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Re -imagining the site of the feminine: A rediscovery of Zhang Ailing's fictional works

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Re -imagining the site of the feminine: A rediscovery of Zhang Ailing's fictional works

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Content RE-IMAGINING THE SITE OF THE FEMININE
A REDISCOVERY OF ZHANG AILING’S FICTIONAL WORKS
by
George A. Da Roza
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES)
August 2003
Copyright 2003 George A. Da Roza
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UMI Number: 3116685
Copyright 2003 by
Da Roza, George A.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This dissertation, written by
G eo rg e A . Da R oza
under the direction o f h l s dissertation committee, and
approved by all its members, has been presented to and
accepted by the Director o f Graduate and Professional
Programs, in partial fulfillment o f the requirements fo r the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
D r . D o m in ic Cheung
Director
Date 9.2003
Dissertation Committee
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1 1
Acknowledgements
The writing of a dissertation is an arduous task that requires immense patience,
dedication and discipline. It is a myth though that the dissertation process is a
solitary affair. While the actual physical aspect of writing requires the concentration
and the cooperation of the author, the inspiration comes from the stirrings of many
muses to whom I am deeply indebted and for whose assistance I am truly grateful.
I wish to thank the primary women in my life, my grandmothers, my mother
Rita, my sister Giannina, my dear friends, Victoria and Stacey who by their lives
have shown how women have maneuvered through the machinations of a male
dominated society and have created niches of well being and happiness for
themselves. Their lives have inspired me to examine Zhang Ailing’s voice that
contest this masculine order that can place upon us all a “Golden Cangue.”
In the writing of the dissertation, at times barriers seemed unsurmountable and,
mood swings had to be kept under control. To my family, especially my father and
my sister Giannina, and Victoria—you have been a constant source of support and
love— for your patience and understanding when the dissertation became the only
focus in my life, thank you for everything. To my good friend, Dan, who made sure
that my mind was clear and that my brain had sufficient endorphins, thank you. I
appreciate the many insisted workouts and runs that provided clarity and vision.
Arturo, Asmita, Bill, Bob, Janet, Sean, and the many sisters of Social Service
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iii
who listened and on more than one occasion provided a shoulder upon which I could
lean. Thank you so much for the support over the course of the writing process. To
the Society of St. Columban who gave me this opportunity to expand my mind and
my horizons, thank you.
To my mentors who led me through the hallowed halls of scholarly research, I
am deeply grateful. Dr. Dominic Cheung whose patience is saintly, I appreciate the
many readings, the good counsel and the insightful revisions offered over the years.
You have been a beacon of light guiding me through the storm. To Dr. Peter Starr
and Dr. Marita Sturken, my many thanks for opening up the doors to the myriad
theories available and showing me the exciting possibilities of readings. To Dr.
Bettine Birge whose seminar on Chinese Women was inspiring and instrumental in
setting the tone and foundation of my research, thank you. Reading Zhang Ailing’s
Chinese can be unsettling, but when classical expressions are thrown in her texts, it
can be daunting. My thanks and appreciation for Dr. George Hayden’s class on
Classical Chinese that was not only enjoyable but it gave me the necessary tools to
tackle some of the subject matter.
To my many classmates over the course of the years, the discussions and input
shared have been invaluable to me as a scholar and a person. Thank you for being a
part o f my journey.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements..........................................................................................ii
Abstract..............................................................................................................vi
Introduction........................................................................................................1
Chapter One: Sexual Politics; Subverting Gender Roles.........................19
Subverting the Wife, Widow and Dowager
Inverting the Mundane
Undermining the Femme Fatale
Transforming the Virgin
Chapter Two: Sexual Politics: Masquerade and Mimicry...................... 67
Manipulating Patriarchy and its Phallic Symbol
Reconfiguring Sexual/Social Exchanges
The Mother as Phallic
Chapter Three: Liminality and the Mystique of the Other.....................103
The Reversed Other: “Man as Object”
The de-exoticizing of the Foreign Other
Rewriting the Oedipal Other
Chapter Four: Marriage and Love: The Violated Trust..........................146
The Violated Trust: Wealth, Power, Independence
The Inter-gender Dialogue: Debunking the Marriage Myth
The Intra-gender Dialogue: The Expense of Marriage
Chapter Five: Shanghai and Hong Kong: Cities Reconfigured............. 180
Zhang’s Shanghai as Uneven Contrasts
Shanghai: Blurred Boundaries
Shanghai: City of Broken Promises
Zhang’s Re-mapping of Hong Kong as Exotic Specter
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Conclusion ,221
Glossary of Chinese Names and Terms in this Study.............................228
Selected Bibliography................................................................................... 234
Primary Sources: Sixteen volumes of Zhang Ailing’s works in Chinese
Zhang Ailing’s Novels, Stories, Essays translated into English
Secondary Sources: Articles in Chinese
Books in Chinese
Dissertations
Articles in English
Books in English
Appendix: A Chronology of Zhang Ailing’s Life....................................248
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Abstract
Several Chinese literary critics have acclaimed Zhang Ailing (1920-1995) as one
of modem China’s most accomplished and most admired fiction writers. Her
writings did not customarily reflect the wider social implications of war ravaged
China but rather peered into the souls of individuals who shared a common
humanity. She examined the transient agonies and fleeting pleasures as men and
women maneuvered their way through the labyrinth called life. She wrote to contest
structures that held women and men prisoners and she challenged the myths of
gender and sexual interplay perpetuated by those structures.
This dissertation examines Zhang Ailing’s corpus of fictional works beyond
the current studies available and argues that Zhang’s conscious use of characters and
city subvert traditional paradigms of understanding gender and their interplay. The
introduction presents to the reader Zhang Ailing, her history, her critics, and her own
sense of her position as a writer. The first chapter examines Zhang’s works as she
reconstructs the myriad expressions of woman, breaking away from the traditional
reading of woman within the bipolar constructs of virgin or vamp. The second
chapter looks at Zhang’s use of mimicry and masquerade as tactics whereby her
female characters are able to maneuver and create for themselves a position of
authority within a male dominated power structure. The third chapter studies Zhang
Ailing’s use of liminality in which Zhang repositions woman not as the object of
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v ii
desire but rather as the subject of desire that allows for feminine possibilities and
transformations. The fourth chapter explores Zhang’s discourse on the dynamics of
the inter-gender and intra-gender complexities within the economy of marriage. The
fifth chapter looks into the function of the city as part of her “uneven contrasts”
technique that creates unfamiliar landscapes that offer a different reading of Hong
Kong and Shanghai. The dissertation concludes that Zhang’s re-visioning of
“woman” and gender simultaneously conforms to and subverts the expected
patriarchal literary standards and thus establishes her as an early Chinese feminist
literary voice. It finally discusses the project’s other concerns for the future study of
Zhang Ailing.
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Introduction:
Zhang Ailing (1920-1995) was bom, Zhang Ying, in Shanghai to a distinguished
family at a time of change and chaos in China.1 She received her name Ailing from
her English name, Eileen, given by her mother and she opted to keep that name
rather than change it to a more literary or striking name as is common in
China.2
When I was ten, my mother wanted to send me to school but my father
kept furiously refusing to agree. At last, my mother sneaked me away,
just like a kidnapper, and so I finally got there. When she was filling in
the school registration form, she hesitated over what given name to use.
My girlhood name was Ying, making the two characters, Zhang Ying,
sound unattractively like the hum of insects. So she paused for a moment,
then said, “Let’s temporarily transliterate her English name into Chinese
and use that for now.” She always planned to change it for me, but never
did; now I don’t want to change it.
Though she was bom to a family of privilege, Zhang’s childhood was marred
with turmoil. Her father was stem and conservative while her mother was more
liberal and westernized. Zhang remembered that her father beat her and locked up
her in her room.4
1 Her grandmother’s father was the famous statesman, Li Hongzhang and her grandfather, Zhang
Peilun, a Qing official was a casualty in the Sino-French War of 1884. Zhang Ailing was bom one
year after the 1919 May Fourth Movement that brought about changes socially and culturally in
China. There were groundbreaking movements in literature, ideologies and politics. See Immanuel
Hsu, The Rise o f Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 605-609.
2 Ailing Zhang, “The Essential is that Names be Right” [Biye zhen ming hu] in Ailing Zhang’s Idle
Talk [Liu Yan], (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 39.
3 Ibid., 40.
4 Zhang made references to being spanked or beaten by her father, and of being locked up by her
father in two o f her essays. See Ailing Zhang’s Reflections: Words and Pictures (Excerpts) [Dui
Zhaoji], (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 53 and in Ailing Zhang, “ Intimate Words” in Ailing
Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yan] (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 157.
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Her parents, though, sharing a prestigious background and educational
opportunities had little else in common. Her father, Zhang Tingzhong, while well
educated, was versed in both classical Chinese literature and contemporary Western
literature, lived off his family inheritance and ended up an opium addict.5 Her
mother, Huang Yifan, who also came from a well-known family in Hunan province,
divorced Zhang Ailing’s father in 1930, left Zhang in the care of her father, and then
moved in with her sister in the French Concession. Later on, her mother left for
Europe and traveled extensively. Though her mother was not always at her side as
she grew up, Zhang’s memory of her mother was filled with fondness.6 Her
sentiments toward her mother were clearly those of strong admiration for her
mother’s unbridled courage in a time of uncertainty and change:
Hereditary is just this mysteriously unpredictable—it’s in these trivial
things that I resemble her, and in none of her strengths. How maddening.
In the early Republican years, most women had semi-bound feet, meaning
that their feet had been unbound mother’s had been bound since she was
little. On her three inch golden lotuses mother straddled two eras; skiing in
the Swiss Alps, she did better than auntie ( to hear auntie tell of it) .....
Mother had the bad luck to be twenty or thirty years ahead of the trend.7
5 Ailing Zhang, “Intimate Words”[Siyu] in Ailing Zhang’s Idle Talk (Liu Yan) (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press), 159.
6 In “Intimate Words” [Siyu] Zhang states that in her “first home, there was no mother, though I didn’t
feel her absence because she had not been there for a long time. When she was there, I remember a
maid carrying me to her bed every morning. It was a brass bed. I would crawl on the black-checkered
quilt and recite Tang poems with her without knowing what they meant. She was never very happy
first thing in the morning. She would only begin to be happy after playing with me for a long time.”
See Janet N g’s translation o f “Intimate Words” [Siyu] in Renditions, A Chinese-English Translation
Magazine, No. 45, Spring 1996, 37.
7 Ailing Zhang, Reflections: Words and Pictures (Excerpts) [Dui Zhaoji](Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press, 1995), 006, 020-022. For the English translation, see Janice Wickeri’s translation in Renditions,
A Chinese-English Translation Magazine, No. 45, Spring 1996, 13, 16-17.
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Zhang’s use of details and of contrasts in describing the homes of both her
parents is noteworthy as this is a style and technique employed in the writing of her
short stories and novels. The seemingly insignificant details mark a contrasting
difference that highlights not just the disparity of the two homes but also of her
Q
affection for her mother and the lack of affection for her father.
My mother was gone, but my aunt’s home still retained my mother’s
aura—the delicate tangram-puzzle table, the soft, vibrant colours.
There were the comings and goings of lovely people I couldn’t quite
place. The best things I knew, spiritually and materially, were all here.
That is why to me, spiritual and material goodness have always blended
together. Unlike most young people, I do not believe in that mind-body
split where the two are constantly at odds with each other and painful
sacrifices must be made.
On the other hand, I despised everything about my father’s home:
opium, the old tutor who taught my brother to write compositions like
“An Exposition on the First Han Emperor”, episodic novels—life was
languid and dust shrouded. Like the fire-worshipping Persians, I split
the world into two parts—light and darkness, good and evil, god and
devil. Whatever belonged to my father had to be bad, even though I
sometimes liked it. Liked opium smoke, hazy sunlight, the disorderly
piles of tabloid newspaper in the house (even today, seeing big piles of
tabloids always make me feel nostalgic), joking about our relatives with
my father as I read them—I knew that my father was lonely and that he
liked me when he was lonely. It was a perpetual afternoon in
my father’s room, If you sat there for too long, you would feel yourself
sinking, sinking.9
The striking difference in tone, between mother and father, is blurred by the line
that she still found comfort within her father’s home. For Zhang Ailing the polar
8 See Ailing Zhang “My Writing” [Ziji de Wenzhang] where she expounds on the function and
importance o f the “uneven contrasts” or “off-set oppositions” as the term, cenci de duizhao, is
translated. See Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Ailing Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yan] (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press, 1995), 21. Wendy Larson translates the term to uneven contrasts and Karen Kingsbury
Sawyer translates it as “off-set oppositions.”
Wiling Zhang, “Intimate Words,” [Siyu] trans., Janet Ng in Renditions: A Chinese-English
Translation Magazine, No. 45, Spring 1996,41-42.
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4
existence of good and bad is drawn together by a wide margin of gray in which she
finds solace. The function of the “cenci duizhao” then, is not to create polarity but to
examine the margins in which individuals move from one point to another. The
influences of both her parents and the events of her own life can be found in Zhang’s
works: in her short story, Fragrant Jasmine Tea, the description of the home and the
father echo the memory mentioned in “Intimate Words” and the novella, A City
Toppled by Love reflects Zhang’s experience of war tom Hong Kong as read in her
essay, “Records from Remnant Ashes.”1 0 In this particular essay, Zhang reiterates
her own sense of style and technique in her use of detailing and writing against the
backdrop of war.
my impressions of Hong Kong are virtually all confined to
irrelevant matters. I have no intention of writing a history, nor am
I qualified to comment on the attitudes historians should take, but
privately I have always wished they might concern themselves a little
more with irrelevant matters. This thing that we call reality is without
stmcture, a confusion of gramophones playing in chaotic cacophony,
each singing its own song. But amid the unintelligible clamor is the
unexpected lucid interval that sours the heart and moistens the
eye, a discernible melody instantly reclaimed by the weighty gloom,
the spark of understanding swamped. Painters, writers, and composers
intertwine fragmentary, accidentally discovered harmonies, and so
attain artistic wholeness. But if history insisted on her own artistic
wholeness, she would become fiction.
For instance, H.G. Wells’ The Outline o f History cannot rank as a proper
History for the simple reason that the entire work is based on the conflict
between the individual and society, and as such is just a shade over
rationalized.
Regardless of whether they are political or philosophical, world views
which are too clear cut are bound to provoke antipathy. Man’s joie de
vivre is solely to be found in life’s irrelevancies.1
1 0 Ailing Zhang, “Fragrant Jasmine Tea” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer[Di yi lu xiang] (Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996) and Ailing Zhang, “Records from Remnant Ashes” [Jin yulujin Ailing
Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yan], (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995),41-54.
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By age twelve, Zhang Ailing wrote her first piece of fiction titled “Unlucky Her”
[Buxin de ta]. At twenty-seven, Zhang had completed what is probably the most
1 9
important collection of her short and mid-length stories. Despite social pressures
and an editor’s caution, Zhang was determined to make the most of her early
success. In her preface to her first edition of Romances, Zhang stated: “If you want to
1 9
be famous, there’s no time to waste! Get there too late and it’s not half as exciting.”
Zhang also recaps these sentiments in her essay, “From Remnant Ashes” where
she states: “I knew that whatever ability I had would soon be lost. This in itself
taught me a lesson that has stood the test of time: if you feel like doing something,
do it then and there or it may be too late. ‘Man’ is such an unpredictable creature.”1 4
However, her moment of glory was short-lived like a shooting star. This was due
largely in part to political pressures to mold art for political purposes.1 5 In 1952,
after having enjoyed some measure of public admiration and literary success, Zhang
fled Communist-occupied China as life as an artist would become increasingly
hostile and dangerous.
1 1 Ailing Zhang, “Records From Remnant Ashes”[Jin yulu] in Ailing Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yan]
(Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 41-42. Translation is taken from Oliver Stunt’s translation of
the essay, “From The Ashes” in Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine (The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, no. 45, 1996), 47.
1 2 Karen Kingsbury Sawyer, Reading Eileen Chang’ s Early Fiction: Art and A Female Sense o f Self
(Ph.D., Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995,) 14
1 3 ibid., 21.
1 4 Ailing Zhang, “Records from Remnant Ashes” [Jin yulu] in Ailing Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yen]
(Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 52. Translation is taken from Oliver Stunt’s “From The Ashes”
in Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine (Chinese University o f Hong Kong, No. 45,
Spring 1996), 56.
1 5 See Merle Goodman, Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977), for a more comprehensive discussion on the politics
and public-mindedness of fiction in that time period.
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6
While in Hong Kong she wrote her two anti-communist novels, The Rice Sprout
Song and Naked Earth which registered her disagreement with and resistance to the
Communist Chinese Government.1 6 Zhang Ailing was, for many decades after that,
banned from the People’s Republic of China. However, she managed to maintain a
faithful following in Hong Kong and in Taiwan.1 7 In 1944, Fu Lei speaks of Zhang
Ailing as a rare blossom appearing in the literary garden when least expected.1 8 C.T.
Hsia first commented in English on the literary talents of Zhang Ailing in 196 land in
his History o f Modern Chinese Fiction would hail her as a literary genius whose
works could be compared with if not superior “to the works of serious women
writers in English.”1 9 Twenty years later, in introducing Zhang’s Golden Cangue to
an English reading audience, Hsia would remove Zhang’s works from a gender bias
and compare her to writers as a whole:
Eileen Chang was the most gifted Chinese writer to emerge in the
forties, and certainly the most important... .her permanent status in
Chinese Literature is assured, and her influence on the younger
Chinese writers in Taiwan and America has been as salutary as the
influence of Lu Hsun on the fiction writers of the twenties and thirties.
No Chinese author can boast of so rich an oeuvre.. .2 0
1 6 In 1954, Zhang wrote The Rice Sprout Song in English and translated it into Chinese as Yang Ge.
Chidi zhi lian and her English translation, Naked Earth was published in Hong Kong. Her leaving
Shanghai for Hong Kong had also to do with her liaison with her lover, Hu Lancheng, who was a
compromised official having collaborated with the Japanese.
1 7 See Chenghao Liao’s article, “Bewitching Butterfly: Zhang Ailing’s Romance in Taiwan” In Con
temporary[dangdai] no. 147, 1999:11:1, Crown Press has reprinted all of Zhang’s works in 16
volumes. See also Sung Sheng Yvonne Chang’s “Yuan Qiongqiong and the Rage for Eileen Zhang
among Taiwan’s Feminine Writers” in Modern Chinese Literature 4, 1988 : 201-223.
1 8 Fu Lei in Tang Wenbiao, ed., A Comprehensive Collection o f the Material on Zhang Ailing[Z\\ang
Ailing ziliao de quanji] (Taipei,Taiwan: Shibao wenhua, 1984), 115.
1 9 C. T. Hsia, A History o f Modern Chinese Fiction, 2n d ed., (New Haven; Yale University Press,
1971), 389.
2 0 C.T Hsia in his introduction to Zhang Ailing’s translation o f her novella, “The Golden Cangue” in
Joseph S. M. Lau, C. T. Hsia and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds., Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas: 1919-
1949 (new York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 528.
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Ke Ling, Zhang Ailing’s editor in her heyday would write in the early 1980s that if
we look far and deep, we will “note that history is just. Zhang Ailing’s strengths
and weaknesses have been publicly and objectively recorded. Whether she will be
recognized, whether she will be rewarded, only time will tell. Patience is not a
modem virtue but if we have faith, then we must be willing to wait.”2 1
In her days of fame, Zhang Ailing was widely sought after. She was in such
demand that editors would openly court her, interviewers wanted to draw her out to
discuss her works, and the public either adored or reviled her as did her critics.2 2
Despite the fact that Zhang Ailing had enjoyed early recognition as a writer and was
spoken highly among critics, she was to remain in the margins of the literary scene
after 1954. Zhang remained a shadowy figure within the larger discourse of modem
Chinese literature due in part to her resistance to write politically and also in part of
her personal distaste to write in the expected social didactic model of her time. It did
not help matters that in the 1960s, Zhang become a recluse in the manner and
tradition of the Daoist masters or in modem terms, as Kingsbury Sawyer puts it, “ a
■y'i
la Greta Garbo.” This sense of the Hollywood recluse is heightened by Zhang’s use
of her dramatic and artistic expression as reflected in her collection of photographs.
In Duizhao ji [Facing Photos], Chang never appears beyond
un certain age, i.e. somewhere in her late 40s. Thus the image
2 1 Ke Ling in Zheng Shusen, ed., The World o f Zhang Ailing [Zhang Ailing de shijie] (Taipei, Taiwan:
Yunchen wenhua, 1989), 12.
2 2 For details recoding Zhang’s meteoric rise to fame, refer to Tang Wenbiao, ed., A Comprehensive
Collection o f the materials on Zhang Ailing [Zhang Ailing ziliao da quanji] (Taipei, Taiwan;
Shibao wenhua, 1984).
2 3 Karen Kingsbury Sawyer, Reading Eileen Chang’ s Early Fiction: Art and A Female Sense o f Self
(Ph. D., Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995), 16.
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8
of Eileen Chang that haunts the public eye is the one created in
the 1940s, the image of a woman who is beautiful, mysterious,
original— always young and always alluring.2 4
This sense of being elusive or strikingly peculiar is not new to the adult Zhang
Ailing who acknowledges that she perceived herself as different, even as a child.
That is in a sense, she saw herself somehow performing for the world. In an essay
titled, “Dream of A Genius,” Zhang states:
I am a peculiar girl, regarded as a genius ever since I was small, the
sole aim of my life was the development of my genius. But once the
fantasies of childhood faded. I realized that I had only the dream of
being a genius— this and the eccentricities o f being a genius. The world
forgives Richard Wagner his free and easy ways, but I do not think that
it will forgive me.2 5
She goes on to say that she could recite Tang poetry at the age of four, which she
did once standing before an Old Manchu official, who was moved at the sight of
such a young girl reciting Tang poetry.2 6 This performance is an inversion of a
gaze as Zhang is the onlooker aware that she as the little girl reciting a poem is
watching the performance of both the little girl and the Old Manchu official as he
shed his tears for a past fast disappearing. Zhang’s genius, then, lies in her ability to
observe not only her own performance but also the reactions and responses of a
world observing her. In the reading of Zhang Ailing’s Last Will and Testament many
years after this was written, Dominic Cheung (Zhang Cuo) suggests that Zhang’s
genius was not lost on herself and she was aware it was not so much that the world
2 4 Ibid., 27.
2 5 Ailing Zhang “ Dream of a Genius” [Tiancai meng] trans., Karen Kingsbury, Renditions: A
Chinese-English Translation Magazine, no.45, Spring 1996., 25. Italics are my own.
2 6 Ibid.
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had not forgiven her excesses, but rather it was Zhang who ultimately rejected the
world.2 7
In 1939-1941, Zhang Ailing was awarded the Ho Fook Scholarship and the
Nemazee Donor Scholarship to attend the University of Hong Kong. Her studies
were interrupted with the outbreak of the Pacific War and in 1942, she returned to
Shanghai with the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. From 1943-1948, Zhang
Ailing was a prolific and popular writer in Shanghai. Due to the political climate
in China, she returned to Hong Kong and then left for the United States in 1955.
In 1956, Zhang Ailing was awarded a two-year stay at the MacDowell Colony, an
Artist’s colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to pursue a fiction-writing project.
There she met with Ferdinand Reyher and married him in New York in August.
During her marriage to Rehyer, who was a 1930s style socialist and an overseas
supporter of Maoist political theory, Zhang wrote little fiction. She rewrote The
Golden Cangue, wrote a series of essays, did translations, began the textual
scholarship on the Qing novel, The Dream o f the Red Chamber and was
9 0
commissioned to write screenplays in Hong Kong.
Surprisingly, there has been minimal interest in Zhang’s works either from the
halls of academia and from the general reading audience in both a Western and
Chinese context. There has been even less interest in her as an author in the
2 7 See Dominic Cheung, “Zhang Ailing and the Desolate” Shanchu xiaozhi (Taipei: Hetong, 2001)
24-29.
2 8 Refer to Shusen Zheng’s biographical information on Reyher. Shusen Zheng. The World o f Zhang
Ailing [Zhang Ailing de shijie} Taipei, Taiwan: Yunchen wenhua, 1989), 33-40.
2 9 From 1961-1965, Zhang wrote the screenplays for Rencai liang de, and Nanbeiyijiaqing, she
wrote an English article about her only visit to Taiwan, titled “Back to the Frontier.”
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10
Western hemisphere despite the high praises given in the States by Chinese literary
critics such as C. T. Hsia. One of the issues that may have contributed to Zhang’s
delegation to the sidelines may well have been her use of language: Zhang’s adroit
use of the Chinese language added to the complexity of understanding her works as
she maneuvered between the classical and the vernacular. Her weaving of the
National language (Mandarin) and other regional dialects and colloquial expressions
do not aid matters in unraveling some of her complex thoughts. Since her death in
1995, however, there has been a resurgence interest in the study of Zhang Ailing’s
works. Most scholars of Zhang’ works would agree that her uniqueness as a writer
starts with her being a woman writer of fiction, when in her time, this would still
have been a novelty30. She intertwined the aura of the strange and new, the familiar
and the old, tradition and modernity and became a pioneer in her own right as she
rebelled against predominately masculine literary and social structures that wanted to
control both her creativity and style. Zhang Ailing may have, after all, inherited
something of an open rebelliousness from her French-educated mother. She chose to
write about a “liminal” space possibly reflecting the Japanese occupation that
allowed her some degree of freedom to write on individual consciousness and
revelation, rather than enter into the then prevalent nationalist discourse of heroism,
woman as national symbol o f victim and national consciousness. Zhang’s liminality
3 0 This is not to argue that Zhang Ailing was the first or only woman writer in China but rather that
she broke from traditions to articulate a new literary style and a new paradigm from which women
could be viewed both as an author and as subject within her text.
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allowed her characters to move through the complex fabric of life exposing social
structures to be detrimental to both genders.
Zhang’s early fiction, produced at great speed (the urgency of becoming
famous), was written in a time of chaos and crisis. Yet this time was for Zhang a
moment of opportunity. Echoes of this can be seen in her short story, “Sealed Off,”
where the protagonist like Zhang seizes an opportunity to become what she
imagines. What is a moment of crisis becomes a moment of danger and opportunity
'i i
for Zhang Ailing. Zhang’s works maintain a sense of calm and serenity as she
gazes on her subjects and unpacks the intricacies of their everyday existence, often
with a sense of amusement. While her works have often been accused of being
weighed down with too many details, with sensory impressions and emotional
effects, she contends that it is meant to lead the reader to something deeper.
I like simplicity, but it is only through describing the resourcefulness
and ornamentation of contemporary people that I can elicit the basis
of their hidden simplicity. Because of this people too readily regard
my writing as overly flowery... .1 don’t put falsehoods and reality into
stark contrast in my writing, yet I still use the method of uneven contrast
to show the reality in the emptiness, the simplicity in the ornamentation,
of contemporary people. Because of this people too readily find a kind
of indulgence in my work. Even so, I continue to maintain my style,
ashamed only that I haven’t been able to write as well as I want. I am
still just practicing at literature.
Consequently, while scholars such as Sung Sheng Yvonne Chang states that these
“irrelevant details and lavish descriptions” overburden Zhang’s fiction,3 3 or Song
3 1 This is clearly Zhang’s play on the two characters, weiji, ‘danger and opportunity,’ that makes up
the word ‘crisis’ in Chinese.
3 2 Ailing Zhang “My Writing” [Ziji de Wenzhang]in Dirk A. Denton. Ed., Modern Chinese Literary
Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996),
439.
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Jiahong who suggests that Zhang’s dark themes and pessimism are reflections of
Zhang’s early unhappy childhood and of her affinity to a fast dying way of life,
they must still contend with Zhang’s writing style as a technique if they are to
delve more deeply or to unpack the richness of Zhang Ailing’s corpus.3 4 Rey
Chow’s work examines these details not as bothersome items but rather as part of
Zhang’s feminine discourse. Chow states: “Detailing in Chang is more appropriately
a layering than an uncovering of a concealed corporeality: while it represents one
thing, it does so by adding to it another.” She goes on to state that this kind of
detailing is a destruction of the rhetoric of Chinese modernity that adopts and
upholds an ideal and moral principle. Zhang, like a Daoist master, uses details and
uneven contrasts as techniques to reject binaries and traditional concepts to reveal
the duality that exists within a single unit, that is, she exposes the complementary
tension within the complexities of everyday life.
Zhang Ailing infused in her characters a complexity of emotions and
psychological depth. She veered away from the hegemonic binary style of
representation. She refused to create the virgin or the vamp. Nor did she write on the
scholar/gentleman and the cad. Her intent is to make her readers uncomfortable.
When someone from the old school reads my work, they feel at ease
but still not quite comfortable. Those from the new school think it
interesting but still not serious enough. But I can write no other way,
3 3 Sung -sheng Yvonne Chang, “Yuan Qiong qiong and the Rage for Eileen Chang AmongTaiwan’s
Feminine Writers,” Modem Chinese Literature 4 (1988): 213.
3 4 Jiahong Song in Shusen Zheng, ed., The World O f Zhang Ailing [Zhang Ailing de Shijie] (Taipei,
Taiwan: Yunchen Wenhua, 1989).
3 5 Chow’s study of “feminine details” while insightful is narrow, as is inevitable in any study that
focuses on a single topic. See Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics o f Reading
between East and West (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 114.
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and I feel confident that I am not compromising myself. The only
demand that I place on myself is to try and write things that are more
real.3 6
Kingsbury Sawyer draws attention to Zhang’s book cover illustration made for
the first edition of Romances.The drawing is
actually a pastiche based on a late-Qing fashion plate shows a young
matron sitting at a table playing dominos while a nanny holding a small
boy looks on from one side. The nanny is not, however, the only onlooker:
sketched in over the balustrade is a huge, ghostly, and also female figure
who, in Chang’s own reading of the illustration “is a xiandai ren fa modem
person], who watches with intense curiosity” the game that is played
beneath her gaze. Both method and intent are manifestly archly surreal:
“If something in this drawing makes people uneasy,” says Chang, “that is
the very feeling I hope to create.”
Zhang seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct her female protagonists not as
something out of the ordinary but rather in the unsuspecting ordinary. Zhang
breaks the illusion of the “female fantastic” by stating that such women are fantasies
of bored city people:
the “wild women,” the women of great power, is nothing like the
black-eyed wild rose that most people imagine, stronger than man
with a whip in hand, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. This is the
-5 0
fantasy of city people who seek to be stimulated.
Zhang’s eagerness to create characters that break from the hold of tradition stems
from an impending sense of her civilization as a thing of the past. Consequently, the
3 6 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing”[Ziji de Wenzhang] in Ailing Zhang’s Idle Talk [Liu Yan] (Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 21. Translation used is Wendy Larson’s translation of Zhang Ailing’s
“My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-
1945 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 439.
3 7 Karen Kingsbury Sawyer, Reading Eileen Chang’ s Early Fiction: Art and A Female Sense o f Self
(Ph.D dissertation, Columbia University, 1995), 32.
3 8 Ailing Zhang, The City Toppled by Love (Taipei,Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 8.
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word that she often uses is “desolate.”3 9 This term for Zhang does not denote a
negative but rather implies a positive. She states:
Tragedy offers a kind of completion, whereas desolation offers a kind of
revelation.4 0
To read Zhang’s works as merely tragic, then, is to misunderstand her very
intention that her characters lead the reader to some form of awareness and/or
moment of illumination. Zhang states that “in the coming desolation, among the
debris of a destroyed civilization, the only one that can, is a woman without a care in
the world like the vivacious female in Peking Opera; in any age, in any society, the
whole world is her home.”4 1 Writing against the tradition of woman as victim,
Zhang’s women wield great power as the “vivacious females” as they are
simultaneously seductive and frightening because these female protagonists threaten
the masculine order internally and externally by subverting the roles proscribed to
them.
After having spent almost forty years of her life in the United States, scholars
such as C. T. Hsia, Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Joseph S. M. Lau, Dominic Cheung, William
Tay and others have tried to draw the attention of western scholarship to Zhang
Ailing’s works and to expose her writings to a broader English speaking audience.4 2
Despite their best efforts, however, Zhang Ailing has remained in the shadows of the
3 9 Ibid., 6.
4 0 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Dirk A. Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on
Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 438.
4 1 Ailing Zhang, The City Toppled by Love (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 8.
4 2 Joseph S.M. Lau, C.T. Hsia and Leo Ou-Fan Lee included Zhang Ailing’s work in their anthology.
Dominic Cheung (Zhang Cuo) in 1996 obtained for the University of Southern California Zhang
Ailing’s original English translation of the manuscript “Hai Shang Hua” (Flowers o f Shanghai).
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literary stage. While some of Zhang’s works have been translated still much is left to
be done.4 3 Zhang’s language in Chinese is rich and complex but the task is not
impossible. If Shakespeare and Chaucer can be translated into good Chinese, then
why not Zhang Ailing’s works from Chinese into good English?
In the last few years, growing interest has sparked among Chinese scholars in
the study of Zhang Ailing. These scholars have examined the concept of the
feminine in Zhang’s works. More traditional scholarship has looked at her aesthetics,
examined her style and her techniques. Lately, Zhang has been seen through
Freudian eyes and re-visioned through Lacan.4 4 She has been peered at through
the lenses of colonialism and post-colonial studies.4 5 Yet the author’s corpus like
a richly “detailed” painting beckons to be examined again and again. My objective
here is to look at Zhang’s short stories and novels, perhaps as Zizek says a little
askance, and to unpack some of the possibilities intended by the author who wished
to lead her readers through desolation to revelation. This study is in part
interpretative and contextual as it looks at Zhang’s works not only as independent
threads but also as a whole as it reveals a tapestry of Zhang Ailing’s construct and
use of liminality and the feminine. Cross-cultural use of theories have been used
prior this work, the benefits of those scholars and their scholarship enable a deeper
4 3 Zhang Ailing’s writings have been translated by Eva Hung, Janet Ng, Janice Wickeri, Simon
Patton, Carolyn Thompson Brown, and Karen Kingsbury Sawyer to name a few.
4 4 See Jinyuan Hu’s article “Mother, Where are you?” in which the scholar examines masochism
and its inscription on women. Hu uses Freud and Foucault in unpacking the subject matter in two of
Zhang’s novels, The Golden Cangue and H alf a Lifetime’ s Yearning.
4 5 Yuanhuang Cai’s article titled: “Reading Zhang Ailing From a Postcolonial View.” See also
Xiuchen Peng’s article: “The Colonized and Modem Narration” which examines Zhang’s texts within
modernity and colonization.
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reading of Zhang Ailing. There is little doubt that Zhang was influenced by Western
literature.4 6 Her stories reflect some of that influence 4 7 Zhang may have been too
young to have attended Margaret Sanger’s lecture in China ini 922 or personally
remember the “Nora” phenomenon. Yet she was influenced by the culture of
Shanghai that spoke of the East meeting the West, of modernity confronting tradition
where once clearly defined gender roles were now blurred because of this historical
context. In addition, Zhang’s positioning of her characters caught in the flux of
change and in the hybrid cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong allow for the use of
post- colonial theories that examine the supposed “Other” from a non-Eurocentric
position.
This study examines Zhang Ailing not only as an authentic female voice
contesting patriarchy but one that de-mythicizes the constructs of women as mere
masculine “objects.” It considers Zhang’s use of liminality and her writing
techniques as she reconfigures women as subjects rather than as objects and removes
them from the sexual-political web of being helpless victims. The study, therefore,
explores Zhang’s “off-set oppositions” as means that allow the readers to discover
for themselves, from the mundane moments of her characters, the promise of
illumination and revelation. In examining the multiple layerings in Zhang’s fictional
works, this study endeavors to spark a greater interest among English-speaking
4 6 Zhang was familiar with George Bernard Shaw, Alexander Dumas, Beverly Nichols, H. G. Wells,
Jane Austen, Shakespeare, the Bible but to name a few.
4 7 There is a note o f similarity between Zhang’s Crystal Tiles (1943) and Shalom Aleichem (1859-
1916) Tevyi and his daughters. Both tales speak of daughters, marriage and changing traditions.
Zhang has also been compared to Jane Austen and Somerset Maugham.
4 8 Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1990), 317.
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academics, to broaden the scope of a wider reading audience, and to foster a deeper
appreciation for the richness and talents of Zhang Ailing.
Chapter One examines how Zhang Ailing uses her female protagonist to subvert
traditional gender roles and expectations. It unpacks, using different feminist
theories, the four traditional categories of women as virgin, wife, widow and vamp.
Zhang demonstrates in her fictional works that women are complex and
consequently cannot be fixed or bound into binary constructs. She shows that women
use the tactics of seduction and deduction to maneuver their way through the
complex social web that seeks to entrap them.
Chapter Two looks at the use of masquerade and mimicry as articulated
by Mary Ann Doane and Luce Irigaray as tactics that allow women and men to play
out their roles within the arena of sexual politics. It further argues that patriarchy is
confining for both genders and that the point of power is not fixed at any particular
masculine position.
Chapter Three examines Zhang’s construct of liminality as a space of
possibilities that debunk the myth of the “other” in its myriad forms. Zhang writes
and subverts the traditional concept that posits man as subject and woman as object.
In Zhang’s fictional works, woman can take on the subject position, thus, making
man the “other.” This chapter further looks at Zhang’s configuration the Oedipal
other as well as Zhang’s inversion of the Western other as superior.
The Fourth Chapter analyzes the myth of love and the economy of marriage as
Zhang’s fictional works challenge a masculine hegemony that dictates roles and rules
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for men and women. It also looks at how Zhang reconstructed the tension of love,
romance, modernity and tradition of her time.
Finally in Chapter Five, the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong are viewed as
sites of liminality and a landscape of uneven contrasts so that Zhang’s use of the
hybrid nature of these cities bring about revelation in and through her protagonists
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Chapter One: Sexual Politics: Subverting Gender Roles
Zhang Ailing’s “sharp wit and intelligent sarcasm” and narrative style have been
compared to Jane Austen as both examined their social milieu through characters
framed round the subject of romance and marriage.1 Zhang’s similarities to Austen
depart however in her articulated observations of her subjects in various social
environments. There are no clearly defined Bennett sisters, nor is there an Emma
Woodhouse, Zhang Ailing’s characters are more complex as they cross spcial and
sexual boundaries.2 She writes of love as a complex web of emotions infused with
the interplay of sexual politics where individuals vie for authority and power. While
Zhang’s stories seemingly appear to belong to the romance genre, the stories often
carry a twist where few of her protagonists embedded in the sexual politics of gender
enjoy wedded bliss. This does not imply as some scholars suggests that Zhang is a
complete pessimist when it comes to love or marriage, rather Zhang would consider
herself a pragmatist.
While she has written numerous stories to substantiate a darker reading of
wedded “bliss” she has also written on the unexpected happiness of couples as
1 Eva Hung, “Preface” in Eva Hung, ed., Traces o f Love and Other Stories by Eileen Chang (Hong
Kong: Renditions: Research Center for Translation, Chinese University o f Hong Kong, Renditions
Paperback, 2000), 9.
2 The similarities between Zhang and Austen are striking when their stories are compared to one
another. As examples, Zhang’s Compassion can be likened to Austen’s Emma where a marked age
difference between the male and female protagonists (twenty three years in Zhang’s work and
sixteen in Austen’s) make an unlikely pair. Yet affection is found between the couples. Contrasting
Zhang’s H alf a Lifetime’ s Yearning to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, one notes how pride and
prejudice, unlike that in Austen where both are met face on which leads to a happy ending, not dealt
with, affected the lives and relationship between Zhang’s two main protagonists.
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found in Xiao Ai and Compassion translated by Eva Hung as Traces o f Love?
Compassion recounts the tale of a couple whose age and social difference
would normally cast a shadow of doubt as to their marital happiness but the
unexpected twist is that the young wife finds that she indeed cares for her husband,
not with passion but rather with a sense of compassion. In Zhang’s short story, Xiao
Ai, the protagonist, a purchased “Yatou,” at eleven or twelve, creates her own
marital happiness despite the odds against her.4 She has no control over her own life
which falls under the whims of the mistress and master of the house. Raped by the
master of the house, Xiao Ai is still able, in the story, to forge on and create a niche
for herself by marrying a man of her own choice. In doing so, Xiao Ai finds some
fleeting moments of happiness. These stories reflect that Zhang’s characters were
not always women of doom, gloom and tragedy.
Zhang Ailing prefers to write about the complexities of human beings
embroiled within the politics of gender interplay and the entrapment found within
the web of courtship and marriage. In her two collections of short stories, entitled
3 1 have opted for the translation of Zhang’s short story, Liu Qing, as Compassion rather than Eva
Hung’s rendition o f it as Traces o f Love as the protagonist, Mr. Mi, feels compassion for his ex-wife.
“He used to refer to his other wife as ‘her’, until Dunfeng objected, saying, ‘But no one speaks like
that!’ After that, on the rare occasion when her referred to her, he used headless sentences. He said
now, ‘Quite ill. I’ve got to go and have a look.’ ‘I don’t mean....All these years now Really
quite ill, and no one there to look after things. I can’t possibly ’ See Eva Hung, Traces o f Love and
other stories (Hong Kong: Renditions: Research Center for Translation, Chinese U niversity o f H ong
Kong: Renditions Paperback, 2000), 93. It is evident that Mr. Mi is moved with both a sense of duty
and a desire to alleviate the sufferings of his ex-wife, ergo, the term “compassion.”
4 The term “Yatou” in old China refers to a purchased maid or a slave girl. Xiao Ai is referred to in
the early chapters of the story as a young pre-teen girl with little experience sold into the family as a
maid. Ailing Zhang, Lingering Charms [Yu Yun] (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 126-127.1
am indebted to Eugenia Wu for the insightful translation o f Yu Yun as Lingering Charms where Yun
refers to the charms of a woman who has reached middle age.
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The City Toppled by Love and The First Censer, Zhang portrays a variety of
characters enmeshed in the complex web of desire, social expectations, and
personal choices within the framework of flirtation, courtship and/or marriage5.
Zhang’s avoidance of heroic virtues and strengths and her preferred use of
ordinary individuals caught in the multifaceted snare of matrimonial scheming
reflects more profoundly the social and cultural constraints upon her characters and
their choices. Zhang herself states that she prefers to write about a people caught in
change, ordinary individuals who better than cultural champions represent the
totality of her time.6 She writes:
There aren’t many people around who are either enlightened or
perverse to an extreme. This is a troubled era that does not allow
for any easy enlightenment. In these years people have just gone
on living, and even though insanity is insanity, there are limits. So
in my stories, with the exception of Cao Qiqiao in The Golden Cangue,
none of the characters are extreme. They are not heroes; they are the
ones who bear the burden of the era. But even though they are not
extreme, they are serious.7
Zhang Ailing writes, through the use of her characters, to unravel the myth of
and reveal the truth behind social and gender equality promised modem Chinese
women in the Revolution, the May Fourth Movement and thereafter. Sung Ch’ing
Ling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic, once wrote:
5 The texts are also translated into English as “Love in a Fallen City” and “Aloeswood: The First
Brazier”. I have opted for the above translations as the title “The City Toppled by Love” better
reflects the traditional understanding of a city destroyed because o f a woman’s beauty and “The First
Censer” describes the fragility, the sacrificial nature and impermanence of both the object and the
subject as intended by Zhang Ailing.
6 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., M odem Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford: Sanford University Press, 1996), 438.
7 Ibid., 437-438.
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From its inception, our national revolutionary movement has
made the liberation of women one of its basic demands. The
advance of our women of our women to equality in legal status,
educational opportunities, and social position has been and is an
essential part of China’s march toward full independence and
democracy. No nation can claim to be free when half
its citizens are dominated by the other half. From the very start,
our women fought under the banner of a barren feminism but as
a part and parcel of the democratic movement as a whole.8
It is precisely against the claim that China and women are free that Zhang Ailing
writes. She protests through her texts that women are still dominated by male
structures and a masculine ideology. While the Revolution and the May Fourth
Movement did allow women a certain sense of freedom as it awoke in women a
consciousness of sexual equality, an emerging self-identity and a promise of life
outside the confines of a home, it did not make them equals with the same rights.9
Modem Chinese women were in for a rude awakening when they confronted the
realities of life outside the arena of and debate among the Chinese intellectuals.1 0
Too often, Chinese women’s roles became embodied within a national symbol
of “mother” and home so that the traditional values of good wives, wise mothers
could be perpetuated. Even, Cai Yuanpei (Ts’ai Yuan-pei), the once-chancellor of
National University of Beijing, and an advocate of liberalism once wrote:
8 Sung Ch’ing ling, “Chinese Women’s fight for Freedom” in Yu ning Li, ed., Chinese Women
through Chinese Eyes (New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1992), 90-91.
9 Henry Ibsen’s play, “The Doll House” had a profound impact on the lives o f Chinese women in the
1920s as many like the heroine Nora left their homes in search o f a better life.
1 0 Lu Xun concerned with the Nora phenomenon addressed Beijing Girls’ Normal University with the
topic: “What happens after Nora leaves home?” He warned that though some of the shackles of
marriage and home might be thrown, unless women were able to gain some level of economic
independence and equality, their freedom would be an illusion. See Jonathan D. Spence, In Search o f
ModernChina (New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1990), 317-318.
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The biological functions of women dictate that they must fill the
mother’s role. In the social structure of our time, a woman must
become a wife before she becomes a mother. Therefore, the principal
responsibility of a modem woman is to play the dual role of wife
and mother. She is duty bound to be a good wife and a good mother.
Therefore the major requirements of a modem woman is that she must
play both roles well. If a man devoted to academic pursuits or social
reform is lucky to have a good wife, he will be able to make
greater contributions to scholarship or society, and his wife
naturally can take partial credit for his achievements. If a
woman gives birth to superior children and provides them
with a good family upbringing, they would naturally distinguish
themselves in their future careers. Then her contributions to society
would be even greater. Therefore, a woman must consider the value
of being a good wife and a good mother as equal to that of engaging
in academic pursuits or social reform herself.1 1
Li Yu Ning’s article, “Changes in Women’s Status” further traces how this trend of
« 19
thought and binding legacy persisted even till the 1980s.
However, an area where women seemed able to achieve some level of equality
was within the literary arena. Ding Ling, Lin Hui-ying, Ling Shu-hua, Lu Yin, Feng
Yuan-jun and others made a deep impression on the literary scene but it was not until
Zhang Ailing appeared on the scene that women writers were perceived to be on par
with or superior to their male counterparts.
Her genius may indeed stem from her ability to wed both Western and Chinese
literary techniques and styles, to blend her protagonists into the cosmopolitan,
Westernized hybrid cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and that her characters run
the spectrum of both the East and the West. Like Somerset Maugham, Zhang Ailing
1 1 Yu ning Li, “Changes in Women Status” in Yu Ning Li, ed., Chinese Women through Chinese Eyes
(New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1992), 115.
1 2 Ibid., 116.
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gazed upon her subjects, inspecting them in minute detail to uncover the secrets
unfolding in their hearts. Zhang Ailing’s style and content opposed both the expected
forms of the May Fourth Tradition and the “Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly” school.
While the former stressed criticism of social divisions and hierarchies, the latter
followed the romance themes of the classical beauty and scholar with the additions
1 o
of modem issues and problems.
To analyze Zhang’s use of her female protagonists that undermine the ideological
constructs, one must examine Confucianism and modernism as a social monitor and
the framework of the “Butterfly School” as a literary device that adulterates both the
traditional and the modem. Unlike the West and the modernist concept of
individualism, individuals and their attached rights are irrelevant to Chinese life.
Instead rights are perceived in terms of the “communal” so that it would be almost
impossible to subvert or counteract suppressive structures based on a supposed
universal truth that individuals have god given rights. A Chinese woman turns not to
1 3 Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century Chinese
Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 34. Zhang, in Her Writing, states: “ It may be
that the difference between modem literature and past literature lies right here: we no longer
emphasize a main theme but allow the story to give what it can and the reader to take whatever is
available” “The literati of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly entertainment school of writing feel they
(cohabitation lifestyles) don’t have enough sentiment of the ‘beauty-scholar’ kind and new style
literati feel they are relationships neither of love nor prostitution, neither healthy nor perverse. They
lack a clarity o f a main them e.” In Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 440-441. See also Edward M. Gunn, Unwelcome Muse
(New York: Columbia University, 1980),230. “...the romantic May Fourth Literature o f ‘New Youth’
and the tradition-bound Saturday School of ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly Literature. The writers of
the former group were concerned only with affirming their ideals and passions, while the latter could
only find an eye for the manners and concrete details of the new. Each group lacked and disregarded
the better qualities of the other. If we look at Chang Ai-ling’s work in the light of this statement, we
find that she represents a strong departure from their work.”
