Chapter 17 3. Worship the "Red House"

Opened in 1935, Red House Western Restaurant is the first French western restaurant in Shanghai.In the 1940s, the Red House Western Restaurant was re-opened on the current Shaanxi South Road. The name of the restaurant was Chzlouise Restaurant. Because the facade was painted red, it was called the "Red House" by the business people who often went to parties for dinner. . In Shanghai, many people learn to eat Western food from the Red House.I heard that Zhang Ailing was a "fan" of the Red House back then, and there was a menu of Zhang Ailing's favorites: onion soup, grilled mandarin fish, grilled snails, mustard steak.Many celebrities in Shanghai are very fond of these kinds of housekeeping dishes of the Red House. Zhao Dan, Huang Zongying, Bai Yang, Wang Danfeng, Yu Zhenfei, etc. all like these dishes.

Therefore, the red house has also become the old Koehler in Shanghai ("Kehler" is a foreign word, it means "Color", the meaning of color, transliterated to explain, and also refers to "Class" for grade and class explanation, "Old Koehler" It refers to the upper-class gentlemen in old Shanghai who are well-educated and enjoy themselves; the old Koehler in old Shanghai was the first group of people who were impacted by Western culture, and they were also the first to absorb and combine Western culture. At that time, they combined local and foreign cultures to form a One of the nostalgic places for Shanghai style culture in a certain period.

But Shanghainese's admiration for Western food and Western culture is also based on the pragmatism in their urban character.If Beijingers see Western goods, then Shanghainese see advanced civilization; if Beijingers care about "ism", then Shanghainese care about "interests".This is the essence of Shanghai people's "worship of foreigners and fawning on foreigners", and they pay attention to the actual benefits that this behavior is and will bring. Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou are all treaty ports that were forced to open in the "Nanjing Treaty", but no city like Shanghai uses the Bund, which is lined with colonial buildings, as a symbol of the city and a business card for external publicity.

The British "Daily Telegraph" published an article in 2008 stating that the Shanghai government spent 280 million pounds to "reconstruct the expressway separating the Huangpu River and the neoclassical buildings on the Bund into an underground passage, and demolish the overpass that hinders the view."This overpass is the famous "Waibaidu Bridge".The first generation of Waibaidu Bridge was built in 1856, named "Wales Bridge", which is a wooden bridge.It is a "Suzhou Creek Bridge Company" (China) funded by 20 people including Wells, an Englishman who worked for Jardine Cheunghang, Wei Ren and Huo Mei of Baoshun Xianghang (mostly managers of Cheunghang or opium tycoons). The first bridge construction company in history) invested in the construction. In 2008, the Waibaidu Bridge was renovated and moved to reconnect the two sides of the Huangpu River.In this regard, the British think this is good news, because the Shanghai government "has realized the importance of being connected to water, which is very important for any modern city".

Obviously, the British viewed Shanghai's renovation and preservation of old buildings purely from the function of a bridge.But they also "have to admit that the striking building lines are so British that if we looked at the photographs we might confuse it with Liverpool's Mersey waterfront". People in China often accuse Shanghainese of "worshiping foreigners and fawning on foreigners", and it may be the surface of these colonial buildings.But in fact, what Shanghainese worship and admire is not Western goods, but advanced civilization.The pragmatism and utilitarianism of Shanghai people's handling of principles predestined them to care more about the actual benefits brought by a certain thing, rather than the attributes of this thing or the way of initial entry.Therefore, "ism" has no meaning to Shanghainese, and "interest" is what they really care about.

For example, in the eyes of Yu Qiuyu, "the first strictly Shanghainese", Xu Guangqi, a Jinshi in the Ming Dynasty, embodies the "utilitarianism" of Shanghainese.There is a very detailed description of this person in a book: This smart Jinshan Wei scholar traveled north and south, and met Italian missionary Guo Jujing in Guangdong, and they chatted very well, and Xu Guangqi began to know what Catholicism was all about.He was 34 years old this year, and he had already been deeply immersed in the Chinese religious spirit with Confucianism as the mainstay, but he did not laugh at the Western religion he had just heard about as a diorama, nor did he just treat it as a kind of foreign knowledge. It's just a description in the book, but I think about it deeply.He didn't want to give up the imperial examination. Four years later, he went to Beijing to take the exam. When passing through Nanjing, he went to visit the more famous European missionary Matteo Ricci to ask about the true meaning of life.Later, he associated with another missionary, Luo Ruwang, and accepted his baptism.

