my bold speculation.My important sentence is: she has a different view of "red studies" from her father, and she instinctively perceives and feels a strange "something wrong" in the "parts" of the original work at or after the eighty chapters!

She said to herself: From when I was twelve or thirteen years old, I saw less than eighty episodes, and I just felt that "the sky is dark and everything is tasteless"! It really shocked me, and I couldn't help secretly exclaiming, for the first time in decades, such eight big characters appeared in my eyes! The poem says: Shi Po's shock is rare since ancient times, and Fang Ling's whispers are strange. Suddenly the sky is dark and cloudy, and it is tasteless and embarrassing. How can there be a "teacher"?