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a modem belief that she has rights but rather to a two thousand year old definition
and uses her identity as a tactic to subvert the constructs of womanhood.
Zhang’s women are ordinary people devoid of outstanding virtues and from that
posture of ordinariness contest the Confucian imposed womanly virtues. Zhang’s
female characters do not veer away from the stare of a Confucian social monitor nor
do they shy from the modem eyes of the West. Rather, these women return a gaze
that challenge the premise that women are universally socially gendered. The effect
is that her characters do not proclaim a male determined femininity but rather
announce diverse femininities.
Rey Chow suggests that “the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly” fiction played an
instrumental role in the modernization process and created in Chinese women a site
of new interiority. Women became actors in melodramas of moral development in
which “the male will be remembered as a backdrop.” Furthermore, Chow’s study
indicates that this popular fiction parodies classical concepts of feminine behavior
and constmcts an “aura” of Chineseness albeit with Western influences.1 4 Chow goes
on to say that the structural design is such that the reader can more often than
not predict the outcome of the story. The plot rarely strays from sentimental stories
of unfulfilled or unrequited love. The general plot reads as follows:
Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl are separated
by cruel fate, boy and girl die of broken hearts.1 5
1 4 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity (Minnesota: University o f Minnesota Press, 1991), 64-
66, 78-82.
1 5 Ibid., 82.
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Zhang Ailing wrote to avoid this sentimentality. She wrote on love and romance
as it played itself out in her world: a game of chance and choices where love is
obscure, fleeting and unpredictable. Indeed, for Zhang the exchange within sexual
politics need not end in marriage but in cohabitation as seen in her short stories:
Interlocking Rings, The Heart Sutra, Sex, Abstinence, The First Censer, and
The City Toppled by Love all contain characters that desire marriage but accept
cohabitation as a possibility of an alliance or as a tactic to achieve the desired goal of
marriage. Therefore, unlike the “Butterfly” fiction, Zhang works are neither fable
nor fairy tale. While the “Butterfly tradition used familiar structures to deal with
morality within love relationships and often warned against Westernization, Zhang in
sharp contrast wrote in twists and turns to deconstruct the perceived concepts of
feminine identity and choices, accepting the reality that Westernization and
modernization were inevitable.1 6 It is clear, then, that Zhang wrote to contest a
literary tradition and a cultural milieu that constructed the female gender in defined
roles of ingenue or femme fatale. She also wrote to challenge traditional romance
novels where either true love endured and made all things right or remained
unfulfilled with the death of a loved one.
Furthermore the “Butterfly” tradition did not write from a space of feminine
authority but rather from a male subject. Nancy Armstrong articulates this well
when she says:
1 6 “Butterfly” fiction covers the range of love stories published in the 1910s. An example of the
Butterfly tradition would be Xu Chenya’s Jade Pear Spirit. See also Perry Link’s Mandarin Ducks
and Butterflies, Chapter Two “Love Stories of the 1910s.”
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Thus although [butterfly fiction] implied a feminine source and
writing subject according to the Richardsonian premise that fiction
can constitute its own authorial source, butterfly fiction also contradicted
that very set of assumptions: it implied a writing subject that was
empowered because that subject was male.1 7
Unlike many of the authors of the “butterfly” fiction, Zhang, from Helene
Cixous’s viewpoint, wrote from a space of authority as she wrote as a woman
challenging the constructs of conventional man, attempting to create identities and
meanings of women.1 8
Consequently, Zhang Ailing’s numerous texts serve as part of a technology that
communicates and explains the inscription of gender on the human body and
subverts preconceived notions of sexuality and gender. Francesca Bray’s use of
the term “technologies” is employed as she views technologies “as part of a web of
political and cultural practices” that contribute to the production of identities and
relationships between people.1 9 Zhang’s description of gender interplay in her
novels and short stories reveal the household to be a site of sexual politics that
a
produces, organizes, maintains and extends control of one sex over another. This
contestation of power and inscription of gender roles within sexual politics allow for
a certain amount of maneuvering so that authority which is understood as some
desired form of power and knowledge, is not fixed at any one given point, but rather
1 7 Nancy Arm strong, “Chinese W omen in a Com parative perspective” in Ellen W idm er and Kang I-
sun Chang, eds., Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997),
419.
1 8 Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” in Mary Eagleton, ed., Feminist Literary Theory 2n d
Ed., (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996), 320.
1 9 Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics o f Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley:
University o f California Press, 1997), 2-3.
2 0 Toril Moi, Sexual Textual Politics (New York: Routledge 1985), 26-30.
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weaves in and out of a complex network not only between the sexes but also through
the different economic systems within the sexes.
This chapter examines Zhang Ailing’s representations of gender and power and
how these elements interact between the genders within a persistent patriarchal
framework. It will also examine how in this gender interplay, Zhang deconstructs
previous concepts of the virgin and vamp, the wife and mistress, and the self and
“other.” Zhang’s texts argue against the belief that the movement toward modernity
in China freed women or made them equal to men. Rather, women are forced to
function as either pseudo-males or idealized females. Rosalind Coward suggests this
masquerading only perpetuates the patriarchal structure as women’s power is
assigned to the male sexual or gender construct and does not elevate them to a level
of partnership.2 1 This patriarchal structure continues to impose “certain standards
of femininity on all biological women, in order precisely to make us believe that the
chosen standards for ‘femininity’ are natural.”2 2 Zhang’s female characters contest
this universal masculine established standard and show that constructs of femininity
are historically and culturally formed. As a result, Zhang’s fictional works cited here
deal specifically within these perimeters where the definition of “woman” remains
within a male dominated and controlled sphere.
2 1 Rosalind Coward, Our Treacherous Hearts: Why Women Let Men Get their Way (London: Faber
and Faber, 1992), 147-163.
2 2 Toril Moi, “Feminist, Female, Feminine” in Sandra Kemp & Judith Squire, eds., Feminism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 247.
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By the construction of her varied female protagonists, Zhang articulates a
feminine “Imaginary” that is a site of “identifications of an ego no longer given
over to an image defined by the masculine... but rather inventing forms of women
...so that instead of lying down, women will go forward by leaps in search of
themselves.”2 3
Subverting the Wife, Widow and Dowager
Since Zhang herself states that the female protagonist in The Golden Cangue is
an exception among her characters and that it is Zhang’s most studied work. It seems
apropos to begin with an analysis of The Golden Cangue, the basis for her later
novel, The Rouge o f the North. The story recounts the main female protagonist’s
descent into a world of moral madness as she adapts to and adopts the position of
masculine power.2 4 Moral madness is understood here not in terms of a biological
illness but rather a label used to describe women who have rejected totally or in part
their stereotypes and/or social prescriptions. It is in this sense that Qiqiao/Yindi
enters into madness.2 5
2 3 Helene Cixous, “Castration or Decapitation” in Mary Eagleton, ed., Feminist Literary Theory, 2n d
Ed (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1996), 324.
24 “The ‘golden cangue,” referred to here, stands for the destructiveness o f this woman who, while
symbolically bearing the frame used to hold prisoners in old China, is both imprisoned and
imprisoning. She uses her restrainer as a means o f cutting down— mutilating— others; and
paradoxically the golden cangue represents her own exploitation.” In Shirley J. Paolini’s and Chen-
shen Yen’s “Moon, Madness, and Mutilation in Eileen Chang’s English Translation o f The Golden
Cangue, Tamkang Review, vol.XIX, nos. 1,2,3,4., 548. The Golden Cangue refers also to the
patriarchal structure to which the protagonist succumbs and then eventually upholds.
2 5 See Phyllis Chester’s pioneering work, Woman and Madness (New York: Doubleday Press, 1972).
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The main character, Qiqiao (Yindi in the Rouge version) is a woman of lower
economic means.2 6 She sells oil in a shop owned by her brother and his wife.
Presented with the possibilities of marriage, Qiqiao/Yindi opts for a union with a
sickly, deformed man from a well-to-do family rather than enter into marriage with a
poorer man who works at an herbalist shop for whom she has some attraction. The
story unfolds itself to show that the household becomes a site for power, both
economic and political for Zhang’s characters. Rey Chow states that
Qiqiao’ s/Yindi’s perversities are “the result of her social position, first as a poor
• • • 9 7
parentless young woman, then as a despised daughter in law of a wealthy family.”
Qiqiao/Yindi identifies her power in terms of the household and the distribution of
its wealth. This economic security becomes the object of desire in a Lacanian sense,
that is, desire comes into being when an existing other prevents the object from being
obtained.2 8 The manner in which wealth becomes the object of desire, the object
denied and an economic imprisonment of women is evidenced in Zhang’s other
works, Ge Weilong in The First Censer; Zheng Chuanchang in A Withered
Flower; Wang Jiaruo in Red Rose, White Rose; Nixi in Interlocking Rings,
and Bai Liusu in The City Toppled by Love. Irrespective of how these women
characters enter into their prison whether they do so by choice or compulsion, they
are perceived as nothing more than comm odities o f exchange. These wom en like
2 6 Zhang Ailing translated Jinsuo Ji as the Golden Cangue in 1971 and wrote the expanded version of
the Chinese short story Jinsuo Ji in English as The Rouge o f the North in 1967 published in
London by Cassell & Co.
2 7 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity (Minnesota: University o f Minnesota Press, 1991), 117.
2 8 Malcolm Bowie, Lacan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 162.
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Qiqiao/Yindi exchange their bodies for economic security. Yet Zhang Ailing
subverts that concept and shows that the exchange is not solely for economic gain
but rather a jockeying for positions of power whereby women are able to manipulate
male power to their advantage.
The family structure in which Qiqiao/Yindi finds herself denies her the very
thing for which she enters the Jiang/Yao family. Marriage is the traditional site of
power for women. Yet in the case of Qiqiao/Yindi, she gains no ground as she
was to enter as a concubine. In the dialogue between the two maids, the reader is
informed of Qiqiao’s status:
“Was to be a concubine. Then Old Mistress thought, Second Master,
wasn’t going to take a wife, and it wouldn’t do for the second branch
to be without its proper mistress. Just as well to have her for a wife so
she would look after Second Master faithfully.”2 9
The matriarch elevates Qiqiao/Yindi to the position of wife so that she can look
after her crippled husband and imprisons her within the confines of Confucian
dictates of wifely duties and responsibilities. Her new social status as a wife in the
Jiang family does little to alleviate the discrimination and humiliation she
experiences not only among the members of the family but also in the lower
echelons of the household. The maids talk behind Qiqiao’s back mocking her
lower class status.
“Our Second Mistress’s family owns a sesame oil shop.”
“Oh!” Feng Hsiao was surprised. “A sesame oil shop! How could they
2 9 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C. T. Hsia and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds.,
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),
531.
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stoop so low!.....
Dragons breed dragons, phoenixes breed phoenixes—as the saying goes.
You haven’t heard her conversation! Even in front of the unmarried
• • 3 fl
young ladies she says anything she likes.
Qiqiao/Yindi is aware that to secure her position in the family, it would be necessary
to have an heir. Unfortunately, even with an heir in tow, being a widow and the
death of the matriarch, her mother-in-law, do not allow Qiqiao/Yindi any access to
the distribution of the family wealth. Instead, the male family elders attempt to deny
Qiqiao/Yindi her right as a legal wife so that they can offset the Second Master’s
debts. She is caught in a dilemma. She could play the role of the independent woman
promised by the changes in post-dynastic China or she could play into the old
recognized traditional Confucian construct of the virtuous and helpless widow.
Qiqiao/Yindi adopts the latter position and in so doing draws her male elders into the
illusion of a male construct of feminine propriety and thwarts the family elders plans
to deprive her of her dead husband’s share.
Eldest Brother and Sister-in-law say nothing, but I have to be
tough-skinned and speak out this once. I can’t compare with
Eldest Brother and Sister-in-law. If the one we lost had been
able to go and be a mandarin for a couple of term and save some
money, I ‘d be glad to be generous too— what if we cancel all
the old accounts? Only that one of ours was pitiful, ailing and
groaning all his life, never earned a copper coin. Left a widow
and orphans who’re counting on just this small fixed sum to live
on. I’m a crab without legs and Ch’ang-pai is not yet fourteen,
with plenty o f hard days ahead .” Her tear fell as she spoke.
“What do you want me to do then, if you may have your way?”
said Ninth Master.
“It’s not for me to decide, “ she said sobbing. “I’m only begging
3 0 Ibid.
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Ninth Master to settle it for me.”......
Ch’ang-pai, what a hard life your father had! Bom with ailments all
over, went through life like a wretch, and for what? Never had a
single comfortable day. In the end, he left you, all there is of his blood
and bone, and people still won’t let you be, there’re a thousand designs
on your property. Ch’ang-pai, it’s you father’s fault that he dragged
himself around with all his illnesses, bullied when he was alive, to have
his widow and orphan bullied when he’s dead. I don’t matter—how
many scores of years can I live? At worst, I’d go and explain this before
the old Mistress’s spirit tablet and kill myself in protest. But Ch’ang-
pai, you’re so young, you still have your life to live even if there is
nothing to eat or drink but the northwest wind!”3 1
As a result of her mimicry of the chaste widow and her emotional manipulation of
the elders, she not only squeezes out her share but is able to maintain a living for
herself. Later in the story, Qiqiao/Yindi becomes successful in the management of
her finances. She flourishes at least financially so that she no longer needs to play
out the roles imposed by male fantasies as the weak and helpless woman that
requires the support of a man.
Zhang Ailing subverts the role of Qiqiao/Yindi as prey as she plays out a
scenario involving Qiqiao/Yindi and her brother-in-law, Third Master. In this
scene, Third Master comes to Qiqiao/Yindi to borrow money. Once in the past, she
had been attracted to him or at least to the possibility of power or economic gain
through an alliance with him. She appeared a willing prey to his seductive manner,
but now she is aware that Third Master’s presence is unnecessary and undesired. Yet
drunk with a sense of her own power, she plans to seduce him, she becomes the
predator to his unsuspecting prey, but at what cost, for in the end she rejects him.
3 1 Ibid., 541-542. See also Eileen Chang, Rouge o f the North (London: Cassell & Co., 1967), 95-97.
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Today it had all been her fault. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know he
was no good. If she wanted him she had to pretend ignorance and
put up with his ways. Why had she exposed him? Wasn’t life just
like this and no more than this? In the end what was real and what
was false?3 2
Here the character, Qiqiao/Yindi reflects on her past affection for her brother-in-law
and the control he still has over her and might have over her finances. The strings
with which he pulled at her heart she had little control but she had control over the
strings of her purse and she would not give that up to him. In a split second,
Qiqiao/Yindi mimics that which is expected of her and plays the virtuous widow yet
this mimicry creates more sexual confusion. In the past, Qiqiao/Yindi used her
sexuality to manipulate herself into a more favorable social position, first by
conceiving a child with her crippled husband, then later in attempting to seduce and
be seduced by her brother-in-law in order to gain economic benefit or some political
alliance to enable her to survive. Then, she conspired to seduce the family elders into
believing that she occupies the space of a chaste widow whose sexuality is denied
and upon whom charity and concern must be given. Confronted with the possibilities
of an alliance with her brother-in-law and the consequences that it would have on her
personal finances, Qiqiao/Yindi opts for the male imagined role of the chaste widow.
The constant maneuverings required of Qiqiao/Yindi within these patriarchal
structures is both mimicry and seduction into the imagined position created by the
3 2 Ibid., 544. The seduction scene and rejection is more played out and in greater detail in Zhang’s
Rouge o f the North, 126-132.
3 3 Irigaray states that mimicry is perhaps the only path where the woman can assume the feminine role
deliberately to thwart the masculine subject in a playful manner. In Luce Irigarary, This Sex Which Is
Not One, trans., Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1985), 76.
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men in her environment. This seduction is a movement in play whereby the woman
manipulates the male subject into giving in to her desire while making him believe
that she has acquiesced to his desire and intention.3 4 As a woman writer, Zhang is
keenly aware of women’s need to employ the art of seduction as a tactic, that is her
protagonists here and in other stories divert from their original path to retain or gain
power within the male order. Many of the seduction scenes depicted in Zhang’s
stories resemble a dance between the male and female ‘actors.’ A scene from her
short story, A Beautiful Relationship, best reflects this:
One sings, the other harmonizes, delaying until it can no longer
be delayed, the man finally makes a move to draw her to him.
The woman accompanied with gongs and drums circles the stage
as she runs, one escaping, the other chasing, like flowering branches
• 35
attracting each other’s attention.
Baudrillard’s definition of seduction is insightful here. He states that this is “what
occurs in the most banal game of seduction: I shy away: it is not you who will give
me pleasure, it is I who will make you play, and thereby rob you of your pleasure.
It is a game of continuous movement—one cannot assume that sexual strategies
alone are involved. There is above all, a strategy of displacement that implies a
distortion of sex’s truth.”3 6 Consequently, Qiqiao/Yindi in effect seduces the male
members of her household in becoming a part of the male order. She was therefore
3 4 Jean Baudrillard, Seductions, trans. Brian Singer, (N ew York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 21.
3 5 Many of seduction scenes depicted in Zhang’s stories resemble a dance between the male and
female actors. A scene in her short story, “A Beautiful Relationship” (Huali Yuan) best reflects
this. In Ailing Zhang’s collection, Lingering Charms [Yu Yun] (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995),
107.
3 6 Jean Baudrillard, Seductions, trans. Brian Singer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 22.
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able to establish herself as a wife, mother, mother-in-law and become the
commanding, demanding and often feared “dowager” in the male construct. The
male construct of power for Zhang refers not only to a patriarchal structure but also
to economic dominance. It is precisely because of money that Qiqiao rejects her
Third Brother-in-law, it is due to money that her children remain under her control
and subjugation.
Noteworthy is another dowager figure in Zhang’s writings in Zhang’ s Views. In
A Wounded Epoch, the family Dowager, Kuang Ziwei, is perceived to be in
control as she holds the family’s purse strings.
Grandfather was unwilling to come out to be an official, even if he
were willing, there was nothing seeable that he could do. From big
to small, there were about ten mouths, all reliant on grandmother’s
money for support, grandmother most unwilling, nevertheless
37
maintained them these many years.
Yet in acceding to the patriarchal definition of authority and power, Qiqiao/Yindi
perpetuates the very laws that demean her and transform her into what Judith Butler
describes as the “Phallic Woman.”
[the] figure of excessive phallicism typified by the phallic mother,
is devouring and destructive, the negative fate of the phallus when
attached to the feminine position. Significant in its misogyny, this
construction suggests that having a phallus is much more destructive
as a feminine operation than as a masculine one, a claim that
symptomatizes the displacement of phallic destructiveness and implies
that there is no other way for wom en to assume the phallus except in its
most killing modalities.3 8
3 7 Ailing Zhang, “A Wounded Epoch”[Chuang shiji] in Ailing Zhang’s Zhang’ s Views[Zhang Kan]
(Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 82. There is clearly a play on the homograph “chuang” which
means both to create or to be wounded. In the context of Zhang’s story, the word “wounded” is a
better choice as it reflects the woundedness of the heroine.
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This dual personality of being a biological woman constructed by Confucian
demands to be a mother and the culturally determined perimeters that allow
• TO
Qiqiao/Yindi to be a substitute father figure as a dowager take on deeper meaning.
The enigma is that these desires are male constructs and phallic in a Lacanian sense,
that is, with either role assigned the woman there is a degree of power and authority,
and when women fulfill these expectations of their male counterparts or within the
design of the patriarchy, they lose themselves and their identities. A reading of this
novel might suggest that Qiqiao/Yindi has no options within this male dominated
structure. If Qiqiao/Yindi concedes to the battle, she buys into the male construct of
her femininity and loses her own identity. If she wins her struggle against the male
order, she loses her femininity as prescribed but gains her identity. This dilemma
found in Zhang’s writings, repeated in her other stories, created for many the
assumption that Zhang was a tragic pessimist.
In effect, Zhang places her characters in sites of desolation not because there is
no hope but rather that there be revelation or illumination. The disclosure here is that
Qiqiao/Yindi is not a sexual prey but a site of gender and power. Qiqiao/Yindi uses
her feminine roles as tactics to subvert the paternal law.4 0 Qiqiao/Yindi in her
3 8 Judith Butler, “Crossing the Great Divide: Phantasmic Identification and the Question Of Sex” a
paper presented in the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Speakers Forum at Cornell University, Ithaca, New
York, N ovem ber 6, 1991.
3 9 Jinyuan Hu, “Mother, Where are you? Masochism, Feminine Subjectivity and Reading” in
Yang Zipian, ed., Reading Zhang Ailing— The International Conference o f Research and Readings
on Zhang Ailing (Taipei, Taiwan: Mai tian Press, 1999), 235-250. The article states that the
traditional role of a Chinese mother is removed from the confines of womanhood which is often
described as huoshui that is a woman who is a source of trouble. Qiqiao as a mother is a source o f
trouble for her children as she ascribes to and perpetuates the paternal law. She in effect becomes the
phallic substitute.
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seduction and tactics creates for herself the long-suffering maternal image, the
national symbol of a Chinese mother who in her desire to perpetuate the “Father’s
law” inflicts suffering on those around her. She becomes what Julia Kristeva calls
the queen of masochism.
If what woman desires is the opposite of the sublimating word and
the paternal law, she herself cannot have or he that opposite. All
that remains is to pit herself constantly against that very opposite in
the very gesture by which she desires it, to kill it endlessly and then
suffer continuously: a radiant perspective on the masochism at the
price of which she becomes queen.4 1
Here the term, masochism, refers to the Freudian understanding of sadism and
masochism as “instincts” that arise from within an individual and not from an outside
stimulus. Masochism is essentially passive, feminine and internalized sadism.4 2
The final seduction scene between Qiqiao/Yindi and her brother-in-law Jize
reveals that Zhang Ailing’s extreme character Qiqiao/ Yindi is a masochist par
excellence. As mentioned earlier, in the final seduction scene between Qiqiao/Yindi
and her brother-in-law, Qiqiao/Yindi still desires her brother-in-law but to keep him
she would have to play up to his expectations and demands for she has already
consented to see him. However, instead of giving in to further demands, she exposes
4 0 By tactic, I am using Michel de Certeau’s understanding o f tactic where he states: “Power is bound
by its very visibility. In contrast, trickery is possible for the weak, and often it is his only possibility,
as a ‘last resort’: The w eaker the forces at the disposition o f the strategist, the m ore the strategist will
be able to use deception.” The Practice o f Everyday Living (Berkeley: The University of California
Press, 1984), 37.
4 1 Julia Kristeva, About Chinese Women, trans., Anita Burrows (New York: Marion Boyars, 1986),
22 .
4 2 Sigmund Freud, “Instincts” in The Standard Edition o f the Complete Works o f Psychological
Works, trans., James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953) 72-77. Also Freud’s “The Economic
Problem of Masochism,” 159-170. See also Jinyuan Hu, “Mother, Where are you?,” 239-240.
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his needs and castrates him in the Lacanian sense. That is Qiqiao/Yindi has taken
power away from the male subject and he stands powerless before her. Qiqiao/Yindi
exposes her brother-in-law’s scheme to squeeze money out of her coffers. Offended
and insulted by the realization that it was not love of her but necessity to repay his
debts that she slaps her brother-in-law in the presence of subordinates. She exposes
his weakness and in that instance he is emasculated.4 3 In a few sentences in the text,
Zhang Ailing shows how Qiqiao/Yindi inverted the imposition of pain from her
brother-in-law inward toward herself.
She wanted another glimpse of him from the upstairs window. No
matter what she had loved him before. Her love had given her endless
pain. That alone should make him worthy of her continuing regard...
Today it had been her fault. It wasn’t as if he was no good. If she
wanted him, she had to pretend ignorance and put up with his ways.
Why had she exposed him?4 4
Qiqiao/Yindi blames herself for not letting her fantasy become reality but what is
real when the subject no longer occupies the role deigned him in the male order.
Qiqiao/Yindi now occupies the phallic position that can concede or deny sexual
pleasure, she makes her brother-in-law her mirror image of suffering and her desire
dissipates, as he is no longer able to be the source of her joy.
4 3 In The Rouge o f the North, Yindi slaps him. Eileen Chang, The Rouge o f the North (London:
Cassell & Co., 1967), 132. In The Golden Cangue, Qiqiao attem pts to slap him. Eileen Chang, “The
Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C.T. Hsia and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds., Modern Chinese Stories
and Novellas 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 545. What is significant is
not that she slapped him or attempted to slap him, it is the fact that Third Master lost face as the
encounter takes place where others are witnesses to his shame. See also Shirley J. Paolini and Chen-
shen Yen, “Moon, Madness and Mutilation in Eileen Chang’s English Translation o f the Golden
Cangue” Tamkang Review, Vol.XIX, Nos. 1,2,3,4:553.
4 4 Eileen Chang, “The Golden Cangue,” 545. Italics are my own.
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Furthermore, Zhang imbues in Qiqiao/Yindi a site of meaning as both
dowager and mother. Traditionally a site of power and family blessing, Zhang’s
character plunges into a world of darkness, destroying the very family she tries to
construct to ensure her own power. Qiqiao/Yindi becomes the phallic substitute in
the absence of the paternal law and as a result subjugates both her son and daughter,
who contest her authority, into murky waters of parental-child relationships under
the guise of filial piety. With Ch’ang-pai, there is an inversion of the Oedipal
Complex where Ch’ang-pai becomes the object of desire so that the phallic position
can be replaced within the masculine order. Unfortunately, Ch’ang-pai is only half a
man and so she controlled him through the use of opium.
“Come Master Pai, fill the pipe for me a couple of times.”
“With an opium lamp right there why put me to work? I have honey
on my fingers or something?” Ch’ang-pai stretched himself while
replying and slowly moved over to the stool in front of the opium lamp
and rolled up his sleeves.
“Unfilial slave, what kind of answer is that! Putting you to work is an
honor.”
She looked at him with slitted, smiling eyes. All these years he had
been the only man in her life. Only with him there was no danger of
his being after her money—it was his anyway. But as her son, he
amounted to less than half a man.
And even the half she could not keep, now that he was married.4 5
With her daughter, Qiqiao undermines her daughter’s self esteem and
perpetuates the very suffering that she had to endure. She informs her daughter that
all men are rotten and that they are only after her money4 6. Qiqiao undermines her
daughter’s chances of happiness with Tung Shih-fang to whom she is engaged by
4 5 Ibid., 549.
4 6 Ibid., 546.
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casting doubts on Shih-fang’s sincere intentions.4 7 In the end, Ch’ang-an breaks off
the engagement.
Who knew what her mother would do? Sooner or later there would
be trouble, sooner or later there would be a break. This was the most
beautiful episode of her life; better to finish it before other people could
add a disgusting ending to it.
A beautiful, desolate gesture....She knew she would be sorry, she knew
she would, but unconcernedly she lifted her eyebrows and said, “Since
mother is not willingly to make the match I’ll just go and tell them no.”
In Qiqiao’s/ Yindi’s contestation of desire for the “other” and quest to define the
self, the moment of disillusionment is precisely the moment of illumination. Qiqiao/
Yindi realizes that the very masculine powers that have entrapped her have molded
her into a fellow conspirator. It is as Zhang Ailing states not tragedy but rather a
moment of desolation that leads to revelation. Lim Chin-chown’s, “Reading ‘The
Golden Cangue’: Iron Boudoir and Symbols of Oppressed Confucian Women” in a
footnote to his article states that Zhang’s “use of the word ‘desolation’ and other
related words such as ‘bleakness’, ‘melancholy’, ‘wretchedness’, all
contain a yin aspect. They cannot be regarded as androgynous and
certainly should not be used to describe a masculine form of desolation.
The text’s essential femininity would be lost if the full connotations of
desolation were ignored. Therefore the language of desolation, bleakness,
misery and melancholy with Eileen Chang’s narrative has a new yin
significance. That is to say, the feelings and sensitivities of her female
characters reflect specific cultural phenomenon through Chang’s yin
style of writing —they become metaphors of female desolation.4 9
4 7 Ibid., 555-556.
4 8 Ibid., 556.
4 9 Lim Chin-chwon, “Reading: ‘The Golden Cangue’: Iron Boudoir and Symbols of Oppressed
Confucian Women” trans., Louise Edwards and Kam Louie in Renditions 45 (Spring 1996) 146.
footnote 9. The Chinese characters for tragedy are “bei zhuang” which refers to a heroic tragedy and
“cangliang” which refers to desolation. These characters do not have a feminine root.
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The concept of a feminine desolation lies not in the linguistic root of the words
(which do not necessarily contain a feminine root) but rather in a “kind of Jungian
obscurantism” whereby male and female are cosmic principles so that the way we
symbolize the world is ultimately bound in language that is marked by the masculine
and the feminine.5 0
This feminine desolation to which Zhang refers can be seen in her later and more
developed version of The Golden Cangue entitled, The Rouge o f the North. In this
version, the protagonist, Qiqiao,/Yindi, reflects back to the very moment before her
marriage proposals, the site prior desolation and the reader is left to ponder as to
what she might have chosen given the opportunity again.
Inverting The Mundane
For Zhang if Qiqiao/Yindi becomes the queen of masochism in the game of
gender interplay and the mad mother because she rejects the expected norms of
behavior as wife and mother, then Wu Cuiyuan in her short story, Sealed O ff is the
human who becomes the ethereal beauty, the seductress par excellence.
Sealed O ff tells the story o f a young plain looking woman on a tram ride
returning home from her teaching duties at the university in Shanghai. The ride is
5 0 Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awy: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995), 46.
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interrupted by a possible air raid and all the lights and electricity in the city are
temporarily suspended. In this momentary silence of the city, the story recounts the
trivial happenings between two individuals who end up entwined in a seductive,
courting dance. Zhang’s female protagonist, Cuiyuan is in sharp contrast to the
characters Qiqiao/Yindi. Zhang portrays Cuiyuan as a plain-looking, modem,
Western-influenced, single, innocent woman trapped within a tram during a
shutdown in Shanghai. Zhang takes great care to depict Cuiyuan so that the reader
can conjure up visions of purity and propriety.
She looked like one of those Church matrons, yet only unmarried.
She was wearing a white linen cheongsam, with thin blue piping
all around. The dark blue and white might have been announcing
a funeral. She held a blue and white gingham parasol. Her hairstyle
was non-descript, as if she was afraid of attracting attention. But there
was really no risk at all of that. She was not unattractive, but her prettiness
was of the wishy-washy sort, the kind that was afraid of giving offense.
Everything about her face was pale and limp and without definition. Even
her own mother would have been hard pressed to say whether her face
was long or round.
At home, she was a good daughter. In school, she had been a good student.5 1
Then she sets her apart from the ordinary by making her an English teacher having
graduated from university, a rare accomplishment in itself. Cuiyuan is described as a
good daughter, a good student from a good family who all bathe daily. She does not
engage in frivolous past times but occupies her mind with the operas of Beethoven
and Wagner not that she understands them. She reads the Bible and dresses in
5 1 Eileen Chang, “Shutdown” in Eva Hung’s Traces o f Love and other stories (Hong Kong:
Renditions, Research Center for Translation, The Chinese University o f Hong Kong, 2000), 25.1
prefer the translation “Sealed O ff’ as it better represents the suspension of time and space in the story.
It is translated as such in Joseph S. M. Lau et al, eds., The Columbia Anthology o f Modern Chinese
Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
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a neat and prim manner. She is therefore immaculately clean, body and soul. Despite
earlier encouragement from her “new style” Christian family to study, her parents
now wish that Cuiyuan had spent time finding a rich husband.
Zhang places the characters in the noisy, busy and crowded streets of Shanghai.
Then through the use of an air raid, Zhang suspends time. Cuiyuan is both in the
world yet suspended from the world. In the silence of still time, Cuiyuan ruminates
and begins to correct papers as she observes the other passengers in the tram with
her. Cuiyuan suddenly takes note that Lu Zongzhen has moved from his seat to the
one next to her and she becomes highly suspicious of this sudden change of seat. She
puts up her guard against any untoward move, unaware that Lu Zongzhen had
changed seats in order to avoid an encounter with a much-disliked nephew. Wishing
to affect a little scandalous behavior before his nephew, plus he is intrigued by
Cuiyuan’s coy and guarded manner intrigue, Zongzhen strikes up a polite
conversation with her.
Zhang has carefully set the stage to implicate Zongzhen as the perceived
predator on the prowl drawn to the stiffened image of his prey. Yet the scene begins
to shift and Zhang Ailing creates an imaginary site of seductive fantasy and sensual
longing by reversing roles. She transforms Cuiyuan from the humdrum and plain
woman to the ethereal seductress and Zongzhen from the would-be predator to the
unsuspecting mortal victim.
5 2 Ibid., 26-27.
5 3 Ibid., 29.
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I saw part of you through the tear, just the chin. It was an ad for
milk powder, with a baby’s plumb face on it. And then suddenly,
beneath the baby’s ear, a woman’s chin had appeared. Thinking
back on it, it had actually been quite startling. ‘Then you bent your
head to look for change in your purse and I got to see your eyes,
your brows, your hair.’ Taken part by part, she did have a kind of charm
about her.5 4
Cuiyuan, perceived to be passive and powerless, is in fact the initiator of
the seduction albeit not of her own accord but rather because of the suspension of
time and space. She is transformed from her humdrum self to a captivating charmer,
body part by body part. It is now her look that attracts Zongzhen to her. Her body
language invites Zongzhen, the predator, to make his move. The initial contact is
ordinary but Zhang depicts a scene where soldiers disrupt the silence of the city and
the lovers. This technique sets them apart from the world and makes them voyeurs of
that “outside” event, the two find themselves in very close physical range and share a
private intimate moment.
Cuiyuan blushes and Zongzhen delights that he has the power to make this
woman blush. His masculinity is affirmed by Cuiyuan’s coquettish behavior and
he becomes more infatuated with her. Zongzhen has fallen in love not with the
mortal in the beginning of this story in whom he states he has no interest and who he
describes as having a body like “squeezed out toothpaste”5 5 but rather with the fairy
like princess who he describes now as “pale, fragile, warm — like a breath on the
winter air. If you do not want her, she silently vanishes. She is part of yourself. She
5 4 Ibid., 30.
5 5 Ibid., 29.
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understands everything. She forgives you everything. If you speak from the heart,
she will feel sad on your account. If you tell lies, she smiles, as if to say, ‘you can’t
kid me!’” 5 6 Suspended from mortal time, Cuiyuan is imbued with an intuitive
knowledge of her male counterpart’s thoughts while he is left a fumbling mortal
caught in the beauty of his new found love.
“Oh you don’t know... my family....” a short cough.” We’d better
not talk about it.”
“Here it comes,” thought Cuiyuan. “His wife doesn’t understand him.
Every married man in the world seems desperately in need of another
woman’s understanding.” Zongzhen hesitated, then swallowed hard
and forced the words out: “My wife- She doesn’t understand me at all.” 5 7
This “sealed o ff’ moment from society alleviates Cuiyuan to a new imaginary
site where she indulges in reveries of her mortal otherwise forbidden her. Leo Ou-
Fan Lee cites Rey Chow who states that this suspended space and time is the
necessary ingredient to create a romance that could not otherwise have existed.5 8 In
this created space, Cuiyuan is also able to acknowledge her displeasure of her “prim
and proper” family and plots to punish them by marrying or worse still, by being
involved with a married man. Cuiyuan teases and plies her feminine wiles on
Zongzhen in the game of the masked ingenue or the ethereal beauty, neither of whom
can be possessed. In this masquerade of mystery, she cannot reveal who she is
without breaking the spell of her charms.
5 6 Ibid., 33.
5 7 Ibid., 31.
5 8 Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f A New Urban Culture in Shanghai: 1930-
1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 291. He cites a paper given by Rey Chow in the
International Conference on Zhang Ailing in Taipei, 1996.
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A man in love likes to talk. A woman in love, unlike her usual self,
does not talk much. This is because, subconsciously, she knows that
a man won’t love her any more if he understands her too well.5 9
Cuiyuan is transformed completely into a heavenly benevolent beauty who must
not be corrupted by the mundane. Zongzhen’s unwillingness for this lovely spirit to
sacrifice herself for him and his practicality and mention of money spoils the
moment. She is filled with sadness. As she thinks to herself:
Oh, how foolish he is! How foolish! She only wanted one part of
his life, the part that nobody else wanted. He was throwing away
his own happiness. What a stupid waste! She burst into tears. But
they weren’t refined, ladylike tears. It was as if she was spitting them
onto his face. He was a good man — so there was one more good man
in the world.6 0
Cuiyuan does not break her spell over Zongzhen but rather has the enchantment of
the moment removed when the tram lights once again come on and Cuiyuan
realizes that it was only a dream: a flight of fantasy.
Zhang Ailing creates a site of imaginary where Cuiyuan is empowered. As an
ethereal beauty, a seductress, Cuiyuan understands the dynamics of the male order.
The art of seduction and fantasy transform the subject, the object and the experience.
Adrienne Rich explains:
[I]f the imagination is to transcend and transform the experience it
has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to
the very life that you are living at the moment. You have to be free
to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be
hate, nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into
its opposite or to call experimentally by another name.6 1
5 9 Eileen Chang, “Shutdown,” 33.
6 0 Ibid., 35.
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By using the play of the imagination, Zhang inverts the ordinary image of Cuiyuan
and suggests that there is more behind the public facade than what we see. Cuiyuan
defies and challenges the social definition of who she is. In the imaginary she
f\)
transcends the “name itself, the signifer, which supports the identity of the object”
What happens then when the name suffers from a slippage? Who is Cuiyuan? What
role does she play? Kristeva states:
In ‘woman’ I see something that cannot be represented, something
that is not said, something that is above and beyond nomenclature
ideologies.6 3
For as long as she is not entirely revealed to the reader, she continues to seduce the
imagination and is Zhang Ailing’s seductress par excellence.
Undermining The Femme Fatale
A City Toppled by Love recounts the events of an attractive, young, divorced
woman, Bai Liusu, who is informed that her ex-husband has died. The inference is
that she is now able to marry and cease to be a burden on her family. With few
options open her, Liusu, sets her hope on the intended beau, Fan Liuyuan, of her
younger sister. At the first meeting, Liusu attracts and holds the attention of Fan
6 1 Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision on Lies, Secrets and Silence,” in
Mary Eagleton, ed., Feminist Literary Theory, 88.
6 2 Slvoj Zizek, The Sublime Object o f Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 95.
6 3 Julia Kristeva, “Woman Can Never Be Defined: New French Feminisms” In Mary Eagleton,
Feminist Literary Theory, 267.
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through her knowledge of Western dance and later accepts an invitation to Hong
Kong to meet up with him, naturally under the watchful eye of her traveling
chaperones. There she masquerades as the perfect Chinese woman. She is coy and
shy, hoping that he will find this appealing enough to ask her hand in marriage.
However, she finds that she is in competition for Fan’s attention with the exotic and
erotic Indian princess, Saheiyini.
Liuyuan stopped and made a slight bow in her direction. Liusu
looked at the woman, and the hauteur of the woman’s returning
gaze put a thousand miles between them.
Liuyuan introduced them, “Miss Bai, Princess Saheiyini.”6 4
Liusu, on her second trip to Hong Kong, realizes that she has nothing to lose
as she does not want to return to her Shanghai family a second time without a
husband in tow. She pulls all stops and becomes intimate with Fan ending up not
his wife but his mistress. Fan sets her up in a western style house where she finds
life as unfulfilling as before. In wartime Hong Kong, in the decay of the city, Fan
marries Liusu not out of love but rather as an act of belief that he too has nothing to
lose at this point in time. If the was is to bring an end to them both, then he would
have done the right thing and made Liusu a respectable woman. Should the war end
without casualty on their part, his life could continue as it had prior marrying Liusu.
Bai Liusu like Qiqiao/Yindi appears also to have entered into a relationship for
economic gain and independence from a repressive and desolate family structure.
Yet a closer reading will show that Zhang Ailing is subverting the concept of the
6 4 Eileen Chang, “Love in A Fallen City” Renditions; A Chinese English Translation Magazine,
Chinese University o f Hong Kong, no. 45, Spring 1996, 75.
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femme fatale. Edward Gunn and Mei Jia-ling both suggest that Zhang Ailing
deliberately plays on the title of the story, Qing chen zhi lian, which alludes to
traditional narratives of femme fatales that are blamed for toppling cities and even
kingdoms.6 5 Constructed within the framework of the classic femme fatale, Shui Jing
stresses a number of striking details in the story to show Zhang’s use of the
traditional concept of the femme fatale. He suggests that like the ancient beauties of
old, the reader is first made aware of Liusu’s physical appearance with the music of a
huqin in the backdrop. Shui jing suggests that Zhang’s description of Liusu’s
beauty as cold with a cruel smile reflect female ghosts who do harm to the male
counterparts. This would then contextualize and explain Liusu’s divorce and then
subsequent widowhood.6 6
Indeed the description of Liusu fits the reading of a traditional beauty that leads
to destruction of man and city.
She had the kind of slender figure that doesn’t show age—a waist
forever thin, and a budding, girlish bosom. Her face had always been
as white as fine porcelain, but had now changed from porcelain to jade
— semi-translucent jade with a tinge of pale green. Her cheeks had once
been round, but now had grown thinner, making her small face even
smaller and more attractive. She had a fairly narrow face, but her eyes
— clear and lively, slightly coquettish eyes —were set well apart.6 7
Zhang further describes Liusu as rhythmically moving to the sound of huqin when
6 5 Edward Gunn, Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai and Peking (1937-1945) (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 215-217. See also Jia-ling Mei’s footnote no. 13 in
“Signaling the Beauty’s Departure and Return” (feng huo kuei ren de chu zuo yu hui gui) in Yang
Zipian, ed., Reading Zhang Ailing: An International Conference on the Research and Reading o f
Zhang Ailing (Taipei, Taiwan: Mai tian Press, 1999), 274.
6 6 Shui Jing, Zhang Ailing de xiaoshuo y i shu (The art o f Zhang Ailing’ s Fiction) (Taipei: Dadi
chubanshe, 1973),43-50.
6 7 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City” trans., Karen Kingsbury, Renditions 45 (spring 1996), 66.
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Suddely, she smiled — a private malevolent smile— and the music
came to a discordant halt. Outside the huqin still played but it was
telling tales of fealty and filial piety, chastity and righteousness, distant
tales that had nothing to do with her.6 8
While both Gunn and Shui had an interest in the technicalities of Zhang’s aesthetics,
both fail to develop more thoroughly Liusu as a modem femme fatale whose
femininity is fatalistically linked to both the male protagonist Fan and the city, Hong
Kong. Zhang Yingjin suggests in his chapter, “The Female Vision of the Modem
City” that Zhang Ailing’s elaborate description of city and woman is an attempt at
re-visioning previous concepts of woman, man, enlightenment, city, and
civilization.6 9 Rey Chow also suggests that Zhang’s detailing of city and woman is a
type of reconstruction that “destroys the centrality of humanity” that is often upheld
in “Chinese modernity as an ideal and moral principal” while searching for a new
identity.7 0
Here Liusu’s personae is examined as the re-imaged femme fatale in Zhang’s
understanding of an apparent desolation that requires her to contrive ways in which
she can better her lot and reach some kind of illumination. Told in not so many
words by her family that she is in effect unwelcome in their home—
“As long as you live you belong to his family, and after you die,
7 1
your ghost will belong to them too!” —
6 8 Ibid., 67. Italics are my own for emphasis.
6 9 Yingjin Zhang, The City In Modem Chinese Literature and Film (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1996), 247.
7 0 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity (Minnesota: University o f Minnesota Press, 1991), 114-
120.
7 1 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City,” 62.
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Liusu is left with few options. In fact, her husband’s death has astonishing
repercussions for Liusu. Her unspoken anxieties of not being welcomed in her
natal family are openly articulated by her family members and Liusu is forced to
enter into a decision. She can stay in a family that clearly sees her as a burden or plan
to enter into a marriage with the help of a marriage broker originally employed for
her sister. Liusu whose family fortune has been lost by gambling decides to gamble
with her future. Marriage was her only solution.
She decided to wager her future. If she lost her reputation would
be ruined, and she wouldn’t even be allowed to play stepmother
to five children. If she won, she would get the prize that everyone
was watching with greedy tiger eyes—Fan Liuyuan—and all her stifled
rancor would be washed away.7 2
She set her sights on Fan, a wealthy businessman who had been educated
overseas. Liusu uses her femininity as a tactic to maneuver and manipulate her way
so that she can usurp her younger sister’s intended rich beau. Liusu is aware that if
she fails, her reputation would be ruined and no other recourse would be available to
her. If she succeeds, however, she will have obtained the “desired” other. The plot
reveals how Liusu plays the art of seduction and the femme fatale to the hilt. She
plays both the Western other and the ideal Chinese woman.
Your idea of the perfect woman is someone who is pure and
high-minded but still very ready to flirt. The high-mindedness
is toward others, but the flirting is towards you. If I had been
an entirely good woman you never would have noticed in the
first place.......
I don’t care if you are good or bad. I don’t want you to change.
It’s not easy to find a real Chinese girl like you.7 3
7 2 Ibid., 71.
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Liusu manipulates her way into meeting with Fan. As a femme fatale par
excellence, Liusu not only manipulates an invitation by Baoluo who is unaware of
her scheme but also manages to maneuver her way into Fan’s life.
Noteworthy is Zhang Ailing depiction of this modem femme fatale with a
blend of good and bad and not the traditional concept of being bad. Thus, removing
the female protagonist from a traditional reading. Zhang imbues in Liusu, the
orthodox and the heretical, so that there is a movement within the character itself as
she unfolds to reveal the truth behind her mask. Bourdieu articulates well this
process that gives momentum in the conflict between the established symbolic order
and the heretical break from and subversion of that very model.7 4 First, Liusu is a
divorced woman living in her parents’ home when she hears of her ex-husband’s
death. She is a modem woman because she is a divorcee and yet she is perceived as a
traditional woman as she has returned to her natal home to live. Second, Liusu,
unlike other female members of her family, knows how to dance Westem-style
dances— a characteristic that draws the attention of and different reactions from both
Fan and her family members. While Fan is quite taken by her ability to move around
the dance floor, her family looks on with disdain. Ironically, Fan who has lived
abroad and has the reputation of being a philanderer and a connoisseur of “exotic”
wom en insists that he likes Liusu because she is a “real Chinese girl” and that “real
Chinese women are the most beautiful in the world.” Liusu, not an ingenue,
7 3 Ibid., 75.
7 4 P. Bourdieu, Outline o f A Theory o f Practice, trans., R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977), 545.
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recognizes that Fan has created a site of the imaginary where she is the desired object
because she is different from her Shanghai siblings and different from Princess
Saheiyini, Fan’s on and off erotic and exotic Indian playmate. Fan states that Liusu’s
mannerisms appear to be from another world, another time, making Liusu much
more attractive to him.7 6 Liusu aware that if she to snare Fan in the game of marriage
she must entertain Fan’s idea of the perfect woman— “ someone who is pure
and high-minded but still very ready to flirt. The pure high-mindedness is toward
others, but the flirting is toward” Fan. She acknowledges that if she were an entirely
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good woman Fan would not have given her a second glance.
Shortly after this scene, Liusu begins to openly flirt with and engages in the act
of seducing Fan. The game of seduction weaves in and out between the two so that
both are enmeshed in its complex web, leaving both less options by the play
of the game.
“That’s more like it! Now there’s just a bit of venom in her voice!”
Liusu had to laugh. “I have never seen anyone like you, so intent on
Making people jealous!”....
Trying to make her jealous was a way of taunting her, trying to make
her run, of her own accord, right into his arms. She’d kept him at a
distance for so long now; if, at this point, she softened toward him, she
would be sacrificing herself for nothing. He wouldn’t really feel obligated;
he’d just think that she had fallen for a trick. She would be dreaming if she
thought that he’d marry her after that.. ..Clearly he wanted her, but he still
wasn’t willing to marry her.7 8
7 5 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity, 75.
7 6 Ibid., 79.