In the second year after the baptism, Xu Guangqi was admitted as a Jinshi and became a scholar of the Imperial Academy. This is a very glorious threshold for traditional Chinese intellectuals, and he can be a Beijing official with peace of mind.But this Shanghai native was very uneasy, and always went to Ricci, who was in Beijing at the time, and the topics of discussion went far beyond religion, including astronomy, calendar, mathematics, weapons, military affairs, economy, and water conservancy.Among them, he was most interested in mathematics. Wearing the official uniform of the Imperial Academy, he was obsessed with sophisticated Western mathematical thinking.Soon, he actually translated a large set of "Elements of Geometry" together with Matteo Ricci, and put them into print.At that time, it was still in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, and there were still more than 230 years before the artillery fire of the Opium War.

This Shanghai native is very good at dealing with the world. He does not use a whole set of mathematical thinking to provoke and challenge the feudal political institutions all day long. Twenty years after the publication of "The Original Geometry", he actually became the minister of the Ministry of Rites, and soon became the Minister of the Ministry of Rites.After obtaining such a great official position, he seriously promoted Catholicism, advocated Western scientific civilization, and hired and reused European nationals. After a few years of busy work, he died of exhaustion.After Xu Guangqi's death, Emperor Chongzhen "stopped the court for a day" to express his condolences, and the coffin was transported back to Shanghai for burial.After the burial place was also the residence of his family for generations, it was called "Xujiahui" at first.Xu Guangqi was a strange combination of Chinese and Western cultures until his death: after his death, he was granted the title of the imperial court, and there was a Latin inscription erected by the church in front of his tomb.

Open-minded, eager to learn, easy-going, clever, able to learn traditional culture, and social reality, but open the door of the soul to the world civilization, dare to absorb new knowledge that was very strange not long ago, and naturally import it into the world. Life.Unlike Zhang Juzheng from Hubei, who was far-sighted for prospering and eliminating disadvantages, not like Hai Rui from Guangdong, who desperately admonished, and Tang Xianzu from Jiangxi, who sang sincerely, this was the first shrewd Shanghainese who appeared in the Ming Dynasty. A Japanese described and introduced Shanghainese in this way: they speak exaggeratedly, have an extreme sense of superiority, like to talk about ostentation, save face, and are used to being proud of being ahead of the times and advocating fashion.They are also practical and able to skillfully use the financial resources of others to achieve their own ends.The characteristics of the Shanghainese are: quick-witted, fast-moving, with a character that does not stick to the past history that Chinese people do not have.

Not sticking to the past, this is the most accurate description of Shanghainese.As long as this past hinders them from gaining real benefits, Shanghai people will wisely discard it quickly, so they don't mind, and even take the Bund as the city's symbol with pride.Just because in the 1930s, when hundreds of millions of peasants on the vast land of China were squatting on kangs and eating corned buns, Shanghainese were enjoying Coca-Cola. Abandoning the past for utilitarian purposes, this is how Shanghainese treat their history of being colonized, and the same is true when dealing with the "Shanghai dialect" that is one of their symbols.Based on the convenience of communication, Shanghainese voluntarily abandoned Shanghai dialect.

