by Anyi, Wang
When the city’s streetlights are ablaze, its longtang remain in darkness, save the lonely street lamps hanging on the alley corners. The lamps, enclosed in crude frames of rusty iron covered with dust, emit a murky yellow glow. On the ground, a shroud of thick mist forms and begins to spread out—this is the time when rumors and gossip start to brew. It is a gloomy hour, when nothing is clear, yet it is enough to break the heart. Pigeons coo in their cages, talking their language of secret whispers. The streetlights shine with a prim and proper light, but as soon as that light streams into the longtang alleys, it is overwhelmed by darkness. The kind of gossip exchanged in the front rooms and adjoining wings belongs to the old school and smacks faintly of potpourri. The gossip in the rooftop tingzijian and staircases is new school and smells of mothballs. But, old school or new, gossip is always told in earnest—you could even say it is told in the spirit of truth.
This is like scooping water with one’s hands: even though you might lose half the water along the way, with enough persistence you can still fill up a pond. Or like the swallow that, though she may drop half the earth and twigs she is carrying in her beak, can still build a nest—there is no need for laziness or trickery. The longtang of Shanghai are an unbearable sight. The patches of green moss growing in the shade are, in truth, like scars growing over a wound; it takes time for the wound to heal. It is because the moss lacks a proper place that it grows in the shade and shadows—years go by and it never sees the sun. Now ivy grows out in the open, but it serves as Time’s curtain and always has something to hide. The pigeons gaze down at the outstretching billows of roof tiles as they take to the air, and their hearts are stabbed with pain. Coming up over the longtang rooftops, the sun shoots out its belabored rays—a majestic sight pieced together from countless minute fragments, an immense power born of immeasurable patience.
Gossip
Gossip always carries with it an exhalation of gloom. This murky air sometimes smells like lavender in a bedroom, sometimes like mothballs, and at other times like a kitchen chopping block. It does not remind you of the smell of tobacco plugs or cigars, nor is it even faintly reminiscent of the smell of insecticides like Lindane or Dichlorvos. It is not a strong masculine scent, but a soft feminine one—the scent of a woman. It combines the smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, the smell of cosmetics and cooking oil, mixed in with a bit of sweat. Gossip is always trailed by clouds and a screen of mist. Shadowy and indistinct, it is a fogged-up window—a windowpane covered with a layer of dust. Shanghai has as many rumors as longtang: too many to be counted, too many to be told.
There is something infectious about gossip; it can transform an official biography into a collection of dubious tales, so that truth becomes indistinguishable from gossip. In the world of rumor, fact cannot be separated from fiction; there is truth within lies, and lies within the truth. That gossip should put on an absurd face is unavoidable; this absurdity is the incredulity born of girlish inexperience, and is at least in part an illusion. In places like the longtang, it travels from back door to back door, and in the blink of an eye the whole world knows all. Gossip is like the silent electrical waves crisscrossing in the air above the city, like formless clouds that enshroud the whole city, slowly brewing into a shower, intermixing right and wrong. The rain comes down not in a torrent but as a hazy springtime drizzle. Although not violent, it drenches the air with an inescapable humidity. Never underestimate these rumors: soft and fine as these raindrops may be, you will never struggle free of them.
Every longtang in Shanghai is steeped in an atmosphere of gossip, where right and wrong get twisted and confused. In the elegant apartment-style longtang on the west side of town, this atmosphere is free of clouds, refreshing and transparent as a bright autumn day. Moving down among the modern-style longtang neighborhoods, the atmosphere becomes a bit more turgid and turbulent, blowing to and fro like the wind. Lower down still is the fractious atmosphere of the old-style longtang neighborhoods with the stone gates. Here the wind has died, replaced by the vapor of a humid day. By the time one gets to where the slum-dwellers live, all is enveloped in mist—not the roseate mists of dawn, but the thick fog that comes before a torrential downpour, when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
But regardless of the type of longtang, this atmosphere penetrates everywhere. You could say that it is the genius loci of Shanghai’s alleys. If the longtang of Shanghai could speak, they would undoubtedly speak in rumors. They are the thoughts of Shanghai’s longtang, disseminating themselves through day and night. If the longtang of Shanghai could dream, that dream would be gossip.