7 7 Ibid., 74.
7 8 Ibid., 81.
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Notwithstanding her many attempts, Fan falls short of asking for her hand in
marriage. His casual public affections imprint on those around that the two must
be intimate. Despite her denials to the contrary, few if any would believe Liusu
when she says that the relationship is innocent. Liusu can no longer rely on the
traditional virtues for women to snare her prey, instead she learns to play her game
and on her second visit to Hong Kong, she consummates her affair with Fan and
consents to becoming his mistress.
Finally, Zhang creates a duality not only within Liusu but also around her.
Liusu once described her days at the Bai residence in Shanghai as tedious and
monotonous while her days in Hong Kong were hectic and fun-filled. Though
while she wants to be out of the Bai residence where she is safe and protected to a
degree, Liusu is insecure and defensive when she faces the realities of Hong Kong.
The contrast of these localities are part of Zhang’s interesting technical skill as
Zhang Yingjing’s points out— both Hong Kong and Shanghai are dead cities infused
with life. They are dark worlds filled with a repellent underside and an appealing
fa£ade.7 9
Furthermore, while both Hong Kong and Shanghai are westernized, Hong Kong
is alien territory to the heroine as it is an English colony, and thus becomes the very
backdrop and occasion for an unusual romance. Ironically, then, Liusu seeks security
in a city besieged by war and discovers that her existence as she has constructed it is
no better than before. This fatal beauty causes neither the ruin of city nor the death of
7 9 Yingjing Zhang, The City in Modern Literature and Film, 247-248.
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her mate. Instead, Liusu and Fan marry against the backdrop of ruins in Hong Kong
• 8 0 • •
and have a romance on borrowed time. The Femme Fatale, Liusu, is revealed in the
end as only a woman struggling to make the best of her situation. Zhang continues to
deconstruct and in the two “Censers” stories, she transforms the role of the virgin
and the ingenue from their expected prototypes to unexpected characters of choice
• 81
and destruction.
Transforming The Virgin
Zhang Ailing was well acquainted with the Qing dynasty “beauty-scholar”
tradition where women were often depicted as chaste and of superior moral fiber as
compared to their male counterparts. McMahon states:
The prominence of such portrayals of women in Qing fiction is part
of a deviation among highly literate circles from the discourse of
obligatory male and female roles. The beauty-scholar romances were
a playing ground for positions already expressed since the last sixteenth
century by literati critical of certain norms governing women and
marriage, especially the virtue of widow chastity or the opinion that
it is virtuous for women to be silent and uneducated.8 2
8 0 Jialing Mei, “Signaling the Beauty’s Departure and Return” in Yang Zipian, ed., Readings on
Zhang Ailing: An International Conference on the Research and Reading on Zhang Ailing (Taipei,
Taiwan: Mai Tian Press, 1999), 260. Mei articulates three sites o f cities, Hong Kong, the “colonial”
city besieged by war, Shanghai, the “real” city and the im agined city o f the heart. It is on all three
fronts that Liusu does battle.
811 have used the word, censer, for the translation o f the collection of short stories, “ Di Yi Lu
Xiang” as the censer is usually a decorated incense burner used at home or at temples for the
purpose of prayer and sacrifice and has a temporary nature to it.
8 2 Keith McMahon, “ The Classic Beauty-Scholar’ Romance and the Superiority of the Talented
Woman” In Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject and Power in China (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), 227.
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It is in this “playing ground” that Zhang begins the transformation of the virgin
into something quite unexpected. In her first story, The First Censers, Zhang uses the
traditional model of the beauty-scholar tradition with a twist. The virgin beauty
chooses her own path of destruction and is a willingly partner in her moral
corruption.
The story begins with Ge Weilong, a young, average-looking ingenue who
0 -5
travels to Hong Kong from Shanghai. She hopes and plans to attend and graduate
from a school in Hong Kong but due to the ever-rising tuition costs must seek aid
and refuge in her aunt’s domicile which she soon recognizes as something other than
a regular household.
Here at aunty’s all the maids appear to be sweet-looking and slim,
as mouth watering as a good dish of sweet and sour spareribs, one
after the other making clicking sounds like that of wooden shoes as
they sashay along the hallways.8 4
Weilong soon discovers that her aunt owns and runs a house of entertainment for
wealthy Chinese businessmen and British servicemen. Her aunt, an outcast from
the family as she broke from the expected tradition of being a chaste widow, appears
hesitant to take in Weilong, yet does not protest too strongly. After all, Weilong is
seen as a potential asset. Instead, the aunt makes great pretense that the decision to
stay is Weilong’s and not her’s. For Weilong, though, there is little choice if she
wishes to pursue her education. Weilong, aware of the moral tension between her
8 3 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press), 32.
8 4 Ibid.,34.
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58
aunt and her father, lies to her father as to the source of her financial support so that
she can stay in Hong Kong with a minimum of resistance. Weilong tells her mother
the truth and the women conspire to keep the “father” without knowledge. Her father
is only informed by his wife that Weilong is an outstanding student and has been
offered a scholarship. His pride in his daughter prohibits him from checking out the
facts or to go over to thank the dean as is ordinarily expected. This is the Zhang’s
only mention of Weilong’s parents in an active form. From now on, they will only be
referred to either by Weilong or by her aunt. In effect, Zhang has ensured that her
protagonist is perceived as a lost babe in the woods. At the start, Weilong, though,
inexperienced in the matters of the world, is well aware that she is a lamb in the den
of wolves but she is determined at first to keep her moral character intact and to
attend school.
The plot thickens with the arrival of Qiaoqi (George) Qiao, a young rogue of
European-Chinese blood who is emotionally entangled with more than one female
O f
character m the story. He is described as a philanderer from a rich family with a
suspect bloodline. He and his sister are described as being Arabic, Negro, Indian,
O/T
English, and Portuguese. Originally on good terms with the madam of the
house, he commits a faux pas by asking the madam to accompany him on one of his
0*7
trysts. Infuriated by this gesture, Mrs. Liang bans him from the house. However,
8 5 The placement of the last name here is significant. Chinese protagonists are introduced first by
their family names then their given names unlike names in the West. Here the characters are clearly
introduced to the reader as a Westerner or Western influenced Chinese. Ibid., 37.George Qiao,
Marlene Chao, etc.
8 6 Ibid., 54.
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59
he is not a man without charms and he is able in the course of the story to win over
the madam’s girls. He further manages as the story unfolds to ingratiate himself to
Weilong’s good graces and begins his attempts to seduce her but not by promising
marriage.
While this plot is unraveling, Weilong’s aunt is using her niece’s so-called
“Western” education and connections to her advantage so that she might gain
some air of respectability. She encourages Weilong to act as hostess to her foreign
friends and even sets up the stage whereby she can seduce one of Weilong’s Chinese
male friends from her church choir. Her aunt also has intentions of using her to keep
some of her older clients.
It is against this backdrop that the reader becomes enlightened as to the type of
education that Weilong receives. From the start, Weilong is schooled in dress and
decorum. She is taught how to be attentive to those around her and she is seduced
into a life style that she is unwilling to give up. Zhang does not remove from Weiling
her choices within this moral dilemma. She can choose to leave her aunt and return
to Shanghai, but what would she tell her father? She had lied as to her school funding
so there was no valid reason as to why she would be returning home. She can play
the game her aunt has planned out for her and for which she has been trained most
subtly. The consequences would be, in effect, to follow in her aunt’s footsteps.
This, however, does not appear appealing to Weilong as her aunt has repeatedly
pointed out that she lacks the physical attributes to be truly successful. Finally, she
8 7 Ibid., 36-37.
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60
can set her sights on a man for the purpose of marriage. This seemed the most
attractive of her options so she plots to marry.
Weilong’s obvious choice would be the Chinese Christian choir member from
a good family but to her dismay, he has been corrupted by the wiles of her aunt at
a party to which she was hostess. As a result, she turns to George who is by no
means a good catch. He is not a man of independent means nor has he demonstrated
any moral fiber, yet he is her passport out of her aunt’s house into some light of
respectability. Weilong does indeed marry George but she still functions as a
companion to others so that she might maintain his lifestyle and her public
appearance of respectability. Weilong’s possibilities of marriage are limited because
of the choices she has made.
You see, our only possibilities of potential marriage partners are
these men of mixed lineage. Chinese would not do because the
foreign education that we have received and the unadulterated
Chinese do not mix. Foreigners also will not do! Where is there
a Caucasian here who is not steeped in racial concepts? Even if he
were willing, their society would not permit it.
Whomsoever marries an Asian, his career would be over in this life.
oo
In this age, who is such a romantic fool?
The chaste beauty is knowingly corrupted and takes up a life of prostitution.
Zhang sets the stage in Westernized Hong Kong using much of the Shanghainese
dialect in the dialogue among the women to establish and contest the institution of
courtesan literature found in Shanghai that generally defined women in terms of
the “Madonna/whore construction.” Gail Hershatter’s text, Dangerous Pleasures,
8 8 Ibid., 60-61.
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61
contends that the literature actually expands down three lines, bad girls, good girls
and dead girls.8 9 Bad girls were courtesans who “embodied a lasciviousness that
appeared inappropriately early and persisted long after a courtesan should have been
a concubine or a madam.”9 0 Good girls were those who entered the profession
because their families were experiencing financial hardships.9 1 Stories of dead
courtesans were often perceived as tropes of “cautionary tales of violence and
greed.” 9 2 Zhang Ailing’s protagonist Ge Weilong seemingly follows the framework
of the good girl but the moral contrast of the female and male protagonists in
traditional tales so evident in the beginning blurs as the plot unfolds. The final scene
set in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong sees Weilong acknowledging the
difference between the prostitutes in Wanchai and herself. Weilong states:
• > c n
How is there any difference? They had no choice, whereas I was willing.
This final statement from Weilong transforms the ingenue from unwilling partner
of circumstance to someone who knowingly chooses her own path. She breaks free
from the courtesan lineage while still living the life. Zhang’s portrayal of life
decisions are neither black nor white but shades of gray where this protagonist
finds some happiness amidst the uncertainties of her life. Like the stick of incense
burning, the reader is left to ponder the cost of the sacrifice of Ge Weilong.
8 9 Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 143-165.
9 0 Ibid., 145.
9 1 Ibid., 152.
9 2 Ibid., 164.
9 3 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer,” in her collection, The First Censer (Taipei: Crown Publications,
1996), 85. Translations from this story are my own.
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62
Leo Ou-fan Lee states that the setting of these two stories purposely present
itself as “the object of a Western Orientalist gaze by materializing what existed
only in the colonist’s fantasy.”9 4 Zhang’s second censer story debunks the colonial
fantasy and destroys the myth of the colonizer as the idealized other. The Second
Censer is the romance of Zhang’s English protagonists, Roger and Susie set in
Hong Kong. Unlike The First Censer the protagonists, while clearly Western,
speak a language unmistakably Chinese. That is, there is no trace of dialect, accent or
the use of wrong grammar to indicate that the protagonists are speaking in anything
but Chinese. In essence, Zhang has sinicized her Western characters. Yet there is still
referent to these people being “other.” Zhang Ailing tells her readers, in the
introduction to the story through the voices of a Chinese girl and her Irish friend, that
Chinese and Western girls differ in their knowledge of sex.
The majority of Chinese girls have known about it at an early age,
and so it is no longer mysterious. Our novels are more frank than
yours, and we have more opportunities to read these types of books
than you do.9 5
Despite the fa9ade that this is typical beauty/scholar romance, the tale emerges as
a story of destruction and death. Roger is depicted as the typical scholar. He is in
his forty, never been married and is a professor at the university. He is not a man of
wealth but is comfortable. He is a romantic who has fallen head over heels in love
with the beautiful Susie Mitchell.
9 4 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f A New Urban Culture in China, 1930-
1945, 327.
9 5 Ailing Zhang, “The Second Censer,” ibid., 89.
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His bride’s hair is flaxen blond, when you run your hand’s through
it, it is like wind blowing in through the desert, carrying fine grains
of golden sand... .He is a romantic fool9 6
In fact, Susie is portrayed as the picture perfect virgin and the idealized other. The
reader is led to believe that this beauty can do no wrong. She is beautiful, sweet,
considerate and chaste. If Susie is the ideal of goodness, then Roger becomes the
binary construction of evil as he is her predator out to corrupt the essence of that
goodness with his carnality.
This matrix of truth and falsehood create in Susie the inability to see truth, she
perceives things through her perception of love qua pure love, and not as knowledge
nor knowledge of human love. Susie’s mother, Mrs. Mitchell, keeps a tight reign on
her three daughters. She is overly careful so that nothing might contaminate the
purity of her girls. She even controls the material that they read. On Roger’s and
Susie’s wedding day, on the pretext of getting flowers for his future mother-in-law
and sisters-in-law, he finds his perfect bride in an emotional state. In a conversation
with Susie’s sister Millicent, he suspects that Millicent has been filling Susie’s mind
with doubts about marriage and wedded life. Roger argues that he is not like
Millicent’s husband who by Millicent’s account is a degenerate beast. He goes
further to state that Millicent’s husband is an exception to the male species.
“Sorry, M illicent, Could you repeat that.”
Millicent raised her head, opened wide her glazed empty blue-gray
eyes, seemingly mesmerized by the electric fan on the floor, began
to speak intermittently: “You love her....My husband also loved me,
but he he treated me... .the attitude with which he treated me, like
9 6 Ibid.,90.
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64
an animal.. .not as good as! He simply did not view me as a person,
because....he said it is because he loved m e...
Men... .they are all alike”
Q7
“In this point, you are wrong, men like your husband are very few.”
Roger is unnerved by what he has heard and hopes that Susie is not too disturbed by
all the fuss made by Millicent. All goes well for the wedding until the wedding night
when Roger begins to play the part of the attentive groom. At this juncture, the
story takes a sudden turn with Susie’s departure from the wedding chamber. Hiding
out all night in the students’ dormitory and her consistent babbling on of her
husband’s “perversities,” Susie brings public humiliation and subsequent scandal to
Roger. His inability to tarnish the image of his love, the object of his desire, Susie,
sends him into madness and eventually to his death by suicide.
Roger’s perceived “perfect’ Susie seeks refuge in the room of an inexperienced,
foreign student. She is dressed in a seductive nightgown, arousing the scholar at
study who is only rescued by the clamor of students who barge their way into the
room. Shocked to see the new bride and suspicious of the events, their tongues begin
to wag not without Susie’s fanning of the flame that her husband is a beast. The
reader is left to believe that Roger is indeed a cad as he does not even bother to run
after her or search her out. In fact he does nothing that night. Roger returns to the
room without his bride. This behavior would strike the reader as most odd and not
blame Susie for not wanting Roger back as is seen in the subsequent pages. Yet as
the plot further unfolds the reader discovers that Zhang has actually transformed the
9 7 Ailing Zhang, “The Second Censer” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press, 1995), 95.
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65
supposedly perfect virgin bride into a femme fatale or worse the physically attractive
female demon who brings about ruin.
Despite all her coyness and socially acceptable mannerisms, Susie like Millicent
before her, becomes the shrew who destroys first Roger’s career by perpetuating a
myth of male degeneracy. Then, like Millicent’s husband who is unable to fit into
proper, colonial society, Roger also commits suicide. In the story, Roger understands
that he is not a degenerate but human and that Susie like her sister are sexually
repressed. He is aware that Susie and her sister are incapable of sexual intimacy due
to ignorance and social propriety but he cannot stop desiring nor loving her. He is
trapped and is finally pulled into a web that leads to his death. By creating a
scenario that is completely “other”, Zhang deconstructs the world of the colonial
“other” as anything but idyllic and sabotages the image of virgin as perfect.
Susie is seen as the beautiful ghostly other whose unavailability saps her mate’s
strength or like a spider spirit who spins her web and feeds on her mate’s soul till he
dies. Thus it is Roger who has been sacrificed to maintain the image of the virgin
pure.
OR
At the same time, Roger’s incense slowly burnt down.
In writing about the trivial interplay between the sexes, Zhang creates a space
whereby she re-imagines roles of wom en who challenge traditional models. She re
fashions various women imbuing them with varied personalities within different
circumstances so that woman cannot be named nor defined. Zhang challenges and
9 8 Ibid., 125.
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66
deconstructs through these myriad voices a formal male structure that has kept and
maintained woman in the binary construction of virgin or vamp.
Zhang’s ordinary people offer not one definition of the feminine but rather a
spectrum of feeling and behavior that is woman. Zhang wrote in her much quoted
essay, “My Writing”
Things are even to the point of writing about trivial things between
men and women... .1 like simplicity and it is only through describing
the resourcefulness and ornamentation of contemporary people the
basis of the hidden simplicity... .It is just that I do not place falseness
and reality into stark contrast in my writing, yet I still use the method
of uneven contrast to show the reality in the emptiness...."
Zhang Ailing by her assault, revision, deconstruction and reconstruction of the
polar concepts of virgin and vamp, has for Gilbert and Guber “managed the
difficult task of achieving true literary female authority by simultaneously
conforming to and subverting patriarchal literary standards.”1 0 0
9 9 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton. Ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought, 439.
1 0 0 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Guber, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 73.
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Chapter Two: Sexual Politics: Masquerade and Mimicry
67
Recent scholarship offers several interpretations to the concept of patriarchy
dependent upon the theories used.1 Despite the various understandings, the concept
of patriarchy as a system that has one sex dominant over another remains crucial to
feminist, theory. The analysis of patriarchy and the construction of gender in early
modem China both by Western and Chinese scholars have often portrayed women as
subjects of oppression and victims. Kate Millet’s 1970 text, Sexual Politics, argues
that patriarchy constructs an ideology grounded in misogyny that oppresses women
both institutionally and in private. Her influential analysis unpacks patriarchy as a
balance of power that lie with men as they control women by enforcing on them a
binary system of female and male spheres where public power is often given to only
men. While Millet ignores the fact, as Cora Kaplan (1979) points out, that this
organized misogynist system is not always conscious or that women themselves do
not subconsciously accede to the system, it is nonetheless a powerful structure that
informs the way in which men and women function.
Toril Moi’s informative text, Sexual/Textual Politics, further expounds on the
subject of feminist theories, and on the subject of power and its location, and
1 Gayle Rubin argues that the sex-gender system is only one way o f speaking about patriarchy. Kate
Millet contends that patriarchy is independent of capitalism (that is, a sexual division o f labor) or
other modes o f production, while Shulamith Firestone argues that patriarchy is defined in terms of
men’s domination over women’s reproduction. Mary Daly argues that patriarchy is a prevailing
religion over the entire planet while Heidi Hartmann argues against a universal patriarchy, but insists
that patriarchy changes its intensity over time and culture.
2 Toril Moi, Sexual Textual Politics (New York: Routledge , 1985), 24-31.
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68
whether or not there can be a feminine form of power. The foundational works of
Foucault and Bourdieu, while different, offer theories on the interplay of power and
how women have managed to maneuver spaces within the power struggle dependent
on their personal skills and life stages. Bourdieu suggests that women often employ a
limited power by proxy that is nonetheless still real. He argues that women use this
power to scheme their way into the decision-making process by acceding to the
men’s illusion of their own masculine authority. Foucault describes his concept of
power as something not to be “acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds
on to or allows to slip away,” but rather that power is “exercised from innumerable
points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations.”4
Though more traditional studies and analysis depict Chinese women as
incapable of decision-making and devoid of any “actual” or “real power,”
contemporary readings of classical and modem Chinese literature and recent studies
on Chinese women have shown that Chinese women have indeed been able to carve
out for themselves a space of authority without direct challenge to the oppressive
structure.5 Western missionaries first highlighted the concept and belief that women
3 Pierre Bourdieu, The Outline o f a Theory o f Practice Trans., Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), 41.
4 Michel Foucault, The History o f Sexuality, Vol. 1, trans., Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books,
1980), 94.
5 M argery W olfe’s text, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (1972) presents a radical break
from the preconceived notions of a patriarchal controlled Confucian order. Her work demonstrates
how women wielded power though not always recognized by the existent order and how these women
were able to maneuver themselves into positions o f authority albeit limited authority. See also
Dorothy Ko’s introduction to her text Teacher’ s o f the Inner Chambers. Ko argues in her text that
gender and the possibility of resistance become relevant when argued against the May Fourth-New
Culture Legacy o f 1915-1927 that constructed and perpetuated woman as a national victim ravaged by
foreign powers and modernity.
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69
were pure victims of a highly oppressive society by interpreting bound feet, lack of
modem education and an absence of social identity as signs of a patriarchal system.
With the May Fourth Movement, the intelligentsia assigned to the uneducated, lower
class, mral Chinese women the constmction of a “ suffering woman” as a national
symbol of China as victim of both feudalism and Confucianism.6 The noted May
Fourth writer, Lu Xun, created the quintessential traditional Chinese female victim in
the New Year Sacrifice.
The heroine has no name and is known only in terms of her relationship to her
husband, she is called Xianglin’s wife [Xianglin Sao], She has no identity of her own
and is considered a commodity by her mother-in-law and sold into a second marriage
that ends in tragedy. Both her husband and her only son die and she is compelled by
her circumstances to return to her former master’s house in servitude. Portrayed and
perceived as impure, Xianglin’s wife is denied the right to prepare the food for the
New Year sacrifices. This is a right traditionally reserved for wives and widows yet
Xianglin’s wife is barred from the very activity that would give her a socially
acceptable identity. Xianglin’s wife becomes the perfect victim because she buys
into and believes the very ideology that imprisons her.
6 See Jinhua Emma Teng’s informative article, “The Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese
Woman’ in the Western Academy: A Critical Review” in Signs, Autumn 1996, 115-151. Teng traces
the construction o f woman as victim and the discourse that follows from the late Qing to the
1990s.
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70
She, in short, does not blame the structures but herself for her misfortunes.7 Lu
Xun’s famous tale describes the horrific victimization of women in a patriarchal,
feudal China and lends itself well to the construction of woman as a symbol of
national victim that is oppressed by feudal Chinese structures. This representation of
women can also be seen in the works of Xiao Hong. Howard Goldblatt who
translated some of Xiao Hong’s stories states: “in thematic terms, Xiao Hong
generally deals with the plight of women from the deprived classes; her stories are
o
almost invariably tragic and do not offer much hope for change.” Xiao Hong’s
stories, much like Lu Xun’s New Year Sacrifice, depict women as victims of an
oppressive feudal past.9 It is easy therefore to imagine how this identification of
women as victims becomes adopted as a national symbol for a ravaged and
feminized China at the beginning of the twentieth century. Rey Chow states that if
“feminine self-sacrifice was the major support of traditional Chinese culture, it is not
surprising that, during a period of massive social transformation, the collapse of
tradition would find its most moving representations in the figures of those who are
traditionally the most oppressed, figures that become the ‘stand-ins’ for China’s
7 Lu Xun, “ The New Year Sacrifice” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C.T. Hsia and Leo Ou-fan Lee eds.,
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 17-
27. For consistency in the chapter, the pinyin system is m aintained for the nam e o f the protagonist,
Hsiang lin’s wife.
8 Howard Goldblatt, ed., Chinese Literature for the 1980s: The Fourth Congress o f Writers and
Artists (Armonk, New York: M. E Sharpe, Inc., 1982), 2.
9 For further insights on Chinese women, body and national discourse in Xiao Hong’s text, see
Lydia Liu’s “The Female Body and the Nationalist Discourse: Manchuria in Xiao Hong’s Field of
Life and Death” in Tani Barlow and Angela Zito, eds., Body, Subject and Power in China
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 157-177.
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71
traumatized self-consciousness in every sense of the phrase. In this way, ‘woman’
does not simply amount to a new type of literary content but, more so, to a new
agency, a dialectic of resistance-in-givenness that is constitutive of modernity in a
non-Westem, but Westernized context.”1 0
This victim concept of Chinese women has been perpetuated not only by
the May Fourth writers and scholars but also by Western scholarship on Third World
women. Chandra Mohanty points out that the prevalent discourse on “woman” as
victim is part of an ethnocentric feminist discourse that holds that Western women
are more liberated and more in control of their lives. Mohanty argues that this
discourse is based on several false assumptions of the homogeneous experience of
women across cultures, the universality of patriarchy and the tension created
between tradition and modernity.1 1 Spivak (1981) also argues that these very
proponents of a feminist theory suffer from their own bias of colonialism and
historical context from which they draw their references. Simultaneous to the
construction and perpetuation of the woman as victim was the literary re-imaging of
a new modem Chinese woman as “the Girl Student”, the May Fourth development of
Ibsens’s “Nora” and the later Chinese communist construction of the “White-haired
girl comrade.” These new images offered young women the hope of better
educational opportunities and were perceived by many wom en to be free to make
1 0 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 170.
1 1 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,”
in Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women and the Politics o f Feminism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 74.
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72
choices for themselves, even if it was to serve the state as in the case of the “White-
haired Girl.”
Notwithstanding, there were other images such as Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie.
This protagonist is in sharp contrast to the self-effacing victim, the national symbol
or the promise of a better life. Ding Ling brings her female protagonist’s sexual
desires to the fore, breaking the taboo on the culturally imposed purity of heroines.
Though Ding Ling hints to the readers of an unknown freedom for Sophie, she
remains imprisoned within the confines of a male dominated realm. At the onset of
the story, Sophie’s self-references reveal that she is still confined or restricted as is
seen in the imagery of Sophie being “wrapped in a quilt.” Rey Chow offers an
interesting and insightful reading of this text. Chow sees Sophie’s condition in terms
of her sexual desires and her confinement to the ways in which she can act. Chow
states:
Sophie’s attraction to Ling Jishi provides us with the basic structure
of her mental paralysis and sickness. If the sexual frustrations of the
protagonist in Yu Dafu’s ‘Sinking’ cannot be separated from his sense
of impotence as a Chinese man vis-a-vis the world, the sexual frustrations
of Sophie cannot be separated from her social position as a Chinese woman
who is bound by centuries of sexual etiquette. There is, unlike in ‘Sinking,’
no means for idealization in the form of a bigger, more important figure
like ‘China’ onto which Sophie can displace her frustrations...1 2
Ding Ling’s critics did not perceive Sophie as a national symbol but rather as a
woman struggling with the collapse of traditional values and the promises of a new
1 2 Rey Chow, Women and Chinese Modernity, 165.
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73
era. Sophie is seen as a woman frustrated by the centuries of chains placed upon
her.1 3
Manipulating Patriarchy and its Phallic Symbol
Zhang paints her characters sometimes against the backdrop of a feudal past,
sometimes within the context of the modem. She imbues her characters with the
turmoil of a world that are never quite liberated by the promise of the new dawn nor
are they ever fully stripped of their old social customs. Zhang argues against the
concept of victim as a gendered determinate and demonstrates this through her
portrayal of male protagonists who fall victim to the same patriarchal structure.1 4
With the exception of Qiqiao in the novella, The Golden Cangue, Zhang’s
protagonists, male and female, weave through life positioning themselves at times as
victor and at times as victims. The clearest representation of this can be seen in her
short story, The Second Censer. The story unfolds around the upcoming wedding
of two British expatriates living in the British colony of Hong Kong. These
characters are clearly freed from the feudal restraints of a Confucian ideology but
Roger, the male protagonist, is clearly a prisoner and victim of a patriarchal system
1 3 Compare this to Qiqiao’s golden cangue which is used to not only imprison but to destroy those
around her. See Shirley J. Paolini and Chen-shen Yen , “Moon, Madness and Mutilation in Eileen
Chang’s English Translation of The Golden Cangue,” Tamkang Review, Vo. XIX, nos 1,2,3,4: 554-
555.
1 4 Edward Gunn’s early analysis on Zhang Ailing’s text serves as a springboard for the following
reading of Zhang’s works as a voice that debunks the myths of patriarchy.
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74
that determines his relationship with Susie. In this instance, Susie becomes for Roger
the position of power, the seat of authority and the embodiment of a patriarchy that
sends him spiraling down the depths of despair and death. As seen in the previous
chapter, Roger’s illusion of his perfect bride is shattered by the reality that he has
married a hysterical and frigid woman-child. This is evidenced by Susie’s panic
attack on what should have been a perfectly normal wedding night. Her insistence
that Roger’s “natural desire” is a perverse act and the spread of that “reality” among
his colleagues within the academic community lead to Roger being socially
ostracized. The slow and neat destruction of Roger’s world occurs because Roger is
unable or unwilling to extricate himself from the very social structures that
eventually propel him toward suicide.1 5 Roger, if he were to expose Susie , would in
effect expose the patriarchy for what it is a malevolent enemy and not what he
supposed it to be, the benevolent ally. Gunn suggests that Roger is socially
perceived as an embarrassment or as a threat to the British Order where
order is the over riding concern of the British establishment. Tragedy is
precluded by Roger’s inability to conceive of himself apart from that order.
Thus, in his inability to escape or even to attempt to escape, Roger becomes
a pathetic victim.”1 6
A further example of the male caught as a victim within the system is found in
the male protagonist in the story, “Red Rose, White Rose.” The male protagonist,
1 5 Roger’s patriarchy includes physical and psychical power over an other. It is also as Stephen Kerns
suggests a power “over one’s own habits and meanings....Deficiencies in the exercise of the will to
put one under the power of others.” Stephen Kern, The Culture o f Love (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 218-219.
1 6 Edward Gunn, Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai andPekingl937-1945, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 207-208.
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Zhenbao, is presented as a virtuoso of social conventions. By all public appearances
he is a successful man who has attained social respectability. His imprisonment
occurs because he is unable to relate to the reality of women outside of
his binary construct of women as red roses or white roses. Zhenbao reduces women
to objects of desire: the red rose representing the illicit, passionate, sexual
relationships that he desires and the white rose is the woman of purity, asexual, and
socially acceptable as wife and mother. Zhenbao’s sexual dalliances with a variety of
women only confound his situation where his sense of order is threatened.
The opening scene of Zhenbao with the Parisian prostitute is the first suggestion
that Zhenbao’s world order is being threatened when he gazes into the reflection of
the prostitute in a mirror. Her reflection brought Zhenbao into an illusory world in
which he willingly participates although he feels shame.
Though he had paid for her time, she did not belong to him and it
was the most shameful of experiences. Yet there is one detail he
had been unable to displace. It was as she was dressing again,
slipping her clothes over her head. Halfway dressed, her clothes
piled disorderly around her shoulders, it seemed as though she
thought of something, and paused momentarily. In that instance,
he saw her in the mirror. Her abundant, disheveled blond hair,
pulled tight against her dress, revealing a long, thin face. Her
eyes were blue and for that moment these spots of blue blended
into the green make-up under her eyes, and the eyeballs themselves
turned into transparent glass balls. It was a severe, cold, and
masculine face, the face o f an ancient warrior. Zhenbao’s nerves
1 n
were jolted.
1 7 Ailing Zhang, “Red Rose, White Rose” in Ailing Zhang’s City Toppled by Love (Taipei: Crown
Press, 1991), 55. Translations here are my own and the italicized section is done for emphasis.
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The gaze in the mirror reflects back not the face of his sexual “other” but rather the
image of a patriarchal past dressed in the guise of a warrior that now threatens his
world order. He is threatened precisely because he is unable to possess the object for
which he has paid and his masculine inabilities are revealed in that he is the one
possessed albeit temporarily. He admits to the fact that he is unable to displace the
memory of the prostitute who turns into the ancient warrior. He cannot differentiate
the image in the mirror from his own reality.
Frightened by his own image of sexual desires and social propriety, conflict
arises within Zhenbao. As a consequence, he turns his attention towards more
desirable objects of affection in the hope of reinstating himself in his world order.
The promiscuous Chinese girl studying overseas, his friend’s wife with whom he
embarks on an affair, even his seeming frigid and asexual wife leave Zhenbao less
sure of his own identity within his own tightly defined social structure and binary
constructs of women.
His world finally crumples when he realizes that his mistress no longer desires
him and the expected norms of behavior are reversed. It was he who cried at their
final encounter and not the mistress. Zhenbao’s order further disintegrates when he is
caught in the dilemma of knowing that his wife, Yinli, was having an affair with the
tailor and his inability to articulate that affair. His seem ingly indifferent w ife, his
white rose, is in effect another person’s red rose.
He walked toward the living room, his heart beating excitedly,
there was a strange premonition. Placed his hand on the doorknob,
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he opened the door, Yinli was in the living room, there was also a
tailor, standing by the sofa. All is familiar, Zhenbao relaxes his guard,
not knowing why he suddenly became guarded again, he felt nervous,
there was no other reason. The reason had to be that the room’s two
other individuals felt nervous Zhenbao, himself, is above the rest,
• 1 8
looking down on this pair of inexperienced adulterers.
Zhenbao is shocked that his wife would have chosen a tailor to be her lover.
Confounded by the realities assaulting his world, Zhenbao leaves his wife—the
symbol of his secure world. Yet Zhenbao assumes no responsibility for his actions.
He sees nothing wrong in his own adulterous behavior nor in his lack of love for his
wife; he simply lays blame on his wife, who is after all supposed to remain the white
rose of his world order.
I did not treat her badly! I don’t love her but there is really no area
in which I have offended her. It cannot be said that I have treated
her badly. Slut, probably knew that she was no good, so found it
necessary to find someone even lower than herself, to comfort herself.
But I treated her so well, so well— 1 9
Zhenbao leaves his wife, believing perhaps that her social order would fall apart
at least within his social circles. However, Yinli undergoes a metamorphosis and
maneuvers a space of power for herself, a space defined by the male order in the
abandoned, blameless wife. She is not seen as the adulteress but rather as the victim
and in need of care, concern and understanding.
Yinli, at this time, changed into a woman of courage, though fast
approaching thirty, suddenly grew up. Her speech was more fluent
and convincing, slickly she informed Mr. Liu, complaining and crying:
“How can this go on! In truth he wants my life—the whole family old and
1 8 Ailing Zhang, “Red Rose, White Rose” in Ailing Zhang’s A City Toppled by Love (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press, 1996), 92.
1 9 Ibid., 93.
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young are dependent on him. If he continues on this way, the job
in the factory will also be lost.. .he is seemingly mad. He does not
come home, and when he does, he hits people and breaks things.
He was not like this in the past! Mr. Liu you must help me with a
solution, help me with a solution. How am I to go on?”
Yinlin, now in an instant, had self-esteem, a place in society,
compassion and friendship.2 0
To his surprise, Zhenbao returns to find his wife quite capable of managing on
her own. His world is turned upside down and his only recourse is to enter more
stolidly into his self-made compartment.
On the second day, getting out of bed, Zhenbao started anew and
became a good person again 2 1
Zhenbao cannot escape the constructs of woman that he has imagined. These women
occupy the phallic position as points of power as they have control over his life and
he bounces from one to the other. In fact, Zhang Ailing’s detailed description in the
final scenes suggests that she perceived the women in Zhenbao’s life as ghostly
images. The wife’s slippers left casually by the bed in a state of disorder imply that
the slippers are used but there is no presence of a person 2 2 This might be an echo of
an earlier tradition where female spirits threaten, drain and destroy the man of this
world in the bedchamber. The presence felt, even if not seen, intimidates but never
actually confronts the characters.
2 0 Ibid.,96-97.
2 1 Ibid., 97.
2 2 Ibid., 97.
2 3 Edward Gunn, Unwelcome Muse, 212.
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Finally, this false concept of a patriarchal structure that makes women its only
victim and phallocentrism the sole domain of the masculine order is again challenged
in Zhang’s only short story originally written in English.
In “Stale Mates,” Zhang plays with the ironic and illusive concept of love. She
sets her stage with the subtitle, “A Short Story set in the Time When Love Came to
China.” 2 4 Unlike the romance novels of her period, Zhang deconstructs masculine
and feminine desires and attitudes towards marriage within a changing Chinese
system. Zhang sets the mood by creating a scenario of young love and promises of
romantic interludes.
The four had been meeting almost daily for more than a year. They
would go out on the lake, have dinner at one of the restaurants along
the shore, and go boating again if there was a moon. Somebody would
read Shelly aloud and the girls held hands with each other when they
felt moved.
The irony in the story is that these men are already married (practically everybody
• 0f\
was married and had children before ever hearing of love) but the concept of love
was so new and alluring that as Zhang puts it: “ a little of it went a long way.”
Zhang’ characters are quickly seduced by the romantic notions of personal choice
and desire within a system that offers neither freedom to choose nor the freedom to
desire. When Lo, one of the male protagonists promises to divorce his “traditional”
2 4 The Chinese title refers to the things not spoken about by or in the May Fourth Movement. The
illusive promise of freedom in love and in choosing one’s mate was not without its promise in this
time o f transition for China.
2 5 Zhang Ailing, “Stale Mates” in Zhang Ailing, Sequel (xuji) (Taipei: Crown Press, 1993), 251.
2 6 Ibid., 251.
2 7 Ibid., 252.
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wife and comes back for the more “modem” Miss Fan, the reader becomes acutely
aware of the social prison in which Lo finds himself.
Lo is a man caught between tradition and modernity. His divorce from his wife
can therefore be read as an allegory for his break from tradition and like the divorce,
neither is speedy nor painless. Lo’s first wife refuses to divorce him on the grounds
that she has not broken any of the seven rules. His mother and his wife’s family is
much against the divorce but his mother finally relents as she suspects the daughter-
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in-law of wishing for her death. It was commonly accepted that a daughter-in-law
could not be put out once she had worn the mourning garments for her parents-in-
law.2 9 As a result, the mother-in-law swore that
she would see the younger woman out of the house vertically before
she made her exit horizontally.3 0
Six years pass and Miss Fan is soon pressured into an engagement with another.
On hearing the news, Lo, too proud to return to his first wife, marries a Miss Wong
whom he does not love. Miss Fan’s marriage proposal falls apart and she once again
sets her sights on Lo and plays his ideal woman to the hilt. Realizing that time has
taken its toll on her beauty, she plays into “all his moods without being
monotonously pliant. She read all the books that he gave her and was devoted to
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Shelley.” Lo, caught in his choice and earlier decision to marry Miss. Fan, proceeds
to divorce his second wife and five years later marries her. Miss Fan has in effect
2 8 Ibid., 257.
2 9 Ibid., 256.
3 0 Ibid., 257.
3 1 Ibid., 263.
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waited over a decade for this marriage of love. Yet Lo’s two divorces leave him in
much humbler circumstances and his bride’s demands on him leave him
disillusioned of the promise of love and romance. Traditional values and facades of
respectability create a pressure cooker that eventually cripple Lo and keep him a
prisoner in a cell now owned by three women. Miss Wong returns to Lo under the
guise of respectability without knowledge of Miss Fan where they were “understood
to be of equal status.”3 2 Lo’s first wife is returned to the household under the pretext
that it was only fair as he had taken back Miss Wong. After the divorces, the two
earlier wives were wealthier than Lo but neither tried to assist him in any way. He is
completely disheartened by his circumstances but especially by the taunts of Miss.
Fan whom he had married out of love. By all outward appearances Lo is surely the
-IT
victor, he had after all, every man’s dream, three women! Zhang’s final scene is
revealing:
And now he had lived down the scandal and ridicule, people envied
him his yeng fu, glamorous blessings—extraordinary in an age that
was at least nominally monogamous, for it was already 1936— living
with three wives in a rose-covered little house by the lake. On the rare
occasions when he tried to tell somebody he was unhappy, the listener
would guffaw. “Anyway,” the friend would say, “there are four of you—
just right for a nice game of mah-jongg.”3 4
3 2 Ibid., 266.
3 3 “A man could have only one legal wife. However, he might take as many concubines as he
wished or he could afford. Concubinage was, therefore, frequent among the well-to-do. It seems to
have been most common in the families of merchants.” Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Chinese:Their
History and Culture (New York: Macmillan Company, 1964), 570.
3 4 Op.cit, 266-267.
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Zhang reconstructs the concept of patriarchy as an imprisonment to both sexes.
She does not deny the authority of patriarchy and Confucian ideology that have
informed and enforced models of gender behavior, rather she effectively
demonstrates Foucault’s “matrices of transformation” which show how both sexes
are caught in their own confinements of gender-defined behavior and how men and
women need to manipulate their positions to jockey for power.
Reconfiguring Sexual/Social Exchanges
It is against the universal understanding that women are the only victims of
patriarchy, against the homogeneity of all women as being oppressed by social
structures that Zhang Ailing writes. She contests the colonial attitude that suggests
that third world women are somehow less able to achieve and maintain authority.
She argues against both the notion that westernization is the key to a brighter future
and the concept of women as national symbols. Rather Zhang’s stories reveal a
milieu where the struggle for power is between individuals caught within a system
that defines their way of acting. If as Millet suggests that patriarchy encodes gender
behavior and determines the loci of power, then Zhang shows how women maneuver
their way through these configurations via the use o f masquerade and/or mimicry.
Butler’s reading of Lacan suggests that masquerade is part of the feminine
acquiescence to power interplay as women must appear to be or to have the phallus,
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that is to accede to playing a part or role demanded or expected of them. The concept
of the masquerade can take on different nuances as is used by individual scholars.
The underlying principal appears to be that masquerade is an illusory concept of
femininity which arises from the woman’s awareness of the man’s desire for her and
that she exists solely as the reflected object of male desire. Butler points out that
masquerade, consequently, is a two edged sword that allows women to experience
desire as a man situates her, while preventing her from experiencing it on her own
right.3 5 Irigaray suggests that the concept of femininity is an image imposed upon
women by a masculine system of representations from which a woman cannot
escape.
In this masquerade of femininity, the woman loses herself, and loses herself
by playing on her femininity. The fact remains that this masquerade requires an
effort on her part for which she is not compensated. Unless for a woman, her
pleasure comes simply from being chosen as an object of consumption or of being an
object of desire by the masculine “subjects.” Moreover, how can she do otherwise
'1 C
without being “out of circulation.” If masquerade is, as Riviere suggests in her
much cited text, a tactic of aggression and conflict resolution and that there is no
difference between the masquerade and femininity, then with what is woman left?3 7
Would this therefore imply that for as long as a woman dons the mask o f femininity
3 5 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990),47.
3 6 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, Catherine Porter, trans., (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1985), 84.
3 7 Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as Masquerade” in Formations o f Fantasy, eds. Victor Burgin, James
Donald and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986), 38.
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as constructed by a male order she surrenders her own identity and agenda? If the
woman is aware that she is participating in the masculine delusion and uses it to her
advantage, does she not in effect reconstruct the arena of sexual interplay?
Irigaray’s works are a little more insightful. She makes a distinction between the
awareness of the positioning of one’s femininity as the masquerade and the tactic
that is used as mimicry. Irigaray suggests that mimicry is a deliberate assuming of a
feminine style and posture dictated by male desire to undermine and uncover the
mechanisms that exploit woman. Irigaray contends that masquerade and mimicry can
be sites of power where women play assigned and designed feminine roles and do so
to manipulate male desire without articulating their own feminine desires which
would be perceived as threatening to the male order.3 8 Women therefore seduce and
flirt with their male counterparts to subvert the concept of women as being mere
“commodity-objects.” Irigaray argues that it is precisely in respect to the exchange
dynamic that women are able to contest the phallic order. For what would happen if
the “exploitation of body-matter of women” ceased? What modification would this
process, this society, undergo, if women, who had been only objects of consumption
or exchange, or necessarily aphasic, were to become ‘speaking subjects’ as well?
What happens to women then when they cease to be compliant with the masculine,
or more precisely the phallocratic “m odel.”
3 8 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, 76-77.
3 9 Ibid., 85.
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Zhang Ailing’s stories such as The Golden Cangue, The City Toppled by
Love, Crystal Tiles, The First Censer, and Withered Flower all contain female
characters that thwart the male order by mimicking the roles of daughters, wives, and
mothers that are assigned to them. Zhang demonstrates in her stories how her female
protagonists undercut the very fabric of Confucian garb that demands of women an
obedient and subservient posture. Both the Confucian and patriarchal model
functions so that the organization and monopolization of private property is to the
benefit of the head of the family: the father. It is his family name that his wife and
children bear. His family name is his mark of ownership of his wife and children.
This therefore demands monogamy from the wife and chastity from the widow. The
social structures therefore require a preference for sons who provide descendants to
carry on the family name over daughters who would be perceived as mere
commodities to ensure the prosperity or social and economic security of the family.
In the short story, Crystal Tiles, Zhang Ailing introduces her readers to Mr.
Yao and his large family. There is no concealment of the irony in which Zhang plays
with the social expectations on Mr. Yao and his prolific wife. The story begins with
the following:
Mr. Yao has a very fertile wife, giving birth to all girls. Relatives
and friend were the source of the expression: giving birth to daughters
is as giving birth to jade.4 0
While Mr. Yao and his wife may have yearned for a son, they ended up with
seven daughters. The only consolation for the Yao family is that all his daughters
4 0 Ailing Zhang, “Crystal Tiles” in Zhang Ailing, The First Censer (Taipei; Crown Press, 1991) 128.
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are beautiful.4 1 Zhang here carefully articulates that the concept of beauty is time and
culturally constructed by the “phallic order.” She states:
Strangely, when classical beauty was socially popular, Mrs. Yao’s
daughter was bom with the goose egg shaped face. When the goose
egg shaped face was passe, and the melon seed face was in vogue,
Mrs. Yao’s second child possessed just that. When appreciation for
the Western large eyes and long eyelashes entered Chinese soil,
Mrs. Yao with a loyal and fastidious brush constructed that beauty,
without losing its form.4 2
Mr. Yao’s daughter, Jing jing, is perceived as a commodity of sexual exchange
for the advancement of his own economic and social position.4 3 He selects a spouse
for his eldest daughter under much protest from her as the intended beau is perceived
to be far inferior by his own daughter’s standards. The groom-to-be is however the
son of Mr. Yao’s boss. The oldest daughter, Jing jing, compelled by the Confucian
dictate to be obedient to the father’s wishes, accedes to the parental authority to
marry a man for whom she has no affection.4 4 She adopts the masquerade of the
obedient daughter, using this feminine wile because she fears “the retributive
consequences of taking on the public appearances of masculinity.”4 5 In this context,
Jing jing fears being perceived as independent (a commonly accepted masculine
trait) and perhaps, damage her own options for any other marriage. The patriarch
4 1 Zhang Ailing in the story states in the second paragraph that daughters are a burden to the family, as
daughters require dowries but beautiful daughters are exceptions to this. “Crystal Tiles,” 128.
4 2 Ibid., 128.
4 3 Luce Irigaray states that women are products, merchandise, commodities used by men in which
they do not take part as subjects. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One(Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1985) 84.
4 4 Confucianism extolled “Filial Piety” as one of the cardinal virtues. While it included much more
than the family, loyalty and obedience to one’s parents was part of its essence.
4 5 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 51.
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assures her that if there is an iota of dissatisfaction with the marriage she can return
to him for recourse.4 6
Jing jing, confronted by her husband that she married to advance her father’s
career denies that she is so traditional or so “filial that she need sell her body to bury
her father.”4 7 To attest to her own choice, a sign of modernity, she needs deliberately
to frustrate her father’s plans for advancement. Clearly, Jing jing is also moving
along Foucault’s “matrices of transformation.” On the one hand, she accedes to her
father’s wishes and denies her own feminine desire, yet not losing a maneuverable
space. When she renounces the role of a filial daughter for that of a loving wife, Jing
jing enters into a different sexual and social exchange, now with her new husband.
Jing jing’s identity is still perceived through the identities of the men in her life. This
is a sign that Jing jing must manipulate her ground within a rigid patriarchal
structure. Irigarary holds that “the ‘feminine’ is never identified except by and for
the masculine.” Here Zhang has her character positioned between two masculine
representations, that of daughter and wife.
When Jing jing moves into the new posture of wife, she mimics the role of lover
and assures her husband that he is the reason for her entering into the union. Zhang’s
use of masquerade and mimicking of the feminine role as divisionary tactics for Jing
jing is not without its playful flirtations. Her husband entrapped by her coy manner
and his inflated ego is now more than happy to do her bidding.4 9 Mr. Yao’s
4 6 Ailing Zhang, “Crystal Tiles,” 129.
4 7 Ibid., 131.
4 8 Luce Irigary, This Sex Which Is Not One, 85.