Since the country advocated "speaking Mandarin and being a civilized person" in the 1950s, children speak Mandarin at school, and parents and family members also cooperate to speak Mandarin at home. words, meaning stiff, bad) Mandarin to coax children and grandchildren. "In the end, they are no longer used to speaking Shanghainese," said Qian Nairong, a famous Shanghai linguist. Xiao Le, the Shanghai dialect host of Five Star Sports and born in the 1980s, also admitted: "Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer young people who can speak Shanghai dialect for five minutes in a row." Has been heterogeneous. Although since 2005, in response to all kinds of social concerns about "Shanghai dialect will disappear" and "children can't speak Shanghai dialect", Shanghai has set off a wave of "defending Shanghai dialect": Shanghai Municipal Education Commission launched a "Shanghai dialect protection survey" research topics”, the Shanghai Municipal Language Commission also planned the drawing of the “Shanghai Dialect Map”.Qian Nairong, a leading expert in this area, compiled a "Shanghai Dialect Dictionary" after ten years of work, and in 2008, he even worked out a Shanghai dialect pinyin input system.But in Qian Nairong's view, these measures are too late, "It is the Shanghainese who have caused the decline of Shanghai dialect." According to Li Dawei, a columnist for Xinmin Evening News, this top-down "dialect rescue" method from officials and scholars does not conform to the spirit of contract in Shanghai's commercial society.He believes that "Shanghai dialect is instrumental and rational. The separation of working language and social language is the general trend of the development of Shanghai dialect. Just like Hong Kong people, they have to speak English at work and speak Cantonese in daily life." Another voice is also clamoring on the Internet, "In Shanghai, a city where you can't speak Shanghainese, but you can't speak English, what can you do if you don't speak Shanghainese?" Several middle school students from Datong Middle School in Shanghai conducted a social survey in the summer vacation of 2005.The conclusion of their investigation is: "Shanghai dialect is in a bad situation".The students found that the places where Shanghainese should be used most, such as the shops in Chenghuang Temple and the old streets of Shanghai, the common language is Mandarin. Professor Liu Mingang, Ph.D. in Linguistics, Shanghai Normal University, said: "Shanghai dialect has changed from ancient Yue to a dialect of Chinese. The grammar and vocabulary are relatively close to Mandarin, and they are getting closer and closer. Some unique vocabulary of Shanghai dialect is gradually disappearing, being replaced by northern dialects. The pronunciation of Shanghai is getting closer and closer to Mandarin, many sounds are gradually disappearing, and the pronunciation of many characters is getting closer to Mandarin.” For the same reason, cultural scholar Zhu Dake believes that since Shanghai was positioned as an "international metropolis" in 1990, "internationalization" has gradually eroded "locality".Zhu Dake feels that the most prominent thing is that Shanghai dialect lacks the ability to create words.As we all know, a large number of words in Shanghai dialect come from the transliteration of English. For example, the source of "sofa" is the English word "sofa". It is very close to the English word, but it is far from the Mandarin pronunciation. A similar word is "嘤". "This character was created based on the pronunciation of the English word dear. It was very successful and later entered Mandarin. However, in the past two decades, the word-forming ability of Shanghai dialect has seriously declined. There is only one pattern of 'don't be too... ...' and 'pound paste' and a handful of new words." In fact, whether the pronunciation of Shanghai dialect is getting closer and closer to that of Mandarin, many ancient sounds are gradually disappearing, or many English transliteration words have been introduced into Shanghai dialect, they all show the same problem: Shanghainese only use Shanghai dialect as a communication tool , rather than an irreplaceable mother tongue. A person in charge of the Shanghai Language and Writing Committee once said: "One of the characteristics of language is that we hate the poor and love the rich. Guangdong's economy has improved, and there has also been a wave of learning Cantonese among Shanghainese." People carry out with perfect proficiency. In contrast to this is the strong defense of Cantonese by the people of Guangzhou. On July 5, 2010, the Guangzhou Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference suggested that Guangzhou TV station add Mandarin programs to facilitate the viewing habits of domestic and foreign guests during the Guangzhou Asian Games.However, this suggestion was interpreted on the Internet as canceling Cantonese programs and "promoting popular and abolishing Cantonese".As a result, some Guangzhou people with a strong sense of self-esteem launched the "Defend Cantonese" campaign, and even used popular pop-up parties to express their solidarity. Compared with the great anxiety of Guangzhou people about the "disappearance of Cantonese", a small number of Shanghainese experts and scholars are anxiously trying to defend Shanghai dialect, while the general public continues to make Mandarin and English the common language of communication in the city, with very few responders. "It is the Shanghainese who make the Shanghai dialect decline", this sentence can be added more completely: it is the utilitarianism of the Shanghai people that makes the Shanghai dialect decline.Shanghai dialect is just a tool, which can be refurbished or even thrown away when worn out.For Shanghainese, it is not difficult to give up, as long as you give an appropriate price. Unlike Beijing, Shanghai traps you in circles and traps you to death.Shanghai is a beach. The beach is open, but it is also melting. In the end, individuals will merge into this beach and become a part of her.Yi Zhongtian used the word "melting" to describe the process of a foreigner becoming a "Shanghai native", not "integration". In this process, disintegration is bound to happen. If this city wants to accept you, you need to abandon the incompatible part, throw it away!It is possible to lose innocence, ideals, and beliefs.This is the "charm" of Shanghai's tidal flats and this magical city. You must pay the price, just as she has developed and grown to the present, it is also a process of continuous abandonment and transformation. What she discarded in the process may be the history of the city, or the tool called "mother tongue", or more likely It is you who refuse to give up something and do not match it.To enter the city one must be prepared to sacrifice.Of course the price will be expensive, it just depends on whether you think it is worth it.