Courtesy of SCPL Staff Picks ...
In 2007, New York Review Books published Love in a Fallen City (倾城之恋),
a collection of seven novellas by famed Chinese writer Zhang Ailing (张爱玲).
Originally published in 1943, it tells the story of a rapidly declining
aristocratic family in Shanghai at the end of the 1930s. Not unlike Mrs.
Bennet, the mother in Pride and Prejudice, the old matriarch is
anxious to marry off her three grown-up daughters, especially Bai Liusu,
the sixth daughter, whose ex-husband has just died, to eligible rich
bachelors. Instead of succumbing to fate as a widow to claim a share of
the inheritance or a future of shaving her hair to become a nun, the
28-year-old Liusu is determined to live her own life: "First marriage
for the family, second marriage for oneself." Her half-sister, the
seventh daughter, admires Liusu’s fiery and free spirit and chooses her
as her companion for her first formal meeting with Fan Liuyuan, a
wealthy Chinese heir from London. In a twist of fate, the sophisticated
Liuyuan shows more interest in Liusu than in the intended betrothed. He
engineers an invitation to Hong Kong for her. They fall in love after
resolving a series of misunderstandings, and survive untold hardships
during the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation.The title story, which made Zhang Ailing the most popular new writer in Shanghai in the 1940s, displayed what became her literary trademarks: settings (Shanghai and Hong Kong), time periods (prior to and after World War II), characters (European or American educated intellectuals from declining aristocratic families), and themes (tension and uncertainty between love/freedom and societal restraints). She drew substantially from her real life experience, as reflected in her autobiographical novel Xiao tuan yuan (小团圆; SCPL has a copy in Chinese).
Despite her early success and later recognition as one of China's four female literary giants (along with Lü Bicheng, Xiao Hong, and Shi Pingmei), Ailing remains relatively unknown to today’s readers. Her first marriage, to a Japanese collaborator in the Sino-Japanese War, resulted in the banning of her books in Mainland China until recently. And, while a handful of her books have been translated into English, many subtleties have been lost in the process. However, Ailing's literary works transcend time and space with their penetrating language to portray "the desires, imaginations, and personalities of urban residents," (Encyclopedia Britannica). Meanwhile, their conflict between traditional Chinese culture and Western modernity is one of the constant themes favored by film/TV directors. Many of them have been adapted into movies, mostly notably, Love in a Fallen City (1984), Red Rose, White Rose (1994), and Half a Lifelong Romance (1997 as a film; 2003 as a TV series).