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ambitions to achieve greater success fail because of his daughter’s new role in life
and the need to preserve the belief that she married for love or at least out of
affection for her husband. In short, the very marriage that Mr.Yao had painstakingly
taken to ensure his employment opportunities, backfires primarily because Jing
jing’s role has changed from the masquerade of traditional filial daughter to the
mimicry of a “modem” loving wife.5 0
The frustrated father sets his eyes on the marriage of his second daughter, Ququ,
who totally disregards his choice of a husband and marries a man of her own
choosing. The daughter’s reluctance to enter into the patriarchal structure and her
adamant refusal to don the mask put her outside the familial realm lest she
contaminate her younger sisters. Ququ confronts the “Paternal Law” and throws in
her father’s face the consequences of the previous marriage arrangement that has
failed in his estimation.5 1 This direct affront that Ququ refuses to participate in the
sexual/ social exchange as a commodity to better her family renders her voiceless
and she is not seen again in the text. Zhang Ailing leads the reader to believe that
Ququ has chosen the path of love for a poorer man. The text is unclear if Mr. Yao is
affected by social conventions or by the love for his daughter that he provides a
home for her. Perhaps for Mr. Yao the matter is still one of control. Mr. Yao, the
symbol of the Phallic Order, is still able to exercise some authority over the
4 9 Ailing Zhang, “Crystal Tiles,” 131-132.
5 0 Bourdieu states that women often exercised real power in matrimonial matters on the condition
that the appearance of power, that is, the official sign of it remained with men. See Outline, 41.
5 1 Ailing Zhang, “Crystal Tiles,” 133-136.
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livelihood of his second daughter. Mr. Yao then sets his eyes on his third daughter
who by all appearances is more malleable than Ququ. Yet here again, his plans run
afoul. In the end, though the story reveals the impotence of the father or the paternal
law to control the lives of his daughters.
Jing jing returns home when she discovers that her husband is having an affair
and expects her father to take care of her and to solve the problem. Jing jing plays
out her role as dependent daughter until she can return to her husband. Surprisingly,
it is the father who becomes illuminated when he discovers that the very women he
has used as means of exchange in effect control his life. In the end:
Mrs. Yao’s stomach grew large again, and again it was a girl. The
relatives all said: “Came at the right time, next year Mr. Yao will
be fifty, just right to put together eight fairies for longevity.5 2
The masquerade of femininity and the mimicry of assigned roles are not limited
to that of daughters and wives but also cover the encoded behavior of widows and
virgins. In Zhang Ailing’s most famous and most discussed novella, The Golden
Cangue, Qiqiao masquerades as the helpless widow to subvert the patriarchal clan
that would deny her rights to her husband’s share of the property. Zhang carefully
illustrates how Qiqiao is made aware of the male elders’ desire to oust her from the
clan and her quick ability to manipulate the males in the household to her favor.
Qiqiao masquerades and m im ics the chaste and suffering widow. The scene begins
5 2 Ibid., 142.
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with the description of Qiqiao’s widowhood and filial piety toward her in-laws.
What follows is the statement:
Today was the focal point of all her imaginings since she had
married into the house of Chiang. All these years she had worn
the golden cangue but never even got to gnaw at the edge of gold.
It would be different from now on.5 3
From the above passage, the reader is made acutely aware of Qiqiao’s desires for
some kind of perceived freedom from her gilded cage. Qiqiao faces the council of
elders armed with the Confucian dictate to care for the widow and the orphan.
Playing her part to perfection, she as widow and her fatherless children are taken
care of, even though certain advantages were taken by the elders to preserve the
family name.5 4 Qiqiao moves from one point of power to another by
donning different masks through her life cycle. The minute Qiqiao subscribes to the
masculine power and becomes the dowager figure, she ceases to masquerade the
helpless female. Qiqiao though enters into destructive behavior as she moves from
Dowager to the phallic mother.
In the City Toppled by Love, Bai Liusu is a divorcee who becomes a widow.
Unlike Qiqiao, Liusu manipulates her way through a system in a different time and
space. Consequently, the way in which she must masquerade as the widow differs.
Liusu is positioned again as a commodity for sexual/social exchange. She is
perceived as a burden to her family and efforts are made to deliver her into a suitable
5 3 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C. T. Hsia and Leo Ou Fan Lee, eds.,
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1914-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),
540.
5 4 Ibid., 542.
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marriage. Liusu aware that her marriage marketability fares lower than the other
eligible women in the clan, proceeds to masquerade as friend to the women in the
household so that she can ingratiate herself into a more favorable position, then she
mimics the ideal “girlfriend” for the wealthy, Western educated Fan. In the former
scenario, Liusu first must ensure that she gets an invitation to meet with Fan.
Baoluo, Fan’s intended blind date, is made aware in a round-about way of the
intricacies and intrigues brewing in the family among the younger women.
Determined to undermine the plans of Fourth Mistress and her daughters, Baoluo
insists that Liusu accompany her on the date. Liusu, thus, must masquerade as
Baoluo’s friend and confidante when she is actually planning to usurp Baoluo’s
position. At the meeting with Fan, Liusu plays the coy Chinese girl who is capable of
Western dancing. This interesting blend of Chinese and Western, of the traditional
and the modem intrigues Fan. Liusu mimics Fan’s ideal and draws him into her web
but he manages to stay untangled for most part of the story. The dance of
masquerade and mimicry in this tale shifts back and forth as Liusu tries on different
models and re-invents herself for Fan. While Liusu desires marriage, she accepts the
role of mistress and keeps Fan happy while denying her own desire. Despite Liusu’s
conniving and manipulations, it is circumstances beyond her control that compel Fan
to marry her. She had achieved her desire and now her masquerade could come to an
end.
Fan did not try and tease her anymore, saving all his dark talk for
other women. This was good, something to celebrate, since it meant
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that he took her as his family—his real, official wife—but Liusu was
still somewhat saddened by it.5 5
Liusu plays with mimesis as articulated by Irigaray but becomes absorbed into the
masculine discourse of wife. Once absorbed, Liusu stops reversing the phallic order
and now perpetuates the masculine discourse that prevents her from seeking a free
flowing identity apart from being a wife: a male possession of the symbolic order.
In The First Censer, the female protagonist, Ge Weilong gives the appearance of
a naive schoolgirl determined to stay in Hong Kong to complete her studies. Her
family is incapable of supporting her, nor does Weilong have the ability to maintain
her own lifestyle. Consequently, she turns to her aunt who has been disowned
because of her opportunistic life choices. Her desire to stay in Hong Kong compels
her to lie to her father about her funding and to seek refuge with her aunt. Zhang
Ailing intends for the reader to perceive Weilong as an innocent ingenue. Yet a
closer examination of the text reveals that Weilong is aware of her surroundings and
that she is masquerading as the innocent. She is not naive about her circumstances
but opts to stay because she is enslaved to the luxuries of her new lifestyle. Weilong
is one of Zhang’s more interesting characters as she is positioned between a male
protagonist, the Eurasian playboy George, and her aunt, both of whom do not
promise “love” but a semblance of happiness. If Irigaray is correct in saying that
“woman” does not find definition without the “masculine order,” then the role of the
aunt, Mrs. Liang, becomes pivotal. Mrs. Liang runs an establishment of pleasure and
5 5 Ailing Zhang, “A City Toppled by Love” in Renditions, 92.
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clearly sees Weilong as a commodity of exchange. Mrs. Liang, therefore, represents
the “masculine order” that uses Weilong to enhance the prospects of Mrs. Liang’s
physical pleasure and economic gains. In the case of the latter, Weilong’s youth and
beauty are deployed to ensure that a former client would continue to ply gifts on the
establishment. In the former instance, Weilong is used to procure the company of a
young Christian gentleman in Weilong’s choir for Mrs. Liang’s personal enjoyment.
Mrs. Liang’s role is constantly looming in the background. Weilong’s actions or
reactions are in continual response to Mrs. Liang’s machinations.
Weilong, aware of her aunt’s web and intrigue, seeks to disentangle herself from
her aunt’s lure. She does this by first masquerading as an unwilling victim, the virgin
sacrifice in her aunt’s ploys, hoping that the aunt, a woman herself, will see her as
family and not as a commodity. She mimics the grateful niece but to no avail, so she
plots to be a predator out to ensnare George, a former lover of her aunt. She plays the
ingenue not only for her aunt, and for George but also for the reader. In the text,
Weilong finds herself caught in a social and sexual web from which she finds
difficulty extricating herself. She can choose to succumb to the ploy of her aunt to
keep company with an old client or she can seduce George to even the score with her
aunt and perhaps to assure herself of better options for her life. Having decided to
ensnare George, she feels betrayed by his dalliances with one of her aunt’s “m aids.”
Weilong’s masquerade now over, no longer the innocent, nor George’s betrothed,
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she enters into hysteria.5 6 She enters into the masculine discourse to attempt to
articulate a new space for her. Noteworthy is the response of Mrs. Liang who sees
the outburst as a source of “ public scandal.” This indignity is seen as a threat to the
“organization and monopolization”5 7 of Mrs. Liang who represents the masculine
order. Consequently, she must reinstate Weilong by convincing George now to
marry her, thus placing her back into the masculine discourse. Weilong accedes to
the proposal of marriage as the perceived and socially acceptable security, the
promise of happiness but not of love. In accepting George’s proposal, Weilong loses
both happiness and love for they are intricately linked to her identity and self.
Weilong, believing herself to be educated and thus able to make life-decisions for
herself, perceives happiness in terms of the modem concept of being in love and in
being loved. Yet in marrying George, she gives up the concept of loving and being
loved, she agrees to a marriage of convenience and social acceptability.
Weilong is not blind that it is by her choice that she has succumbed to the
phallocratic order. Zhang ends the scene with the two leaving the Wanchai area, a
place in Hong Kong notorious for its lower-end prostitutes. As George drives
Weilong away, he says jokingly:
5 6 Juliet Mitchell states that “ hysteria is the woman’s simultaneous acceptance and refusal of the
organization o f sexuality under patriarchal capitalism. It is simultaneously what a woman can do both
to be feminine and to refuse femininity within patriarchal discourse.” Juliet Mitchell, ‘Femininity,
Narrative and Psychoanalysis’ Women the Longest Revolution” in Mary Eagleton, ed., Feminist
Literary Theory (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.,1996), 155.
5 7 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, 83.
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What did those drunken mudfish take you for? Weilong replied:
After all, what is the difference between myself and those girls?
George, with one hand steered the car, with the other covered her
mouth, saying;
No more nonsense ...
Weilong, smiling, apologized: Fine, fine, I admit I said something
wrong. How can one say there is no difference? They have no choice,
I did it on my own free will.5 8
Zhang Ailing does not explain in the text if Weilong is a victim of her own bad
choices or if she is a casualty from the war of a masculine discourse that does not
allow her to articulate herself without a masculine referent. If Weilong, then, is not
seen as a victim but rather as a willingly participant in the prevailing conditions of
her life, then perhaps one can argue that had the incense of her life had burnt longer
the ending would have been different.
There is always the danger of women subscribing unconsciously to the
patriarchal determinate that molds their identities. In Withered Flower Zhang
Ailing constructs a heroine, Zheng Chuanchang, who buys into the identity of
Camille, the sickly western heroine or models herself after Lin Daiyu from the Qing
Classic, The Dream o f the Red Chamber, both who die for love and in spite of love.5 9
The story begins with an epitaph:
Chuanchang was a rare beauty.. .At nineteen, she graduated from Sungji
School for Girls, at twenty one, she died from tuberculosis.. .loved
music, loved the quiet, loved her parents.. .a boundless love, a
never-ending forgiveness, lim itless regrets a remembered flower,
an eternal rose.... Rest in peace, from the depths of the hearts of those
5 8 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in The First Censer (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 85.
5 9 Zhang makes reference also to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights where this protagonist is
portrayed as not being very bright nor is she the most beautiful. See Ailing Zhang, “Withered
Flower” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 203.
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who love you. Those who knew you, there is not one who did not love
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you.
The stage is set. Echoes of Lin Daiyu permeate the memory of Zhang’s readers
who now expect a “bei zhuang” tale. The tragedy is not that Chuanchang will die but
that the deaths of so many literary heroines before her are lost, the heroic quality of
their deaths have disappeared. Chuanchang enters into desolation and does not come
to illumination which leads to her demise. Chuanchang mimics the role of the
suffering ethereal beauty of Chinese traditional literature. Unlike her obituary, Zhang
describes the “living” Chuanchang as not being very bright; she is like an “unlit
lighthouse.”6 1 Nor is she quite the rare beauty.
Among her sisters, she would not be counted the beauty, because
above her are several stunningly beautiful older sisters.6 2
It is the nostalgic remembrance of Chuanchang that alleviates her to the status of a
saintly beauty. The reality is quite contrary to the myth constructed by the family
members. It is this perpetuation of the Phallocentric myth of woman pining for her
object of desire as beautiful that is problematic. The woman, here, is not the male
object of desire but the subject of desire and thus becomes simultaneously the agent
of power and one governed by the power of the Phallocentric myth. There is an
inversion that makes mimicry difficult.
Masquerade becom es the game plan as Chuanchang acts out the role o f “Lin
Daiyu.” As a consequence, Zhang seemingly wrote from a position that differs from
6 0 Ibid., 202.
6 1 Ibid., 203.
6 2 Ibid., 203.
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traditional tragic love stories. In Perry Link’s analysis these tragic love stories offer
the reader some kind of escapism from their own painful reality.
“Tragic love fiction” described beautiful people suffering great pain
and injustice, thereby reminding the reader that suffering is an
affliction of the virtuous, and furthermore that, among the virtuous,
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some are in even worse condition than ourselves.
Zhang wrote to argue against the construction of women as tragic beauties and to
challenge the paradigm that women’s suffering is somehow cathartic. In Withered
Flower, Chuanchang’s life is a life wasted but it is only in the memory that
there is purification process, and it is not for the heroine but those around her who
seek to give her life meaning. Zhang established that the family like society recreates
the image of the heroine in an epitaph that has little meaning for the dead. The
heroine, Chuanchang, is perceived as one in search of the elusive she is not
in search of the man of her dreams but in search of a love that always eludes her.
Zhang Ailing carefully crafts a stage that depicts the heroine outside the context of a
traditional Chinese family even though Chuanchang’s father is described as a
conservative with knowledge of the old ways.
Mr. Cheng was a conservative who did not accept the Republic.
Ever since the establishment of the Republic, he has not aged.
Although familiar with women who could hold their liquor and
opium, his heart was still that of a child’s.6 4
The mother is the modem influence. She is much younger than the father and
likes to affect the air of modernity by her use of English although she “does not
6 3 Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 20-
21 .
6 4 Ailing Zhang, “Withered Flower” in The First Censer, 203.
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understand English.”6 5 In public, her daughters are known by their Western names,
“Nancy, Lucy, Sally, Polly” while at home, they are called by their Chinese
pet names.6 6 This duality somehow indicates that these women were to be more
independent than their mother; however, the main protagonist and her sisters are still
paralyzed by the constructs of marriage and traditional feminine images of faithful
love.6 7 Chuanchang, who cannot maintain the object of her desire that is marriage,
yearns for her own demise.
Chuanchang has played the “victim” role to the extreme, neither she nor the man
can sustain the relationship based on myths and legends. In the end, Chuanchang
loses her man who had once pledged that he would wait for her.6 9 In her emaciated
state, Chuanchang is aware that the game is over and turns to her mother in tears to
ask how it happened that she should have become so unattractive.7 0
In this tale of victim-love, Zhang points out the dangers of women who
subscribe and ascribe to the male constructs of beauty and desire as sacrificial victim
'a la Camille and Lin Daiyu. In the end, even though Chuanchang masquerades and
mimics the literary heroines of her time, she is unable to compete with a flesh and
blood rival for her beau.7 1 Zhang intimates that women who contest but
simultaneously accede to the “Paternal Order” cannot escape tragedy or heartbreak.
6 5 Ibid., 203.
6 6 Ibid., 203.
6 7 Ibid., 204-205.
6 8 Ibid.,220.
6 9 Ibid., 216.
7 0 Ibid., 221.
7 1 Ibid., 216.
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Their survival lies in the fact that they must become mistresses of their own game.
Zhang in her stories further raises the question of what happens when women get co
opted into the patriarchal system.
The Mother as Phallic
What happens when a woman comes in and disrupts the community of women?
In popular parlance, the other woman is the mistress, the sexual rival for a man’s
affection, a sexual threat.7 2 Yet the “Other Woman” might also be perceived as the
woman who accedes to and adopts the phallocratic order as her own. She therefore
ceases to masquerade the feminine and is seen as a threat both to the masculine order
to which she does not belong and ostracizes the community of sisters from which she
wishes to break. She succumbs to madness as she stagnates in her ability to mimic
the feminine. She has no recourse but to enter in a destructive path for herself and
those in her way. Zhang’s writings show three characters that have clearly become
phallic “mothers” or “monsters.” Mrs. Mitchell in The Second Censer, Qiqiao in
The Golden Cangue and Mrs. Liang in The First Censer.
All three characters accept the reified values imposed on women and have
enforced them on those under their charge. Mrs. M itchell, condemns her daughters to
7 2 The expression, the other woman, surfaces in a variety of writings o f late. Other Women by Lisa
Alther; The Other Woman: Stories o f Two Women and a Man, edited by Susan Koppleman; Laura
Richardson’s The New Other Woman and Luce Irigaray’s Speculum and the Other Woman, to cite a
few.
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a life of spinsterhood and sexual frigidity by instilling in them the horror of sexuality
— their own sexual desire and that of male sexual desire. Her daughters are forever
bound to her in their cloistered lives.
Qiqiao enters into madness when she can no longer manipulate through mimicry,
her feminine ways. The tour de force is the scene where Qiqiao expels her brother-
in-law, Jize, from the house after which she ponders the question of what is real and
what is false. Qiqiao’s sense of reality is shattered and she turns on her daughter and
begins the careful destruction of her daughter’s reality. The contrast between mother
and daughter is stark. Qiqiao now lives in a world of fantasies colored by her
rejection of her sexuality while her daughter dwells in the light of possibilities for
love and sexuality. Qiqiao chases away her daughter’s suitor. As he leaves, the
daughter is aware that her first, last and possibly only love is leaving forever. The
imprisonment and madness becomes complete as Qiqiao’s patriarchal influence
infiltrates every member of her family. The only sign of hope is at Qiqiao’s death
when her daughter is given her share of the property and achieves financial
independence.
Mrs. Liang perpetuates the system of women as commodities not only in her
attitude toward her niece previously discussed but in her treatment of her “maid.”
She crushes the maid’s love life because she had dared to interfere with Mrs. Liang’s
plans. Mrs. Liang reminds the girl that she has no recourse but to stay on as her
family relied on her source of income for survival. Mrs. Liang’s control over the
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women in her household is complete, they have little alternative. To believe
otherwise is to follow the path of naivete or madness.
Though naivete and madness are common themes in Zhang Ailing’s writing,
Zhang’s works show how women maneuver through life with only Qiqiao entering
into true madness and Chuanchang in true naivete. Zhang Ailing uses the traditional
site of marriage and the modem discourse of courtship as sites of power for women
as they masquerade the object of male desire in the guise of daughters, lovers, wives,
mothers and widows. Her many protagonists mimic the feminine to scheme their
way through the maze of life where their sexual exchange sometimes is successful
and at other times dismal.
Whatever the outcome of Zhang’s characters, the reader cannot but marvel at how
these female protagonists have created tactical spaces to contest the masculine order
that seems determined to suppress and control them. Irigaray suggests that women
are precisely good at mimesis because they are not reabsorbed into the schemata.
She states:
If women can play with mimesis, it is because they are capable of
bringing new nourishment to its operation. Because they have always
nourished this operation? Is not the “first” stake in mimesis that of
re-producing (from) nature? Of giving it form in order to appropriate
it for oneself? As guardians of “nature,” are not women the ones who
maintain, thus make it possible, the resource of mimesis for men? For the
logos?
It is here of course, that the hypothesis of a reversal—within the phallic
order—is always possible. Re-semblance cannot do without red blood.
Mother-matter-nature must go on forever nourishing speculation. But this
re-source is also rejected as the waste product of reflection, cast outside as
what resists it: as madness. Besides the ambivalence that the nourishing
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phallic mother attracts to herself, this function leaves woman’s sexual
pleasure aside.7 3
7 3 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, 77.
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Chapter Three: Liminality and the Mystique of the “Other”
In the previous chapters, Zhang Ailing’s understanding and use of feminine
desire as a political and social construct of power has been discussed. Zhang argues
in her writings that gender cultural matrices that inform and define gender behavior
imprison both men and women within a patriarchal system so that both men and
women become victims of a cultural and social framework. While Zhang accepts the
traditional rendering where a woman’s sexuality is primarily portrayed through her
object status, that is her ability to attract the male, Zhang debunks the function of
woman as only object and writes of woman as subject where her sexuality contests
her objectification and subverts the dynamics of expected gender roles, thus enabling
her to create her own reality.
In many of Zhang Ailing’s short stories, her female protagonists are well aware
that their main medium to socially defined acceptability lay in their prowess to
attract and keep their men.1 This feminine desire is thus defined in terms of
masculine dependence as in marriage and in eventual motherhood. What then, for
Zhang Ailing, is woman’s desire outside the constraints of social expectations? In
order to dissect and analyze the concept of feminine desire, Zhang creates a liminal
space whereby she repositions woman not as “other” but as one who determines the
“other.” Zhang’s “woman” is not written only in terms of being the object of desire
1 Ge Weilong in The First Censer, Bai Liusu in A City Toppled by Love, Nixi in Interlocking Rings
Manlu in H aifa Lifetime’ s Yearning are representative of women who continue the role of seductress.
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but also in terms of the “subject of desire, an agent that can will things and make
them happen.”2 This liminal space occupied by Zhang’s female protagonist allows
for a repository of possibilities and transformations. This liminal space is as Victor
Turner suggests “ the mood of maybe, might be, as if, hypothesis, fantasy,
conjecture, desire - depending on which of the trinity of cognition, affect and
cognation is situationally dominant. Ordinary life is in the indicative mood where we
expect invariant operations of cause and effect, of rationality and common sense.
Liminality can perhaps be best described as a fructile chaos, a storehouse of
possibilities, not a random assemblage but a striving after new forms and structures,
a gestation process...”3 Consequently, the liminal place that Zhang constructs for her
female protagonists is a space where women are betwixt and between and therefore
not in socially defined masculine controls. It is precisely that these women are not in
social control that they are able to learn the tactics necessary to obtain their desires.
Liminality is, then, more than what Turner envisioned as a cultural modality
of process, it is a psychic and spiritual place where transformation is possible.
Liminality is standing at the threshold buying neither into the old structures of the
past nor the promised structures or anti-structures of the future. In Zhang’s writings,
2 Jessica Benjamin,“A Desire of One’s Own” in Teresa de Lauretis, ed., Feminist Studies, Critical
Studies. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 87.
3 Victor W. Turner, “Dewey, Dilthey and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience” in
Victor Turner and Edward M. Brunner, eds., The Anthropology o f Experience. (Chicago: University
o f Illinois Press, 1986) 42. The word “Liminality” comes from the latin ad limina which refers to the
threshold. Turner refers to it in terms of initiation rites that carry an individual from one reality to
another. Staying at the liminal space is belonging to neither reality but is not entirely separated from
them either. Liminality is used here in a broader understanding of a psychic space where conventions
can be challenged. It is not a space of indifference but rather a space of neutrality that offers a glimpse
o f clarity.
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nothing new happens so long as we stand in the comfort zone of expected social
norms. It is Zhang’s insistence that she stay at the liminal place as a writer as it is a
space of neutrality that offers clarity. She, therefore, carefully situates her
protagonists in situations of chaos.4 It is in the deliberate movement to the
uncomfortable zone of the threshold that Zhang Ailing’s female protagonists can
contest the masculine construction of woman as Other.
In this space, women no longer accept the confines of traditional expectations
nor are they rushing head on into the illusionary position of independence from the
masculine order. Here, these women play out their roles as they maneuver their
positions out of the ordinary expectations of daily life where rationality and
commonsense abide. Instead Zhang’s characters find themselves in the midst of
chaos either social or personal where norms are suspended and the nonsensical and
seemingly illogical can thrive. To emphasize liminality, Zhang pays great
attention to the minor details of each scene. The articulation of these minor facts
leads the reader to believe that all what is perceived is normal and ordinary, and that
all is within the control of social norm and expectation. Yet the writer’s minute
detailing is in effect a ploy to suggest normality in times of chaos.5
4 There has been much misunderstanding o f Zhang Ailing as a tragic figure because of her writing
on the topic o f desolation. Dominic Cheung (Zhang Cuo) points out that the displacement of a word
from its context can render an entirely different reading so that a strong and intelligent person like
Zhang Ailing can be perceived as a sad and resentful female. “The world has insulted her. In fact,
deducing from her will, what one finds is an independent and strong woman’s final declaration: it is
not that the world did not want her, but rather she did not want this world. ” in Zhang Cuo “Zhang
Ailing and the Desolate” in Shan chu xiao zha (Taipei: Hetong, 2001), 24. It is precisely because
Zhang rejects the world that she is able to stand ad limina and write as a contestory voice.
5 In much of her writing, Zhang made note o f this time of transition that allows for liminality to
exist. To cite a few examples: In “The Golden Cangue” the protagonist reflects on Shanghai thirty
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Rey Chow articulates this as Zhang’s language “giving rise to a
non-anthropocentric affective structure that is often expressed through the figures of
ruin and desolation.”6 Chow’s reading places Zhang’s characters in a tragedy and
fails to take into account that Zhang’s figures while surrounded by chaos and
desolation etch out a path for themselves, finding a space where transformation can
take place albeit for a temporary moment. The concept of tragedy takes on a different
reading for Zhang. These descriptive threads so neatly drawn are tactical in that
Zhang unravels and unweaves the fabric that constructs the mystique of the “other.”
It is in this liminal space that Zhang creates moments of crisis for her protagonist —
whether private as in Qiqiao’s decision to avoid definition by the masculine order
as seen in The Golden Cangue or public as in the descriptive passages that set the
mood for Sealed Off.
In The Golden Cangue, Zhang depicts Qiqiao descending down a staircase to
receive her portion of the estate. Zhang carefully describes the scene and the props,
setting the reader up for what is to be expected to be a just division of the property,
after all Qiqiao is the widow of the Second Master and the mother to a male heir.
Qiqiao plays her role as the traditional widowed daughter-in-law who must throw
herself on the mercy of the elders to obtain her desire. Yet it is in the playing out of
years ago at the time of dynastic change. In “The Withered Flower,” Mr. Cheng is described as a
conservative who cannot accept the Republican era. In “The City Toppled by Love” Hong Kong is
occupied by the Japanese during the Pacific War. In “The Wounded Epoch,” the female protagonist is
seen in direct conflict with the matriarch as modernity and tradition merge. In “Sealed O ff’ the
protagonists are set in a stage o f an imminent air raid.
Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991),! 14.
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the discovert widow role that Qiqiao is able to thwart the elders’ ambition to control
her. As a result, Qiqiao enters a liminal space by not doing the expected so that she
does entirely subvert the system, she takes control and moves out of the familial
n
house, thus forging her own destiny.
The short story, Sealed O ff sets the tone of everyday movement in Shanghai
when suddenly an air siren is heard causing momentary chaos in the streets. As the
street quiets down waiting for the air raid, Zhang unravels a tale of a young girl and
o
her sexual fantasy of a male passenger abroad the tram. These scenarios can take
place because Zhang situates them in a liminal space where these very possibilities
for alternatives can exist, that is the mundane woman can be transformed into the
siren and the helpless widow into the black widow. In creating this space of betwixt
and between, Zhang argues against and unravels the concept of woman as the
defined “Other” by a masculine order.
A cursory reading of Zhang’s works reveal that she does employ the more
popular rendering of the mythical “Other” as suggested by Simone de Beauvoir in
her 1953 text, “The Second Sex”. However, Zhang does not restrict herself to that
construction. She shows that woman can and do leave the space of desired object and
move into the subject position while not abandoning their previous posture, thus
7 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C. T. Hsia and Leo Ou fan Le, eds.,
Modem Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981)
542-543.
8 Ailing Zhang, “Sealed O ff’ In this translation, the story is translated as “Shut Down” in
Renditions, no.45, Spring 1996, 93-94. The translation of “Sealed O ff’ is preferred as it suggests a
marginal space not removed from the actualities o f everyday life. The Chinese title Feng Suo
“Sealed O ff’ suggests that Zhang intended a reading of liminality.
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allowing for seduction as a game jockeying for power. While Beauvoir, and others
after her, identify and argue that woman is the perceived “other” precisely because it
is man who positions woman so that her identity is often defined and determined in
terms of woman’s inferiority to man, or of her being different from the male, Zhang
argues that “otherness” is merely a place of positioned desire. That is, the one who
desires maintains the subject position and the one who is desired is the object and
hence the “other.” For Zhang then, it is not a matter of gender identification but a
matter of occupied space. Toril Moi’s interpretation of Beauvoir argues that
women have been reduced to objects for men: ‘woman’ has been
constructed as man’s Other, denied the right to her own subjectivity
and to responsibility for her own actions. Or, in more existentialist terms:
patriarchal ideology presents woman as immanence, man as
transcendence.. .The fact that women often enact the roles that are prescribed
for them does not prove that the patriarchal analysis is right: Beauvoir’s
uncompromising refusal of any notion of a female nature or essence is
succinctly summed up in her famous statement ‘One is not bom a woman;
one becomes one.’”9
Though Beauvoir rethinks this position in her later writings, she tends to hold to
the fact that women buy into and accept the patriarchal stronghold that determines
feminine behavior. Zhang argues through her texts that this patriarchal structure
reduces both man and woman as objects of desire albeit for different reasons.
Women who claim their subject position and forge their own destiny then are no
lon ger “reduced to o b jects.” Z hang argues that it is in the m an ip u lation of their
imposed fem in in e wiles that women can and do enter into a liminal space that
transforms object to subject without losing the power of either. It is in this somewhat
9 Toril Moi, Sexual/ Textual Politics, (New York: Routledge, 1985), 92.
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chaotic process that Zhang defines both masculine and feminine behavior to which
both men and women must accede if they are to jockey for and maintain power
within the complexities of a social order.
Any in-depth analysis of Zhang’s texts reveals that as a writer, she was
interested with gender issues and that she argued that the concept of gender is
socially and culturally constructed and that there is a consistent play of gender and
sexual politics that place women sometimes as objects and at other times as subject.
In Zhang’s numerous writings, she continuously undermines the concepts and
unravels the fabric of a patriarchy that describes the “other” as male defined or male
dependent. Writing before the theoretical discourse of the “other” was clearly
articulated in China, Zhang began to explore the multiplicity of meanings in the
character of the “Other.” While Zhang does demonstrate the more traditional concept
of woman as “other” as exemplified in Red Rose, White Rose, Interlocking Rings,
Great Felicitations, or in The City Toppled by Love she demonstrates that the
identification of the “other” occurs also in terms of marginality as in the example of
the mixed blood protagonist, George in The First Cense” or the Englishman, Roger
in The Second Censer, Miss Ashe in Red Rose, White Rose,” and Nixi in
Interlocking Rings.1 0
1 0 Edward Gunn in Unwelcome Muse suggests that George represents “the plight of those doom ed to
entrapment in this culture [of Hong Kong], rejected by both Chinese and Europeans, save in a purely
commercial fashion.” (224) George and Roger are marginalized in Zhang’s representation because
they fall outside societal norms and expectations. Roger cannot see himself as separate from the social
order o f his time and because o f his inability to integrate the hypocrisy of both women and world, he
falls from the fold. George, Zhang explains, is marginalized by his actions that have cut him off from
Mrs. Liang, a former lover, and from a society that sees him as nothing more than a playboy.
Furthermore, George’s father views him as a wastrel and a good-for-nothing. Miss Ashe is Eurasian
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Zhang further articulates the “other” in terms of the Electra taboo as depicted in
the incestuous desire of the daughter for her father in her short story, The Heart
Sutra or the inverted incestuous desire of the student protagonist, Nieh, who desires
a classmate’s, Yan Danzhu, father who is also his professor in Fragrant Jasmine
Tea. Zhang develops the incestuous quality of the relationship through Nieh’s self-
identification with Danzhu and his obsession with her father. Edward Gunn offers
the following reading:
Nieh is in search for a father figure in Tan-chu’s father, a professor
at the university. Just as Nieh’s search is futile, so too is Professor
Yen, in chastising (Nieh) for his lack of masculinity and identifying
it with Chinese youth in general, reveals his own frustration in finding
his image of a son.1 1
These alternative character renditions show the multiple readings of the “other”
dependent on one’s specific position or reading. Nieh could be perceived as the
“other” for the professor or his daughter, but clearly for Nieh, the professor is his
“other.” Susie is Roger’s “Other” but Roger is the “other” within the text. George
and Weilong are both “other” in terms of the roles they play in the game of
seduction. In the novel, the Rouge o f the North, Yindi’s son becomes the other.
A controlled expression on his face gave her the feeling that may be
exactly what had happened. If he had got a taste of it his heart would
have flowered as a bean might sprout. It is madness, especially at first.
He wouldn’t be so quiet after being kept home for days, nor would he
b e so sen sitiv e to m ere ten d ern ess from a w om an . T h e o il lam p sh on e
aware that she fits neither true English society nor does she blend in with the Chinese community.
Nixi is marginalized because o f her dalliances with men from the non-Chinese community. She is
described as being a member of the lowest rung of the social ladder and is consequently marginalized
by her low social status.
1 1 Ibid., 227.
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I l l
brighter than any other, being seen lying down from afresh angle of the
eye. The face beyond the light revolted her slightly. There was something
monstrous about a face grown so unrecognizable over the years, but she
was not the young mother he remembered either. They felt so safe together,
a little sad too at the reunion. For a moment she was close to tears,
1 2
willingly to live her life through him. He was part o f her and male.
Consequently, Zhang speaks of the “other” in a variety of forms and not only in
terms of woman as “other.” This chapter examines Zhang’s construction and
development of her characters that offer and embrace various meanings of the term,
“the Other” as seen and lived out by her characters in liminal space.
The Reversed Other: “Man as Object”
In Zhang’s novellas and short stories such as The Golden Cangue, Sealed
Off, The City Toppled by Love and Red Rose, White Rose, The First Censer,
and Interlocking Rings, one sees in Zhang’s staging of the act of seduction a
reversal of the role of object and subject. Zhang initially depicts the man as the
subject in control of the scene and the woman as the object of desire, yet she cleverly
shows that it is only by invitation that the man can advance. If denied the invitation,
the man must retreat. This male movement is dependent then on the female initiative,
thus making the woman the subject and man the object of desire. In creating this
reversal of positions, Zhang demonstrates that man can also be depicted in terms of
being “other” as reflected or perceived from a feminine space as is evidenced by the
1 2 Ailing Zhang, The Rouge o f the North (London: Cassell, 1967), 150. Italics are my own.
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female protagonists’ treatment of the men in their stories: Qiqiao (The Golden
Cangue), Cuiyuan (Sealed Off), Liusu (The City Toppled by Love) and Jiaorui (Red
Rose, White Rose), Nixi (Interlocking Rings) and Weilong (The First Censer).
The lines of subject and object, of seducing and being seduced, of desire and
being desired are blurred and the characters are caught in a new liminal space of
possibilities. In the short story, Sealed Off, Zhang effectively depicts liminal space
within the realm of the imaginary or the fantasy. The female protagonist, Cuiyuan,
described as an average looking Christian female, is transformed into a seductive
temptress who knows the thoughts of her prey. The dance of seduction between the
two though is suspended in the realm of the fantasy and when Cuiyuan leaves liminal
space, she returns to her dowdy self to resume her everyday life amidst the chaos of
her time.
Zhang’s most extreme character, Qiqiao, crosses the traditional role of the
“other” into the subject leading eventually into the calcification of a male determined
position of madness. Qiqiao is first introduced to the reader as object through the
evening discourse of two maids. There is an acute awareness that Qiqiao’s brother
has traded her body for profit and that her own desire has been silenced. She is
completely objectified and has no voice as she enters the initial contract not as a wife
but as con cu b in e. A fter all, her h u sb an d ’s p h y sica l im p ed im en ts p reven t h im from
taking a wife from a wealthy or prestigious family so the Old Mistress decides to
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1 3
accept Qiqiao into the family not as a concubine but as a wife. The rise within this
familial structure does little for her own personal status as she is still perceived as an
“other,” both marginal and despised. She is still an object. Yet Qiqiao learns to use
her object position to maneuver through the complex web of social relations. It frees
her from the restrictive patterns of speech and expected decorum. Her speech is
consistently marked with sarcasm laced with malice. To appear within the perimeters
of the family or social order, Qiqiao scorns those she perceives as even more
marginalized than herself.
Yet Zhang’s two seduction scenes between Qiqiao and her brother-in-law has
Qiqiao enter a liminal space of possibilities. In the first seduction scene Qiqiao,
by entering into a liaison with her brother-in-law, articulates and enters into her own
desire that is to be desired and to be loved by him.1 4 Qiqiao is seen first as the
predator rejected, then as a prey that turns predatory on her victim. In the first
scenario, Qiqiao is the subject and her brother-in-law occupies the space of the
object of desire. She makes the first move as an attempt to flirt with her brother-in-
law, Jize, who fears Qiqiao’s indiscretion and seeming lack of self-control.
She (Qiqiao) tried to sit next to Jize and only got into a comer of his
chair and put her hand on his leg A little stunned at first, Jize got
up. “I’m going if that’s all right with you. If you are not afraid of being
seen, I am.
1 3 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C. T. Hsia, Leo Ou-Fan Lee, eds.,
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),531.
1 4 Jessica Benjamin suggests “ideal love is the key to understanding the intricate relationship
between women’s desire and her submission.” See Jessica Benjamin, “A Desire o f One’s Own:
Psychoanalytic feminism and Intersubjective Space” in Teresa de Lauretis, ed. Feminist Studies,
Critical Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 80. This ideal love is a construct or
belief that true love exists in being loved, desired and loving in return.
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Have to save some face for Second Brother.”
Gripping the chair to rise, she said sobbing, “ I’ll leave.” She pulled a
handkerchief from her sleeve to dab at her face and suddenly smiled
slightly.
“You are so protective of your Second Brother.”
Jize laughed. “If I don’t protect him, who will?”
Qiqiao said walking toward the door, “You are a great one to talk. Don’t
try to act the hypocrite in front of me. Why, just in these rooms alone.....
nothing escapes my eyes —not to mention how wild you are when
you get outside the house. You probably wouldn’t mind even taking
your own wet-nurse, let alone a sister-in-law.”
“I have always been easygoing. How am I supposed to defend myself
if you pick on me?” he said smiling.
On her way out she again leaned her back against the door, whispering.
“What I don’t get is in what way am I not as good as the others. What is
it about me that’s no good?”
“My good sister-in-law, you are all good.”
She said with a laugh, “Could it be that staying with a cripple, I smell
crippled too, and it will rub off on you?” She stared straight ahead, the
small gold pendants of her earrings like two brass nails nailing her to the
door, a butterfly specimen in a glass box, bright colored and desolate.
Looking at her, Jize also wondered. But it wouldn’t do. He loved to play
around but had made up his mind long ago not to flirt with members of the
family. When the mood had passed one could neither avoid them nor kick
them aside, they’d be a continual burden. Besides, Qiqiao was so outspoken
and hot tempered, how could the thing be kept a secret? And she was so
unpopular, who would cover up for her, high or low? Perhaps she no longer
cared and wouldn’t even mind if it got known? He spoke up: “Second
Sister-in-law, young as I am, I’m not one who’d do just anything.”1 5
Is it fear of being caught that prevents Jize from acting or is it the reversal of roles
that prevents him from taking it a step further? If desire and power are perceived to
be one, then Qiqiao’s attempt to take from her brother-in-law her power in
so m e w a y s dethrones J iz e ’s o w n p o w er h old . In the seco n d sed u ction scen e, Jize
makes a conscious attempt to seduce Qiqiao in the hopes of obtaining some financial
benefit. Money has become Qiqiao’s symbol of power and the object of her desire.
1 5 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue,” 536-537.
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Qiqiao exposes Jize, then, regrets the act as she enters into the masculine discourse
of power, authority and control. In doing this, Qiqiao leaves her liminal space and
loses her femininity.
She wanted another glimpse of him from the upstairs window. No
matter what, she had loved him before. Her love had given her endless
pain. That alone should make him worthy of her continuing regard.
How many times had she strained to repress herself until all her muscles
and bones and gums ached with a sharp pain. Today, it had been all
her fault. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know that he was no good. If she
wanted him, she had to pretend ignorance and put up with his ways.
Why had she exposed him?1 6
Caught in the dilemma of maintaining ideal love and the suppression of herself to a
masculine dictate and holding on to her desire for masculine power and desire,
Qiqiao leaves her liminal space and enters into a schizophrenic reality of denial and
masquerade. That is to say that Qiqiao is positioned as the “other” throughout this
text within a masculine discourse that demands that she, as a woman, remain silent
and accept the roles imposed upon her. In maintaining the facade demanded of her as
a woman, she must deny her soul and her mind. Yet she can choose to disobey the
Law of the Father, and follow her mind but in so choosing, she enters into a silent
world, a world of self-imprisonment and eventual destruction as she takes on the
masculine role once denied her. She, in effect, loses her femininity when she
embarks on the voyage to make man as her “other.” Becoming solely subject or
remaining only object, Qiqiao, is no longer in a liminal space of possibilities. Qiqiao
is imprisoned so long as she moves in either direction. She is in effect in a Catch 22.
1 6 Ibid., 545.
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If she remains within the confines of the masculine order she is doomed to a world of
silence yet when Qiqiao articulates her independence from the social construct that
demands of her to be other, she imprisons herself, her son and daughter. Her
resistance to be perceived as “other” within the masculine discourse removes her
voice from and within the community. Consequently, in internalizing the Other “is
almost definitionally to be able to speak in the language of the self.. .To experience
being an Other is often to feel so schizophrenically tom, that not even a clandestine ]
i n
authentic T dares to speak.”
When a woman enters liminal space and plays with the options available to her
where rules and norms are suspended, she is able to create and invent her own
identity so long as she is both subject and object and not internalizing the space of
the object “other.” Yet in constructing and making man as woman’s only “Other,”
woman loses liminal space and accedes to the masculine discourse becoming neither
1 Q
feminine nor masculine but a neuter position that exists within liminality. Zhang
shows that when woman moves within liminal space and is between and betwixt,
woman as subject and object symbolically enter into a state of illumination, precisely
because she is not bound by the confines of social dictates.
1 7 Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi, The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology o f Housework (New
York: Seabury, 1982) 176.
1 8 The word, neuter, is to mean neither one nor the other. “Neither one nor the other of these words
which delimit this term; neither one nor the other of their referents: “feminine” and “masculine.” Nor
anything else referred to by a sign, whatever it may be.. .neuter in its ambiguity, aims at neither
ambiguity nor precision. Rather, it is a question of what is in between.” Eberhard Gruber,
“Regarding the Neuter” in Mireille Calle, ed., trans., Catherine McGann., On the Feminine (New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996), 27.
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Qiqiao’s tragic moment of disillusionment found in the act of seduction between her
self and her brother-in-law is, at the same time, her awareness that she cannot remain
in liminal space nor can she avoid buying into the masculine order. Qiqiao is an
extreme character for Zhang Ailing who depicts Qiqiao as surrendering to the
madness of the masculine order by acceding to its illusionary promise of freedom
through control. Qiqiao’s character spirals down the masculine order as she
struggles for control that only leads to violence for her self and for her children.
In contrast to Qiqiao, Zhang portrays in The City Toppled by Love, the
character Liusu who learns to enter into liminal space and to position herself as both
subject and object so that she can forge her own destiny without spiraling into
madness. Through the text the reader is shown that Liusu perceives both men and
women as potential “others” and that she takes on the subject position while never
quite abandoning her object status. In this liminal space, Liusu plays out the subject
by viewing her unmarried sisters as objects to be displaced so that she can construct
her own destiny.1 9 In the meanwhile, she maintains an object position to manipulate
Fan Liuyuan, the male protagonist, into the promise of marriage. The liminal space
in which Liusu maneuvers is also a space where time is seemingly suspended due to
the chaos of war. Zhang clearly weaves a background reminiscent of the ancient
b eau ties and sch olars tradition w h ere gender ro les can be crossed . L iu su is a
1 9 Ailing Zhang, “The City Toppled by Love” in Renditions, the title is translated as “Love in Fallen
City” Renditions, No:45, 65-66.
2 0 See Keith McMahon’s “The Classic Beauty-Scholar” Romance and the Superiority o f the
Talented Woman” in Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject, & Power in China
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 233-237.
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woman caught between the concept of feminine object as a traditional virtuous
beauty and of liminal subject in modernity where she is expected to carve out her
own future. She is aware of the power of her tradition and its effect and yet she must
move away from the very virtues that her tradition treasures. She moves not from
structure into anti-structure but somewhere in between as she locates her voice and
power.
She turned on the lamp, set it next to the dressing-mirror and studied
her reflection. Good enough: she wasn’t too old yet. She had the kind
of slender figure that doesn’t show age— a waist forever thin, and a
budding girlish bosom. Her face had always been as white as fine
porcelain, but now had changed from white porcelain to jade— semi-
translucent jade with a tinge of pale green. Her cheeks had once been
round, but had now grown thinner, making her small face even smaller
and more attractive. She had a fairly narrow face, but her eyes—clear and
lively, slightly coquettish eyes—were set well apart. Out on the balcony,
Fourth Master started playing the huqin again. Following the
undulating tune, Liusu’s head tilted to one side, and her hands and eyes
started to gesture subtly. As she performed in the mirror, the huqin no longer
sounded like a huqin, a bit like strings and flutes intoning a solemn court
dance. She stepped toward the right a few paces, then to the left. Her steps
seemed to trace the lost rhythms of an ancient melody. Suddenly, she
smiled— a private, malevolent smile—and the music came to a discordant
halt. Outside, the huqin still played, but it was telling tales of fealty and filial
piety, chastity and righteousness: distant tales that had nothing to do with
her.2 1
In this arena of liminal space where time is suspended, Liusu begins a deliberate
plan to seduce and manipulate Fan Liuyuan into a position that she considers
advantageous to her self. Zhang permits her characters to ponder over the
contradictory positions in which women find themselves. They are more skeptical
2 1 Ailing Zhang, “Love in A Fallen City,” 66-67.
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on the issues of love and marriage and less inclined to idealize their marriage
potentials. Modernity seemingly suggests that an individual must move toward a
self-autonomy yet this self-autonomy is elusive as Benjamin suggests. She states
“autonomy that denies dependency characteristically leads to domination.”2 2
Benjamin’s suggestion is that women are caught in the dilemma of the idealized
“other” and the reality of the situation in which women find themselves. Liusu
desires the idealized state of marriage for various reasons. Liusu desires marriage so
that she can claim the love of a man as a means to validate her own existence in the
community of women and to return to her family a respectable woman. The
weaving of Liusu’s web as she positions herself as the subject and Fan Liuyuan as
object is made evident when Zhang inverts the gender position in the understanding
of love. Masculine carnality is dislodged by the feminized spiritualization of love
when Fan Liuyuan displaces Liusu in the role of the sexual predator. A ploy used to
disarm her intentions. Yet Liusu understands the dynamics only in terms of her
object status and her feminine desire.
Liusu assessed the situation. It turned out that what Luiyuan cared
about was spiritual love. She agreed entirely, since spiritual love
always leads to marriage, while carnal love tends to stop at a certain
level, with very little hope of marriage. There is only one little thing
wrong with spiritual love: in the course of falling in love, the man always
says things that the woman doesn’t understand. But that doesn’t matter too
m u ch . In the en d there is the gettin g m arried, the h o u se b u yin g, the
furniture arranging, the servant hiring—and in all these things the woman
2 2 Jessica Benjamin, “Master and Slave: The Fantasy of Erotic Domination,” in Powers o f Desire: The
Politics o f Sexuality, eds., Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1983), 280-99.
2 3 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City,” 70-71.
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is more adept than the man. Thinking of it this way, Liusu felt this
evening’s little misunderstanding wasn’t anything to worry about.2 4
The dance of seduction within this liminal space blurs the lines of social
demarcation. Liusu is the agent of her own destiny or so she believes. Yet the story
weaves through a complicated dance as Liusu and Fan Liuyuan keep an exchange of
subject-object positions. At the end of Zhang’s story, Liusu is established as Fan
Luiyuan’s wife yet there is an absence of consolation or joy in obtaining her “object”
desire she in effect becomes the abject “subject.”2 5 Liusu discovers that in obtaining
the desired status of marriage, Liusu has locked her self outside of liminal space and
fossilized her self into the male “object.”
