The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (Weatherhead Books on Asia)

by Anyi, Wang

  By the time Wu Peizhen got home, her family was already at the dinner table and she had to fib about where she had been. But she didn’t have an ounce of regret; even when later that evening she saw the blisters on the soles of her feet from all that walking, she still felt that it was all worth it. That night she even had a dream about the film studio. She dreamed of an elegantly dressed woman under the mercury-vapor lamps. When the woman turned to her and smiled, Wu Peizhen saw that she was none other than Wang Qiyao; she was so excited that she woke up. Her feelings for Wang Qiyao were a bit like the puppy love that a teenage boy feels for a girl for whom he is willing to go to the edge of the earth. She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark bedroom and wondered: Just what kind of place is this film studio anyway?

  When the day finally arrived, Wu Peizhen’s excitement far surpassed that of Wang Qiyao; she could barely contain herself. A classmate asked them where they were off to. “Nowhere,” Wu Peizhen casually responded, as she gave Wang Qiyao a knowing pinch on the arm. Then she pulled Wang Qiyao aside and told her to hurry up, as though afraid that that their classmate would catch up and force them to let her in on their pleasure. The whole way there Wu Peizhen couldn’t stop jabbering, attracting curious glances from people on the street. Wang Qiyao warned her several times to get hold of herself. Finally she had to stop in her tracks and declare she wasn’t going any further—they had not even set foot in the studio and Wu Peizhen had already embarrassed her enough. Only then did Wu Peizhen cool down a bit.

  To get to the studio they had to take the trolley and make a transfer. Wu Peizhen’s cousin was waiting for them at the entrance; he gave each of them an ID tag to clip on her chest so that they would look like employees: that way they could wander around wherever their hearts desired. Once inside, they walked through an empty lot littered with wooden planks, discarded cloth scraps, and chunks of broken bricks and tiles—it looked like a cross between a dump and a construction site. Everyone approaching went at a hurried pace with their heads down. The cousin also moved briskly, as if he had something urgent to take care of. The two girls were left straggling behind, holding hands, trying their best to keep up.

  It was three or four o’clock, the sunlight was waning and the wind picked up, rustling their skirts. Both of them felt a bit gloomy and Wu Peizhen fell silent. After going a few hundred steps, their journey began to feel interminable, and the girls began to lose patience with the cousin, who slowed down to regale them with some of the rumors floating around the studio; his comments, however, seemed to be neither here nor there. Before their visit all of those anecdotes seemed real, but once they had seen the place everything was now entirely unreliable. Numbness had taken hold of them by the time they entered a large room the size of a warehouse, where uniformed workers scurried back and forth, up and down scaffolding, all the while calling out orders and directions. But they did not see a soul who even faintly resembled a movie star. Thoroughly disoriented, they simply trailed after Wu Peizhen’s cousin, but had to watch their heads one second and their feet another, for there were ropes and wires overhead and littering the ground. They moved in and out from illuminated areas into patches of darkness and seemed to have completely forgotten their objective and had no idea where they were—all they did was walk. After what seemed an eternity, Wu Peizhen’s cousin finally stopped and had them stand off to one side—he had to go to work.

  The place where they were left standing was bustling with activity; everyone seemed to be doing something as they moved briskly around the girls. Several times, rushing to get out of one person’s way, they bumped into someone else. But they had yet to lay eyes on anyone who looked like a movie star. They were both getting anxious, feeling that the whole trip was a mistake. Wu Peizhen could hardly bring herself to look Wang Qiyao in the eye. All of a sudden, the lights in the room lit up like a dozen rising suns, blinding them. After their eyes adjusted they made out a portion of the warehouse-like room that had been arranged to look like one half of a bedroom. That three-walled bedroom seemed to be the set, but everything inside was peculiarly familiar. The comforter showed signs of wear, old cigarette butts were left in the ashtray, even the handkerchief on the nightstand beside the bed had been used, crumpled up into a ball—as if someone had removed a wall in a home where real people were living to display what went on within. Standing there watching they were quite excited, but at the same time irritated because they were too far away to hear what was being said on set. All they could see was a woman in a sheer nightgown lying on a bed with wrinkled sheets. She tried to lie in several different positions; on her side one moment, on her back the next, and for a while even in a strange position where half her body extended off the bed onto the floor. All this became somewhat boring. The lights turned on and off. In the end, the woman in bed stopped moving and stayed still in the same position for quite some time before the lights once again dimmed.