Gossip is base. With this vulgar heart, it cannot help wallowing in self-degradation. It is like sewer water, used, contaminated. There is nothing aboveboard about it, nothing straight and narrow; it can only whisper secrets behind people’s backs. It feels no sense of responsibility, never takes the blame for the outcome—whatever that outcome may be. Because of this, gossip has learned to do as it pleases, running wild like a flood out of control. It never bothers to think things over—and no one ever bothers to think it over. It is a bit like verbal garbage, but then again one can occasionally find small treasures in the garbage. Gossip is made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice. These bits and pieces have faces that are not quite decent; always up to something, they are spoiled merchandise. They are actually made from the crudest materials. However, even the girls in Shanghai’s west-end apartments feel compelled to stockpile some of this lowly stuff, because buried deep inside this shamefully base material is where one can find a few genuine articles. These articles lie outside the parameters of what is dignified; their nature is such that no one dares speak of them aloud—and so they are taken and molded into gossip.
If gossip has a positive side, it is the part of it that is genuine. The genuine, however, has a false appearance; this is what is known as “making truth out of falsehood, fact from fiction”—it is always dishing itself up in a new form, making a feint to the east while attacking from the west. This truth is what gives you the courage to go out into the world and not fear losing face, or the courage to become a ghost—to go against prevailing opinions. But there is a kind of sorrow that comes with this courage—the sorrow that comes from being thwarted, from being kept from doing what one wishes. However, there is a certain vital energy in this sorrow, because even in the midst of it one’s heart surges with high-flying ambition; in fact, it is because of these surging ambitions that one feels such bafflement and loss. This sorrow is not refined like Tang dynasty poetry and Song dynasty lyrics, but belongs to the world of vulgar grievances aired out in the streets. One can feel the weight of this sorrow as it sinks to the bottom. It has nothing of the airy-fairy—the wind, flowers, snow, and the moon dancing on the water—it is the sediment that accumulates at the bottom. Gossip always sinks to the lowest place. There is no need to go looking for it, it is already there—and it will always be there. It cannot be purified by fire or washed clean with water. It has the tenacity for holding onto life that keeps the muscles intact when the bones are shattered, that enables one to swallow the teeth broken in one’s mouth—a brazen-faced tenacity.
Gossip cannot help but be swashbuckling and sensational. It travels in the company of monsters and goblins; rising with the wind, its elusive tail can never be caught. Only in gossip can the true heart of this city be found. No matter how gorgeous and splendid the city may look on the outside, its heart is vulgar. That heart is born of gossip, and gossip is born of the Shanghai longtang. Magnificent tales of the Far East can be heard all over this Paris of the Orient; but peel away the outer shell and you will discover that gossip lies at its core. Like the center of a pearl—which is actually a rough grain of sand—coarse sand is the material of which gossip is made.
Gossip always muddles the senses. Starting with inconsequential things, it winds up trying to rewrite history. Like woodworm, it
slowly chews up the books and records, eating away magnificent buildings like an army of termites. Its methods are chaotic, without rhyme, reason, or logic. It goes wherever it wants, swaggering like a hooligan, and wastes no time on long-winded theories, nor does it go into too much detail. It simply spreads across the city, launching surprise attacks; by the time you turn around to see what sneaked up on you from behind, it has already gone without a trace. It leaves in its wake a chain of injustices with no one to take the blame and a string of scores with no one to settle with. It makes no big, sudden movements but quietly works away without stopping. In the end, “many a little makes a lot,” and trickling water flows into a great river. This is what is meant by the saying, “Rumors rise in swarms”; they indeed drone and buzz like a nest of hornets. A bit contemptible, maybe, but they are also conscientious. They pick up discarded matchsticks to make a fire. If they see a lone piece of thread on the floor, they will take it up and begin to sew. Though always making trouble, they are nevertheless earnest and sincere.