Luiyuan did not try to tease her anymore, saving all his daring talk for
other women. This was good, something to celebrate, since it meant that
he took her as family—his real, official wife— but Luisu was still
somewhat saddened by it. Hong Kong’s defeat had given her victory.
But in this unreasonable world, who can say which was the cause,
which the result? Who knows? Maybe it was to vindicate her that an
entire city fell. Countless thousands of people dead, countless thousands
suffering, and what followed was an earth-shaking revolution.. .Liusu did
not feel that her place in history was anything remarkable.
She just stood up smiling, and kicked the pan of mosquito incense under the
table. The legendary beauties who felled cities were probably all like that.
There are legends everywhere, but they do not necessarily have a happy
ending. The huqin wails in the night of a thousand burning lamps: the bow
slides back and forth, pouring out a tale desolate beyond words—Oh What’s
the point of asking?!2
24Ibid.,78.
2 5 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 59. The abject
subject is constituted as subject only in light of an Other, that is, its identity lies in its separateness of
the other while replacing the object with itself.
2 6 Ibid., 92.
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This is Zhang Ailing’s understanding of a tragedy. Women must constantly
maneuver between the perimeters of traditional acceptability of dependency and
modem expectations of independency. For as long as women remain in liminality,
they are in a space of illumination and power, unfortunately, this space cannot be
occupied indefinitely and when a choice is made, women are trapped either by their
own false desire or the desire inscribed upon them by the masculine order. Nixi, the
female protagonist in Zhang’s Interlocking Rings is caught in her desire to attain
and maintain social respectability. Her self-worth is based on an economic and
financial system that is determined by a masculine order. In the beginning of the
story, the reader is introduced to a Chinese woman, Nixi, with a foreign surname.
Though she is addressed as Mrs., it is made clear that she has not been married and
has been in cohabitation with several men. Her marital status or lack of it is further
made evident by the fact that she has been purchased, by an East Indian, Yaheya,
97
though the price fluctuates with each telling of the tale. Zhang tell her readers that
• 9R • •
Nixi suffers from a poor self-image. Nixi knew that she has her looks and so hopes
to use them to further her advantage when she is made aware that Yaheya has
90
intentions of taking a wife other than herself, she hunts for other prospects. Nixi’s
inability to hold onto the object of her desire — respectable marriage for herself and
fin an cial security— m o v e s from o n e p oten tial m ate to another. D esp ite her b est
2 7 Ailing Zhang, “Interlocking Rings” In Ailing Zhang’s Zhang Views (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press,
1995),12- 17.
2 8 Ibid., 15.
2 9 Ibid., 22-23.
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efforts, social conventions prevent her from being a suitable partner. She
consequently settles for financial reimbursement which becomes the substitute
‘object of desire.’
[Mr. Thompson] felt safe, signed a five thousand dollar check, saying:
“This is yours, if you promise from today on not to come and see me.”
Nixi was not satisfied with this sum, crying thus making matters more
complicated. Mr. Thompson called out in a loud voice: “Miss Firestone”
in this manner he was a little like the Chinese, when calling his secretary,
he did not ring a bell but simply called out. The secretary came in. Nixi
unwilling to kick up a fuss in front of her and to give herself some leeway,
left. When the money was spent, she went back to look for him.3 0
In the end, Nixi, acknowledges that she is old because she cannot hold unto her men
nor are they interested in her anymore. Instead, interest has shifted from mother to
daughter as Nixi ponders an engagement proposal for her thirteen year old daughter
to a thirty one year old man. In so doing she perpetuates the myth that women are
dependent on men.
She said laughing: “But Falize is younger than I am! The ages are not right”
The Indian missus halted and said smilingly: There is a big difference in
age, he means...Selita....Selita is thirteen this year, he is thirty one but he is
willing to wait, wait for her to grow up. If you are willing, let them get
engaged. One, he will not have to worry, secondly, he can pay for her
education. Studying so well and to not continue, what a pity. Of course, the
younger siblings would also go to school. Becoming related, would also
enable you to approach him should you meet with any difficulties, isn’t that
right, Mrs. Samson?”3 1
N ix i is trapped, th ou gh sh e is defined as b ein g o n the m argins o f so ciety , all her
actions are to ensure that she can ingratiate herself into a system that keeps her out.
3 0 Ibid., 77.
3 1 Ibid., 78.
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She has no space in which to maneuver. All her mimicry and masquerade are, in
effect, ineffective because she moves within the realm of her own false desire that is
her identity is dependent on the masculine order.
In Zhang’s Red Rose, White Rose Zhang seemingly offers the more traditional
interpretation of woman as the “other.” The male protagonist, Zhenbao, perceives
women as either objects of desire or objects of social acceptability. In this tale,
Zhenbao sees women as representing the binary of virgin and vamp. In early scenes
in the story, Zhenbao is involved with a Parisian prostitute and a seemingly
promiscuous overseas Chinese girl student yet he is aware that neither
would be suitable mates and the story ends with his marriage to someone for whom
he has no love or passion. The first two lines of the story show this binary
construction of woman as “other.”
In Zhenbao’s life, there are two types of women. He says that one type
is his white rose, the other type is his red rose. One is the pure wife, one
is the passionate lover—ordinary people until now separated these two
words, control and virtuous when they spoke.3 2
Yet Zhang Ailing’s weaving of this tale in liminal space posits Zhenbao not as the
subject, a man forging his own destiny but rather as an object, an individual
controlled by social structures. Zhenbao is described as having “returned from
abroad, standing at the window of the window of the world.”3 3 This non-place
(liminality) gives Zhenbao a sense of freedom to discover his desires as he searches
3 2 Ailing Zhang, “Red Rose, White Rose” in her collection o f short stories, entitled The City Toppled
By Love (Taipei: Crown Press, 1996), 52. The translation is my own.
3 3 Ibid., 53.
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for the ideal between “his wife and his mistress.”3 4 Consequently, in the early
scenes of Zhenbao’s purchase of the Parisian prostitute or in the seduction of the
ingenue, Rose, Zhenbao is perceived as the masculine subject in pursuit of the object
of his desire and in control of that desire.3 5
However, Zhang delineates Zhenbao’s dilemma as the tale unfolds to reveal that
he is not in control of his destiny especially when he meets his friend’s wife, Jiaorui.
In this instance, Zhenbao proceeds into a personal world of chaos where masculine
and feminine identities meld and converge within the dance of seduction and
sexuality. With deliberate irony, Zhang obscures the lines of seduction between
Zhenbao and the female protagonist, Jiaorui, so that the reader is never quite sure
who is the predator, who is the prey, who has seduced or who has been seduced. The
dance is intricately intertwined with the two dancers constantly changing postures of
subject and object.
Furthermore, the female character, Jiaorui, is immediately marked as being
different from other women. She is the “Other” even within the community of
women. She is neither truly western nor is she truly Asian. A Singaporean Chinese
siren, Jiaorui, is educated in England and has developed habits that are caught
between the East and the West. Jiaoruo, like Rose who is half Chinese, is just a little
too strange for C h in a and Z henbao cannot h elp but m ake note of it.
3 4 Ibid., 53.
3 5 Ibid., 55-57.
3 6 Ibid., 66-72.
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Why did he always run into this kind of woman? Was he to blame that
it happened everywhere he went? No. Women like this were rare among
Chinese. It was because he had just returned to China and had mixed with
friends who were half-western and half Chinese.3 7
Jiaorui is married to Zhenbao’s friend and as such is socially unattainable at least as
a potential marriage partner but is available as a sexual partner. Zhenbao recognizes
his own depravity as he acknowledges and analyzes his emotions, thus embarking
unto the steps of liminal space and consequently, participates in the art and dance of
seduction.3 8 By embodying Jiaorui as a liminal space of potential subject and object
never truly occupying the space of one, Zhang allows for possibilities to abound. In
this liminality, Zhenbao begins the process of his illumination that leads to the
awareness that Zhenbao is as imprisoned as an object within his subject position.3 9 In
sublimating his desire of passion for respectability, Zhenbao enters into the posture
of the abject subject, finding no happiness in either of his choices. He, like Liusu in
The City Toppled by Love is in a world of desolation precisely because he has
become object within the subject structures.
The “Other,’’can be understood as a perceived object in relationship to a
speaking subject. For Zhang Ailing the speaking subject is both the man and the
woman and they are both object because they only have voices within
3 7 Ibid., 63.
3 8 Ibid., 58-59.
3 9 Karen Sawyer Kingsbury speaks of this as “Zhenbao’s movement along the foreign-native axis”
that “cannot be seen as a search for the legitimate Chinese woman. Instead it is a fearful retreat before
the double threat of female alterity and cultural oneness. (She even makes Jiaorui, in a typically
vampish innuendo, send a thrill of fear and excitement through a group of Chinese men by claiming to
have eaten too much ‘sheep-meat,’ which in Chinese is a homophone for “Western flesh.”) in Karen
Sawyer Kingsbury, “Reading Eileen Chang’s Early Fiction: Art and a Female Sense of S elf’
Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995, 146.
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the perimeters of social expectation. So once the subject remains outside the
conceptual system of social language, he and she will be perceived as the “other.” In
other words, the unconsciousness of the subject is the discourse of the Other. By
being a conscious other, woman affirms man in his manhood and vice versa.
Consequently, Zhang argues that this “Other” when defined in terms of
liminal space, opens up new possibilities for women and men because it is in
liminality that they celebrate their differences from the masculine other personified
within the social structures in which they find themselves.
Within liminality, women de facto achieve immanence. In these short stories
Zhang Ailing reconstructs the “other” not only in terms of a feminist discourse but
she also contests the concept of woman as only object and thus the sole “other.” She
demonstrates through placing women within liminal space that man is also caught in
the patriarchal system where he, too, acts to prescribed roles. In Zhang’s terms, both
man and woman are not bom but constmcted in terms of social difference.
The De-exoticizing of the Foreign Other
In Zhang Ailing’s texts, the terms “western” and “modem” are usually
sy n o n y m o u s.40 T h is is b est e x e m p lifie d in Fan L iu yu an ’s d efen se o f h im se lf.41
4 0 There are numerous examples to be found where the terms, “modem” and “western” are
interchangeable. Individuals described as modem are all western trained, Cuiyuan is a modem woman
because she is a Christian and studied English. The protagonists described as modem in “Red Rose,
White Rose” are also western educated. Qiqiao’s potential son-in-law in “the Golden Cangue” is
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In the historical period in which Zhang writes, the clash between tradition and
modernity is a real dilemma, the questions that arise from Chinese national identity
and Western idealization plague the main cities. Consequently, the confusion that
Fan Liuyuan articulates in Zhang’s short story is echoed in many of the writings of
that time.
Zhang’s use of liminality places her protagonist in positions that allow a skewed
view of the foreign “other” not as privileged nor prestigious individuals and objects,
but rather as subjects struggling to fashion a life for themselves within a landscape of
liminality, that is adjusting to a space to which they do not belong. The backdrop to
the deconstruction of the Foreign “Other” is noteworthy. Zhang places the characters
in Colonial Hong Kong where the British ruled with an arrogance of cultural
superiority. Zhang slowly unweaves the fabric that suggest that the “Colonizer”
is better off than the “colonized.”
In the short story, The City Toppled by Love, Zhang constructs the exotic and
erotic “other” in her character of Princess Saheiyini.
Directly in their path was a group of Western gentleman who, like
stars around the moon, stood clustered around a woman. Liusu first
noticed the woman’s long black hair, which had been done up in two
long braids and then coiled up on top of her head. She was Indian, and
though she was dressed Westem-style she still had a very Oriental aura.
Under a dark, sheer cape she wore a close-fitting gown, gold-fish red,
that cov ered her hands, lea v in g o n ly her pearly fin gern ails ex p o sed . T he
plunging neckline of her dress formed a narrow V, reaching to her waist;
it was the latest fashion from Paris, called “Ligne du Ciel”. Her complexion
depicted as having been educated in the west and is perceived as a modem man. Zhang’s description
o f modem homes was o f domiciles that possessed Western style furniture.
4 1 Ailing Zhang, “ The City Toppled by Love,” Renditions, 75.
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was rich and tawny, like a gold-plated Buddha statue, but in her dark eyes a
devil lay in wait. A classically straight nose, if a bit too sharp and thin. And
a small mouth with pink, full lips that almost seemed swollen. Liuyuan
stopped and made a slight bow in her direction. Liusu looked at the woman,
and the hauteur of the woman’s returning gaze put a thousand miles between
them.4 2
Here Princess Saheiyini is clearly the depicted object of desire for the Western men
as they gather around her. She is exoticized both by her dress and her looks. She is
neither completely Western nor is she perfectly Asian, she is a meld of both, thus
enabling her to straddle both cultures remaining “Other” to both. Zhang’s artful
depiction of Liusu’s gaze and Saheiyini’s returned gaze is not one of identification
but rather one of separation. Neither Liusu nor Saheiyini identify with each other as
women but rather they occupy spaces of subject that place them in competition with
each other for the now desired position of a gazed-upon object. Liusu, as the gazing
subject looking at the masculine ordered object of desire, becomes one with the
masculine order and not one with the feminine construct of desired object.4 3
Zhang creates liminal space by contextualizing her tale within the framework of
war. This time of chaos allows to demystify the exotic “other” and also to bring self-
awareness to her main characters.
He was just a selfish man, and she was just a selfish woman. In this age of
chaos and disorder, there is no room for individualists, but there is always
room for an ordinary married couple.
O ne day, w h en th ey w ere ou t sh op p in g for fo o d , th ey ran into P rin cess
Saheiyini. Her face was rather sallow, and her loosened braids had been
4 2 Ibid., 75.
4 3 Toril Moi in her text, Sexual/Textual Politics states that Freud’s text, “The uncanny, theorize the
gaze as a phallic activity linked to the anal desire for sadistic mastery o f the object.” (New York:
Routledge Press, 1985), 134.
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piled up in a fluffy top-knot. She was dressed in a long black cotton-wadded
gown she had picked up who knows where, but on her feet she still wore a
pair of a fancy Indian slippers, colorfully embroidered and bejeweled.4 4
The “bodies” are dismembered in that they are no longer seen as a single unit but in
terms of each other. The positioning of each is dependent on the other so that even
Princess Saheiyini only remains as an object in view of their subject gaze. In
liminality, Liusu and Fan Liuyuan, both accept and acknowledge their self(ish)ness
and realize that they are merged as subjects viewing Saheiyini no longer as a
exoticized “other” but rather as a displaced subject. This concept of definitional
relationship in liminal space is what Judith Butler articulates as:
the source of the personal and political agency comes not from within
but in and through the complex exchanges among bodies in which identity
itself is ever shifting, indeed, where identity is being constructed,
disintegrated, and recirculated only within the context of a dynamic field of
cultural relations.To be woman is, then, for Wittig as well as for Beauvoir, to
become a woman, but because this process is in no sense fixed, it is possible
to become a being whom neither man nor woman truly describes.4 5
Zhang delineates lines that blur the construct of gender demarcation so that to
become man or woman is a process of ever-shifting fields. Both Liusu and Fan
Liuyuan viewed the Indian Princess Saheiyini as the exotic and the erotic “other. The
situating of the exotic and erotic as perceived by both sexes offers a different
reading and contests that the desired other is only male constructed.
Z hang A ilin g ’s story, The S e c o n d C e n se r ex a m in es the co n cep t o f the
perceived “idealized” colonial Other. From the onset, the reader is told that the story
4 4 Ailing Zhang, “The City Toppled by Love,” Renditions, 91.
4 5 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge Press, 1990), 127.
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is tragic. Yet the introduction to the characters has nary a tragic tone. The tragedy
lies in the fa?ade of the subjects and the objects. The male protagonist, Roger, a forty
year old English professor residing in Hong Kong is in love and is about to marry his
“ideal” English beauty at two in the afternoon. Zhang depicts the bride as a flaxen
blond whose hair is soft and reminiscent of desert sands. Her clear honey tone skin
so perfect it seemed unreal.4 6 Susie, the bride to be lives at home with her mother
and divorced sister. She is pampered and indulged by her mother whose careful
watch of Roger allows little time for the two to spend alone. Susie is held out to be
the model virgin.
Roger sees in Susie his ideal and thus connects with her and merges into her
identity which is symbolic of the “Utopia” he has constructed. Susie’s rejection of
him on their wedding night and her subsequent actions send Roger into a tirade of
madness and despair. So long as Roger can identify with Susie, his beloved other, he
is euphoric. Rejected, Roger enters into an imagining of self-death that eventually
finds expression in the ultimate act of suicide at the end of the story. It is precisely
because his sense of the “utopia” crumbles both in his “other” Susie and then, in his
inability to find his identity apart from Susie that his world unravels.4 7 Susie is
Roger’s ideal so that Roger only finds voice in his identification with Susie and
ev en tu a lly can o n ly d o so in death. K risteva su g g ests that
4 6 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in The First Censer (Taipei: Crown Press, 1968), 89-90.
4 7 See Gunn’s reading of Roger as one who cannot see himself apart from the Paternal Order,
Unwelcome Muse, 207.
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If the object of fantasy is receding, metonymical, it is because it does
not correspond to the preliminary ideal that the identification process
has constructed. The subject exists because it belongs to the Other, and
it is in proceeding from that symbolic belonging that causes him to be
subject to love and death that he will be able to set up for himself imaginary
objects of desire. Transferred to the Other as to the very place from which
he is seen and heard, the loving subject dose not have access to that Other as
to an object, but as to the very possibility of the perception, distinction and
differentiation that allows one to see.4 8
Susie, while Roger’s ideal, is only a fa?ade of that concept. She is in effect a
narcissist who is incapable of loving another and when forced to express love for the
subject, Susie, as the object of desire, enters into hysteria temporarily till she finds
her voice within the community that upholds her ideal object status “the virgin bride”
or Roger’s concept of Utopia. The fact that Zhang gives Susie a voice within Roger’s
community, first with his students then with his superior, indicates that Roger has
lost hold of his own process of self-identification with his utopia. He is no longer
subject but now is abject object. Susie and Roger have switched gender positions,
Susie is now the speaking subject and Roger the silent object. To maintain the ideal
of both his object and of his utopian construct Roger must remain silent. To give
voice would be to shatter the image of Susie and the world that he has constructed.
He must, therefore, imagine himself to be similar to the idealized object of desire,
“merging with him and even indistinguishable from him.”4 9
U n ab le to m aintain utopia, self-id en tifica tio n w ith the ob ject o f d esire and lo sin g
power, Zhang depicts Roger as entering into hysteria, a disease historically
4 8 Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader(new York Columbia University Press, 1986), 252-253.
4 9 Ibid., 250.
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associated with women, further indicating the reversal of gender positions.5 0 A
reading of Susie as symbolic of Roger’s world allows for an interpretation that
suggests that Roger is caught in a structure that is auto-erotic, that is, this subject has
no object nor image in which it can find pleasure, leading Roger into inevitable
tragedy. Roger spirals into a world of chaos despite his awareness that it is his
symbolic “Other” that is off-center. Susie, untouched by Roger’s dementia returns to
the security of her mother’s home to resume the fagade of the Other. Susie is, in
Kristeva’s words, the auto-erotic person who
cannot allow himself to be ‘loved’ (no more than he can let himself be
lovable), except by a maternal substitute would cling to his body like a
poultice — a reassuring balm, asthmogenic perhaps but nevertheless like a
permanent wrapping. Such a false mother is the only ‘fathering’ [pere-
manence] tolerated by one who, henceforth, will indolently be able to enjoy
his own organs in polymorhous perversity.”5 1
Roger’s psychosis initiates a floating in isolation where Roger loses the narrative and
his voice.5 2 Without recourse to a liminal space Roger can find no solace in structure
nor is there room for him to maneuver in an anti-structure. He has become an abject
object within the perimeters of his own construction. Zhang’s artful writing of this
tale shows that men and women require liminality if they are to be transformed.
Zhang contends then to stand solely and solidly on the grounds of a fixed reality
leads only to death.
5 0 Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed, “History of the Subject, The Subject of History” in Mireille Calle,
ed. Trans. Catherine McGann, On the Feminine (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993), 16-17.
5 1 Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader(Newr York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 251.
5 2 See similarities as discussed earlier in “Interlocking Rings” where Nixi’s inability to love herself or
to see her own worth outside o f the male order contributes to her demise as a marginalized person.
This is done not only through the constructs of social convention but also through her own actions.
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Rewriting The Oedipal Other
Zhang’s stories have positioned woman as the subject and man as the Object of
desire. She has demonstrated in and through liminality that the other can be male,
perceived and desired by the woman. Zhang has also shown that without recourse to
liminal space, the fixed positioning of any individual leads to madness as in Qiqiao
or death as in Roger. In contrasting her characters, the reader is made aware that
Zhang speaks of a human condition and thus Zhang resorts to break down the
constructs of man and woman, the idealized “colonial” other and the “western”
other.
In Zhang’s short stories, Fragrant Jasmine Tea and The Heart Sutra, Zhang
examines the concept of the “other” within the complexity of the Oedipal and Electra
complexes. Zhang also examines these complexes of the absent father figure in H alf
a Lifetime’ s Yearning. Zhang does not record this “other” as taboo but rather as
characters in search of self-identities.
Removing the Oedipal/Electra complex from the simple configurations of sexual
taboo, this “other” can be read in terms of Kristeva’s refigured oedipal other where
the child is the narcissistic self, pursuing both the abject mother as perceived in terms
o f the m oth er’s b o d y and the d esired im aginary father as the ob ject o f the mother’s
CO
love or desire. The Oedipal subject, then, transfers affections from the self subject
5 3 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 15.
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to the abject mother object, only to become the subject in pursuit of the object father.
The Oedipal other is not simply drawn through the complexities of a Freudian sexual
dysfunction of replacing the father but rather the (oedipal) subject maneuvers
through a space where the same subject finds a voice within the symbolic order. This
maneuvering or journeying creates a liminal space that allows for a redefinition of
the Oedipal other as suggested in Oliver’s reading of Kristeva’s writing as “a
Narcissus turned lover.”5 4 Kristva’s Oedipal structure argues for several “paternal
functions and not just the function of law and prohibition.”5 5
In the short story, Fragrant Jasmine Tea, Zhang looks at the Oedipal
configuration where the young sixteen/seventeen year old male protagonist, Nieh
Zhuanjing, imagines his reunion with his lost mother through, not his biological
father but rather his mother’s original object of desire and love, a professor in his
college. Zhang carefully depicts Nieh as an unhappy individual whose very identity
is contested by his biological father now remarried who silences him on every
occasion and demeans him whenever possible.
About his mother, he knew very little. He knew that she had never loved
his father. And because of this, his father hated her. At her death, he
transferred that hate and anger unto her child. Otherwise, even with his step
mother’s provocation, his father would not treat him with such cruelty. His
mother had never loved his father — Had she loved someone else?5 6
5 4 Ibid., 70-71.
5 5 Ibid., 171.
5 6 Ailing Zhang, “ Fragrant Jasmine Tea” in her collected short stories, The First Censer(Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Publishers, 1996),14. All translations from this text are my own.
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There was a rumor that his mother had loved another man, Yan Ziyie (the professor),
but due to concepts of filial piety and its restrictive nature on women that marriage
was not allowed to take place and his mother was quickly married off to his
biological father.5 7
From Nieh’s perspective, his mother takes on the role of the abject mother par
excellence. While he wants to blame her for his present situation, he cannot but feel
empathy for her inability to change her own plight. It is in this light that the reader
sees the young protagonist, Nieh, enter into a relationship with the daughter of the
man Nieh imagines his mother loved. Nieh’s imaginings paint out what life might
have been like had his mother married Professor Yan, the man she loved. The young
male protagonist imagines that he, then, and not Danzhu would have become the
apple of Professor Yan’s eyes. While drawn to Yan Danzhu, the professor’s young
daughter, he enters into a rivalry with her and sees her not as an object but rather as a
subject to be replaced. Nieh finds that in his present circumstances, he has neither
voice nor identity within this familial structure. By becoming friends with Yan
Danzhu, Nieh seeks to find himself and also his voice to articulate his feelings and
frustrations as he is caught in a system in which he has no control. The story unfolds
where Nieh’s desire to claim the “Imaginary Father” can only take place if Nieh
• • SR
rep laces the daughter, D an zh u , w h o is the p ro fesso r’s ob ject o f lo v e.
5 7 Ibid., 15.
5 8 Kristeva’s “Imaginary Father” is neither father nor mother but a combination of both. It has no
sexual difference but rather contains the characteristics of both masculine and feminine. Kristeva
names it the “father-mother” conglomerate. See Kelly Oliver’s reading o f Kristeva in her text,
Reading Kristeva (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 77.
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The possibility of his mother’s marriage to Yan Ziyie, would mean that
he could have been Yan Ziyie’s child. Yan Danzhu’s older brother, perhaps
he would have been Yan Danzhu. If they had him, they would not have had
her.5 9
The transference from the abject mother to the mother’s love is the imaginary father
that allows for an identification of the mother-father figure that is apparently absent
in Nieh’s life. The identification with the “Imaginary Father” is significant because it
“is the vortex of primary identification within what Kristeva calls ‘the narcissistic
structure.’ This identification is the originary identification that sets up all
subsequent identities, including the ego’s identity with itself.”6 0 Consequently Nieh’s
Oedipal desire is a yearning to find himself within the complexities of life. Nieh
believes that in the fantasies of the “Imagined Father” he will discover his self worth.
Zhuanjing(Nieh) believed if he had been Ziyie’s and Zuiluo’s child, he
would be more reserved and more reflective than Danzhu. At the same
time, a child who grows up in a loving family, no matter how tumultuous
or unstable life is, will find himself confident, and compassionate —
persistent, enterprising, brave. All Danzhu’s good points he would possess
and those she did not have he would have.6 1
Unfortunately, the process of definition remains in the realm of the imaginary or
within liminal space. Zhang does not allow for Nieh’s construction of either structure
or an anti-structure whereby he can be transformed. It is only in liminal space where
control can be aborted and metamorphosis can take place. As in any Oedipal
con stru ction there is a castration th em e and in th is ca se, self-castration . For Z hang,
5 9 Ailing Zhang, “Fragrant Jasmine Tea,” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press, 1996), 17.
6 0 Ibid„
6 1 Ibid., 19.
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Nieh acts out the castration motif by his attempt to displace Yan Danzhu who
becomes the symbol of the Paternal Law. He attempts to be rid of her and to replace
her within the symbolic order. Nieh kicks her and knocks her off a mountain at the
close of the story. However,
Danzhu doesn’t die. After two days, when school starts, he will still have
to see her. He cannot run.
Pivotal to this story is Zhang’s transitional positioning of characters in the
Oedipal structure. Zhang sees the struggle as one for power where the principal
character Nieh conspires internally to discover an identity and a voice within the
story. The power struggle exists on several fronts, the need for Nieh to establish
himself within his own familial structure and as a viable individual within his social
setting. It is also significant to note that the story can only unfold within the
imaginings of the sixteen/seventeen year old protagonist who finds his reality bleak.
Zhang’s use of the imaginary creates a liminal space that affords Nieh the
opportunity to seek clarity of his identity within seemingly oppressive structures but
because there is no real structure for the protagonist to which he can lay claim nor
hold, he loses his grip on reality.
This space, as Oliver argues, is fundamentally unrepresentable:
toward which all glances nonetheless converge; a primal scene where
genitality dissolves sexual identification beyond their given differences’
This fantasy that I am reading as the fantasy of the imagined father, is a f
fantasy that embraces alterity and difference in an imaginary wholeness.
It is not that one becomes the other, or that both disappear.
6 2 ibid., 29.
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Rather the combination provides complete satisfaction, which fills
any gap between them. Alterity becomes a pleasurable excess rather
than a painful gap.6 3
It is evident as the story unfolds that Zhang is articulating a “Kristevan” Oedipal
structure where the young male protagonist, Nieh, attempts to reunite himself to both
the lost mother/ father figure, that is the Imaginary Father to locate and find himself.
The text clearly shows Nieh’s adulation of Professor Yan as the idealized imagined
father figure. Zhang contorts the Oedipal configuration by adding an interesting
twist. She has the young female protagonist position Nieh not as a possible sexual
partner (the object) but as a listening subject attentive to a speaking feminine other
where the imaginary identification exists within Yan Danzhu’s experiences of her
father. It is only in this discourse that Nieh becomes aware of his “Imagined Father.”
Yan Danzhu confides in Nieh precisely because she perceives him not as male threat
but as female support.
Danzhu said: “I don’t know why, I wouldn’t say these things to anybody,
except for you.” Zhuanjing said: “I also don’t understand why.” Danzhu
replied: “I guess it is because....because I perceive you as a girl.”6 4
This gender transition for Nieh is both comforting and threatening. At the onset,
Nieh enjoys his camaraderie of Danzhu but as his desire to replace her increases, so
does his dislike for her. Nieh’s passion for both father and daughter are
proportionate to each other.
His hate for Danzhu was equal to his daily increase of his abnormal
admiration for Yan Ziyie.6 5
6 3 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva (Bloomington: Indiana Press, 1993), 80.
6 4 Ailing Zhang, “Fragrant Jasmine Tea,” 9.
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139
The suggestion of homoeroticism of Nieh’s adoration of Professor Yan contests
the concept that the Imagined father is the same as the Father of the Law. Rather
in this instance it acts as a rival. Nieh has a biological father representing the
Symbolic Law that robs Nieh of his own identity and thus his self-hood. The
articulation of a mother who will neither love the Symbolic Law nor heed it
enhances the Imaginary Father to whom the abject mother concedes her love. Nieh
does a double transference. He takes on the imagined desire of his abject mother for
the imagined father and he attempts to replace both the speaking subject and the
object of love by his desired other. The transference is so complete that Danzhu
becomes both the speaking subject and the object of desire. The transference of
Nieh’s affection from father to daughter also seems to rectify Nieh’s homoerotic
desire for the imagined father. Yet Nieh’s inability to articulate his own identity
outside of the Oedipal matrix creates the dilemma in which Nieh both needs and
abhors Yan Danzhu.
Danzhu, if you fall in love with someone else, you are only a lover.
But with me, you are not only a lover but a creator, a father, a mother,
a new environment, a new world. You are the past and the future. You
are god.6 6
When Danzhu refuses to enter into liminal space of imagined possibilities but reveals
the harsh reality of her own world, Nieh is confronted with the fact that Danzhu
never saw him as a potential partner. She had, after all, seen him in the guise of a girl
6 5 Ibid., 20.
6 6 Ibid., 27.
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friend. Indeed Danzhu has no desire for any grandiose design, all she wants is to be
someone’s lover and eventually a wife, just not his.
[Nieh says] “Then, you don’t love me, not even a little bit”
Danzhu said: “ I have never given it any thought.”
Zhuanjing[Nieh] said: “ that’s because you treat me like a girl.”
Danzhu said: No! No! Really....but...” “Since you didn’t want
to hear it then why suffer me to say it?”
Zhuanjing turned his back, gritted his teeth and said: “ You treat me like a
f t 7
girl. You—you—you simply don’t treat me as a person.”
Zhang reconfigures the characters’ gender definitions as Nieh the male seeks to find
his identity through the female protagonist. The search through the Oedipal matrix
remains for Zhang complex. She argues that the search for self is not gender
determined but socially constructed and yet while liminal space allows for
opportunities, in reality, self definition cannot be found in externals.
In the story, The Heart Sutra, which follows a parallel storyline to Fragrant
Jasmine Tea, what is central in this story is the infatuation with and disillusionment
of the main female protagonist with her father figure, a suggestion of the taboo of
incestuous love and the final result of identifying with her mother as the symbol of
women’s lot outside of a liminal space. Xu Xiaohan is depicted as besotted with her
young and handsome father and seemingly wants to displace her mother. The
absence of the mother in the early part of the text is telling. In the opening scene,
classmates are discussing Xiaohan’s mother”
Among her classmates, there was one who seeing that she had gone
a little further, said softly: “You only hear from her lips, father this
and father that. “What about her mother? Is she still alive?” Another
6 7 Ibid.
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replied: “Yes, she is” A third asked: “Is it her own mother?” The
previous friend replied: “It is her own mother.” “Have you seen her
mother before?” “No, I haven’t. I come often but her mother doesn’t
like to entertain guests...”
As the tale unfolds, the reader becomes keenly aware that the daughter identifies
with her dapper and modem father. It is the father and daughter’s photographs
that adom the piano.6 9 An acquaintance of Xiaohan mistakes them for a couple.
“This is my father. I want you to recognize him clearly.. .so as not to....”
She said correcting in a squeaky voice. So that the next time you see him
and me together, another misunderstanding will not occur. Milan, not
understanding asked: “What misunderstanding?” Xiaohan said: “Last time,
a classmate anxiously asked me, the tall person who went with you to see
the Thai film. Is he your boyfriend? I laughed for several days— it is funny
whenever it is mentioned! Really....who would think such a thing!7 0
In several scenes Zhang has father and daughter flirting playfully with each other.7 1
The twist in this story lies in the father’s change in attention from his daughter to her
best friend whom he sees to resemble his daughter and ends up being the daughter’s
substitute.7 2 Xiaohan, in an effort to displace her father’s affection for her friend,
comes to an awareness that her father’s mind and heart are set.
Xiaohan, her back to him, biting down on her teeth and smiling, said:
“You did not in the beginning give me up to third Aunt, now it is too
late.. .and you? What new plans do you have for life?”
Fengyi said: “ Perhaps we will pass the summer at Mt. Morgan.”
“[We] ? You and Ma?” Fengyi did not reply.
Xiaohan said: “If you love her, if I am here you will still love her, if you
6 8 Ailing Zhang, “The Heart Sutra” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer(Taipei: Crown Publishers,
1996), 146.
6 9 Ibid., 148.
7 0 Ibid., 150.
7 1 Ibid., 150-151.
7 2 Ibid., 152.
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142
do not love her, then you can send me off to Siberia, and you would still
not love her.7 3
The daughter’s identification process breaks down and the daughter is caught in the
turmoil of her own feelings. For as long as the father was playfully hers, her identity
was not threatened but when his affections turn to her best friend, she is replaced as
the object of desire and as such she ceases to have value and a voice within the
system. Prior to this shift in attitude, the girls are ingenues laughing about their
possibilities in life and marriage. She is free to flirt even with her father. Yet when
the father’s affection moves from daughter to best friend, the daughter unable to
identify her self within the fading perimeters of the Imagined Father tinged with the
concept of forbidden love, enters into a discourse with the abject mother as to her
options.
Xiaohan said urgently: “You are just going to let them go?” Mrs. Xu
replies: “And If I do not let them go, then what? Your father doesn’t
love me, and he cannot love you —you can keep the person next to you
but you cannot keep his heart. Fie loves Ling. His eyes have seen forty
years. People live in this world but for a short time. Love is but also for
a short time. Let them go.”7 4
The philosophical attitude with which Mrs. Xu deals with the dilemma is perhaps
Zhang’s solution to practical liminal space. Since there are no structures that exist to
facilitate the subject /object position, perhaps the best thing to do is to let things go.
In Zhang’s novel, H aifa Lifetim e’ s Yearning, both protagonists, the female,
Gu Manzhen and the male, Shen Shijin are unable to let things go. They both have
7 3 Ibid., 164.
7 4 Ibid., 180.
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143
an absent father figure and as a result, seek identity through the patriarchal structures
that restrict their very choices.7 5 Manzhen’s father passes away when she is still a
very young child.
When my father died, my family was in serious trouble. At that time, we
still did not understand things. Only my sister was a bit older. From that
time on, my family relied solely on my older sister.7 6
Shijin, on the other hand, has a father who spent most of his life with his concubine.
because father’s concubine has been with him these many years....
Father lived a long time on that side. Rarely coming home once, mother
treated him most politely.7 7
The father figure’s absence in both protagonists creates a need for the “Father’s”
affection and approval. Manzhen and Shijin enter into a pre-oedipal phase of
identification with the mother figure. As they share the same psychical space, they
are alternatively subject and object to each other. Early on, the reader is aware that
Shijin places Manzhen as his idealized other. Fie is seen as anticipating the arrival
of his desired other.
Early today he was waiting for her at the bus stop. Later on, he went to her
home, she had not yet returned, so he waited in her room. Now he was still
• 78
waiting for her.
A closer reading reveals that Shijin is the object as Manzhen deliberately makes
him wait. This shift in object/subject space blurs the lines as to who is the Oedipal
7 5 Jinyuan H u, “Mother, Where are you?” in Zepian Yang, ed., Reading Zhang Ailing: An
International Conference on the Research and Readings o f Zhang Ailing (Taipei, Taiwan: Maitian
Press, 1999), 244.
7 6 Ailing Zhang, H alf a Lifetime’ s Yearning (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 17. All translations
here are my own.
7 7 Ibid., 4.
7 8 Ibid., 92.
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144
father figure. For Shijin, Manzhen seems to be the Paternal Law, pure, chaste and
perfect. His possession of Manzhen then, is a self-identification of his own identity
and power. However, there is a shift of power back to the original symbol of
authority when his father returns home. Manzhen, on the other hand, identifies the
Paternal Law and the Oedipal father with her sister, Manlu, who has replaced the
father figure and the Paternal Law. This recognition causes her to accept the rape by
her brother-in-law, engineered by her own sister. She, thus, stays bound within the
confines of a patriarchy that blames women for their defilement by men. Shijin does
not come to her aid against the structures that restrict her. Rather he stands silent
before his once absent father who now returns due to ill health. Bound by a blind
sense of duty to this paternal law, he rejects Manzhen’s sister and her past, and in a
sense, binds Manzhen further to the Paternal Law that she both desires and yet
70
hates. Both are unable to break from the chains that bind them. Blinded by their
pride and prejudices, they accept the social restrictions imposed on them, their
futures are determined for them and despite their yearnings for each other, they are
forced to live apart in their own sorrow.
In her fictional works, Zhang Ailing deconstructs the concept of the “Other” to
show that otherness is a matter of position of power and not determined by gender. It
is in debunking the concepts o f the idealized other that Zhang shows how people
7 9 Read Jinyuan Hu’s section on the “Oedipal Mother” in “Mother, Where are you?” in Zipian
Yang. Ed., Reading Zhang Ailing: An International Conference on the Research and Reading on
Zhang Ailing (Taipei, Taiwan: Maitan Press, 1999), 243-245.
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intertwine and maneuver through spaces of liminality to create possibilities of self-
identification. Zhang describes the tension between men and women as being
sexual, political and social but what about between women. In her many stories,
Zhang demonstrates that while women can exist within communities they are also in
power conflicts when they are involved in the marriage market. The next chapter
debunks the myth of the Sisterhood and examines the marriage economy within
Zhang Ailing’s works.
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146
Chapter Four: Marriage and Love: The Violated Trust
Within the context of inter-gender sexual politics, Zhang demonstrates how
women maneuver through the complex social web by deploying the tactics of
masquerade, mimicry and by entering into a liminal space that contests the
construction of woman as simply “other.” Yet within the intra-gender arena, Zhang
implies that these learned tactics often fail to secure the desired results as women do
not perceive themselves as “other” but rather as either advocates or adversaries
within the economy of marriage and for the struggle to obtain better social status.1
Consequently, for Zhang Ailing, it is problematic to address woman as a singular
unit as women do not share similar social and historical backgrounds. This chapter
examines Zhang’s short stories and novels as she unpacks the dynamics of the inter
gender and the intra-gender complexities of being “woman” within a traditional
hierarchal and patriarchal system of the marriage economy and the counter-system of
romantic love. This love though is not a free floating agent but one that is often
defined by public opinion. Zhang shows that within the economy of marriage and
class struggle, women do not perceive themselves as a community of unified
sisterhood but rather as contenders for a perceived social status.
11 have coined the expressions, inter-gender and intra-gender, to explain the dynamics o f relations
between the sexes and within the sex respectively.
2 Marriage here is understood as an institution that provides women with a social identity. It is also
seen as a site where categories o f gender are reproduced, that is, a site where women are subordinated
into accepting the patriarchal underpinnings that chain them to domestic service and sexual
exclusivity to men. See J. Mitchell’s text, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmonsworth: Penguin
Books, 1974), also R. J. Dobash and R. P. Dobash, Violence against Wives: A Case Against
Patriarchy (New York: Free Press, 1980). Both these texts examine the social practices of women in
marriage as exchange ‘objects’ under the ruse of patriarchy.
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147
She hadn’t planned this night’s events, but in any case, she had given
them quite a show. Did they think that she was already finished, her life
over? It was still early in the game! She smiled. Baoluo must be cursing
her silently, far more fiercely even than Fouth Mistress. But she knew that
even though Baoluo hated her, there was also respect and admiration. It
doesn’t matter how great a woman is: if she cannot get the love or respect
of a man, she can’t get the respect of other women. Women are petty this
way.3
This social status is not static and changes within social norms and expected
conventions of the time. It is, in other words, historically contextualized. Concepts of
woman, then, are complex because it is difficult to articulate an individual feminine
identity separate from and able to struggle against its social construct without being
reduced to some kind of relative generality.
While Zhang does not speak of women as “woman,” her works do attest to her
belief that a historically consistent asset for women was the concept of beauty and
the use of a woman’s beauty, this may have been the one recognized and identifiable
trait within a feminine identity.4 Indeed, many of Zhang’s heroines are described as
possessing some form of socially recognized beauty, that is, the ability to capture a
man’s attention. Zhang speaks of this beauty not as a physical characteristic but as a
mesmerizing trait with which women hold their men captive.5
3 Eileen Chang, “Love in a Fallen City,” in Renditions, An English-Chinese Translation Magazine, no.
45, Spring 1996, 70. See also Ailing Zhang’s story, “Great Felicity” in Ailing Zhang, A City Toppled
By Love (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 45-47. The text recounts two unmarried female
cousins, Liqian and Tangqian, at a w edding reception, poised to attract suitable m arriage partners.
4 Lu Xun, as shown in Carolyn Brown’s text, argues that the physical body of modem Chinese women
“had become repositories of a meaning—the signified, that it did not rightfully bear.” Carolyn Brown,
“women as Trope: Gender and Power in Lu Xun’s ‘Soap’ Modern Chinese Literature 4, 1988, nos. 1-
2 : 68 .
5 In her text, “My Writings” Zhang states: “ As far as these men are concerned, these women have a
kind of beguiling power.” See Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on
Literature 1893-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 441. While Zhang does not
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Women, then, use this ability to maneuver their way into and to maintain their
status as wives or at least to establish themselves as mistresses. Traditionally, a
woman’s highest social status refers to the married state of being a taitai at its best,
or at least belonging within the familial structure as proscribed by the male
dominated class. Susan Mann points out that
marital status as wife or concubine was a primary indicator of status
for women, setting off wives from concubines within the elite family,
creating a rank order among daughters-in-law, with the wife of the
first-married eldest son presiding, and making courtesans as “ill-fated
women” tainted by their commercialized bodies. In High Qing time, then,
every woman knew that she must marry and understood that being a wife
was the best possible marital status she could hope for.6
Mann further points out that China unlike the West did not offer women the
opportunity to enter a convent whereby women could pursue ideals other than
marriage. Mann cites a statement from the famous Qing novel, The Dream o f the
Red Chamber: “It would look very bad for a girl from a family such as ours to enter
into a nunnery. That really is unthinkable.”7 With the social change of the decline of
the Qing dynasty of the early 1900s and the challenge of modernity by the early
1920s, the dynamic tension of perceived and proscribed social roles challenged
inscribe in all her female protagonists physical attractiveness, she does empower them with the
ability to spin a web and hold them men captive albeit for a while. In stories where the main
protagonist is a woman, Zhang invariably sketches the women with the ability to seduce. Refer to
chapter one o f this dissertation. Qiqiao in The Golden Cangue, Yindi in Rouge o f the North, Liusu
in A City Toppled by Love, Susie in The Second Censer, Ge Weilong in The First Censer, Cuiyuan in
Sealed Off, Xiao Ai in Xiao Ai, Nixi in Linked Rings, Jiazhi in Sex, Abstinence, Jiaorui in Red Rose,
White Rose, to name but a few, all share this trait.
6 Susan Mann, Precious Records (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 13. See also Maria
Jaschok’s interesting study of mooi-jais in Concubines and Maidservants (Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press, 1988).
7 Ibid., 10.
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women to rethink the concepts of self, marriage and family. “There are” as Elizabeth
Minnich points outs:
female-specific privileges, built into the gender system too, primarily
in the form of rights to ‘protection.’ I have a hard time describing these
as “privileges,” however; as more than one feminist has pointed out, such
‘privileges’ granted within the patriarchy are the result of a protection
racket: first we threaten you and then we ‘protect’ you, if you submit to the
terms we set for that protection.
This concept of protection was for Zhang Ailing the coerced contract of
marriage. In the setting of her stories, a woman’s primary means of feeling secure
was, of course, in marriage. So consequently, even in terms of modernity that
promised equality of the sexes, a woman’s social status was still defined in terms of
her marriage. Having been married, a widow, however was not under the same kinds
of pressure so long as she was independently wealthy. This state of economic
independence outside the marital perimeter allowed women to have control not only
of their own lives but to become the source of authority and power and thus control
the lives of those directly under or connected to them as evidenced in The Golden
Cangue, The Rouge o f The North, and in A Wounded Epoch.
The Violated Trust: wealth, power and independence
In Zhang’s, The Rouge o f the North, the widowed protagonist, Yindi
chooses not to remarry and sees in her wealth not only independence from a male
8 Elizabeth Minnich, Transforming Knowledge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 60-61.
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dominated structure but also power to control the men in her life. Yindi consciously
uses her money to attract and resist her brother-in-law’s sexual advances.9 She also
uses her money to control her son and in the choice of a daughter-in-law. In the
novel, two sentences are revelatory of Yindi’s mind frame when it comes to money
and power:
There’s power in money only when it’s used, given or withheld
unexpectedly, never taken for granted.1 0
And
She did not like it, as if he had his hand on a soft spot on her. Right
away she was angry. Even her own son —the minute she got affectionate
it meant a great outlay of money.1 1
In the novella, The Golden Cangue, Qiqiao warns her daughter that men are “all
rotten without exception” and that she needs to be on guard as men would be
10
after her money. For Zhang’s protagonist, Qiqiao, personal wealth is associated
with social power and prestige and as such is as powerfully attractive as feminine
physical beauty is to a man. Consequently, the expected roles of daughters to be
married can be challenged:
I’m not worried about my daughter having no takers; you people needn’t
bother to worry for me. If nobody wants her and she has to be kept all
her life, I can afford it too.1 3
9 Ailing Zhang, The Rouge o f the North (London: Casell and Company, 1967), 122-132.
1 0 Ibid., 117.
1 1 Ibid., 150.
1 2 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, Ct. T Hsia, and Leo Ou Fan Lee, eds.
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),
546.
1 3 Ibid., 547.
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Qiqiao like Yindi uses money to control the marital availability of their children.
Qiqiao’s control over her daughter and her daughter’s finances causes the daughter
to give up hope of ever marrying. However, when Qiqiao passes away and her
daughter inherits her share of the wealth, Zhang ends the story with the following:
After Qiqiao had passed away, Chang-an got her share of the property
from Chang-pai and moved out of the house. Qiqiao’s daughter would
have no difficulty settling her own problems. Rumor had it that she was
seen with a man on the street stopping in front of a stall where he bought
her a pair of garters. Perhaps with her own money, but out of the man’s
pocket anyway. Of course it was only a rumor.1 4
Qiqiao’s daughter, due to her personal wealth, has secured for herself a socially
accepted position within society, that of a woman identified with and through a man.
In Zhang’s short story, “A Wounded Epoch,” the matriarch, who is described as a
traditionalist, holds and controls the wealth and clearly dominates the family.
Her sisters all studied up to junior high and did not study any further,
they stayed at home passing their time. Aunty had promised to find her
a job but because her educational standards were lacking, searched for
while but found nothing. Now she has this job, yet Aunty is not too happy.