  When the lights came back on, everything seemed different. During the previous few takes the light had been marked by an unbridled brilliance. This time they seemed to be using a specialized lighting, the kind that illuminates a room during a pitch-black night. The bedroom set seemed to be further away, but the scene became even more alive. Wang Qiyao was taking in everything. She noticed the glow emitting from the electric lamp and the rippling shadows of the lotus-shaped lampshade projecting onto the three walls of the set. A powerful sense of déjà vu gripped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she had seen this scene before. Only after shifting her gaze to the woman under the lamplight did she suddenly realize that the actress was pretending to be dead—but she could not tell if the woman was meant to have been murdered or to have committed suicide. The strange thing was that this scene did not appear terrifying or foreboding, only annoyingly familiar. She could not make out the woman’s features; all she could see was her head of disheveled hair strewn out along the foot of the bed. The woman’s feet faced the headboard and her head lay propped against the foot of the bed, her slippers scattered on opposite sides of the room. The film studio was a hubbub of activity, like a busy dockyard. With all the cries of “Camera” and “OK” rising and falling amid the clamor, the woman was the only thing that did not move, as if she had fallen into an eternal slumber. Wu Peizhen was the first to lose her patience; after all, she was the more brazen one. She pulled Wang Qiyao away so they could go look around other parts of the studio.

  Their next stop was a three-walled hotel lobby where a fight scene was being shot. All of the actors, in suits and leather dress shoes, were standing around when suddenly a poor fellow in tattered clothes walked onto the set and slapped the hotel manager across the face. The way the action was carried out looked a bit ridiculous; the actor produced the slapping sound with his left hand as he slapped the restaurant owner with his right, but his timing was impeccable and one could hardly tell it was fake. Wu Peizhen liked this scene much more than the first. She watched them do take after take without getting bored, the whole time exclaiming how much fun it was. Wang Qiyao, however, grew impatient and said that the first one was much more interesting. She said that it was a serious film, unlike this one, which was pure buffoonery, no better than a circus sideshow.

  The two returned to the first set only to discover that everyone had gone. Even the bed had been taken away, leaving only a few workers behind to straighten up the remaining items on set. The girls wondered if they had gone to the wrong place and were about to go look elsewhere when Wu Peizhen’s cousin suddenly called out to them. As it happened, he was one of the workers breaking down the set. He told them to wait a little while, and then he would take them to watch a special effects shoot that was going on at one of the other sets! They had no choice but to stand off to one side and wait idly. Someone asked the cousin who his guests were and he told him. But when the man asked where they went to school, the cousin was stumped and Wu Peizhen had to answer for herself. The man flashed them a smile, revealing a set of white teeth that shimmered
in the darkness of the studio. He was the director, the cousin later told them. He had studied abroad and was also a screenwriter; in fact he had written and directed the scene they had earlier seen being filmed. The cousin told them all this as he led them off to see the special effects shoot, where they saw smoke, fire, even ghosts. Once again the technical people were doing all the work while the actors did virtually nothing.

  Asked by Wu Peizhen if they could see some movie stars, the cousin looked embarrassed. He told them that there was not a single big star on any of the sets that day, explaining that it was not every day that big movie stars had scenes. The studio simply could not schedule things the way they would like—they had to work around the stars’ schedules.

  Wu Peizhen caught her cousin in a lie. “Didn’t you tell us that you are always running into all these big name stars at the studio every day?” she protested.