Gossip is never cynical; even if the thing in question is nothing but empty rumors, the utmost care is still put into their creation. Baseless and unreliable as these rumors may be, they are not without a certain warmth of feeling. They mind their own business: whatever others may say, they will stick to their version—to them even settled opinions are taken under advisement. It is not that gossip takes a different political view, but that it does not take any political view; in fact, it lacks the most basic knowledge about politics. Always going by back roads and entering through side doors, it does not stand in opposition to society—it forms its own society. As far as society is concerned, these are small and inconsequential things, like twigs and knots on a tree. And precisely because society never takes these things seriously, they are able to maneuver unseen through the darkness and have their way. Combined together, they constitute a power that should not be underestimated, in the way that a butterfly beating its wings here can cause a hurricane in a faraway place.
Rumors deviate from traditional moral codes but never claim to be antifeudal. Like a true bum, they chip away at the foundations of public decency. They wouldn’t hesitate to pull the emperor down off his horse—not in order to install a new republic, but merely as an act of defiance. Despising revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, they themselves are consistently slighted and deserted by both sides. Indeed, there is not a presentable one in the whole lot—if there were, they could be promoted to the level of “public opinion,” where they could advance into the open. Instead, they have to be content with making secret maneuvers under the cover of darkness. They care not that they are mere whispers in people’s ears; they’ll make their home wherever their wanderings take them, having no conception of what it means to build an enterprise. These are creatures without ambition, holding out no hopes; in fact, they do not even have the ability to think. All they have is the natural capacity to cause trouble and make mischief; they grow and reproduce in complete ignorance. They reproduce at quite startling rates, hatching all at once like spawn. Their methods of reproduction are also varied; sometimes linear, like a chain of interlocking rings, at other times concentric, like a suite of riddles. They spread through the city air like a pack of down-at-the-heel vagrants. But the truth is, gossip is one of the things that make this city so romantic.
What makes gossip romantic is its unbridled imagination. With the imagination completely free from all fetters, gossip can leap through the dragon’s gate and squeeze through the dog’s den. No one is better at making up stories, telling lies, and wagging its tongue than gossip. It also has boundless energy—nothing can kill it dead. Wildfires burn but, come spring, the grass will grow again. Like the lowliest of seeds, gossip is carried by the wind to sprout and bloom in between rocks. It works its way into every crack, even getting behind the heavy curtains of ladies’ boudoirs, where it floats amid the embroidery needles in the young mistress’s pincushions; and lingers among the tear-stained pages of those heartwrenching novels the schoolgirl reads in her spare time. As the clock on the table ticks, gossip stretches itself out, even filling the basin where milady washes her rouge away. It thrives in the most secret of places: a clandestine atmosphere is particularly beneficial to its development.
The longtang of Shanghai are very good at protecting their privacy, allowing gossip to prosper and proliferate. Deep in the night, after everyone has turned out their lights, there is a narrow patch of light peeking out through the crack under someone’s door—that is gossip. The pair of embroidered shoes in the moonlight beside the bed—that too is gossip. When the old amah, carrying her box of toiletries, says she is going out to comb her hair, she is actually off to spread gossip. The clatter of young wives shuffling mahjong tiles—that is the sound of gossip. Sparrows hopping around deserted courtyards on winter afternoons chirp about gossip. The word “self” is embedded into gossip; and within this word “self” there is an unmentionable pain. This bottled-up pain is different from what the Tang emperor felt at the death of Yang Guifei or the King of Chu for his beloved concubine. It is not the kind of grand and heroic suffering that moves heaven and earth, but base and lowly, like pebbles and dirt, or the tentacles of ivy creeping stealthily out of bounds.