Grandmother, she.. .even if Aunty had introduced her to a job, she would
not have agreed... .Grandmother, of course did not agree—she did not even
find Yingzhu’s existence agreeable. Too many grandchildren. Grandfather
may not agree, but wedged in between to protect the grandchildren, not for
any other reason than to be contrary to grandmother, and to express that
although she had supported him all his life, he still had his independent
opinions.1 5
Without independent wealth though, women flounder for an identity separate
from their male counterparts. Zhang suggests that financially insecure women have
1 4 Ibid., 558-559.
1 5 Ailing Zhang, “A Wounded Epoch” [Chuang shi ji] in Ailing Zhang, Zhang’ s Views (Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 83.
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fewer options as outlined in the female characters of Bai Liusu in A City Toppled by
Love and of Ge Weilong in The First Censer. Or in the cases of Xiao Ai in Xiao Ai
and Nixi in Interlocking Rings who were girls sold into families, their very destinies
determined not by their own hands but by the hands of others.1 6 In A City Toppled by
Love, Bai Liusu’s finances have been squandered by her brothers and she needs to
plan for her future. In the story, in a scene with a matchmaker intended for her sister,
Liusu is made aware of her impoverished state and her dependent condition on her
family members. She realizes her lack of options, due in part to being divorced, now
a widow, and also in part to being over the expected marriageable age and having no
marketable skills. Seeking advice from the matchmaker Mrs. Xu and hearing her
comments, Liusu begins her strategy to snare a husband.
“You’re too good, no wonder people bully you,” she (Mrs. Xu) said
tenderly. “Your older brothers played the market with your money until
they spent it all! They really ought to support you for the rest of your life.”
Liusu rarely heard this kind of decency; she didn’t ask whether it was
sincere or not, she just let her heart well up and her tears rain down.
“Why was I such a fool? All because of this little bit of money, now
I have no way out of here.”
Mrs. Xu said, “Someone so young can always find a way to make a life
for herself.”
“If there were a way, I’d be long gone!” said Liusu. “I haven’t studied
much, and I can ‘t lift and carry, so what kind of job can I get?”
“Looking for a job won’t get you anyway. But looking for a somebody,
that’s the way to go.”1 7
1 6 See also the sister characters in Zhang’s novel, “Half a Lifetime’s Yearning.” Neither sister has
options because of economic need. As the novel is unpacked later in this chapter, I have opted for a
footnote here to show Zhang’s consistency in her characters’ developments.
1 7 Ailing Zhang, “City Toppled by Love” in Ailing Zhang’s City Toppled by Love (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press, 1996), 193. See Renditions no. 45, Spring 1996 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of
Hong Kong), “Love in A Fallen City, ” 65, for the translation cited above.
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In the second scenario found in The First Censer, the female protagonist, Ge
Weilong must rely financially on her aunt for her education in Hong Kong. Her aunt
runs a brothel and Ge Weilong is well aware that her reputation will be ruined simply
through association with her aunt. Yet in order to pursue her chances at her own
independence, Weilong has little choice but to bite the bullet and go ahead and seek
her aunt’s assistance despite the apparent disadvantages that might hinder future
marriage prospects.1 8 Zhang’s attitude of women regarding personal wealth might
be summed up by the following sentence:
“If I were you I wouldn’t care about names and titles. The important thing
is get your hands on the money.”1 9
Though financial gain is not gender specific to Zhang, she certainly implies that
women are more often besieged by the reality of economic dependence and plagued
• 90
by their struggle for independence. Clearly, for Zhang, servant girls have life even
harder. The very course of their lives is dictated by the actions of another. In the
short story, Xiao Ai, the last lines echo the sentiments, that even in death the
1 8 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in Ailing Zhang’s City Toppled by Love (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press, 1996), 38-43. See also Zhang’s “Stale Mates” where Miss Fan becoming desperate for
a husband settles for an old lover who had once abandoned his promise to divorce his wife and marry
her. “On her part, Miss Fan was also engaged in a struggle. Hers was against the forces of the years,
against men’s very nature which tires so easily. And in her struggle, she had nobody to stand by her
side as she had stood by Lo.” 262.
1 9 Ailing Zhang, “Traces of Love,” Eva Hung, ed., Eileen Chang’s Traces o f Love and Other Stories
(Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, Renditions, 2000), 119.
2 0 In The Rouge o f the North, the character, Third Master, takes up with a singsong girl of
disputable beauty and reputation because o f monetary gain. (140-141). Zhang echoes this theme in the
male protagonist, George, in The First Censer who pimps his wife, Weilong, to support his own
lifestyle. (83-85)
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protagonist Xiao Ai, a slave girl, feels that she cannot escape the grasp of the family
that had purchased her.
Xiao Ai, speaking softly through clenched teeth, says: “I hate the
Xi family, they caused this illness of mine, these past years, my life
must still be given back to them.2 1
Xiao Ai’s adopted daughter enjoys none of Xiao Ai’s natural qualities of charm or
beauty. She does not have any social status, she possesses neither wealth, class,
beauty nor brains. In Zhang’s novella, Xiao Ai at her death bed knows that her only
legacy to her daughter would be an education of sorts so that she would be able to be
self-sufficient. Xiao Ai urges her husband to let their daughter learn a trade so that
she can have some kind of socially accepted independence should she not get
married.
Xiao Ai suddenly said: “Tomorrow let her learn a trade, so that when
she is grown she will be better able to support herself. Although nowadays,
men and women are equal, it is still a fact that a very unattractive girl is
at a disadvantage.2 2
For these protagonists, marriage is often the perceived ideal. The traditional image of
marriage perpetuates the myth that in the union of husband and wife, women find
their identity, self worth and therefore, happiness.
Even at a time when divorce was becoming increasingly prevalent, it was seldom
seen as an option for women. In Zhang’s short story written in English, entitled,
Stalemates, Zhang expresses the sentiments of women in the country through the
2 1 Ailing Zhang, “Xiao Ai” in Ailing Zhang’s Lingering Charms [Yu Yun](Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press, 1995), 218.
2 2 Ibid., 217.
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character of Lo’s wife. The Chinese title, The May Fourth Legacy, is revealing as it
brings to mind the promise of equality and free love. However, lived reality is
somehow quite different. Zhang states that it is the year 1924 and that being in love
or talking about love is an intoxicating new phenomenon in China.
The two young men, Lo and Wen who pursue the modem women, Miss Chou
and Miss Fan, are caught between traditional and modem protocol of courtship
despite the fact that the young men are already wedded to other women.
The four had been meeting almost daily for more than a year. They
would go out on the lake, have dinner at one of the restaurants along
the shore, and go boating again if there was a moon. Somebody would
read Shelley aloud and the girls held hands with each other when they
felt moved. Always there were four o f them, sometimes six but never two.
The men were already married—a universal predicament. Practically
everybody was married and had children before ever hearing of love.2 4
To emphasize their being a modem people, the women are addressed in the Western
manner of Miss followed by their family name.2 5 The women are further described
as being fashionable as they both wear eyeglasses despite the fact that neither is
'■y/r
near-sighted. Though both women are aware of the fact that Lo and Wen are
married, they are still fascinated by the attention shown them and the infatuation of
the young men which is colored by the romantic notions of new love. The girls
are around twenty and Lo, a seemingly modem man (after all he reads Shelley) is
2 3 Ailing Zhang, “Stale Mates” in Ailing Zhang’s Sequel [Xu Ji] (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995),
250-252.
2 4 Ibid., 251. Italics are my own for emphasis.
2 5 Ibid., 249. Zhang in the Chinese version o f the story does not use the Chinese characters, “xiao jie”
for miss but rather the transliteration of mizi for miss.
2 6 Ibid., 250.
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besotted by Miss Fan. Noteworthy is the contrast between Miss Chou and Miss Fan.
Miss Chou was much admired for her vivacity and boldness as being
typical of the New Woman, while Miss Fan was the beauty of still life.
She sat smiling a little, her face a slim pointed oval, her long hair done
in two round glossy black side knobs. She wore little make-up and no
ornaments except a gold fountain pen tucked in her light mauve tunic.
1 1
Her trumpet sleeves ended just under the elbow.
Lo finds himself drawn not to the modem woman but rather to the traditional
beauty of the past. Lo feeling “pledged and dedicated” to Miss Fan asks if she
would wait for him while he proceeds to obtain a divorce from his wife. Miss Fan
is at first reluctant to agree to Lo’s divorce but he when he begins to spend more time
IQ
at home, assents to the divorce. Lo, eager to please Miss Fan and to assure himself
-1A
of her availability returns home and speaks to his wife of divorce. The following
scene reflects a traditional attitude towards divorce from the woman’s standpoint.
He spoke to her about divorce. She cried all night. It was terrible, almost
as if a judge was to sleep in the same bed with a condemned man. Say what
he might, he knew that he was consigning her to dishonorable widowhood
for the rest of her life.
“Which of the Seven Out Rules have I violated?” She kept asking through
angry sobs. Ancient scholars had named the seven conditions under which a
wife might justifiably be evicted from her husband’s house.
His mother flew into a rage on being told. She would not hear of it.....
To break up a marriage is a cardinal sin that automatically take seven years
of a man’s given life span.3 1
2 7 Ibid., 250. The Chinese version gives a better feel for the traditional beauty Miss Fan represents.
2 8 253.
2 9 Ibid., 252-253.
3 0 Ibid., 254.
3 1 Ibid.,254-255. “A man might divorce his wife for specific causes: failure to bear him a male heir,
neglect of his parents, a shrewish tongue, theft, jealousy, an incurable disease, and adultery.” See
Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture , 570.
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For Lo’s wife, love is not part of the equation to the marriage, rather, it is a
matter of economic security and social acceptance. If thrown out neither she nor her
natal family members would have any recourse to her husband’s property or funds.
True they could not revenge themselves on the faithless man unless his
wife were to hang herself on his lintel. That would place his life entirely
at their mercy. But it was not for them to recommend such a step to her.3 2
Divorce proceedings though were not forthcoming. So for Miss Fan, even concepts
of romantic love soon dissipate when the reality of age creeps into the picture.
Miss Fan’s family never did approve. Now they kept reminding her
that at twenty-six, she was becoming an old maid. Soon she would
not even qualify for a t’ien fang—room filler, a wife to fill up a widower’s
33
room.
Miss Fan, unwillingly to wait any longer, enters into an engagement agreement with
another man. Infuriated by her actions, Lo, whose divorce had now taken on a life of
its on, retaliates by seeking the hand of another young woman, Miss Wong.
Lo’s divorce had reached a momentum. There were signs that his wife’s
side was now more ready to listen to reason. He would be a laughingstock
for the rest of his life if he were to return to his wife at his stage. So he went
ahead with the divorce, giving his wife a generous settlement as he had
promised... .After an exchange of photographs and due investigation, the
Wongs accepted him. Lo sold a great part of his land and bought Miss Wong
a diamond ring even bigger than the one Miss Fan was said to have got. He
was married after three months.3 4
Unfortunately, Miss Fan’s engagement is called off. Zhang insinuates that Miss Fan
might have been perceived as too m odem in her long-term relationship with Lo,
3 2 Ibid., 255-256. Italics are my own to highlight the fact that Lo’s wife is only useful to her natal
family dead.
3 3 Ibid., 257.
3 4 Ibid., 259.
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causing her other engagement to end. However, friends conspire to get the
couple together again, probably out of some modem, romantic notion.
It would be sad and beautiful—and therefore a good thing—for the two
to meet once again on the lake under the moon. 5
Lo is both infatuated with the concept of romantic love and is in love with his image
of Miss Fan.
Her face and white-clad shoulders were blue-rimmed with moonlight.
It stunned him how she could look just the same when so much has
happened.3 6
So Lo begins to divorce his second wife. This time though, he is no longer perceived
or esteemed as a pioneer in the field of love. Now he was a scoundrel.3 7 After his
second divorce and his third marriage this time to Miss Fan, Lo notices that Miss Fan
begins to undergo a change as does his affection for her.
When she was not out playing mah-jongg she lounged about in soiled old
gowns with tom slits and frayed frogs. Half the time she lay in bed cracking
watermelon seeds, spitting the shells over the bedclothes and into her
slippers on the floor. His hints at taking more interest in her appearance
were at first ignored. Then she flared up and said his fussiness was unmanly.
“No wonder you never get anywhere.” 8
The story ends with all three women living with Lo and him being unhappy
• • T Q • • •
much to the surprise of his friends. Lo is caught in the moment and crisis of his
time. Unlike women who relied on marriage for financial security, Lo fell prey to the
promise o f romantic love which eluded him even to the end.
3 5 Ibid., 260.
3 6 Ibid., 261.
3 7 Ibid., 262.
3 8 Ibid., 264.
3 9 Ibid., 266-267.
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Though Zhang argues that marriage is a myth that promotes and/or ensures
personal happiness for either gender, she does not pretend that marriage cannot and
does not bring about happiness for some. In her short story, Compassion, the reader
is let to believe that the female protagonist, the young and widowed Dunfeng,
married an older divorced man of sixty and did so for reasons other than love:
‘You know very well how things stand for me. For me it’s just a way of
getting a living.’
‘But still, you’re now husband and wife....’ said the old lady with a smile.
Dunfeng became agitated. She said, ‘I don’t hold anything back from you,
Auntie. I f I had wanted a man, I would not have married Mr. Mi. ’ Her face
flushed, she moved closer to old Mrs. Yang and said in a low, laughing
voice, ‘In fact we seldom do it, maybe once every few months.’ Having
said this she stared at the older woman, still smiling.4 0
Yet Zhang reveals affection between the seemingly odd couple so that at the end
of this tale, Zhang ends with the satirical note.
In this world, all relationships are frayed and patched up. Still on
their way home Dunfeng and Mr. Mi loved each other. 1
The flirtatious behavior, between the two, signal not love for each other but
rather a comfortableness between them.
‘Why, you’re still here,’ said Dunfeng with minimal interest. He smiled
and said nothing. She picked up her handbag and carrier bag, and walked
out the door; he followed. She pretended not to notice and crossed the road
quickly, yet she worried that he’d be puffing behind her to catch up. Though
she was angry with him, she did not want him to look like an old man, so
she had waited till some cars were coming before she crossed over, thus
4 0 Ailing Zhang, “Compassion,” 113. Italics are my own for emphasis. The title “Liu Qing” can be
translated as “Traces o f Love” (Eva Hung), or “Lingering Love” (Dominic Cheung). The title is
translated thus because Mr. Mi’s former wife is ill and calls him for help. Mr. Mi wants to respond to
the call but chooses not to in the end. (93). I have opted for the title, “Compassion” as love seems
absent from the formula of this tale.
4 1 Ibid., 125. Compare this tone to that found in the story, “Xiao Ai” where the protagonist finds
love with the husband of her choice.
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creating some delay.. .Dunfeng wanted to take off the coat but her hands
were not free.
Mr. Mi relieved her of her handbag, carrier bag and floral knitting bag,
saying,
‘Want to take off your coat?” He then continued, ‘Don’t catch a cold. Let’s
get a pedicab.’
It was only after he has waved down a two-seater pedicab that Dunfeng said,
‘You’re not going my way.’
‘I’m going with you,’ said Mr. Mi.4 2
When the two are in the home of Mrs. Yang, Mr. Mi is seen as a good catch not
only for Dunfeng, who clearly does not appreciate him, but for Mrs. Yang herself.
Dunfeng was the only lucky one. The risk that she had taken with this
marriage had paid off. She was now in the hands of a reliable man, feeling
as if she had always been there.......
The old lady looked at Mr. Mi and thought to herself: ‘He has a high status
in the brokerage, he’s well educated in Chinese and Western learning, he’s
polite, and so considerate—and Dunfeng managed to marry him! Dunfeng
isn’t that young, and yet she doesn’t seem to have any tact. The way she
talks is so hurtful to him, and he just takes it! The times have certainly
changed; these days men bow to such behavior. In the old days she’d never
have got away with it. But it is not as if Dunfeng has never suffered at the
hands of men, why is she so ungrateful? If I could be like Dunfeng,
living quietly with my man in a house of my own—just the two of us!4 3
The banter between the two women reveals that Dunfeng is interested in her
marriage for the financial benefits and this does not prevent her from playing the
part of a vamp in the company of other men.4 4
Dunfeng was a woman with a ‘marriage complex’. To her, every man was
a possibility until it was proven beyond any doubt that the possibility did not
exist.4 5
4 2 Ibid., 95-96.
4 3 Ibid, 109.
4 4 Ibid, 117-120.
4 5 Ibid, 118.
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It is against this backdrop of women as perceived gladiators in the arena of
marriage, where to the victor goes the spoils that Zhang begins to demystify
marriage. Zhang suggests in her writings that marriage, for most women and even
men, is not the expected prize but rather a prison without walls.
The Inter-Gender Dialogue: Debunking the Marriage Myth
The thematic exposition, in Zhang’s novels and short stories, marks out how
women interact within the powerful pressure of both the traditional concepts of
marriage and the modem challenge for the equality of women. This suggests that
Zhang acknowledges that women have in some manner accepted a message of a
traditional legacy of marriage or at least in part accepted the behavioral patterns of
the models of femininity in order to obtain marriage.4 6 While that inherent message
to marry was accepted in part, there continued a correlative tension for Zhang’s
protagonists between traditional concepts of womanhood and the emergent notion of
the modem woman and marriage.
Within the intricacies of tradition and modernity, Zhang attempts to debunk the
myth of marriage both traditional and modem. Zhang writes about cohabitation as a
common reality not taken seriously by writers and she writes o f it as an option for
4 6 John Pocock in his work, Politics, Language and Time, states that tradition stems from “a formed
way of acting, a formed way of living, to those beginning or developing their social membership —
and the transmitters of a message cannot do without some image of a message which he has received
and the way in which he received it.” (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989), 234.
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women as contestory grounds against the traditional model of feminine virtues.4 7 She
examines the interplay of knowledge and power, and the acceptance of norms and
A ft
standards of behavior set upon women, detrimental as they might be. To read
Zhang’s novels and short stories, then, is to rethink and experience the world of
women and to see the concept of marriage as a metaphor for a kind of non-structural
imprisonment of women by the masculine order. In her text, My Writing, Zhang
states:
Modem people are exhausted, and the modem marriage system is irrational.
So there is a silence between husbands and wives; there are those who fear
responsibility but look for momentary relief in sophisticated flirting; there
are those who return to animalistic sexual desire in their visits to prostitutes
(but they are still only animal-like people and not animals, and thus more
frightening than animals). And there are couples living out o f wedlock.
Living together lacks the solemnity of the husband and wife relationship but
is more responsible than flirting and more dignified than prostitution. Since
there are not in the end many who go to the extremes, living together has
become a common phenomenon. The social status of the men who support
this kind of cohabitation is middle- or lower middle class, men who work
diligently just to get by. They don’t dare really to let go, but neither are they
so restrained. They need a lively and substantial male/female relationship,
something complementary to the other lively and substantial aspects of their
lives. Since they need women to take care of their homes, they don’t have
such a perverse attitude toward women.....
Women who live with men have always had a lower social status than men,
but most of them have a sharp, fierce life force. As far as men are
concerned, these women have a kind of beguiling power, but it is the
beguiling power of a healthy woman. Because if they were overly perverse,
they would not be appropriate for those men’s needs. They cause trouble,
get jealous, and argue and fight, very wild sometimes, but they do not lose
control. There is only thing about them that is insufficient: their status is
4 7 Ailing Zhang’s “My Writing” in Kirk A . Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature 1895-1945 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 441.
4 8 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Power: The Birth o f the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979),
303.
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never clear. Doubt and fear cause them gradually to become selfish.4 9
Zhang suggests that the marriage system whether modem or traditional has little
meaning for women when it is seen as a contractual agreement to benefit their
social standing and marriage fails to even offer the security of that. It is precisely
because women lack the ability to determine their identities apart from men that they
seek alternatives to maintain social acceptance. Zhang implies that in a period of
great uncertainty, the value of money remains a constant, so marrying for wealth or
at least managing to establish wealth becomes the new criterion. In this particular
passage, Zhang makes mention of her short story, Interlocking Rings, in which she
claims that the female protagonist would have fared better had her status or her goals
been clear. It is her lack of social stability and her idiosyncrasies for the material that
makes her relationships fail.5 0
What moves me about Nixi’s story is her pure love of a material life,
something she must grasp with all her might. She wants the love of
a man and at the same time wants security, but cannot get them
both at once; so she ends up with neither the man nor the money.5 1
Zhang’s story, Interlocking Rings, recounts the life of the protagonist, Nixi,
whose social status remains ambivalent throughout the text. Nixi, at fourteen, is
purchased for a measly sum of 120 dollars by an Indian man,Ya Heya. In the
beginning, Nixi functions as a servant in his shop, but later enters into a physical and
intimate relationship with Ya Heya, bears him children, and yet is unable to convince
4 9 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature 1895-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 440-441. Italics are my own.
5 0 Ibid., 440.
5 1 Ibid.,441.
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him to take her as a legal wife, despite the prodding of the Portuguese catholic nun,
Sr. Melanie. She thus moves from one man to another in the hope of arriving at and
achieving a recognized social state and acceptance. As Nixi maneuvers through her
men, she is unable to maintain any socially accepted position and this ambivalence
causes the protagonist to strive for material gain.
The opening lines of the story show how Nixi’s marital status has eluded her
throughout her life.
Mrs. Samson is Chinese. Her third husband is an Englishman, by
the name of Thompson, but he does not allow her the use of his name,
instead he confers on her a similar name. From a naturalist’s perspective,
Mrs. Samson has been married several times, but from a lawyer’s
viewpoint, she has never been married before.
Nixi’s lack of social standing as a taitai is not complicated by the fact that she is
sold to Ya Heya, as can be established in the story of Xiao Ai who is also sold but
able to enter into and maintain a marriage. Rather, Nixi’s inability to maintain social
stability lies in the fact that she desires only material wealth, even flirting with
foreign men. Xiao Ai, in contrast is portrayed as a paragon of virtue albeit defiled by
the hands of the master of the house because she seeks not material benefit but love.
While living with her Indian man, Nixi is aware that this relationship is not
permanent and it will not lead to marriage. Consequently, Nixi is portrayed as
enticingly playful as she seeks “momentary relief in sophisticated flirting.” In a
scene with the Englishman, Meyer, Nixi pretends to lose her ring:
5 2 Ailing Zhang, “Interlocking Rings” [Lian huan tao] in Ailing Zhang’s Zhang’ s Perspective [Zhang
Kan], (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 12.
5 3 Ibid.,33.
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Meyer said: “When I find it, what will you give me to thank me?”
Nixi said nothing, wedging her hand to snatch it back, not aware that
an exclamation of surprise had emitted, said softly: “ How does this
count?” She placed it on her hand, it was a single ruby, the size of a
finger nail. He sat down next to her and said: “Don’t lose this one
again. If you lose it, I will not search for it for you. Nixi said softly:
“My ring is jade.” Meyer said: “On the contrary be a bit more generous
and say: In the future if you find it in the crack of the chair, you can
keep it as a memento.”
Nixi looked and said: “On what basis should there be a trade off?
Besides we cannot speak of a trade off, my ring has not been found
yet.” Meyer said: “If it exists, it will be found. If it exists.”5 4
Though Nixi is afraid to wear the new ring given to her by Mr. Meyer, she does
not return the ruby ring.5 5 She seeks out these material objects and in exchange loses
her marriage marketability. While Nixi takes great pride in her ability to have
captured the eyes of her young Indian man or any man, she realizes that she must
embellish her story if she is to increase her worth.
In the line of young girls, Nixi was seventh. None of the other girls had
caught the Indian’s eye, but when he saw her, he had her stay, this was in
the course of her life, a proud moment. She also had other legendary
versions, saying that she and her husband had met earlier. The young
Indian in order to make contacts for his business, took a boat down to the
country. Fortunately, she was by the riverbank washing vegetables, neither
spoke, within moments, both had feelings for each other. He came in to a
small fortune, inquired after her background, from a distance asked others to
request of Nixi’s foster mother to send along a maidservant, not daring to
ask directly for her, fearing only that the mistress would raise the price
making it difficult to wrap up the deal. As a result, only after the seventh
was the deal closed. Regarding the deal part, it was mostly her fabrication.5 6
N ixi, unlike Xiao Ai, who is portrayed as faithful in her affections, lacks
bargaining power precisely because she is perceived as frivolous. As a result, she
5 4 Ibid.,34-3 5.
5 5 Nixi is afraid to wear the ring lest Ya Heya finds out that she has been flirting with other men.
5 6 Ibid., 17-18.
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moves from one man to the next, always in the hope of marriage. However, Nixi has
a moment of revelation in the story when she is aware that marriage could happen for
her, thus explaining her movement from one foreign man to the next.
She now knew, when one is a woman, then, one must be a rule-abiding
woman. If one such woman occasionally lapsed even for a moment, then,
she will get something good that even a bad woman would dream of
getting.5
For Nixi, the pursuit of marriage becomes the impossible dream. She cannot find
the love she searches for nor can she hold onto monetary gain without the assistance
of her children who are entitled to a portion of their fathers’ estate.
In the story, Sweet Osmanthus Steamed, the male protagonist, Mr. Garter, is
clear as to what he desires in a woman:
Moreover, it was clear to him that women were all more or less the
same. He had always believed in making relationships with women
of good families, or with ladies of the demi-monde in search for a little
romance outside working hours. He didn’t expect them to rob the rich
for his benefit; all he wanted was an equitable exchange. He knew that
‘long-term gamblers had to lose, just as long-time lovers had their blues’.
At the gaming table he had always checked to see which way the wind
was blowing and, if things were favorable, took advantage of the situation
to make a bit of a profit. But he always knew when to stop.5 8
The fantasy of marriage also crosses over gender barriers and can be seen in the short
stories, Red Rose, White Rose, and The Second Censer. In both stories, the male
protagonists’ expectations of marriage are not realized with different results. In the
former story, Zhenbao is unable to reconcile social expectations with his carnal
5 7 Ibid., 36.
5 8 Ailing Zhang, “Steamed Osmanthus Flower” in Eva Hung. ,ed, Eileen Chang’ s Traces o f Love and
Other Stories (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, Renditions paperback, 2000), 71.
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desire for pleasure. He marries a woman known for her chaste ways who meets his
family requirements but is frustrated by her very lack of passion, or at least lack of
passion for him. Toward the end of the story, Zhenbao enters into the Jekyll and
Hyde persona with the Hyde factor being dominant as he seeks a “lively and
substantial” relationship.
Zhenbao now drinks often, and openly has his affairs, not at all
like before, with many other fears. He went home drunk, or did
not go home at all. Yinli always had excuses and said that he was
unable to get way from his business entertaining. She never accepted
that it had anything to do with her.5 9
In The Second Censer, Roger’s ideal wife, Susie, has different expectations of her
marriage than Roger does. In the scene where her mother, Mrs. Mitchell, two of
Susie’s sisters and Susie prepare for the wedding, they recall Susie’s sister
Millicent’s earlier wedding and weep at the memory of Millicent having been treated
“like an animal.” When questioned by Roger as to the cause of the weeping, Susie
plays the role of the ingenue infatuated by her older suitor and coyly deflects the
question. The age difference as in Zhang’s story, Compassion, may be significant.
Unlike a younger suitor such as Zhenbao, who may have in Zhang’s words
“animalistic sexual desire,” Roger seems above all of this. He is a forty years old,
English, and a well established professor at the Nanhua University. He is seen as
quiet and respectful and quite beyond reproach.60
5 9 Ailing Zhang, “Red Rose, White Rose” in Ailing Zhang’s Love in A Fallen City (Taipei, Taiwan:
Crown Press, 1996), 95.
6 0 Ailing Zhang, “The Second Censer” [Di er lu xiang]in Ailing Zhang’s The First CemeftTaipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996, 89-90.
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In the Mitchells’ world of insulation and isolation, Mrs. Mitchell has created
in her daughters the inability to be married but they need the appearance of being
married to sustain the illusion of overseas British culture. It is this inability to
maintain the illusion for Susie or himself through the rejection of marriage that
destroys Roger’s character. In the end, Roger is driven to suicide as his only
recourse.
These protagonists, whether male or female, chase the illusion of happiness
believed to be found in marriage all the while remaining in a fantasy of the wedding
day bliss. This is made evident in Zhang’s short story, The Great Felicity in which
Zhang examines the economy of marriage within a Jane Austen-like framework.
Unlike Austen who focuses on the eligible ladies of the household, Zhang views
marriage from the mother’s perspective.
The story revolves around the marriage preparation and wedding of the groom,
Dalu, and the bride, Yuqing. While the reader can get caught up with the excitement
of the young ladies as they prepare for the wedding, or even, with the antics of the
young misses as they survey the room for eligible bachelors, the main focus lies with
Mrs. Lou who shares with her new daughter-in-law a certain sorrow. The young
bride, Yuqing, sees the wedding as her swan song.
She believed that a woman had only one chance in her life to indulge
herself, and she should make the most of it. Whatever she saw, she
bought, as if there was no tomorrow. There was a kind of valediction
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and desolation in her heart. Her sadness as she shopped for her
trousseau was not entirely put on.6 1
The common element between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is heightened
by the fact that money is involved. And while Yuqing is using her own dowry to buy
things she in concert with her soon to be husband have mastered a plan to drain
hinds from the family.
The young couple were both knowledgeable people. In shopping for
their new home they had bought the little things first, leaving the
important things for last, so that when they had used up their money
they could ask for more — a bed, for example was a must. Mrs. Lou
exclaimed, ‘You kids have no planning!’ She loved her son, but she
loved her money, too. She felt a gentle tug at her heart-strings.6 2
It within this structure that Zhang intimates, through Mrs. Lou, that though
people are caught up with the celebration of the wedding and the need to maintain a
reputation, marriage had little to do with all the festivities.
[Mrs. Lou] suddenly remembered that when she was little, she used
to stand in front of her house watching the wedding processions: the
bridal palanquins and the bands, striking up their relentless and barbaric
pipe and gong music, muffling the weeping of the bride. The sound of
drums and gongs made the heart quake. In the heat of the noonday sun,
colorful tassels from the palanquin— a row of light green, a row of pink,
a row of deep red—row upon row rippled in the wind like waves—making
your head spin and then bringing the clarity of the noonday sun, like a
yellow wine one drinks at the Dragon Boat Festival. A palanquin
bearer’s patched trousers showed beneath his embroidered jacket.
From above the jacket stuck out his skinny, yellow neck, shiny with
sweat, like a maggot squirming out of a jar. The palanquin bearers
and the band marched in rows, swaggering extravagantly and colorfully,
and the spectators were also immersed in the procession. Everybody was
6 1 Ailing Zhang, “Great Felicity” in Eva Hung, ed., Traces o f Love and Other Stories (Hong Kong:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Renditions paperback, 2000), 41.
6 2 Ibid., “Dalu also spent his parents’ money with a clear conscience, because he was not just
marrying anyone.” 47.
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caught up in an immense sense of joy outside of themselves that left them
reeling.
After all these years, Mrs. Lou still remembered. Since she was married
and even her eldest son was now married, she should have known that
• • 63
marriage was nothing like that.
When contrasted to the son’s more modem and westem-style wedding, the
differences are striking. The traditional colors and the musical cacophony are absent;
in addition, the bride dressed in white is described as “a corpse who had not quite
awakened at the dawn of its resurrection.”6 4 Mrs. Lou, though, is not making
reference to the dissimilarities of the ceremonies but rather to the inadequacies she
experiences within her marriage and her family as she lives out the role of a new
mother-in-law.6 5 The family does not cease to belittle her or to ostracize her in
conversation as they discuss their daily activities. Yet, if given other options, would
she still choose her lot? Zhang states:
However, if you told her to live differently, to forgo the nice clothes,
the visits the return visits, she would be unhappy then too and feel
bereft. Prosperity, fmstration, embarrassment—this was life. Mrs. Lou
felt another tug at her heart-strings... .She gazed at herself, at her pale,
stolid, spreading cheeks— she couldn’t even articulate to herself her own
misery. The eyebrows were drawn together, always frowning, but her
expression said only, ‘Oh bother! Bother!’ and nothing of her misery.6 6
Nothing seems to have changed from the old to the new in marriage save the fact
that one now was able to choose one’s own mate. Aside from that, there was
everyday life with which one had to contend. In the final scene in the story, Mr. Lou
6 3 Ibid., 57.
64lbid„ 54.
6 5 Ibid., 49.
6 6 Ibid., 50.
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in a manner befitting “a new style father” asks his daughter-in-law how it feels to be
married.6 7
The irony lies in that the newly married couple has not really begun to live a
married life. Perhaps only Mrs.Lou caught the sarcasm though Zhang’s text might
suggest otherwise.
They all laughed, but were slightly ill at ease, not certain if they should
have laughed or not. Mrs. Lou knew that her husband had made a joke,
but she didn’t catch what he said, so she laughed the loudest.6 8
If marriage can be seen in terms of an imprisonment then why do people desire to be
in marriages or more importantly why would women pit themselves against each
other to ensure their own advantages within the marriage economy ? Though Zhang
does not answer this question explicitly, she clearly indicates that women do
sacrifice others in other to achieve their goals, thus deflating the concept of women
as selfless individuals. Zhang states it once as:
It doesn’t matter how great a woman is: if she cannot get the love of
man, she can’t get the respect of other women. Women are petty that
way.6 9
The Intra-gender Dialogue: The Expense of Marriage
In several o f Zhang’s short stories, w e see how the female protagonists sacrifice
the happiness or opportunities of others so that they might attain their own goals. In
6 7 Ibid., 57.
6 8 Ibid., 58.
6 9 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City” in Renditions no. 45, Spring 1996, 70.
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172
A City Toppled by Love, The divorced and widowed Liusu manages to invite
herself, against the wishes of the other women, to a meeting intended for her more
eligible female relatives. By ingratiating herself with the intended prey through
dancing, she leaves her female relatives without prospects and hating her.
Who did he dance with?
Fourth mistress cut in. “Who else? It was your Sixth Aunt of course!
Those of us who come educated families aren’t allowed to dance. But
your Sixth Sister learnt all that from her no-good husband of hers. So
shameless! Someone asks you to dance, can’t you say you don’t know
how, just let it end there? There’s no shame in not knowing how to
dance. Look at your Third Aunt, or me, we’re all from good families.....
One dance, you could have said that it was a courtesy to him . But
to dance again, and again....[turning to Liusu]
... .You’ve got a heart smeared with pig fat! If you think by ruining your
sister’s chances, you can try your own luck, you’d better just forget it!
He’s turned down so many ladies, do you think that he would want a soiled
flower like you?”7 0
Yet, Liusu is willingly to antagonize her family in pursuit of her marriage plans
to a wealthy man because she knows “that if she really married a rich man in Hong
Kong and returned home in glory, they’d better be on speaking terms with her. It
wouldn’t do to offend her.”7 1
In Zhang’s short story, The First Censer, Madam Liang, who runs a brothel,
uses her girls and later her niece to maintain the current object of her affections, in
this case, the Eurasian George. It was also not beneath her to utilize the youth and
beauty available to her to obtain gifts from older clients. W eilong is not na'ive about
being manipulated by her aunt. She is conscious of the game and its rules.
7 0 Ibid., 69.
7 1 Ibid., 71.
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This was probably not the first time that Madam Liang had sacrificed
a young girl to please Si Tuxie. Neither was it likely that this would be
the only time that she would want Weilong to make this sacrifice.7 2
Zhang states that “Weilong was used to the charade, but it did not bother her at
all.”7 3 She was aware of but allowed the manipulations because she had fallen in
love with George, and it was her only means of getting to him. As the story
progresses, Weilong willingly takes clients in order to support George in his
lifestyle. Weilong allows the exploitation and in turn learns to exploit herself in favor
of some kind of illusion of an ideal or dream marriage. Weilong knows that her
married life is a miserable business, although she claims that she has moments of
happiness. This is difficult to imagine from the final scenes given in the text where
she compares herself to prostitutes stating that they had no choices but she could
only blame herself. She had done this to herself because of love, or at least the
illusion of love. In the end then, Weilong has little to strive for and, like the incense
stick that slowly goes out so does her flame of love and hope.
Her future was like this—best not to think of it, it was only endless
anguish. She had no long-term plan for her life. Here among the crude
trinkets, her fear-shrunk heart could only find temporary rest.7 4
None of these protagonists are as extreme as the older sister found in Haifa
Lifetime’ s Yearning?5 This is a love story between Shen Shijun and Gu Manzhen,
whose lives and love are disrupted by the actions and choices o f others, primarily
7 2 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in Ailing Zhang’s The First Censer(Taipei, Taiwan: Crown
Press, 1996), 66.
7 3 Ibid., 52.
7 4 Ibid., 83.
7 5 The title has also been translated as “Eighteen Springs.”
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174
Manzhen’s sister Manlu. Manzhen is fourteen when her father dies, The
family has been entirely reliant on his sole salary. As a result, since Manzhen’s
mother has no skills and Manzhen and her younger sibling too young, the burden of
keeping the family falls on her older sister. Since her sister, Manlu, did not graduate
from junior high and has no skills, she becomes a dance hall hostess to support the
family.
Manzhen is not naive as to what her sister has had to do in order to support and
maintain the family.7 6 The sisters share two different worlds. Manzhen’s
world is full of sweet innocence and Manlu’s world consists of attempts at keeping
her clients enthralled. Manlu, once considered a beauty, is jaded by her hard life and
unable to hold on to her main patron who is dallying with a younger fresher face.
Confronted with the harsh realities of her present condition and the growing interest
of her customers in Manzhen, Manlu enters into an internal moral conflict. It is
clear in the beginning of the story that Manlu is unwillingly to submit Manzhen to
her way of life when a client, Zhu Hongcai, shows interest in Manzhen.
Don’t talk rubbish. Though I have eaten from this bowl of rice,
do you mean to say that my family is destined to eat from the
same bowl? This is called standing at a door and peering through
a crack to see a person, you have made her small. 7
After the incident, Manlu encourages her mother to have her fast-maturing,
attractive sister move out as she is commanding too much unsolicited attention from
7 6 Ailing Zhang, H alf a Lifetime’ s Yearning[ Ban Sheng Yuan] (Taipei,Taiwan: Crown Publishers,
1996), 16-17.
7 7 Ibid., 23.
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175
Manlu’s suitors. Manlu, whose past keeps her from any good marriage match, must
settle for Zhu Hongcai, an individual, not quite divorced from his wife and a
henchman for one of her previous lovers. As Manlu’s marriage to Hongcai becomes
more tenuous as she is unable to have children, her protective nature towards her
sister turns and she begins to plot to use her sister to save her own marriage.
Her mother’s “mama plot” was not entirely without logic. Having
a child would be a good thing. Borrowing a womb to have a child.
The best person would be her sister. First of all, Hongcai, himself, is
attracted to her; secondly, she is after all a younger sister, easier to
control.
When mother was thinking of the plot, she probably never thought that
she [Manlu] would have considered her younger sister.7 8
The internal dilemma continues as Manlu considers herself as mad if she is willing to
sacrifice her own younger sister to her husband. The tide turns when Manlu,
engulfed in regret and self-pity over her choices or lack thereof, succumbs to the
shadowy demons that beckon the virginal sacrifice of her sister, Manzhen to save her
own marriage. As part of her conspiracy, Manlu feigns an illness and Manzhen
comes to nurse her back to health despite the fact that Manlu has a maid. The plan is
to have Hongcai rape Manzhen and eventually to father a child. What is striking and
disturbing is Manlu’s conscious decision to relinquish her sister’s well-being and
happiness in favor of her own marital and economic security.
Hongcai wrinkled his brow and said: “You better not let the blame
fall entirely on me, what do you think we should do” Manlu replied:
“According to you, what should we do?” Hongcai said: “Keeping her
locked up is not a solution, sooner or later, your mother is going to come
for her.” Manlu said: “ Of that I am not afraid, my mother is the easiest
7 8 Ibid., 120.
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176
to handle, unless her fiance has something to say.” Hongcai very quickly
got up, strolled to and fro, mumbling: “this matter could get out of hand.”
Manlu, seeing him in this cowardly manner, felt anger at him and said
coldly: “Then what? Quickly let her go then. Will they accept that she
has been taken advantaged of? It doesn’t matter how much money you
spend, it isn’t like a business deal, you cannot make a deal.” Hongcai said:
“therefore I am at my wit’s end.” Manlu sighed, laughingly said: “Why
are you anxious? It is she who should be anxious. After all, she has had
relations with you, no matter how merciless this cannot be removed. Give
her a few days to recollect herself, I will go and urge her, if she is bright
then she ‘will see the altar and kneel’” Hongcai had his doubts because in
front of Manzhen, he lost all his confidence. He said: “What if she does not
listen to your advice?” Manlu said: “then we’ll keep her locked up a few
more days and test her character” Hongcai said: “Can’t keep her locked up
all her life.” Manlu snickered: “Keep her locked up all her life? When she
has a child, be assured, even if you sent her away, she would not go, she
7Q
would sue you for abandonment.”
In an instance of betrayal, Manzhen’s dreams of marrying Shijun will end, and their
lives will take different directions. Manzhen ends up marrying Hongcai at the death
of her sister so that she can bring up the child that she bore from her rape. Though
her sister shows remorse at her action, neither the sacrifice of Manzhen nor the child
borne of rape would solidify her marriage. In the end, it is an act that destroys many
lives. In a final scene many years later, when Manzhen meets up with Shijun, they
both have regrets over the choices they made, albeit choices made in ignorance and
enforced by patriarchical structures.
All these protagonist suffer in their choices to maintain and sustain a marriage. If
the institution o f marriage is part o f the perceived “sublimating” word o f social order
and indeed part of its legislation to control women, then in order to identify herself, a
woman must constantly pit herself against it. This vicious cycle of desiring marriage
7 9 Ibid., 209-210.
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177
and then trying to move beyond marriage is a form of “masochism” of which
Kristeva speaks. Weilong, Manzhen and Manlu are all unable to reach their desired
object, in this instance marriage, and in marriage what should have been life-giving,
O A t #
is filled with self-torment and hate. It is evident that Weilong and Manlu have
become masochists but so has the seeming victim, Manzhen, who accedes to the
patriarchal definition of her worth and thus marries the man who rapes her and lives
a life of regret.
Shijun said: “How are you now? Do you have enough money?”
Manzhen replied: “I am fine now, all the debts are paid off.”
Shijun said: “Where is he now?” Manzhen said: “Why bring him
up? Things have already passed. In the end, it is I who am at fault,
how could I have been so foolish, I really regret it and when I think
a 1
of it, I hate.” Naturally she pointed to her marriage to Hongcai.
While Zhang’s female protagonists might settle for the masochistic behavior of
settling for pain within the imprisonment of marriage, it is still the expected norm for
modem Chinese women. Ironically, women themselves continue to perpetuate the
myth of marriage as is noted in Zhang’s story, Withered Flower. In the story, the
mother is conscious of the fact that in her marriage she lacks the one thing she
desires, romance yet she actively seeks out potential husbands for her daughters:
Mrs. Zheng had a great interest in searching for sons-in-law.
This was the ember in the dying ashes of her life. Although
she has had many children with her husband and continues
8 0 Julia Kristeva, “About Chinese Women” in Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader(New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 144. See also Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification
o f Intimacy (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1982), 87.
8 1 Ailing Zhang, H alf A Lifetime’ s Yearning (Taipei,Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 356.
8 2 See Jonathan Spence’s section on “Levels of Power” in The Search for Modern China (New York:
W.W. Norton &Company, 1990), 685-687.
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178
to do so, the one thing she lacks is romantic love. At the same
time, she is a good wife and would not dare, furthermore, she
lacked opportunity to obtain from him her satisfaction. Thus,
o - j
she looks for men, but she does so to find sons-in-law.
This does not imply that Zhang dismisses the fact that women can, do and have
abetted one another within the socio-political arena when necessary, just not in the
arena of marriage. In Zhang’s short story, Sweet Osmanthus Steamed: Ah Xiao’ s
Lamentable Autumn, the reader is informed that Ah Xiao acquires amah positions for
the other women, Xiuqin and another female character referred to in the text as
Aunty.8 4 These women band together to gossip about their employers and to help
each other in the trivial burdens of every day life. Yet these same lower class
servants can turn on another woman who is perceived to be a threat to their
livelihood should their masters take on wives or mistresses. Noteworthy are the
emotions experienced when another servant woman speaks of her marriage plans:
I could never get used to living in the country! In the past few
days Mother has been running around buying this and that and
complaining no end to the cost of things. I told her, “What are
you making such a fuss about? You only bought these quilts and
pillows to show off, and as for these embroidered clothes, I’ll never
be able to wear them in Shanghai.” I couldn’t care less about anything
but they must give me a gold ring. By rights that is what they have to do.
You wait and see. If they try and give me one that is gold-plated, I ‘m
8 3 Ailing Zhang, “Withered Flower” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer{Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press,
1996), 206.
8 4 Ailing Zhang, “Sweet Osmanthus Steamed: Ah X iao’s Lam entable Autum n” in Ailing Zhang’s
Love in A Fallen City, (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Publishers, 1996), “ Xiuqin, the Blond’s amah, was a
younger friend of hers; it was Ah Xiao who asked Mr. Garter to recommend her.” 122, and “One was
an elderly lady from their home village who enjoyed chatting with Ah Xiao. This was the only time
that she was free and, since she did not want to trouble anyone, she brought along her own cold rice in
a basket, patiently climbing up eleven flights of stairs. The other, another “elder sister” carried rice
and did temporary work, it was Ah Xiao who found her a job doing the laundry for a family living on
the next floor down.”126.
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179
going to throw it away! Just see if I don’t.’
This display of pride displeased Ah Xiao somewhat. She and her husband
had not had a proper marriage. All these years she had regretted her
decision to move in with him without going through all the excitement
of a wedding. She said: “In fact, you would be better off making a few
compromises. Things aren’t what they are used to be. Where on earth do
you expect them to lay their hands on gold? She had intended to make a
few rather icy remarks but couldn’t manage it.8 5
Zhang Ailing’s protagonists rarely experience authentic love within a marriage,
which implies a freedom to love outside the perimeters of social norms and
expectations. However these very protagonists grapple with the meaning of love
which requires of them an effort of creative power to act and to maneuver around the
structures that determine social behavior.
Marriage and love become non-distinguishable elements of power within the
patriarchal system. And women saw this power as something to be wrested away
from men. However, in the battle of sexes, the lines are blurred as marriage functions
as a prison without walls for both sexes. Perhaps what Zhang espouses, then, is the
slow revelation that women’s increasing awareness of the dynamics of love and
marriage might lead to a more meaningful relationship, though it may never be quite
equitable.
8 5 Ailing Zhang, “Steamed Osmanthus Flower” in Eva Hung, ed., Eileen Chang’s Traces o f Love and
Other Stories (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, Renditions Paperback, 2000), 72-73.
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Chapter Five: Shanghai and Hong Kong: Cities Reconfigured
180
By the 1930s, Shanghai had become a bustling metropolitan city whose
cosmopolitan face was formed in part by its foreign concessions and its original
Chinese features . For a century (1845-1945), Shanghai, the hybrid city of China and
the West, was divided north and south by the International settlement and the
adjacent French concession.1 Though the lives of Shanghai residents were linked
through an elaborate transportation system, Westerners and the Chinese led
essentially separate social lives.
The two worlds were also bound together by bridges, tram and trolley
routes, and other public streets and roads built by the Western Powers
that extended beyond the concession boundaries. These boundaries were
marked by stone tablets, which were hardly noticeable in the labyrinth of
streets and buildings that signaled the Western hegemonic presence: bank
and office buildings, hotels, churches, clubs, cinemas, coffeehouses,
restaurants, deluxe apartments, and a racecourse. They not only served as
public markers in a geographical sense, but also were concrete
manifestations of Western material civilization in which was embedded the
checkered history of almost a century of Sino-Westem contact.
Writers and scholars have been fascinated by the city and have in turn written on it
whether fictional, historical, or allegorical. They have unpacked Shanghai’s
historical and cultural heritage with its multiple meanings. Lee points out that
'Betty Peh-ti Wei, Old Shanghai (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993), 31. See also Stella
D ong’s Shanghai 1842-1949: The Rise and Fall o f a D ecadent City (New York: H arper Collins
Publishers, 2000).
2 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern : The Flowering o f A New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 6.