  Wang Qiyao took pity on the cousin and tried to smooth things over. “It’s getting dark. We had better come back some other time. Our parents will be worried!”

  As the cousin led them toward the exit they once again ran into the director. Not only did he remember them, he addressed them jocularly as “the girls from So-and-so middle school”—Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen turned a bright red.

  On the ride home, neither was in the mood to talk and they sat silently, listening to the ringing bells of the trolley. The trolley was half empty; the after-work rush hour was over and Shanghai’s nightlife had yet to begin. The girls’ experience at the film studio was not exactly as expected; it was difficult to say whether it was disappointing or whether they had had the time of their lives—the one thing for sure was that they were both exhausted. Wu Peizhen had never had her sights set on the studio. Her reason for going rested entirely in making Wang Qiyao happy, so naturally she had hoped it would be a wonderful trip. Just what was so wonderful about the film studio, however, Wu Peizhen had not the slightest clue—she had to wait for Wang Qiyao’s reaction to find out. The impression the film studio left on Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, was much more complicated. It was not nearly as magical a place as she had imagined, yet because it appeared so ordinary it gave her the impression that it was within her grasp—but just what was it that she could grasp? She had yet to figure that out. Her initial hopes may have been dampened, but the anxiety that came with anticipation had been relieved.

  In the days following their visit to the film studio, Wang Qiyao did not utter a single word about their trip, and this left Wu Peizhen quite depressed. She was afraid that Wang Qiyao had not liked the studio and the whole trip had been a complete waste. Then one day she told Wang Qiyao in a confessional tone that her cousin had invited them back to the film studio but she had already declined the offer.

  Wang Qiyao rounded on her. “How could you do that? He is trying to be nice to us!”

  Wu Peizhen’s eyes widened in disbelief. Wang Qiyao felt a bit uncomfortable under her stare. Turning her face away, she said, “What I mean is, you should show the guy some respect. After all, he’s your cousin!”

  This was one occasion when even Wu Peizhen saw through Wang Qiyao. But far from belittling her friend for being phony, Wu Peizhen felt a tenderness well up in her heart. Although on the outside she looks like a grownup, deep down she is still a child! Wu Peizhen thought to herself. At that moment, her feeling for Wang Qiyao approached maternal love—a love that encompassed all.

  From then on the film studio became a place for frequent visits. They learned quite a few inside secrets about filmmaking. They learned that movies are never shot in sequence, but are made one scene at a time and only edited together in the final stages. The set locations may have been dilapidated and in disrepair, but the images captured by the camera were always perfectly beautiful. On one or two occasions they actually saw some of those famous movie stars, who sat in front of the camera doing nothing, like a collection of idle props. Films scripts were revised at random, and in the blink of an eye even the dead could come back to life. The girls made their way backstage, and as they rubbed their hands against the mysterious machinery that made images come to life, their hearts seemed to undergo a kind of transformation. Time spent in a film studio is never humdrum; the experience always hints at life’s greater meaning. This is especially true for the young, who cannot yet completely distinguish truth from fiction and the real from the make-believe, and especially during that era—when movies had already become an important part of our everyday lives.

  Camera

  Wang Qiyao had learned that the most critical moment in making a film came the second that the director calls, “Camera.” Everything up to that point boils down to preparation and foreshadowing, but what happens afterward? It ends forever. She came to understand the significance of the word “Camera”: it announced a kind of climax. Sometimes the director let them look through the camera and what they saw through its lens was always gorgeous; the camera had the power to filter out all of the chaos and disarray. It had the power to make what was dark and dismal glimmer with light. Inside the camera was a different world. After editing and postproduction, only the pure essence would remain.