The longtang of Shanghai are incapable of harboring the kind of suffering that inspires legends. The pain is broken up and evenly allocated throughout the city, so that each person ends up with a small share. Even when they suffer deep sorrow, its inhabitants keep it down inside their bellies; they do not put it on stage for people to admire, nor do they make it into lyrics to be sung by others. Only they themselves know where it comes from and whither it goes. They alone carry its burden. This is also where the word “self” comes into play, and herein, incidentally, lies the true meaning of sorrow. Therefore we can say that gossip is painful; even if the pain does not arise from proper causes, it is still excruciating. The pain is suffered individually, eliciting no sympathy—a lonely pain. This is also what is moving about gossip. The moment that gossip is born is actually the moment that people are trying their hardest to conduct themselves properly. The people in Shanghai’s longtang neighborhoods conduct themselves with the utmost attention and care; all their energy is directed to the way they carry themselves. Their eyes are focused exclusively on themselves, and they are never distracted by their surroundings. They don’t want to create a place for themselves in history: they want to create themselves. Without being ambitious, they expend every ounce of what strength they have. This strength, too, is evenly allocated. Everyone has his fair share.
The Young Lady’s Bedchamber
In the longtang apartments of Shanghai, the young lady’s bedchamber is usually located in one of the side rooms, or in the tingzijian, the tiny room off the landing. But no matter where her bedroom is, its window is never directly exposed to the sun and the flowery curtains are always drawn. When they are pulled open, you can look straight through to the front living room of the apartment in the rear; you may even see the couple who live there, along with the oleander in their courtyard. This vestal bedchamber is far from cloistered. Living in the adjacent tingzijian is perhaps an intern working at a foreign firm, an unemployed college graduate, or maybe even the latest dancing girl on the Shanghai nightclub scene.
The back alleys are the setting for all kinds of unsavory goings-on. The salty language of the old amah is heard along with the rickshaw coolie’s dirty slang. The shady buddies of the college graduate next door and the dancer’s girlfriends pass through regularly. In the middle of the night, listening to the creak of back doors opening and closing, you can imagine all kinds of scandals. Take, for instance, the couple in the living room across the way: who can say for sure that they are husband and wife? They may very well be a pair of illicit lovers on the brink of discovery; a few days later, a knock comes at the door, and all the neighbors will hear the sound of shattering glass and furniture being broken. The worst thing that can happen is to have a rich famil
y at the far end of the longtang with a daughter attending Zhongxi Middle School or one of the other prestigious girls’ schools in the city. Their private luxury car will always be coming or going through the big black gate, and whenever they have a Christmas or birthday party, piano music will ring out. The young lady’s bedroom there is to be completely different from all the others, inevitably giving rise to feelings of resentment and desire. One could say that resentment and desire are the root of all evil in a young lady’s world. What would be the fate of a girl—as pure and delicate as a flower pistil—whose bedchamber is situated in such a place of chaos, noise, and confusion?
However, the shadows cast by the moonlight on the flowery curtains are always soft and beautiful. On cloudless nights, the moon illuminates the entire room, not with daylight’s intense glare, but seemingly through a veil, bathing the room with a gentle radiance. The lilies on the wallpaper and the orchids embroidered on the comforter seem to have been drawn with a fine brush, every line and stroke clear and distinct. The faint sounds of a phonograph playing—what is it?—Zhou Xuan’s “Song of the Four Seasons” make their way into the room. No matter how noisy and chaotic it may be outside, the young lady’s bedchamber is always quiet. The incense, half burned, leaves a pile of ash in the dish. Only six of the twelve chimes of the clock are heard, for the lady has fallen asleep.
Hers is a silent dream. Behind the cavernous windows of the back longtang apartments, who else could possibly aspire to these perfectly pure dreams? They are like clouds drifting over the hectic turmoil below, trance-like and short-lived, yet blissfully ignorant that they are destined to be short-lived, occurring night after night. The stitches in the embroidery frame, the scribbles in the margins of a book—line after line, fine and closely spaced—are the language of the heart. The language of the heart is also silent, steeped in moonlight, eye-catching and yet reticent, full of emotions it cannot even begin to articulate.