3 Mao Dun’s Midnight, G. E. Miller’s Shanghai, the Paradise o f Adventurers, William Crane
Johnstone’s The Shanghai Problem, Ernest Hauser’s Shanghai: City for Sale, Joseph Von Sternberg’s
Shanghai Express, H. J. Lethbridge’s All About Shanghai, Nicholas R. Clifford, Spoilt Children o f
Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution o f the 1920s, Harriet Sargeant’s
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181
the corpus of popular literature which contributed to its legendary
image bequeathed a dubious legacy. For as aside from perpetuating
the city’s glamour and mystery, it also succeeded in turning the name
of Shanghai into a debased verb in the English vocabulary: ‘to shanghai’
is ‘to render insensible, as by drugs [read opium], and ship on a vessel
wanting hands’ or ‘to bring about the performance of an action by
deception or force,’ according to the Webster’ s Living Dictionary. At the
same time, the negative side of this popular portrait has been in a sense
confirmed by leftist writers and latter-day communist scholars who
likewise saw the city as a bastion of evil, of wanton debauchery and
rampant imperialism marked by foreign extraterrritoriality, and a city of
shame for all native patriots.”4
To the advocates of tradition and the later leftist writers, Shanghai must have
seemed to be the heretic incarnate. This local perception is well expressed in Mao
Dun’s novel, “Midnight.” The following passage in the novel has been much cited
as it articulates well the commonly accepted notion of Shanghai at the time of the
decline of tradition within the city.5 Mao Dim describes Shanghai as a devouring
monster of old ways as exemplified in the character of the pious scholar and
traditional patriarch, Old Mr. Wu.
He had also his two precious children, his son Ah-hsuan and his
daughter Huei-Fang, to be at his side, so that although he was now
plunging into the ‘sinners’ paradise of Shanghai, he was strong in his
belief that he could keep himself morally intact. He had closed his eyes
long enough to regain his mental composure and now he opened them
Shanghai, Betty Wei’s Old Shanghai, Marie Claire Bergere’s TheGolden Age o f the Shanghai
Bourgeoise, Christian Henriot, Shanghai 1927-1937: Municipal Power, Locality and Modernization,
to name but a few to show to the extensive work done whether literary or scholarly on the topic of
Shanghai.
4Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f A new Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945,
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), 4.
5 Mao Dun’s Midnight (Ziye) has been considered one of the greatest works o f fiction in modem
China. There is considerable body of critical literature on Mao Dun in both the East and the West. For
a quick overview readers can refer to C. T. Hsia’s A Flistory o f Modern Chinese Fiction, 2n d edition,
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) 140-164. See also Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern
Chinese Literature and Film (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 134-143.
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182
calmly and confidently to look once more at the world.
The car was racing along like mad. He peered through the wind-screen.
Good Heavens! The towering skyscrapers, their countless lighted windows
gleaming like the eyes of devils, seemed to be rushing down on him like
an avalanche at one moment and vanishing at the next. The smooth road
stretched before him, and street lamps flashed past on either side, springing
up and vanishing in endless succession. A snake-like stream of black
monsters, each with a pair of blinding lights for eyes, their horns blaring,
bore down upon him, nearer and nearer! He closed his eyes in terror,
trembling all over. He felt as if his head were spinning and his eyes swam
before a kaleidoscope of red, yellow, green, and black, shiny, square,
cylindrical, leaping, dancing shapes, while his ears rang in a pandemonium
of honking, hooting and jarring, till his heart was in his mouth.....
Among the cars men and women of all sorts and conditions were
dashing about as if the devil was on their tail.6
Through Old Mr. Wu’s descent into this “sinners’ paradise,” armed with the text,
The Supreme Scriptures o f Rewards and Punishments, he repeats the same lines
denouncing sexual indulgence and promoting filial piety.7 Mao Dun portrays
Shanghai as an arena where good and evil battle for the rights to the person’s soul.
Old Mr. Wu unable to withstand the assaults of modernity and its many “sexual”
images, falls ill and soon dies.
“It looks as if the old man’s gone”
“If so, I ‘m not in the least surprised. When he lived in the country he
existed like a mummy. The country was his grave, in which he couldn’t
decompose easily. In this modem city of Shanghai he is done. He’s gone
and good riddance. One mummy of old China the less. Old China herself
is a mummy five thousand years old, and she’s decomposing fast. She
can’t weather the storm of this new age much longer.”
6 Mao Dun, Midnight (Boston: Cheng and Tsui Company, 1995), 8-9.
7 Ibid.,9-14.
8 Ibid., 24.
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183
Was Shanghai seen only as a den of iniquity or was the city the forgiving
matriarch that embraced all to her bosom? Indeed, Shanghai was a city that housed
both Chinese and foreigners. A city that appeared more than tolerant of the vices that
emerged from its streets. Stella Dong quotes a foreign resident’s perception of the
city:
As one Shanghai resident, Edward Parker, expressed it, “It is true
that the ways of mankind savour more of San Francisco or Alexandria
than of London, especially so far as casual visitors are concerned; but
after all Shanghai is tolerant rather than vicious, and the mixed population
is so good-natured that any one but a murderer may rehabilitate himself or
herself after a long period of industry, repentance, and quiet.. .Hence...
everyone knows who every one is and what every one does; the strait-laced
are at liberty to tabu the easy-going if they choose; but the Peruvians do not
behave like the Germans, nor the Frenchmen like the Yankees; and so it
comes round that with twenty nationalities to please nearly everybody ends
up by submitting to the inevitable, and whilst living, letting.”9
It is with little wonder then that the city Shanghai should become identified or
synonymous with seduction, modernity, and westernization. The English word
“modem” (along with the French moderne) received its first Chinese transliteration
in Shanghai itself: The Chinese word modeng in popular parlance has the meaning of
“novel and/or fashionable,” according to the authoritative Chinese dictionary Cihai.
Thus in the Chinese popular imagination Shanghai and “modem” are natural
equivalents.1 0
The words m odem and Western become identical as seen in Zhang’s detailing of
every day life in her short stories and novels: the calling of a young woman as Miss
9 Stella Dong, Shanghai1842-1949: The Rise and Fall o f A Decadent City (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 2000), 30.
1 0 Ibid, 5.
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184
(Mizi), the telephone in an old style house, cars instead of pedicabs, department
stores, Westem-style apartments, weddings, Western style clothing and eyeglasses.
While it is significant that in the popular imaginings, the words Shanghai, modem
and Western bear a relation to each other, it would be as Shaoyi Sun contends too
simplistic to argue that Shanghai is simply understood in terms of a city being
Westernized and “un- Chinese.” He argues that the Chinese living and working
within the metropolis created new meanings, not only for the city but also, for
themselves as residents of Shanghai.1 1 Sim states that “Shanghai stood for its
1 9
cultural fluidity, fusion and negotiation.” Shanghai is a site of crisis where the old
and new, tradition and modernity, Chinese and Western merge, converge and
diverge. It is a space whereby its residents carve out for themselves an innovative
landscape that speaks their reality within the imagined space of the city Shanghai.
Sun points out:
As a specific cultural space, Shanghai in the Republican era was the very
place where the problems of gender, class, nationalism, urbanism, multi-
culturalism, commercialism, radicalism and communism converge.1 3
This is the Shanghai in which Zhang Ailing writes. Her stories set in Shanghai
depict her protagonists stmggling with the issues of “gender, class, urbanism, multi-
culturalism, commercialism” as framed against a backdrop of both crisis and
unpreventable change.
1 1 Shaoyi Sun, Urban Landscape and Cultural Imagination: Literature, Film , and Visuality in Semi-
Colonial Shanghai 1927-1937 (Ph. D, dissertation, University of Southern California, 1999).
1 2 Ibid., 11.
1 3 Ibid., 4.
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185
These characters maneuver as best they can to articulate an identity for
themselves or minimally to survive within the context of uncertainty between
modem and tradition. This tension is perhaps best exemplified in Lo, Zhang’s
male protagonist in her English short story, “Stalemates.” Lo is caught with the
notion of being a modem man, able to choose his love, pursue his ideals and
maintain a free lifestyle. Unfortunately, Lo is caught in the entangled web of
modernity and tradition where the threads of tradition and the seduction of
modernity hold him victim as he is unable to distinguish or differentiate between his
modem ideal and his traditional ideal. Zhang ends the story with the ironic twist of
Lo, being blessed or cursed (depending on one’s viewpoint), living with three
women, none of whom he really loves.1 4
Zhang states her love for Shanghai and it is the backdrop to the majority of her
stories. It is not the nostalgic remembering of old Shanghai but a Shanghai in
transition. In Zhang’s Rouge o f the North, the reader is told that “Shanghai slept
early in those days, already settling down at eight o’clock, the blue-green evening
sky clearing as the sediments of darkness and hubbub slowly sink to the bottom.
Electric lights were not yet common in the Old City.”1 5 In the Golden Cangue,
she writes: “Shanghai thirty years ago on a moonlit night.”1 6 Both echo a time past,
1 4 Ailing Zhang, “Stalemates,” in Ailing Zhang, Sequel (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995), 266-
267. See also the character, Zhenbao, in Red Rose, White Rose where marriage to his traditionally
accepted wife does not improve his character and it does not make him a modem man, nor does his
penchant for “Westernized” women free him from the constraints of tradition.
1 5 Eileen Chang, Rouge O f The North (London: Cassell & Co., 1967), 1.
1 6 Eileen Chang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C.T. Hsia, and Leo Ou-fan Lee., eds.,
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 530.
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186
yet Zhang does not refer to Shanghai of a distant past but rather to Shanghai as city
that symbolizes change. In The City Toppled By Love, Zhang states that “Shanghai
was ‘saving daylight’ so all the clocks had been set forward one hour, but in the Bai
residence they said, ‘we keep the old time.' Their singing was behind Shanghai’s
rhythm, they couldn’t keep up with the huqin of life.1 7 In the story, Xiao Ai, the
1 8
reader is told that the time is after the 1911 Revolution. In her description of her
characters it is evident that the Shanghai of which Zhang speaks is post-1911. This is
a time of transition in China when roles and identities were being contested.1 9
Zhang Ailing clearly considers herself and states that she is a Shanghai
resident.2 0 Zhang does not write of mythic Shanghai, nor as the demonic presence of
destruction nor does she see Shanghai in terms of good or evil. She in fact does
not even envision Shanghai as the new China. Rather Zhang reconfigures the
space of Shanghai in light of a liminal arena of possibilities.2 1 Even when writing
in Hong Kong and about Hong Kong, Zhang confesses to her audience that she
was thinking about her Shanghai readers. In her essay, “ After all a Shanghai
1 7 Ailing Zhang, “The City Toppled by Love” in Ailing Zhang’s The City Toppled by Love (Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press 1995, 188. Italics used for old time are my own.
1 8 Ailing Zhang, “Xiao Ai” in Ailing Zhang, Lingering Charms (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1995),
117.
1 9 Zhang’s characters are marked by their occupations or lack thereof, high/low birth, and or their
social position. In A Wounded Epoch the grandparents are displaced individuals in the new order. In
Sex, Abstinence the time is set after the Japanese Occupation of Chungking and Hong Kong. In
Floating Flowers, Flowing Buds, we are told that the atm osphere is that o f the 1920s and 1930s.
2 0 For the first half of Zhang’s life, she lived two years in Tianjin and three years in Hong Kong. The
rest of that time she spent in Shanghai. 1920-1922, 1928-39, 1941-1952.
2 1 Leo Ou-fan Lee in his analysis o f Zhang’s works suggests that “this odd dis-location of time and
space evokes a different urban sensibility— a sensibility closer to that o f the semi-traditional fiction o f
the Butterfly school than to Western modernism.” In Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The
Flowering o f a new Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1999), 271.
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Person,” Zhang shows her appreciation for her fellow Shanghainese and defends
them against judgments and misunderstandings of the city and its residents, by
describing them not as being wicked but rather as having a curious wisdom that is
derived from being traditional and yet bearing the pressure to be modem. For Zhang,
the Shanghainese are the product of an odd mix of both a new and old culture.
Zhang further states that she writes for the Shanghainese audience and ends her essay
• 99
with: “I like /(love) the Shanghainese and I hope they like/ (love) my books.”
Zhang’s Shanghai is a place where the old and the new merge causing the old to
break at times and the new to emerge. She suggests that it is precisely at this moment
that people cling to the ancient memories that remain shadowy and distant and yet
bright and clear: thus, the references to a time past.
Between memory and reality an awkward disharmony frequently arises,
and because of this disruption—at once heavy and light—and a struggle—
9 9
serious, yet still nameless—are produced.
This is Zhang Ailing’s Shanghai: a place of myriad imaginings because it stands in
the shadows of remembered hazy histories illumined by the promise of better things
yet to come. Zhang creates her protagonists within a detailed painting of Shanghai.
She describes buildings, artifacts, items of clothing with so much information that
she has at times been criticized. Yet this technique of detailing is one of Zhang
2 2 Ailing Zhang, “After all a Shanghai Person” [Daodi shi Shanghai Ren] in Liuyan (Gossip) (Taipei,
Taiwan: Crown Press, 1984), 56-57. The Chinese characters xihuan can mean both like or love.
2 3 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modem Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature, 7R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
188
Ailing’s tactics to draw her readers into the mundane and to lead them to a point of
revelation.
Rey Chow’s analysis on the concept of Zhang’s “detailing” suggests that this
tactic has a special bearing on women and domesticity. She further states that
detailing is “more appropriately a process of multiple layering than the uncovering of
a concealed corporeality: while it presents one thing, it does so by adding to it
another.”2 4 Consequently, Leo Ou-fan Lee contends that Zhang’s detailing can be
extended beyond the private arena to the public signifiers of Shanghai’s urban life.2 5
It is in understanding Zhang’s use of multiple layering that this chapter examines the
cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong as sites of dis-location and therefore as positions
that re-examine everyday relationships in terms of gender, the modem and Western.
Zhang’s Shanghai as Uneven Contrasts
In unpacking Zhang’s many layers of her detailed vision of the city, the reader
recognizes that Zhang creates an odd mix of the city where the concepts and
perimeters of public and private, old and new, roles of gender intertwine and inter
change. In her short story, “Sealed Off, ” Zhang portrays Shanghai as a bustling city
2 4 Rey Chow, Women and Chinese Modernity: The Politics o f Reading between West and East
(Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 114.
2 5 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modem: A Flowering o f a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 271.
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suddenly suspended in time. The story takes place within a tram during an air raid. In
that instant, all public activity seems to cease.
The tram driver drove the tram. In the sun, the tramlines looked like
glistening earthworms fresh out of water, They stretched and contracted,
stretched and contracted, making their way forward, slippery-smooth, on
and on they stretched, without end.. .the tram driver stared steadily at the
two slithering rails, and didn’t go mad.
If not for the shut down, the tram would have gone on for an eternity.
Shutdown! Bells rang: “Ding-ling-ling-ling...,” every “ding” a cold dot in
the air. Dot after dot, the sound of the bells cut a dotted line through time
and space.
The tram stopped but the people on the street started to run. People on the
left side of the street ran to the right side. Those on the right ran to the left.
The metal grilles of stores rasped shut. Women shook them hysterically,
screaming: “Let us in, I have a child here; there are old people out here!”
But the grilles didn’t budge. People behind the grilles and people outside
eyed each other, all of them frightened.
The people on the tram were relatively calm. They had seats to sit on.
Though the fittings were rudimentary, they were a sight better than most
passengers’ homes. The street was gradually quieted down, not to total
silence, but people’s voices became more distant, like the rustle of a rush
pillow people heard through your dreams. The vast city dozed off in the
sunlight, it’s head resting heavily on people’s shoulders, its drool trickling
down their clothes. An unimaginable heaviness pressed down on every
person. Shanghai had perhaps never been this quiet—and in daytime too!2 6
Unlike Mao Dun’s depiction of Shanghai with its modes of transportation as snake
like monsters, Zhang refers to the modes of transportation in the non-threatening
image of earthworms. It is not fear of the city but the fear of an imminent air raid that
sends the people into hysterics. While those in the public outdoor space are panic-
stricken, the individuals in the tram are described as being calm. These individuals
in the tram though are clearly in no less danger of death and destruction should there
2 6 Ailing Zhang, “Shut Down” in Renditions, no. 45, Spring 1996, 93.
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be an actual bombing of the city. The illusion of being enclosed offers these
individual a false sense of security and it is precisely this illusion that allows the
fantasy between the two protagonists to take place. It is the illusion of the city that
hints at the individuals’ social safety and allows for the heroine’s flight of fantasy.
In this suspended state of time and space, reality and illusion, Zhang transforms
this public form of transportation into a private forum of romantic fantastical
possibilities where the roles of predator and prey are inverted. The once bustling city
now quieted down is recreated within the boundaries and lives of the two main
protagonists. Leo Ou-fan Lee, citing Rey Chow’s paper presented at the International
Conference on Zhang Ailing, states that this story could not have unfolded without
the use of the metropolis, without its references to the city’s modem material
culture.2 7 Sealed O ff could only have taken place within the city and not within its
rural counterpart because it is within the city that there is an “awkward disharmony”
that erupts with the encounter of both the old and new, both contesting for space as is
evident not only within the public/private sphere of Shanghai but also with Zhang’s
depiction of the two main protagonists who themselves embody tradition and
modernity. This manner of writing which Zhang refers to as cenci de duizhao
(uneven contrast or off-set oppositions) is a means whereby Zhang explores the
possibilities o f complementary tensions within individuals and social structures
which lead to a kind of revelation. In Sealed O ff the female protagonist finally
2 7 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f a New Urban Culture in China 1930-1945
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 290-291.
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awakens from her illusion of being a free and “modem” woman capable of a sexual
adventure and breaking away from the dictates of an oppressive (albeit Westernized)
family. In reality, she remains exactly as she is imprisoned still by the dictates of
social norms. It is only in suspended time and space that the protagonist is free to
maneuver.
In another of Zhang’s works “Liuqing” (Compassion), Zhang blends the
elements of uneven contrasts to lead the couple to a discovery of truth about
themselves and of their sentiments toward each other. The story takes place in
Shanghai as is evidenced by Zhang’s use of an old road name which came into
existence in Shanghai ini 899. The uneven contrast starts with the discrepancy of
age between the two protagonists which would underscore the belief that this
marriage is not one of affection. Zhang’s use of her cenci de duizhao between the
characters and the physical structures in which they are placed skillfully highlight the
seeming differences that lead to illumination and revelation.
In the story, the couple comes across three structures, each stirring in the
characters emotions usually left unvoiced. The story begins by informing the reader
of the two characters, Mr. Mi and Dunfeng, who have both been married before.
Dunfeng is annoyed with her husband who had intended to visit his former wife who
had called him to say that she was ill. Sensing Dunfeng’s annoyance with the call
2 8 The reader knows that the tale is set in Shanghai from a reference to a street name, Xiaoshadu
Road, from a telephone call that Mr. Mi receives from his first wife. See Eileen Chang, “Traces of
Love,” in Eva Hung’s Traces o f Love and Other Stories (Hong Kong: Renditions, Chinese
University of Hong Kong, 2000), 93. Eva Hung gives the modem name, Xikang Road, for Xiaoshadu
Road.
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and his concern for his former wife, Mr. Mi becomes particularly solicitous and
decides to accompany Dunfeng on her trip. Riding a two-seater pedicab to her
aunt’s house, Mr.Mi spied a “dark brown house with faded blue Venetian blinds
standing quietly in the rain. For some reason it seemed foreign. Mr. Mi was
reminded of the day when he studied abroad.”
This building brings to Mr. Mi’s mind several memories: he remembers an old
gramophone, possibly the RCA Victor which had a dog as its logo, the body heat
and scent of Western women dancing, a toy dog that his son had once possessed and
his first wife with whom he had once thought he was in love. His memories are not
9 1
happy especially that of his marriage to a neurotic wife. What is striking is Mr.
Mi’s recollection of a painful past that still manages to tug at his heart.
Even now, as he recalled them, winter ad the ash-like rain entered his eyes.
He felt a prickling sensation in his nose.3 2
As the pedicab continues on its journey, it passes another house.
Across from the post office there was a house, an old, grey,
Westem-style house where a macaw was usually hung out
on the balcony squawking miserably. Every time she went past
this house she was reminded of the home of the husband of hers.3 3
2 9 Mr. Mi decides to go with Dunfeng to her aunt’s. He helps her with handbag, knitting bag and
carrier bag. He calls for a pedicab so that Dunfeng will not catch a chill. The text further states that
with Dunfeng, Mr. Mi had to sometimes say I’m sorry and thank you. See Ailing Zhang, “Traces of
Love” in Eva Hung, ed., Traces o f Love and Other Stories (Hong Kong: Renditions Paperback, 2000),
95-96.
3 0 Ibid., 96. Italics are my own.
3 1 Ibid., 96-97.
3 2 Ibid., 97.
3 3 Ibid., 98.
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This second house stirs up, not in Mr. Mi, but in Dunfeng the wretched
recollections of her first marriage and her bad relationship with her in-laws,
particularly her relationship with one brother-in-law who tries to slander her to
Mr. Mi.
Dunfeng’s contact with her relatives are strained although she feels
somewhat indebted to her aunt who arranges for Mr. Mi and herself to meet.
The path from the home of that husband to Mr. Mi had been a
tortuous one. Dunfeng was a woman who had put a lot into
relationships, a virtuous woman.. ..About her marriage, she had
given one version to one person, and a different version to another,
so much so that now even she herself wasn’t very clear as to what had
actually happened.3 4
This house like the first stirs up negative images and emotions in the character.
Both buildings are presented as being foreign and /or Western styled. These
buildings are symbols, perhaps, of a modernity that somehow clouds the recollection
of the protagonists’ past. Zhang’s use of uneven contrast extends to the viewing of
the buildings. The protagonists view foreign/western/ modem buildings and are
jolted into a sense of reverie into the past but it is a re-visioned past now unclear to
both protagonists as to all the actual events.
The house or home is traditionally the site of the feminine so when Mr. Mi gazes
upon the house, he gazes upon an object of desire, albeit askewed. Peter Brooks
argues that in Western realist fiction, Mulvey’s concept of scopophilia is linked with
“epistemophilia,” that is the pleasure of knowing. The object “held in the field of
3 4 Ibid.
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vision is par excellence the object of both knowing and desire, knowing as desire,
desire as knowing.”3 5 Consequently, for Mr. Mi, viewing the house, the site of the
feminine, he enters into some knowledge of himself. The same can be argued for
Dunfeng, even though she is gendered female. In the instance of looking at the
Western style house, Dunfeng positions herself as subject, in the site of the
masculine, gazing at the object of the house, the feminine, and in so doing comes to
knowledge of her own past. Finally the final building in the story is an upper-middle
i / r
class nongtang style house where Dunfeng’s aunt resides. While the exterior is
distinctively Chinese, the interior and its inhabitants have a distinctive Western
flavor to it.3 7
The Yangs lived in an upper-middle class town house off a small alley.
Mrs. Yang was at the mahjong table in the dining room. Winter days
were short, and the lights had been turned on at 3 p.m. The mahjong table
had a leather surface trimmed with metal borders—it had quite a long
history. The Yangs had always been a progressive family, his children
were sent to new-style schools and made to study English. When Mrs.
Yang’s husband had just returned from abroad, he was a real radical. He
Forced his wife, who had just given birth, to eat fruit and sleep with the
windows open; his mother-in-law was not amused. At his encouragement,
Mrs. Yang became a lively mistress of the house; her sitting room had the
feel of a salon. Like a French hostess, she received gifts of flowers and
chocolates, which were most flattering to her self-esteem.
3 5 Peter Brooks, Body Work (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), 98.
3 6 In the Chinese text, the characters nongtang are used to describe Yang’s residence. See “Liuqing” in
Ailing Zhang’s Love in a Fallen City (Taipei: Crown Press, 1996), 15.
3 7 Sun Shaoyi, Urban Landscape and Cultural Imagination: Literature, Film and Visuality in Semi-
Colonial Shanghai 1927-1937, (Ph. D Dissertation, University o f Southern California, 1999). In
Chapter One, Sun Shaoyi states that this “was a typical Shanghai style housing that accommodated
more than seventy percent of Shanghai’s population during the first half o f the twentieth century.”
3 8 Ailing Zhang “Traces of Love” in Eva Hung, ed., Traces o f Love and Other Stories Hong Kong: The
Chinese University of Hong Kong: Renditions Paperback, 2000),99-100.
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In this particular case, it is not the exterior of the building that stirs up memories but
rather the interior. So that one can surmise that it is encountering the West that
jolts the memory of this Chinese couple. The three buildings contain strained
memories for the two protagonists — the two Western style buildings loom
ominously over the memory of Mr. Mi’s and Dunfeng’s past relationships, while the
Yang residence stirs up current memories of jealousies in both Mr. Mi and Dunfeng.
It was here at the Yang’s that Dunfeng met Mr. Mi for the first time.
On that day too, their host and hostess quarreled in a fashionably
foreign manner, like lovers. Mr. Mi looked on and felt jealousy,
though he had no right to be. Because of that he made conversation
with Dunfeng, hoping to make Mrs. Yang jealous, and then he took
Dunfeng home in his car. That was how it al started... .If it was indeed
true that such a minor incident had started it all, Dunfeng would not have
admitted it anyway—her pride would have been hurt. But to say that Mrs.
Yang was out of the picture was not quite the truth either; Dunfeng
believed that her jealousy was never without cause.3 9
As the story progresses, Zhang contrasts Dunfeng with her cousin’s wife and her old
aunt. It is through this technique that Dunfeng realizes that she is the fortunate one.
Dunfeng sat herself down on a low stool next to the opium couch,
wrapping her fleshy arms around her fleshy knees. She felt that she
was a child again, a child protected by the grown-ups, very contented.
The world was changing: her auntie had to sell things to make ends meet;
her cousin’s wife continued flirting and playing mahjong in straitened
circumstances — she might have kept up the front of a rich lady but the truth
was saddening. Dunfeng herself was the lucky one. The risk she had with
this marriage had paid off. She was now back in the hands of a reliable man,
feeling as if she had always been there.4 0
Throughout the text, the reader is left to maneuver through the social antics
required of the players that necessitate the both of them to maintain a certain
3 9 Ibid., 101.
4 0 Ibid., 109.
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emotional distance and a staged indifference. In numerous incidents in the text,
Dunfeng feigns disinterest in her husband though her thoughts would have belied her
actions.
‘It’s getting late, if you want to go, go on.’
Mr. Mi smiled and said, ‘I’m in no hurry, I’ll wait for you.’
Dunfeng was silent. However, he still looked at the clock every so often,
and then he glanced at him, and he glanced at her. The old lady was puzzled:
there’s definitely something to all this.4 1
The contrasts between the characters lead them to the knowledge that they have an
affection for each other that leads to some form of self revelation as seen in the last
line of the text.
They walked out of the alley onto the road. There were few
pedestrians and it felt like early morning. Most of the buildings
in this area had pale yellow walls, now black and moldy because
of the damp. Parasol trees lined the road, their yellow leaves looking
like flowers blossoming in the spring. Against the dark-gray walls,
the small yellow trees looked particularly brilliant. The leaves at the
top waved in the wind and then took them off, drawing an arc in the
air before overtaking the two of them. Even after the leaves touched
ground they drifted a long way off.
In this world, all relationships are frayed and patched up. Still, on their
way home Dunfeng and Mr. Mi loved each other. Walking on the fallen
leaves that so much resembled fallen petals, Dunfeng reminded herself to
tell him about the macaw when they walked past the post office.4 2
In Zhang’s imaginings the first two buildings remain remnants of a haunted past
because neither party has access to it. They simply pass these Western style
structures, gaze upon them and allow its presence to stir up the past. With the last
building, the couple venture in to discover that the exterior and the interior are not in
4 1 Ibid., 111.
4 2 Ibid., 125.
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sync, like themselves. The building is an old fashioned nongtang with an interior air
that is both foreign and modem. This multiple layering and uneven contrasts is what
Karen Sawyer Kingsbury refers to as a narrative style that allows Zhang’s text to
cut against accepted apperception, and inscribe, against and in the
established, known discourses of her society and culture, her own
“peculiar” sense of self. Here the method of uneven, unmatched
contraposition serves to define not just the internal dynamics of the
story but the writer’s vision of her own mental position, her own site
of growing consciousness, as is reflected back to her through the art of
writing.4 3
Thus, the couple and the writer are being brought to some tmth about their
relationship. Perhaps then, Zhang was reflecting on her relationship with a Shanghai
that she loves and a Shanghai that is always changing. Zhang states that “Fiction
should involve a story and the story should be allowed to make itself clear, which is
better than concocting a story around a main theme.”4 4 Consequently, Leo Ou-fan
Lee refers to this artistic technique of Zhang’s as “a subversion of the grand narrative
of modem Chinese history.”4 5 Zhang’s writing argues against the traditional binary
construct of the mral as good and the urban as evil, or where the centrality of
4 3 Karen Sawyer Kingsbury, “Reading Eileen Chang’s Early Fiction: Art and a Female Sense of S elf’
(Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), 31.
4 4 Ailing Zhang, “My Writings” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 439.
45Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f a New Urban Culture /930-/9^5(C am bridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 291. Yingjin Zhang states that “from historical scraps
to history as scraps (or nation as patches), Eileen Chang’s distinctively feminine and deliberate
trivialized writings thus constitute an imaginary space exterior to the ‘kingdom’ of ‘great literature,’
of nationalist, rational, but invariably pretentious male writing. Zhang goes on further to say this is a
‘male disease’ one usually not afflicting women. See Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern Literature
and Film: Configuration o f Space, Time and Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 249
and n.71.
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humanity is adopted as a guiding moral principle. Instead Zhang’s writing offers a
“nonanthropocentric affective structure.”4 6
Contrary then to Mao Dun’s or other contemporary writers’ use of the city as
mere backdrops to the story, Zhang’s subversive tactic in detailing creates the city as
though it were not just a milieu for the story but becomes rather a site of contention
and illumination in relationship with the other characters within the storyline. As in
all of Zhang’s characters that are infused with the many shades of gray, Shanghai is
no different for Zhang Ailing. Zhang portrays the character of Shanghai as a curious
mix of the old and the new, the traditional and the modem, things Chinese and
objects Western. Zhang’s mixture of these elements leads the reader mistakenly to
seek out the obvious binary systems within her stories.
Shanghai: Blurred Boundaries
A cursory reading would seem to suggest that Zhang created two forms of
interior space: a typical Shanghai residence and a Westem-styled building or
apartment complex. While Leo Ou-fan Lee suggests that the latter is often
depicted as “the site of estrangement and disturbance” and the former is portrayed as
“warm and familiar, ” this apparently obvious binary constmct is questionable,
specifically because Zhang avoids clear binary constructions through the use of her
4 6 Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics o f Reading between West and East
(Minnesota: University o f Minnesota Press, 1991), 114.
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narrative style.4 7 Zhang’s description of the architectural structure of these
buildings are defined yet her detailing of the interior and the interaction of the actors
with their immediate surroundings blur the lines so that neither structure represents
a singular perspective. Leo Ou-fan Lee cites Zhang’s later novel, Banshengyuan
(Half A Lifetime’s Yearning) as exemplary of this binary concept. While the main
heroine lives in a nongtang with her mother, older sister and younger brothers,
suggesting some kind of familial warmth, this site is not without its internal
problems 4 8 While the nongtang acts as a guarded enclave of tradition away from the
fast-paced city life of Shanghai, Zhang’s deliberate inscription of the nongtang sets
up a separate space and time from and within the city. It is a site of dis-location. It is
as if these individuals moved to a different drummer, a slower pace of life.
Individuals suspended in semi-dream states wake only to discover that they are all
the more lost in their own realities and traditions.4 9 They dwell in Shanghai but live
47Ibid., 272. Lee further offers readings from various texts to substantiate this argument. While Lee
cites from Banshengyuan ( Half a Lifetime’s Yearning), Xinjing (The Heart Sutra), and Liuqing
(Compassion), he does not take into the story, “Xiao Ai” a story of a girl who is trapped by the
circumstances of her life which takes place within the framework of a traditional Chinese setting. Nor
does Lee address “Love in a Fallen City” which clearly depicts the heroine’s, Liusu, environment in
Shanghai as a kind of prison, nor does he take into account Zhang’s depiction of Hong Kong’s
Repulse Bay Hotel in the same story which clearly argues against the cold, foreboding and indifferent
front of a western building. “After disembarking, they took two taxis to the Repulse Bay Hotel. The
taxis drove out of the teeming city, rising and dipping across the hilly terrain. After a while, the road
was flanked by cliffs o f yellow and red soil, with ravines that revealed the dense green of the forest or
the aquamarine of the sea. As they came closer to Repulse Bay, the cliffs and trees continued, but
grew more gentle and inviting. Returning picnickers swept past them in flower-laden cars, the sound
of scattered laughter fading in the wind.” In Ailing Zhang’s “Love in a Fallen City” Renditions,no.45,
Spring, 1996, 72.
4 8 A nongtang is a typical Shanghai courtyard constructed within an alleyway. It is usually narrow and
crowded and neighbors generally know each other and are suspicious o f strangers.
4 9 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modem: The Flowering o f a New Urban Culture, 1930-1945
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 271. Here Leo Lee quotes from Zhang
Ailing’s “The Days and Nights of China” (Zhongguo de riye) (Shanghai: Shanhe tushu gongsi, 1946),
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2 0 0
only in the margins of the city, much like Manzhen’s younger brother who is trained
to respond to “outsiders” before being set on.
that small child lifted a set of keys toward him saying: “My sister
asked me to bring this over. This is the key to her writing desk.” Shuhui
smiled, saying: “Oh! Are you Manzhen’s little brother? How is she?
Is she a little better?” The child replied saying: “She said that she is a
little better, and should be able to come in tomorrow.” He looked no
more than seven or eight but was well trained, having finished saying
what he had to say, he turned around and left. Shuhui’s mother asked
him to stay and eat candy but he did not “Just now that child, looks
as though as if he had been trained, telling him not to say too much to
strangers.”5 0
Noteworthy in this plot is the fact that the main characters are not local Shanghainese
but people who have moved from the countryside to the city in the hope of getting a
better life.5 1 This further heightens the sense of displacement in the characters. A
closer examination of the text reveals that the internal setup, the ways in which the
characters interact with Shanghai and with tradition and modernity, is in part the
cause of the sorrow shared by all the women in this family.
Manlu, the older sister, uneducated and forced by circumstances, becomes a
dance hall hostess and later a prostitute who uses the nongtang residence to entertain
her clients when necessary. In the story, when one of Manlu’s clients, who later
becomes her husband, first notices the younger sister, Manzhen, he does so
while visiting the nongtang. In creating this scenario, the nongtang represents neither
a safe haven for the sisters nor is it entirely a den of iniquity as marked by the many
390. He states: “Her fiction is like ‘a dreamer from the ancient romances, except that he just wakes
up from sleep without a dream — and he feels all the more lost.’
5 0 Ailing Zhang, H alf a Lifetime’ s Yearning (Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996), 13.
5 1 Manzhen’s family is from a rural area famous for its tea and Shuijun is from Nanjing.
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inhabitants of the courtyard. Manzhen’s future brother-in-law, infatuated with her,
tries to persuade the older sister, Manlu, to get the younger to follow in her footsteps
of prostitution. Initially angered by the request, Manlu thinks of getting Manzhen out
of the house and as a result, approaches her mother on the matter. Manzhen has, after
all, an education and should fare better in the city. Yet there is little incentive to have
Manzhen move out of the supposed safety of the enclave as she is still considered
young and has not found an appropriate marriage partner.
Zhang therefore reiterates the portrayal of a traditional maternal figure who sees
her daughters only in terms of marriage opportunities and financial security for the
family as a whole.5 2 In the novel, Manzhen, raped by her brother-in-law and kept
prisoner by her sister in a Westem-style house, might indicate as Leo Lee argues that
the Western style houses were portents of disaster.
Manzhen was already in the state of a semi-coma when she left the Zhu
house, but as the car door opened, and as the car slowly drove out, the
garden’s big metal gate also cracked opened, her heart was suddenly clear.
She had finally gotten out. Even if she died, she would die outside. She
thoroughly hated this house, this time that she got out, she would not go
back, except in her nightmares. She knew that she would see it in her
dreams, no matter how long she lived, it would be hard to forget this devil’s
palace of a house and garden and in her fearful nightmares she would return
over and over.5 3
Leo Lee suggests that Zhang’s negative images may have stemmed from her
unhappy memories o f her life with her father and step-mother.54 This is arguable on
5 2 Ailing Zhang, H alf A Lifetime’ s Yearning [BanshengYuan] ( Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press, 1996),
24-30.
5 3 Ibid., 255-256.
5 4 This theme o f western style houses portending some ominous occasion is repeated in several
Zhang’s stories. In “The First Censer”, Weilong’s aunt lives in a Western style house functioning as a
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2 0 2
several fronts. In Zhang’s “Intimate Words” she plainly states that she “despised
everything about her father’s home.” Yet in the articulation of her distaste, she
makes no mention of the Westem-style house. Rather she notes “opium, the old tutor
who taught my brother to write compositions like ‘An Exposition on The First Han
Emperor’, [and] episodic novels.”5 5 These references are signifiers of tradition and
not modernity, unlike the opulent Western-styled house in the H alf a Lifetime’ s
Yearning. Zhang also admits that her feelings are contradictory toward her father
so that anything associated with him had to be bad even if she at times liked it.5 6
Furthermore, in her stories, the removal of Manzhen from the “Western” site
does little if anything to improve the circumstances of her lot. In the novel, Haifa
Lifetime’ s Yearning, Manzhen eventually moves out of her Western-styled home
prison into the more traditional Chinese setting, even venturing into a poor rural area
to become a teacher. Even this does not improve her fate. It is not the external
structure of a building that keeps Manzhen a prisoner but rather the chains of a
patriarchy that defines and determines a woman’s purity and worth. Rey Chow
argues that in becoming domesticated by the son of her rapist, Manzhen moves away
c n
from liberation into entrapment despite the early promise of love and education.
brothel. While there is a suggestion that the story speaks of the corruption o f an innocent, it is clear as
the story unfolds that Weilong willingly participates in her demise. See Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai
Modern: The Flowering o f a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 272-273.
5 5 Ailing Zhang, “Intimate Words” (Ziyu) in Renditions, No: 45, Spring 1996, 41. See also
AilingZhang, “Ziyu” in Zhang Ailing, Liuyan (Gossip) (Taipei: Crown Press, 1995), 162.
5 6 Ibid., Zhang enjoyed the smell of opium smoke, hazy sunlit rooms and disorderly piles of tabloid
newspapers.
5 7 Rey Chow, Woman And Chinese Modernity (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 115.
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Manzhen shares, at first so different at least on a superficial front from her sister,
in the end whether in a bucolic or urban setting, the same fate as her sister within the
bounds of traditional Chinese mores. It is as if the sisters were lateral inversions of
the same mirror.
The same can be argued with the male protagonists who are as close
as brothers, Shijun and Shuhui. In contrast, they appear quite different. Shijun’s
family lives in Nanjing, Shuhui’s family lives in Shanghai. The latter has a father
present in his life. The former does not. Shuhui is seen as a modem progressive
young man while Shijun is depicted as being more conservative. They take different
paths in life, yet they too end up with the same destiny. They both marry women
whom they do not love.
Zhang seems to argue against the notion that physical structures have anything
to do with one’s destiny. Rather our destinies lie in the choices that we make within
the social structures that bind us. Zhang states that she does not make falsehood or
truth into stark opposites, instead she chooses to show tmth amidst the falsehoods of
her time, and simplicity amidst the extravagance of superficial appearances.5 8 Akin
to the displacement of the individuals in Sealed O ff or the inhabitants of the
nongtang in both Compassion and Half a Lifetime’ s Yearning, Zhang’s
characters seem out o f place with their surroundings.
5 8 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature, 1893-1945), 439.
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In the novella, The Golden Cangue and then again in the novel, The Rouge o f the
North, Zhang positions her characters in old Shanghai.5 9 In The Golden Cangue the
traditional Jiang family lives in a
modem foreign-style house of an early period, tall arches supported by
thick pillars of red brick with floral capitals, but the upstairs veranda had
a wooden floor. Behind the railings of willow wood was a row of large
bamboo baskets in which dried bamboo shoots were being aired.6 0
The detailing of dried bamboo shoots within the modem setting indicates that
there is an incongruous nature within this household. This is heightened in Zhang’s
depiction of the division of the family property after the death of the matriarch. The
context is perceived as being in line with traditional customs but Zhang hints
otherwise when she places “a foreign-style dining table of ebony polished like a
mirror” in the midst of all the conventional items used for the occasion.6 1 In this
uneven contrast, Zhang sets the stage that allows the female protagonist to
manipulate the patriarchal system so that she can move out on her own. If little was
to change for women whether one was in the rural or urban areas then the question
arises as to what was Shanghai’s seductive pull and hold on the mass of individuals
who migrated to the city. Zhang’s sense of history answers the question within the
novel, The Rouge o f the North. In the novel, she states:
They had more relatives than ever this year, so many were fleeing
the revolution seeking shelter in the foreign settlements. She (Yindi)
5 9 In “The Golden Cangue” the story starts with “Shanghai thirty years ago on a moonlit night.” In
“the Rouge o f the North” it begins with “Shanghai slept early in those days.”
6 0 Ailing Zhang, “The Golden Cangue” in Joseph S. M. Lau, C.T. Hsia and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds.
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949(New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 534.
6 1 Ibid., 541.
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had heard about revolutionaries making trouble, wild youngsters
mostly. Here in Shanghai under the protection of the foreign
settlements they attracted more attention than elsewhere with
their own newspapers and their speechifying plays, called ‘civilized
plays’ because they were imported, at a time when reformers deemed
most native things barbaric. 2
Shanghai: City of Broken Promises
Consequently, these individuals flocked to the hybrid city in the hopes of
avoiding adversity, becoming wealthy or minimally to eke out a living. Yet not
all of Zhang’s Shanghai characters are impoverished or try to maintain a marginal
lifestyle. Unlike her other stories, where Zhang’s characters move through a series of
human sufferings colored by Zhang’s use of sentiment or feeling, Zhang’s “Great
Felicitations” speaks of a marriage preparation among the nouveau riche which
generally marks a joyous occasion. The excitement of the bridal party as they shop
and prepare for the wedding cannot be denied. Yet Zhang’s detailed contrast between
the bride and the other women in the tale, the disparity with which she paints the
bride-to-be within a palatial background presents a different way in which to read the
story. According to Tang Wenbiao, Zhang’s unique contribution to the literary scene
lies in this ability to unravel the bitter life of modem urbanites, but in such
unraveling she has also elevated to the level of human nature their inconsequential,
6 2 Ailing Zhang, The Rouge o f the North (London: Cassell and Company, 1967), 73-74.
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natural submissions to life — and it was perhaps the right moment.” In the
discourse between Zhang’s protagonists and their preparation for a wedding, Zhang
acts as both an ethnographer and a social critic.6 4 The story begins with the two
Lou sisters, bridesmaids, being fitted at the Xiangyun Clothing Emporium for their
brother’s upcoming wedding. Zhang describes the decor of the Emporium as
something called the ‘palace style’, its red walls complete with
gold dragon reliefs. The walls of the fitting room were hung with
full length mirrors and there were bridal pictures everywhere—different
heads with different smiles sticking out of the same hired bridal gown.
There was a kind of egalitarian and inhuman cheer about the little
vermilion room. Yuqing pushed away the jumble of gowns on the
aquamarine china stool and sat down. She leaned slightly forward,
chin in hand, and watched her two bridesmaids moodily. Yuqing was
very careful not to let her excitement show—to be beside yourself with
delight at getting married was a sure sign of an eager spinster. Yuqing’s
face was smooth and blank, like a freshly-made bed; with the heavy
imprint of sadness upon it now, it looked as if someone had plonked
themselves down in the bed.6 5
The detailing of uneven contrasts between the description of the Emporium and the
bride- to-be, Yuqing, is striking. The Emporium’s interior hints at the celebration and
happiness that is promised yet it is jarred by Zhang’s description of the bride-to-be’s
saddened exterior. The palatial reference and the numerous photographs on the wall
call to mind a “palatial sorrow” that refers to the pining away of palace concubines
while the Emperor wiles away the hours with his favorite concubine.6 6 This
6 3 Wenbiao Tang, Zhang Ailing juan (Hong Kong: Yiwen Tushu, 1982), 3.
6 4 Edward Gunn, Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in Twentieth Century Chinese Prose
(Stanford: Stanford University, 1991), 143. Gunn suggests that Zhang Ailing writes as a social critic
as she explores not “only the victimization of women, a common enough theme at the time, but also
the consequences of victimization, both to the women and to their society.”
6 5 Ailing Zhang, “Great Felicitations” in Eva Hung, ed., Traces o f Love and other Stories (Hong
Kong: Renditions paperback, 2000), 40.
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suggested omen of things to pass may have drained the color out of Yuqing’s face.
Yet the muted uneven contrast of colors and physical descriptions suggest once
again that things are not as they appear. Yuqing is excited by her impending
marriage, yet she cannot give voice to her emotions as that would suggest that she is
overly eager to be married. As in the story, “Compassion,” Yuqing hides her
emotions because social structures demand it of her and impose it upon her. The
bride-to-be, aware that this is supposed the happiest day of her life, goes on a
shopping frenzy as though to give vent to her feelings.
Yuqing has also bought a satin embroidered night dress, a
matching embroidered robe, a silk padded morning gown,
embroidered padded slippers, a cloisonne compact and a purse
mirror with its own zippered suede cover. She believed that a woman
had only one chance in her life to indulge herself, and she should make
the most of it. Whatever she saw, she bought, as if there was no tomorrow.
There was a kind of valediction and desolation in her heart. Her sadness as
she shopped for her trousseau was not entirely put on.6 7
This accumulation of material goods and Yuqing’s mixed feelings articulates
Zhang’s own sense of the triviality of life in Shanghai’s material culture. People go
about doing things that they are expected to do. The politics of everyday life
zo
overshadow the national politics of Zhang’s time. Indeed, the politics of marriage
had not changed for women even within the walls of a city that supposedly allowed
for all to live and let live. The tale ends with marriage not being all that it is
6 6 This theme is echoed in another of Zhang’s novellas entitled: “Evermore Sorrow,” which tells the
tale of a woman who falls in love with a married man and rather than be his concubine, she leaves him
and finds employment as a teacher. In the opening paragraph, Zhang refers to the empty and deserted
halls as scenes of palatial sorrow and from another palace is heard the distant sounds of drums and
pipes. See Ailing Zhang, Wangran j i (At a Loss) (Taipei: Crown Press, 1995), 97-98.
6 7 Ibid., 41.
6 8 Ailing Zhang, “Wife, Vamp, Child” (1943) reprinted in Lianhe wenxue 3, no.5, march 1987, 54.
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supposed to be despite the promises of economic security and personal happiness.
Yingjin Zhang states that Zhang Ailing’s Shanghai is “typically a fallen city,
populated by old fogies, playboys, opium addicts, alcoholics, gamblers and so on. It
is a ‘dead world’ concealed by the ‘black curtains,’ ‘a place without light,’ or a pure
presence of desolation and darkness.” Yingjin Zhang lifts from the text, Love in a
Fallen City, Liusu’s vision of Hong Kong after the disaster to substantiate his
claim.6 9 In light of Zhang Ailing’s corpus of works and her consistent writing
technique of uneven contrasts and interaction between characters and stage, Yingjin
Zhang’s argument would be difficult to maintain. Zhang Ailing herself states that
with the exception of Qiqiao in The Golden Cangue none of her characters are
extremes. Nor does Zhang speak in terms of pure desolation and darkness but rather
7fi
in terms of a desolation that offers a kind of revelation. She goes on to state:
In “The Love that Destroyed a City,” Liusu escapes from a corrupt
family, yet the baptism of war in Hong Kong does not change her
into a revolutionary woman. The war influences Fan Liuyuan, turning
him toward an ordinary life. In the end, he gets married, but marriage
does not change him into a saint who completely abandons the habits and
style of a previous life. Thus what happens to Liusu and Liuyuan can more
or less be called healthy, it is still common; if you look at the facts of their
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lives, it is the only thing that could happen.
The revelation here for Liusu, like so many before her, is that she obtained what she
desired—marriage to Fan Liuyuan—but it was not all that she had imagined.
6 9 Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations o f Space, Time
and Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 247.
7 0 Ailing Zhang, “My Writing” in Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings
on Literature, 1893-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996),438.
7 1 Ibid.,437.