  The director became quite close with the girls and they eventually stopped blushing in his presence. A few times, when Wu Peizhen’s cousin was not in the studio, they even went straight to look for the director. He had given them the nicknames “Zhen Zhen” and “Yao Yao,” as if they were characters in his latest movie. Behind their backs he described Zhen Zhen to his colleagues as a graceless servant girl right out of Dream of the Red Chamber, a little cleaning maid who thinks she is special just because she is employed in a large, wealthy household. Yao Yao he described as a proper miss who acted the part of a rich official’s daughter, like the tragic lover Zhu Yingtai. He treated Wu Peizhen as if she were a child; he loved to tease her and play little jokes on her. He promised to put Wang Qiyao in a scene in one of his movies as soon as the opportunity arose. Who knows? Because her coquettish eyes resembled Ruan Lingyu’s, they might even be able to capitalize on the audience’s nostalgia for the dead movie star and make Wang Qiyao into a new diva of the screen. Although he seemed to be kidding, this was the director’s reserved and humorous way of making a promise. Wang Qiyao naturally did not take him too seriously, but she did kind of like being compared to Ruan Lingyu.

  Then one day the director telephoned Wang Qiyao at home to have her come down to the studio for a screen test. Wang Qiyao’s heart raced and her hands grew clammy. She was unsure if this was the opportunity she had been waiting for. She wondered: Could my big chance really come this easily? She could not believe it, neither did she dare not to believe it. Deep down her heart was in knots. At first she did not want to tell Wu Peizhen about it. She planned to sneak off alone and return before anyone noticed that she was gone. In case nothing came of the screen test, it would be her own little secret and she could pretend that nothing had ever happened. But then, just before the day of her screen test, she broke down and asked Wu Peizhen to go with her so that she would not be too nervous. Wang Qiyao did not sleep well the night before; her face appeared thinner than usual and she had dark rings around her eyes. Wu Peizhen naturally jumped for joy as all kinds of wild ideas went flying through her head. In no time she was talking about organizing press conferences for Wang Qiyao, who regretted telling her friend about the screen test.

  Neither of them paid attention during their classes that afternoon. When school finally let out the two rushed out of the gate and hopped onto the trolley car. Most of the passengers at that time of the day were housewives with cloth bags in hand, wearing wrinkled cheongsams, the seams of their stockings running crookedly up the back of their legs. They either had messy, disheveled hair or, if they had just walked out of the beauty salon, hair that look like a helmet. Their faces were rigid, as if nothing in the world concerned them. Even the trolley seemed to be afflicted with an air of apathy as it rattled along the tracks. Amid this sea of indifference, Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen were anima
ted and alive. Though neither said a word, centuries of anticipation and excitement were brewing inside them. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the Shanghai boulevards were suffused with weariness, preparing to sign out and change shifts. The sun hung in the western sky above the apartment buildings, glowing ripe and golden. Their hearts were filled with anticipation as if they were about to begin a brand-new day.

  The director led them into the dressing room and had a makeup artist work on Wang Qiyao. Seeing herself reflected in the mirror, Wang Qiyao could not help feeling that her face was small and her features plain—she realized that a miracle would not occur—and this depressed her. She became completely resigned as the makeup man worked on her. She even closed her eyes for a while to avoid looking in the mirror, uncomfortable and anxious only to get everything over and done with. She even got neurotic and thought that the makeup man, impatient to get finished with her, was applying the makeup hurriedly and crudely. When she opened her eyes once again and looked, she saw the awkward expression of someone who had no desire to be there. The harsh, unmodulated light of the dressing room made everything appear commonplace. Losing all confidence in herself, Wang Qiyao decided to simply let everything ride; she focused on watching the makeup man gradually transform her into someone else—a stranger she did not recognize. It was then that she began to calm down and her tensions eased. By the time the makeup man finished his job, she had even started to regain her sense of humor and joked around a bit with Wu Peizhen, who remarked that Wang Qiyao looked like the Lady in the Moon descending into the secular world, whereupon Wang Qiyao quipped that if she were a Lady in the Moon, she was the kind whose image was found on boxes of mooncakes. The two of them had a good laugh. Once this happened, Wang Qiyao’s expression relaxed, her powdered face lit up, and she came to life. As she returned the gaze of the beauty in the mirror, the image she saw no longer seemed quite as distant and unrecognizable.