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Luiyuan did not try and tease her any more, saving all his daring
talk for other women. This was good, something to celebrate, since
it meant that he took her as family—his real official wife— but Liusu
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was still somehow saddened by it.
The protagonist, Bai Liusu, in Love in a Fallen City, seems to embody Shanghai for
Zhang Ailing. Zhang Ailing’s Shanghai, because of its very hybrid nature, its
intriguing mix of Chinese and Western, its awkward disharmony between tradition
and modernity, offers its residents by its nature the potentialities of transformation.
Zhang’s portrayal of Liusu embodies the very tensions of the city and the reality that
Liusu does adapt and change like a chameleon in its surroundings. First, Liusu is
placed within the backdrop of a traditional Shanghai opera.
The huqin wails in the night of a thousand burning lamps; the bow
slides back and forth, pouring out a tale desolate beyond words —
Oh! What’s the point in asking?! A huqin story should be performed
by a radiant entertainer, two long streaks of rouge pointing to her fine
jade-like nose as she sings, covering her mouth with her sleeve.7 3
Clearly, Bai Liusu is introduced to the reader as that entertainer. However, she is not
the entertainer of a classical era, though she is described as a classical beauty, as she
is divorced and acquainted with Western forms of dance. Zhang further depicts her
as out of step with her family just as her traditional family is out of step with modem
Shanghai. Then there is a shift in the story and the plot unfolds not like a Shanghai
opera at all but more like a Hollywood movie.
It would not be hard to argue that only in the movies could their
romance be possible. It is likely that Chang appropriates the
narrative formula of Hollywood screwball comedies in order to
7 2 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City,” Rendtions, no.45, Spring 1996, 92.
7 3 Ibid., 61.
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bring out the mistaken intentions and personality clashes in the
initial courtship game with mutual mistrust and misunderstandings,
and only at the last moment, when the film’s plot reaches its denouement,
do they really fall in love with each other and get married.7 4
This juxtaposition of old and new visuals reflect Shanghai’s shifting reality of
tradition and modernity. It is also in the movies that time and reality are again
suspended as shown in Liusu’s memory of being at a movie theatre when she was
ten. The meld of fantasy and reality caught within the memory of the individual,
Liusu, brings about another kind of revelation. The mother she imagined and the
n e
mother she had “were two different people.” Like Shanghai, a city that occupies
two spaces: Western and Chinese, modem and traditional, old and new, Liusu must
also occupy two positions. She must role-play the femme fatale and the traditional
ingenue. This role-playing is not just “a structural ingredient” but a necessity for
1ft
Liusu to discover her identity. Liusu takes extraordinary measures to ensure her
encounter with Fan Liuyuan, the foreign-educated, wealthy and unattached playboy
in Hong Kong. The move to a new and neutral territory is significant. Liusu leaves
her family and Shanghai to escape the intricate webs of social definition and enters
Hong Kong as the gay divorcee. Furthermore, in Hong Kong even if she does not
snare Fan Liuyuan, the insinuation is that her prospects of returning with a husband
are greatly improved.
7 4 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: A Flowering o f a New Urban Culture (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 293.
7 5 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City,” Renditions, no. 45, Spring 1996, 65.
7 6 Op.cit., 294.
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2 1 1
She would probably find lots of opportunities. In the past few years,
so many Shanghai men have gone to Hong Kong that it is teeming
with men of promise. Shanghai men, naturally enough, prefer to be
with other Shanghainese, so young ladies from their hometown are very
popular. If Sixth Lady went, could there be any doubt that she’d find a
good match? She could grab a handful and take her pick.7 7
In Hong Kong, not only does Liusu’s role change, so does her positioning. She is
perceived as alien gazing upon “others” whom she once saw as alien. This is
exemplified in Liusu’s meeting with the Indian princess. Both women staring and
7R
returning a gaze that signifies each as “other.” Zhang in positioning Liusu in Hong
Kong exoticizes Liusu via her surroundings. Liusu is removed from all that is
familiar to her in Shanghai, she is placed in the illusory world of the Repulse Bay
Hotel. The surroundings and luxuries of which provide an appropriate atmosphere
for flirtation and seduction. The gaze that Zhang inscribes onto Hong Kong
therefore, is both a gaze on the “oriental” as well as the “occidental.” Lee suggests
that it is the look of a
Western Orientalist gaze by materializing what existed only in
the colonist’s fantasies. True to Chang’s fictional technique,
however, this picture of Orientalist exoticism is negotiated through
the narratorial voice of an outside, one who belongs not to Hong Kong
but to Shanghai. In other words, the colonial world of Hong Kong is
viewed from a distance by a somewhat bemused Chinese observer.7 9
7 7 Ailing Zhang, “Love in a Fallen City,” Renditions, no. 45, Spring 1996, 70.
7 8 Ibid.,75.
7 9 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering o f A New Urban Culture in China (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), 327.
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2 1 2
If Bai Liusu embodies Shanghai and its many contradictions, then the question
that begs to be asked is what role does Hong Kong play vis-a-vis Shanghai in Zhang
Ailing’s imaginings.
Zhang’s Re-mapping of Hong Kong as Exotic Specter
For Zhang Ailing, Hong Kong was not exactly a mirror image of Shanghai.
Though the two cities shared similarities, there were vast differences which Zhang
played on and played out in her texts. When Zhang Ailing arrived in Hong Kong,
Hong Kong was a colony whereas despite the European concessions in Shanghai,
Shanghai was never a colony. While Hong Kong’s principal buildings were built up
in good colonial manner and fashion, the island itself had not yet developed into a
OA
thriving cosmopolitan nor was it a significant commercial center. On the other
hand, Shanghai was already a bustling commercial cosmopolitan whose bund rivaled
that of the European cities. Furthermore, Zhang emphasizes that more was to be
81
expected of the Shanghainese because of their cultivation. Hong Kong locals, on
the other hand, are portrayed as loud, blatant, vulgar and too eager to please their
89
colonial lords as shown in Mrs. Liang’s garden party.
8 0 Hong Kong did not begin to thrive until after the Second World War in 1945.
8 1 In the stories where Hong Kong is the stage and the protagonist are from Shanghai, Zhang makes
note of the expected intellectual superiority of the Shanghainese as in the case of the student Nieh in
“Fragrant Jasmine Tea.” The professor consistently remarks that he is surprised that the student
knows so little since he is from Shanghai. In addition, Weilong in the “First Censer” is described as a
student from Shanghai who is from a good family. Zhang implies a stronger moral character in the
Shanghainese than in the Hong Kong local.
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Why then did Zhang write with a Hong Kong backdrop? The answer lies in
Zhang’s text, The First Censer, where she describes a jade pipe and an ivory statue
of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy as required touches of oriental color meant for
foreigners. “The English came from a far to take a look at China, and we must give
them a China to look at— a China in Western eyes: exotic, delicate, ludicrous.”
Yet to the Chinese audience reading the story, Hong Kong must have been as alien
a a
with its exotic characters and colonial customs. Hong Kong is a land without a
father figure. This bastard child is doomed to search for its father figure in the
English and is tom between wanting its Chinese mother’s warm embrace and its
need to be independent of her. Zhang Ailing uses this cultural landscape to reflect the
Oedipal Myth. It is in Hong Kong that Zhang deals with the concept of incestuous
desire. Yet this is placed in a different setting as Zhang argues that Hong Kong is not
a mirror image of Shanghai which requires a single gaze into the hybrid city.
In Hong Kong, in Zhang Ailing’s writing, there is a double gaze. She is writing
as Lee suggests from two perspectives, as a Chinese perceiving the home ground
now turned alien and as a foreigner who views a land that is exocitized by both the
West and China. This double gaze on Hong Kong creates a “fantastical” place that
allows Zhang to maneuver her protagonists into situations that would have seemed
8 2 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer (Taipei: Crown Press, 1996),
54.
8 3 Ibid„ 33.
8 4 The text has a cast of characters whose mixed lineage and heritage must have perplexed a Shanghai
reader. Weilong befriends George Qiao and his younger sister, a young 15-16 year old whose heritage
includes Arabic, Negro, Indian, English, and Portuguese blood. Ibid., 55.
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improbable in Shanghai. Her literary intent as stated was to write of ordinary people.
However, when ordinary people are placed within fantastical backdrops, strange
things can and do occur. It is in understanding Hong Kong, not as Shanghai’s “other”
or mirror but rather as a scene of the unexpected, that Zhang begins to explore the
themes of repressed sexuality, incestuous desire, and a willingness to be corrupted
into a world once feared or despised.
The protagonist, Ge Weilong, in “The First Censer” is a young student from
Shanghai who turns to her aunt, a madam of a brothel, for assistance to finish her
education. Though warned to stay away from her aunt by her parents, Weilong
chooses to walk into the brothel and to eventually participate in its life. The house
is described as being white and on a mountainside with an odd blend of Western
and Asian motifs in the interior design of the brothel. While the house on the hill
might be reminiscent of a haunted house, there are no ghosts within, perhaps only
fox spirits —-just lively young girls caught in the exotic and ludicrous world that is
Hong Kong.8 5
The garden of her aunt’s house was in fact rectangular lawn; around
the lawn ran a low, white balustrade whose stones were set in an odd
incantatory design—the swastika, a bent-spiral cross—and beyond the
balustrade stretched the untamed mountain. It was as if the garden were a
gold-lacquered serving-tray borne aloft by the mountain. One row of neatly
pruned evergreens, two beds of fine English roses. Everything was poised
and solemn, perfectly in place, delicately sketched on that lacquered surface.
In one comer of the lawn the buds of a very small azalea were just opening;
8 5 Kingsbury suggests that the depiction of the house and its surroundings has less to do with sexual
desire, than it has to do with a self- awakening with its references to flames and burning. See Karen
Sawyer Kingsbury, Reading Eileen Chang’ s Early Fiction: Art and a Female Sense o f Self (Ph. D.
diss. Columbia University, 1995), 70.
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the soft red at the base of the petals was tinged with a touch of yellow, so
that they turned hot-pink. In that garden, spring was biding its time; it could
at any minute burst into flames, bum up the garden, bum over the walls, a
brilliant red spark racing through tinder till the whole mountain was heaving
and crumbling in a blaze of glowing azaleas.8 6
Zhang Ailing creates, in the very beginning of the tale, a different world in which
Weilong is to enter and be initiated by “fire.” While the story suggests that her aunt,
Mrs. Liang manipulates Weilong and uses her as bait to draw in clients, it is clear
that Weilong on her own volition, chooses her way of life. She is seduced not by her
aunt, not even by some client with promises of a better life. She is seduced by the
fantasy of a different life. Zhang Ailing creates a time in the past where like the
Empress Dowager, a woman could wield power behind closed doors. Or Zhang
fashions as in period pieces fox spirits who take control over men’s hearts and souls.
In the story, Weilong competes with and in due course rebels against her aunt
who tries to pawn her off on a rich and older gentleman.8 7 She defies her aunt by
attaching herself to the Eurasian, George Qiao, who was a former client of her
aunt’s. Despite her knowledge of who and what George is, a marginalized individual
in society who cannot offer her human love nor can he restore her to her former
paradise of innocence. Yet, because of this mundane love that she has for him,
Weilong, in the end, marries and supports George by turning tricks. Through her
own choices, she enters not only into a man’s world but plunges deep into her own
hell, she is now denied her own power and authority. In the final scenes, Weilong’s
8 6 Ibid., 69-70.
8 7 Ailing Zhang, “The First Censer, ” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer (Taipei: Crown Press,
1996), 44.
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dress has caught on fire and it is George who puts out the fire, both literally and
figuratively.
In Fragrant Jasmine Tea the student, Nieh, plays out the Oedipal complex with
a twist— where his desire for his professor, his female classmate’s father will lead to
an attempted murder of her. Nieh, like Weilong, is also from Shanghai. He is
depicted as a quiet and introverted lad, from a dysfunctional although well-off family
80
where both the father and stepmother are abusive. He imagines that his Chinese
professor, Yan, will find in him the ideal son and he, in turn will find an ideal father.
The effort is futile as Professor Yan sees in Nieh the weaknesses of modem youth.
The narrator creates an atmosphere of past and present by mixing in images of
the smell of jasmine tea in the beginning of the tale and of the aroma of burnt opium
from Nieh’s home, stirring in him memories of the past. This combination of new
and old smells, of present and past realities indicate that Nieh is obsessed with an
imagined past and is unable to be attentive to the moment which explains his
inability to concentrate and to please his professor. Nieh mminates over the “ifs” as
though the “ifs” would lead to some clarity. However, the opposite is tme and Nieh
descends into his own world of make believe and ghostly specters:
the sky had quickly darkened—was already dark— and alone
by the window, the sky in his mind had darkened with it. Silent,
dark m isery.. .as though in a dream, the person watching by the
window at first was himself, and in the next moment, he saw clearly
that it was his mother. Her bangs hung low. Her head was bowed.
8 8 Ibid.,83-84.
8 9 Ailing Zhang, “Fragrant Jasmine Tea,” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer(Taipei: Crown Press,
1996), 11.
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217
There was a pale, vague image of the sharp section of her face. Those
ghostly eyes and eyebrows were like dark shadows in the moonlight.
Yet he knew for certain that it was his dead mother, Feng Biluo.
He had lost his mother when he was about four, but he recognized her
from her photograph. There was only one photograph taken before her
marriage. She was wearing an old-fashioned short jacket of embroidered
satin with tiny bat designs. Now the person before the window was more
distinct. He could see the bats on her satin jacket. She was waiting there
for some person, for some news. She knew well that this news would not
come. The sky within her mind had slowly gone black.. .Zhuanjing’s
body involuntarily convulsed with grief. He did not know if he was his
mother or himself.9 0
Unable to differentiate reality from fantasy, and possessed in his mind by the spirit of
his deceased mother, Nieh finally finds expression for his dementia by attacking his
classmate whom he wishes to replace. She is also his last hold on reality.
In Zhang’s The Second Censer, the protagonist, an Englishman, is presented
as a “romantic fool” brought to ruin by the cold frigidity of a beautiful bride. Roger
is a professor at Nanhua University.9 1 He is seen as a settled professor who has
successfully courted a beautiful English girl, Susie who is half his age. Like many of
Zhang’s stories, the peeling away of the layers allows a different reading. Reading
awry the story echoes back to tales of scholars destroyed by beautifully feminine,
ethereal entities. While all the protagonists are English and therefore foreign, the
third person narrative form has subtly humanized and sinicized the characters. So
while the landscape is unmistakably foreign the language invites the reader into a
realm of familiarity. This is noteworthy when the narrator begins to describe Susie
Mitchell. Though Susie is described as beautiful, she is blond and pale to the point of
90 Ibid., 14
9 1 Zhang Ailing uses the name Nanhua University to refer to the University of Hong Kong.
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218
looking dead.9 2 A foreshadow of how the story is to unfold. This foreign topography
of Hong Kong, a vaporous land where things shift and change without much
notice and predictability, is the backdrop against which humans become demonic,
and where the scholar falls prey to ghostly seductions.
All things seem normal as Susie and Roger prepare for their nuptials. Only at the
moment of their wedding night is there a sharp shift in the tale. Susie, seductively
attired, transforms and reveals her true self at night as a hysterical child, incapable of
understanding the complexities of an adult relationship or in participating in a human
relationship. Reading this tale with Hong Kong as the backdrop for the fantastic or
the supernatural, there is a classical ring to the story but with a twist. Unlike ghosts
of old, Susie’s transformation does not destroy Roger’s corporeal body or even his
soul, rather Susie destroys his reputation and sends him spiraling down the well of
despair. In the end, it is Roger who kills himself. Suicide is not a common theme in
Zhang’s works but Zhang uses it here as an extension of the demonic presence of
both the mother and daughter. Zhang draws similarities between the mother and
daughters and indicates their close bond precisely because they understand one
another’s sorrows. Zhang sketches a striking physical similarity between mother and
daughter that went unnoticed earlier by Roger. They shared the same structural
dental work. W hen Mrs. M itchell bared her teeth at the mention o f her husband’s
name, Roger shuddered but those same teeth seen in Susie brought only a
9 2 Ailing Zhang, “The Second Censer” in Ailing Zhang, The First Censer (Taipei: Crown Press,
1995), 90.
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219
proclamation of beauty and love. Roger’s downfall comes because he is a victim of
his own blindness and the powerful hold that Mrs. Mitchell has over her daughters.
Therefore there is not one demon but a family of female demons. It is not just Susie
but also her mother who controls all within her reach that sends Roger over the edge.
Zhang Ailing’s use of Shanghai and Hong Kong as spaces of maneuverable
possibilities allow for different readings so that a reader can re-examine these
displaced individuals in more forms than in a prescribed tradition. Zhang’s use of
these two cities and her techniques of uneven contrasts deliberately break from her
contemporaries who were fascinated by the “new” and socially relevant. At the
time of her writing, there were two main currents in modem Chinese literature: the
“New Youth movement” and the more traditional Mandarin Duck and Butterfly
tradition. Zhang Ailing stayed with neither. She was not concerned with maintaining
images of the past to offer comfort, nor was she interested in promoting visions of a
new social order. In using both cities, Shanghai and Hong Kong, Zhang shows a
world where people’s interior lives are mixed with the manners of the past and the
passion for the future. She shows that Hong Kong is not Shanghai’s “other” nor
should it be considered as only a mirror image of Shanghai. In the four stories
dealing primarily with Hong Kong, Zhang writes with an obvious Freudian slant but
nonetheless heavily infused the stories with the sense o f a specter. The narratives all
contain an outside voice viewing the antics of a colony possessed. In Zhang’s vision
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2 2 0
Hong Kong is not Shanghai but a mere ghost of the sister landscape that it wishes to
imitate.
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2 2 1
Conclusion:
This study addresses Zhang’s re-imagining of the “Site of the Feminine”
where women are no longer objects of the masculine order but instead become
subjects within their own space of authority. Through her technical use of details,
cenci de duizhao, liminality and desolation as structural frameworks that lead to
personal illumination, Zhang reveals that women maneuver through complex social
webs and are no less victims of the Phallic order than their male counterparts. Zhang,
therefore, breaks the Chinese traditional reading of woman as victim and clearly
challenges the construct of woman as national symbol of suffering. In her stories,
Zhang writes of desolation as a process of illumination that sheds light not only for
her protagonists but also for us, the readers who must question their parts and paths
as we meander through this maze of social identities constructed by masculine
myths and legends.
The chapters in this study have dealt with different aspects of gender
construction and gender interplay within the context of many of the same texts. This
is done for a two-fold reason: one it shows the complexity and multiple layers of
Zhang’s works and the various ways in which these stories can be approached.
Secondly, Zhang’s texts, vehicles of storytelling, a traditional method of inscribing
myths and legends, confront and deconstruct the traditional folklore of femininity
within a more traditional forum.
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2 2 2
A variety of theoretical methods have been applied to demonstrate Zhang’s
masterful deconstruction and reconstruction of the “Site of the Feminine.” In
deploying her unique artistic style and method, Zhang exposes the masculine order to
be manipulative of both men and women and questions socially imposed gender
constructs. Zhang’s writings articulate the myriad expressions that are “woman” and
break down the traditional confinements that seek to make women or men play out
specific roles. That is to say that when men impose roles on women, they de facto,
are imprisoned themselves. Zhang also challenges the concept of the reality of the
“feminine” and articulates that what one perceives is not necessarily real. The
donning of masks, masquerading and mimicking of expected social roles and
behavior become tactical tools whereby men and women jostle for power within
patriarchal structures. In effect, then, the virgin and the vamp, or for that matter the
scholar and the cad share the same body and psyche, and perhaps it is only space and
time that determine their individual paths.
This study examines Zhang’s concept of “motherhood,” a highly regarded
status in China, and reveals not the biological function but rather the psychological
realm of motherhood as a space of negotiations. This departure from a male
determined position of maternity that creates progeny as means to carry on a family
line causes a fissure that reconfigures wom en within the Phallic Order as
empowered individuals. These mothers become “Phallic” in that their offspring have
little to do with the destiny of future generations but rather act as means of procuring
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223
economic and personal security. For Zhang, the self-sacrificing mother is not entirely
selfless. This is perceived as problematic because of the tensions between the social
demands placed on women and their own economic reality. Zhang writes that
women who buy into and become phallic lose their own feminine identity and in
essence enter into madness as they depart from the social order and from their
personal identity. Zhang functions as a prophet as she cautions against acceding to or
ascribing to the “order” without knowledge of the consequences of one actions.
For Zhang, these sites of “desolation” are possible moments of illumination if
readers become aware of the promises that the site of liminality allows. It is precisely
that women can leave their confined spaces through imagination, mimicry and
seduction that allow them to be positioned as subject rather than as man’s mere
object. As a speaking subject, the space is reversed and the mystique and mystery of
the Other is debunked. In liminality, Zhang re-writes and revisions the position of
woman. Zhang, being a pragmatist, is aware of the difficulties that lie in wait as
women weave through the between and the betwixt of life. This position of
liminality, while difficult to maintain, is the place where women are empowered. It
may well have been that it was this concept that made Zhang Ailing a recluse.
Marriage has been commonly accepted as a contractual agreement between men
and wom en with both getting something out of the contract. It is the traditional site
of feminine identification. “Woman” is, after all, in traditional Chinese terms defined
as daughter, wife and mother—identities dependent on a woman’s relationship to a
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224
man. Yet Zhang revisits marriage as a traditional contract blurred by the promise of
love, creating a creative tension for the protagonists involved. This modem
contraption called love, when confronted with traditional models and expectations of
marriage, creates chaos and requires of the players a new understanding of the mles
and the game, as is clearly articulated in Stalemates.
This concept of love creates an illusion for both men and women alike and they
must relearn to navigate through these uncharted waters. Zhang argues that when
modem love and traditional marriage meet, romantic Cupid may seem the victor but
in the end, it is the social contract that lasts. That is, the sense of one’s own identity
defined within this economy of marriage. In a time of chaos and change when the
perimeters of marriage are pushed to their limits with the old and the new, what is
created are new imaginings once considered taboo. As seen in several of Zhang’s
works, her protagonists enter into forms of co-habitation. Zhang makes no moral
judgment on the individuals who choose cohabitation, nor does she condemn the
mistress. Zhang Ailing views all this tension and sees the resourcefulness of
individuals twisting down life’s many paths creating an existence for themselves.
Zhang wrote her observations with what she was familiar and thus, she used the
physical and cultural landscapes of Shanghai and Hong Kong. These two hybrid
cities, where the old and new merge and converge, where tradition and modernity
court with and shirk from each other, to form novel identities. It is in Zhang’s Tale of
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225
Two Cities that she sets her stage for experimentation not only in the social order
but also as a literary device.
This reading of Zhang Ailing’s works allows a new glimpse of the talents and
genius of Zhang Ailing. It unpacks a portion of the treasuries within her Oeuvre. In
doing revealing the richness of Zhang Ailing, there is a desire and a hope that future
readers will feel inspired to venture further and delve deeper into the labyrinth of
Zhang’s writings to discover and uncover even greater riches that lie waiting. The
task has not been to reveal everything but to whet the appetite for more. It is instantly
recognizable that in her works lie more jewels for those who care to enter into the
world of Zhang Ailing. Gems that have not been fully discussed or adequately
developed in this study include Zhang’s plays and screenplays which require a
different forum of analysis. The corpus of that work would, indeed, necessitate
another discussion and study in itself. Furthermore, the dynamics between Zhang,
her critics and some of her closest friends reveal an interesting repartee where
Zhang’s responses to her critics are like modem dancers on a stage: they at times
merge, meet, part and depart. Sometimes Zhang seems to be doing a solo act. It is
not always easy to decipher Zhang’s verbal movements as she tends to respond
metaphorically to her critics. Her language is not always easy to understand and no
less easier to interpret.
Zhang’s early personal life and the psychological impact of it has been hinted at
but not fully developed in this study. Her personal relationships with Hu Lancheng
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226
and Ferdinand Reyher, the men in her life and her ongoing friendship with Yan Ying
have been omitted necessitated by the limits of ability, time and space. Sima Xin
wrote a biographical account of Zhang Ailing in which he makes the following
observation. He states that Zhang and Reyher seemed an unlikely couple. He was
sixty five and she was only thirty six. Their personalities and interests were complete
opposites. Zhang Ailing had no interest in politics whereas Reyher was a socialist
who had supported Mao. Reyher was an extrovert enjoying the company of friends
and Zhang was an introvert shying away from people. Yet Sima Xin states that the
two found in each other what they needed.1
This is an echo, perhaps of Zhang’s story, Compassion. Most scholars would
agree that Yan Ying, a Shanghai born Indian, who met up with Zhang Ailing in
Hong Kong, influenced the Southeast Asian motifs in her texts as found in The City
Toppled by Love and Interlocking Rings. An investigation of these primary
relationships would make for good reading and further research as it would explore
the biographical elements in Zhang’s works and offer a more in-depth explanation on
the psychology of Zhang Ailing. The absence of these themes in this study does not
imply their lack of importance but rather suggest that these require a different forum
in which they can be further developed. From the wealth of Zhang Ailing’s works, it
is evident that the study o f Zhang deserves and requires more than a few
dissertations to cover the scope and span of her works.
1 Xin Sima, Zhang Ailing and Reyher[Zhang Ailing yu Laiya] (Taipei, Taiwan: National Library
Press, 1996), 19-20.
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This study intends to bring Zhang Ailing to the foreground of the academic
discourse by showing how her works might be read, interpreted and analyzed. It is
not meant to be exhaustive but to act as a scout foraging for the possibilities that
await the reader in Zhang Ailing’s collection of gems. This study serves to put the
spotlight back on Zhang Ailing. It gazes upon an individual who dreamt of being a
genius and saw the visions of promise beyond her self and her sex. The study
anticipates a greater and more profound interest in the works of this very gifted
writer: much like her mother before her, Zhang Ailing was a woman before her
time.
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Glosssary of Chinese names and terms in this study:
Bai Liusu
Ban Sheng Yuan (Half A Lifetime's Destiny)
Baoluo
Bei zhuang (tragic and heroic) m
Biluo
Bi ye zhen ming hu (What is essential is that names be right)
Bu xin de ta (Unfortunate her)
Cai Yuanpei mm
Cang liang (desolation)
Cao Qiqiao
Cenci de duizhao (Uneven contrasts)
Chang An
Chang Bai
Chidi zhi lian (Naked Earth)
Chuang shi ji (A Wounded Epoch) i|lJt!£$E
Cihai
Di er lu xiang (The Second Censer)
Di yi luxiang (The First Censer)
Ding Ling "f
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229
Dui zhaoji (Reflections) Pi) un ^
Fa Lize
Fan Liuyuan
Feng Suo (Sealed Off/ Shut down)
Feng Yuanjun
Fu Lei
Ge Weilong
George Qiao ^ § jf
Gu Manlu H ill® !
Gu Manzhen
Guo(translated as Wen in Zhang's text "stalemates")
Hsia, C. T.
Hu Jinyuan mm
Hu Lancheng " A S
Hua Li Yuan (A Beautiful Relationship) M K
Huang Yifan
Hubei
Hunan
Huqin
Jin yu lu (Remnant from the Ashes)
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^
230
Jize
Ke Ling
Kuang Ziwei
m m
Leo Lee Ou-Fan
Li Hongzhang
Liang taitai
Liao Xianhao
Lin Daiyu
Lin Huiyin ^ ^ 0
Ling Shuhua
Liu Qing (Compassion)
Liu Yan (Idle Talk) ^ i t
Lou Dalu
Lou Erqiao
Lou Simei
Lou Taitai
Lu Xun
Lu Yin EHEIs
Lu Zongzhen
Luo
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231
Mao Dun
Mei Jialing
Mi Jingyao (Mr. Mi)
Miss Fan
Miss Zhou (Miss Chou)
Modeng (modem) 0 ^
Nan bei yi jia qing
Nie Zhuanqing
Nixi ftflF
Qing chen zhi lian (A City Toppled by Love) m m
Ren cai liang de
Selita
Shen Shijun
Shuhui
Shui Jing
Si yu (Intimate Words) f t ®
Song Jiahong
Sun Yat-sen (f^M 'fllj)
Sung Ching Ling
Tang Wenbiao
mm
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232
Tian Cai Meng (Dream of A Genius)
Tung Shi fang
Wang Jiaorui
Wei ji (crisis)
I W k
Wu Cuiyuan
Xiang lin sao
mm
Xiao Ai
'\'X
Xiao Hong
m u
Xu Fengyi
mm
Xu Xiaohan
f K h ^
Ya he ya
mm
Ya tou (a slave girl, a bondsmaid)
Y ®
Yan Danzhu
Yan Ziye
Yang Taitai
Yanying
m
Yang Ge (The Rice Sprout Song)
s u t
Yao Jingjing
Yao Ququ
Yao xiansheng
mm
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233
Yao Xinxin
Yindi
Yu Dunfeng
Yuqing
Yu Yun (Lingering Charms)
Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang)
Zhang Cuo (Dominic Cheung)
Zhang Peilun
Zhang Tingzhong
Zhang Ying
Zhang Yingj in
Zhenbao
Zheng Shusen (William Tay)
Zheng chuanchang
Zhu Hongcai
Zi jide wenzhang (My Writings)
m m
mm
m u
m #
W J i|»
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Bibliography:
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Zhang, Ailing. Complete Works. 16 vols. Taipei, Taiwan: Crown Press,
1991-1996.
Yang ge. Taipei:Crown Press, vol.l, 1996.
f f i K . islt, #'(*■: i s . 1996,
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"A Beating." Trans. D. E. Pollard. Renditions: A Chinese English Translation
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Naked Earth. Hong Kong: Union Press, 1956.
"Reflections: Words and Picture (excerpts)." Trans. Janice Wickeri. Renditions: A
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"Red Rose and White Rose." Trans. Carolyn Thompson Brown. "Eileen Chang's 'Red
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The Rice-Sprout Song. New York: Charles Scribner, 1955.
The Rouge o f The North. London: Cassell, 1967.
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huanhua g g jg D g fl|t: 3 0 g g 8 0 ^ 'ft& ^ 4 rllif/ .lN B B l o ,
1988; 223-228
Zhang, Xuerou. Zhang Ailing: Beiqu shengming de gao taowuzhe “ j
Dangdai S i t o ^ 180^ 2002.8.1.
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239
Books in Chinese:
Chen, Bing liang Zhang Ailing duanpian xiao shuo lunji
M fm S - Taipei: Yuanjing *U |hl985.
Chen Zishan (p j^ ^ lj). Shuo bu jin de Zhang Ailing 0 Taibei:
Yuanjing c h u b a n s h e ^ b * 2001.
Commerative Issue on Zhang Ailing. [Zhang Ailing jinian wenji] Huali yu cangliang
[ l I M i i M i L o Taipei: Crown Press ^ b ,
1996.
Lin X in q ia n ^ ^ f f ) . Lishi, nuxing yu xingbie zhengzhi
¥*
AH'
. Taibei. Maitian chibanshe^^ |3} tht{^Tt,2000.
_____________ .Zhang Ailing lunshu: nuxingzhuti yu qu shimo ni shu xie^
. Chenhao diannao paiban you
xiangongsi , 2000.
Liu Shaoming, Liang Bingjun and Xu Zidong, eds. (fi!j$§$&,
Zaidu Zhang Ailing Niujin daxue c h u b a n s h e ( ^ ^ ^ ^ u H )
2002.
Shui, Jing. (^|C^).Zhang Ailing de Xiaoshuo yishu n Dadi
chubanshe^ftti.tij , 1983.
.Zhang Ailing wei wan: Jie du Zhang Ailing de zuoping ^ ^ ^ 7^
2EL
Dadi chubanshe 1996.
Sima, Xin. (d JllfJr). Zhang Ailing yu Lai Ya 0 Taibei. Dadi
c h u b a n s h e ^ b » 1996.
Tang, Wenbiao. Ed. (j^ ^ i^ ).Z h an g Ailing de zasui j y f l l i f e f c n Taibei.
Lianjing chubanshe^ ^ p,: 1976.
.Zhang Ailng yanj iu 0 Taibei. Lianj ing
chubanshe^ ^ P,; m 1983.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
240
_.Zhang Ailing ziliao da chuan ji o
Taibei. Shibao wenhua ^ ^ b : * 1984.
Zhang, Jian. (^ ^ |).Z h an g Ailing xinlun 0 Shuquan chubanshe
1996.
Zheng, Shusen. Zhang Ailing de shejie n Taibei.
Yunchen wenhua chubanshe^^b: * 1989.
Articles in English:
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and Kang-I Sun Chang.eds. Writing Women in Late Imperial China Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1997: 397-422.
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Intersubjective Space." Teresa de Lauretis. Ed. Feminist Studies, Critical
Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986: 78-101.
Bohlemeyer, Jeannine. "Eileen Chang's Bridges to China." Tamkang Review 5.1:
111-128.
Chang, H. C. Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1973.
Chang, Sung Sheng Yvonne. "Yuan Qiongqiong and the Rage for Eileen Chang
Among Taiwan's Feminine Writers" Modem Chinese Literature 4, 1988:
201-223.
Cheng, Stephen. "Themes and Techniques in Eileen Chang's Stories." Tamkang
Review 8.2. (1977): 169-200.
Chien, Ying-ying. "Sexuality and Power: A Feminist Reading of Chin P'ing Mei"
Tamkang Review. Vol. XIX, nos: 1,2,3,4: 607-629.
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241
Chow, Rey. "Seminal Dispersal, Fecal Retention and Related Narrative Matters:
Eileen Chang's Tale of Roses in the Problematics of Modem Writing"
Differences 1999.11.2: 153-176.
Duara, Prasenjit. "De-Constructing the Chinese Nation" The Australian Journal of
Chinese Affairs No. 30, July 1993: 1-26.
Fu, Poshek. "Eileen Chang, Women's Film, and Domestic Culture of Modem
Shanghai." Tamkang Review 29.4. Summer 1999.
Hu, Lancheng. "This Life, These Times" Trans. D.E. Pollard.
Renditions: A Chinese-english Translation Magazine. Hong Kong: The Chinese
University of Hong Kong. no. 45, Spring 1996.
Leung, Ping-kwan. "Two Discourses on Colonialism: Huang Guliu and Eileen
Chang on Hong Kong of the Forties." Boundary 2. Fall 1998: 77-96.
Li, Yu-ning." Historical Roots of Changes in Women's Status in Modem China"
Yu-ning Li. ed. Chinese Women through Chinese Eyes New York: M. E.
Sharpe, 1992: 102-124.
Lim, Chin-chiwn. "Reading the Golden Cangue": Iron Boudoirs and Symbol of
Oppressed Confucain Women." Trans. Lousie Edwards and Kam Louie.
Renditions:A Chinese-English Translation Magazine. Hong Kong: The
Chinese University of Hong Kong, no.45. Spring 1996: 141-149.
McMahon, Keith. "The Classic Beauty-Scholar's Romance and the Superiority of the
Talented Woman" Angela Zito and Tani. E. Barlow, eds. Body, Subject and
Power in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994: 227-252.
Mitchell, Juliet. "Femininity, Narrative and Pyschoanalysis." Mary Eagleton.Ed.
Feminist Literary Theory Cambridge: Blackwell Publsihers 1996:154-157.
Paolini, Shirley and Chen-shen Yen. "Moon, Madness, and Mutilation in Eileen
Chang's English translation o f the Golden Cangue." Tamkang Review, 19,1-4
(1988-1989): 547-557.
Sung, Ch'ing ling. "Chinese Women's fight forFreedom" Yu Ning Li. ed.Chinese
Women through Chinese Eyes New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1992: 87-101.
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242
Teng, Jinhua Emma. "The Construction of the 'Traditional Chinese Woman' in the
Western Academy: A Critical Review." Signs. Autumn 1996: 115-151.
Wang, David Der-wei. "Three Hungry Women." Boundary 2. Fall 1998: 47-76.
Dissertations:
Brown, Carolyn Thompson. "Eileen Chang's "Red Rose and White Rose": A
Translation and Afterword." Ph.D. Dissertation. American University, 1978.
Cheng, Stephen. "Flowers of Shanghai and the Late Qing Courtesan Novels." Ph. D.
Dissertation. Harvard University Press, 1980.
Sawyer, Karen Kingsbury. "Reading Eileen Chang's Early Fiction: Art and a Female
Sense of Self." Ph.D. Dissertation. Columbia University, 1995.
Stewart, Elizabeth Chang, "Awareness of the Woman Question in the Novels of
George Elliot and Eileen Chang." Pd. D. Dissertation. University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 1987.
Sun, Shaoyi. "Urban Landscape and Cultural Imagination: Literature, Film and
Visuality in Semi-colonial Shanghai 1927-1937." Ph. D. Dissertation.
University of Southern California, 1999.
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1990.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans, and ed. by H. M Parshley. New York:
Vintage Books, 1974.
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Bourdieu, Pierre.Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans.R. Nice. Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Bowie, Malcolm. Lacan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabric of Power in Late Imperial China.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Brooks, Peter. Body Work. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Brownell, Susan and Jeffery N. Wasserstrom. Eds. Chinese Femininities and
Chinese Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Burgin, Victor et al. Eds. Formations of Fantasy. London: Methuen, 1986.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Calle, Mireille. On the Feminine. Trans. Catherine McGann. New Jersey:
Humanities Press. 1996.
Chesler, Phyllis. Woman and Madness. New York: Doubleday Press,1972.
Chow, Rey. Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between East
and West. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
Chow, Tse-tung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modem
China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970.
Coward, Rosalind. Our Treacherous Hearts: Why Women Let Men Get Their Way .
London: Faber and Faber, 1992.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Living. Berkeley: Universityof
California Press, 1984.
Dobash, R. J. and R. P. Dobash. Violence against Wives: A Case against Patriarchy .
New York: Free Press, 1980.
Dong, Stella. Shanghai 1842-1949: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City New York:
Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.
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244
Duke, Michael S. Ed. Modem Chinese Women Writers: Critical Appraisals. New
York: M. E. Sharpe, 1989.
Eagleton, Mary. Ed. Feminist Literary Theory. 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1996.
Elvin, Mark and G. William Skinner. Eds. The Chinese City Between Two Worlds.
Stanford University Press, 1974.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York:
Vintage Books, 1980.
____________ . Discipline and Power: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage
Books, 1979.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Psychological
Works. Trans. James Starchey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Guber. Eds. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman
Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1979.
_______________________. The Female Imagination and The Modernist Aesthetic.
New York: Gordon and Breach, 1986.
Gilmartin, Christina et al. Eds. Engendering China. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1994.
Goldblatt, Howard. Ed.Chinese Litearture for the 1980s: The Fourth Congress of
Writers and Artists. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1982.
______________ .Ed. Worlds Apart New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1990.
Goodman, Merle. Modern China Literature in the May Fourh Era.
Cambridge:Harvard University, 1977.
Gunn, Edward M. Unwelcome Muse:Chinese Litearture in Shanghai and Peking
1937-1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
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Chinese Prose. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Hanan, Patrick. The Chinese Vernacular Story. Harvard East Asian series 94.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1981.
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1999.
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Indiana University Press, 1980.
___________ . A History of Modem Chinese Fiction. 2nd ed., New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1971.
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Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1985.
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Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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Shanghai: 1930-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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Sharpe, 1992.
Link, Perry. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Populat Fiction in Early Twentieth
Century Chinese Cities. Berkely: University of California Press, 1981.
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Society. NewYork: State University of New York Press,1993.
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University Press, 1982.
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1974.
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Monthly Review Press, 1983.
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Turner, Victor and Edward M. Brunner. Eds. The Anthroplogy of Experience.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Wei, Betty Peh-ti. Old Shanghai. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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Motherhood. London: Free Association, 1988.
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The Short Story Leiden: Brill, 1988.
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The University of Chicago Press, 1994.
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248
Appendix: A Chronology of Zhang Ailing’s Life1
1920: Zhang Ailing is bom Zhang Ying in Shanghai on September 30.
1921: On December 11, Zhang Ailing’s brother, Zhang Zijing is bom.
1922: The Zhang family moves to Tianjin and lives in the British concession.
1928: Family returns to Shanghai.
1930: Enters the sixth grade at the Huang Shi Primary School and is given the
Chinese name, Ailing, taken from her English name Eileen , by her mother
1931: Zhang Ailing enters St. Mary’s Girls’ School.
1932: Her first piece of fiction “ Bu Xin de ta” (Unfortunate Her] is published in
the school magazine, Feng Zao.
1933-35: Publishes the following “Chimu” [The Elder], “lixiang zhong de lixiang
xun” [Ideally in the midst of the ideal village] and Modeng hong lou Meng
[A Modem Dream of the Red Chamber] in the school magazine.
1936: Publishes “Qiuyu” [Autumn Rain] in school magazine.
1937: Graduates from St. Mary’s Girls’ School. That same year Zhang is beaten
and held house prisoner by her father for defying her stepmother.
1938: Escapes from her father’s and moves in with her mother and aunt. Zhang
Ailing takes the entrance exam for the University of London.
1939: Attends the University Of Hong Kong.
1940-41: Zhang Ailing is awarded the Nemazee Donor Scholarship and the Ho
Fook Scholarship. Zhang also receives honorable mention for “Tiancai
Meng” [Dream of A Genius] in a competition sponsored by the Shanghai
magazine, Xifeng [West Winds]. Zhang’s essay “Chinese Life and
1 This chronology is based on the chronologies found in the Special Issue o f Eileen Chang.
Renditions, Spring 1996 (Hong Kong: Chinese University o f Hong Kong, 1996) ,6-12 and Sima Xin,
Zhang Ailing andReyher (Taipei: Taiwan: National Library Press, 1996), 207-213.
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249
Fashions” is published in the English magazine, Twentieth Century, in
Shanghai.
1942: Leaves Japanese Occupied Hong Kong for Shanghai with her good friend,
Fatima Mohideen (Yan Ying).
1943: Publishes in Ziluolan her following short stories, [the first and Second
Censers] “Di yi Luxiang, Di er luxiang.” Also publishes [Fragrant Jasmine
Tea] “Moli xiangpian,” “Daodi shi Shanghairen” [After all, we are
Shanghainese] and “Qingcheng zhi lian” [A City toppled by Love” in Zazhi.
Her short story, “Xin jing” [The Heart Sutra] is published in Wawciang.
[The Golden Cangue] “Jinsuo Ji” is published in two installments by the
end of year in Zazhi. “Fengsuo” [Sealed Off] is published in Cosmos
[Tiandi] and “Liuli Wa” [Porcelain Vases] is published in Wanxiang.
1944: Publishes in six installments, the story, “Lianhuan Tao” [Interlocking Rings]
in Wanxiang. Also published are: “Jinyu lu” [From the Remnant Ashes] in
Cosmos and “Nianqing de shihou” [When we were young] in Zazhi. Zhang
further published in three installments “Hong meigui, Bai meigui” [Red
Rose, White Rose] also in Zazhi. Zhang’s “Ziji de Wenchang” [My Writing]
is published in Xin dongfang and “Siyu” [Intimate Words] is published in
Cosmos[Tiandi]. That same year, Zhang publishes in Cosmos [Tiandi]
“Zhong guo ren de zongjiao” in three installments. In September of 1944,
Zazhi she publishes Chuanqi [Romances], a collection of ten of Zhang’s short
stories.
Zhang enters into a common law marriage with Hu Lancheng.
1945: Idle Talk [Liuyan] is published by Zhongguo kexue Company. Zhang
publishes “Liuqing” [Compassion] in Zazhi. Also publishes in several
installments in Zazhi, Zhang’s “A Wounded Epoch.” Zazhi also published
Zhang’s “Langzi and shannuren” [The Prodigal and the Virtuous woman] and
“Shuangsheng”[Double Sounds].
1946: Shanhe tushu guan gongsi re-publishes Zhang’s Chuanqi [Romances] with
additional stories “Deng” [Waiting], “Hongluanxi” [Great Felicitations],
“Guihuazheng A Xiao bei qiu” [Sweet Osmantnus Flower, Ah Xiao’s
lamentable Autumn] .
1947: Zhang separates from Hu Lancheng in June.
1947-49: works on screenplays, “Taitai wansui” [Long live the Wife] and “Bu liao
qing” [Unforgettable] for Wenhua Productions. Zhang also begins the series
for “Shiba chun” [Eighteen Springs] in Shanghai’s Yihao. Zhang also
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250
publishes in Dajia, “Duoshao hen” [How much hate] and “Huali Yuan”[A
Beautiful Relationship].
1950-51: The book version of “Shiba chun” is published in Shanghai and “Xiao Ai”
is serialized in Yibao.
1952: In the summer, Zhang returns to Hong Kong and re-enrolls at the
University of Hong Kong. She leaves for Tokyo in November and returns
shortly after that to Hong Kong as she is unable to find a job. Zhang begins
work that year with the United States Information Service.
1953: Zhang’s father passes away in Shanghai. Zhang meets up with and becomes
life-long friends with Stephen and Mae Soong.
1954: The Rice Sprout Song (written in English) and Zhang’s Chinese translation of
that work Yang Ge ; and Chidi zhilian and her own English translation Naked
Earth are published in Hong Kong. Chuanqi [Romances] is published in
Hong Kong by Tianfeng chubanshe under the new title “Zhang Ailing
duanpian xiaoshuo ji” [A Collection of Zhang Ailing’s Short Stories].
1955: Leaves Hong Kong for the United States.
1956: Zhang is awarded a two-year stay at the MacDowell Colony in
Peterborough, New Hempshire, to participate in a fiction-writing project.
Zhang meets Ferdinand Reyher and marries him in August of that year. Her
short story “Stalemates” (written in English) is published in The Reporter in
September.
1957: Zhang translates “Stalemates” into Chinese as “Wusi yishi”[The May Fourth
Legacy] in Wenxue Zazhi (Taipei).
Zhang Ailing’s mother passes away.
1959-63: Moves to San Francisco and begins work on screenplays. Writes
screenplays: “Rencai liang de,” “Liuyue xinniang,” “Xiao Nuer,” “Wenrou
xiang,” “Taohua Yun” and “Nanbei yijiaqing.”
1963: Writes “Back to the Frontier” an article about her visit to Taiwan published in
The Reporter.
1966: becomes a writer-in-residence at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
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251
1967: Ferdinand Reyher dies. Her Rouge o f the North written in English is
published by Cassell & Co, London.
1967-69: Zhang is a Fellow at the Radcliff College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1968: Zhang’s Chinese version of the Rouge o f the North as Yuan nu, Banshengyuan
and Hong Lou Meng wei wan are published by Crown Press in Taipei.
1969-71: Researcher in the center of Chinese Studies, University of California,
Berkeley.
1971: “The Golden Cangue” Zhang’s translation of “Jinsuo ji” is published in C.T.
Hsia, Jopseph S. M. Lau and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds., Twentieth Century
Chinese Stories, New York: Columbia Press.
1973: Settles in Los Angeles
1974: Publishes in China Times Weekly “Tan kanshu” [Discussing Reading books]
and “Tan kanshuhouji” Discussing Reading books a sequel]
1976-77: Crown Press publishes Zhang Kan [Zhang’s Views] an anthology and
Honglou mengyan a collection of monographs on the Qing novel, “Honglou
meng” [Dream of the Red Chamber].
1979: Zhang publishes “se, jie” [Sex, Abstience] in the China Times Literary
Supplement in Taiwan.
1981: Haishang hua liezhuan (Flowers (Sing-song girls) of Shanghai] with her
original annotations of the original Wu dialect is published by Crown Press
in Taipei.
1984: Zhang’s English translation of the first two chapters of Haishang hua is
published in Liu Ts’un yan, ed., Chinese Middlebrow Fiction from the Ch ’ ing
and Early Republican Eras, A Rendition Book, Hong Kong: The Chinese
University Press.
1987: Zhang’s two screenplays “Xiao nuer” and “Nan bei xi xiangfeng” are
published in Lianhe wenxue. Yuyun [Lingering Charms] and the full text of
“Xiao Ai’ is published by Crown Press.
1991-1994: Crown Press republishes the Zhang Ailing Collection.
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252
1991: Her aunt dies.
1994: Crown Press publishes Duizhao ji [Reflections: Words and Pictures].
1995: Zhang Ailing dies in early September in Westwood, Los Angeles at the age of
74.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Da Roza, George A. (author)

Core Title Re -imagining the site of the feminine: A rediscovery of Zhang Ailing's fictional works

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program East Asian Languages and Cultures

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag literature, Asian,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-631503

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