Love in a Fallen City

“In the wilderness that is coming, among the shards and rubble, only the painted-lady type from ‘Hop-Hop’ opera, this kind of woman, can carry on with simple ease. Her home is everywhere, in any era, in any society.”

The central characters in many of Chang’s stories are like the woman in the “Hop-Hop” opera she describes in the preface. They act within a traditional, historic mode while expressing modern ideals of independence. Their ability to adapt to changing Expectations of Women in the Republic of China while adhering to elements of classical culture makes them universal literary figures.

“These Oriental touches had been put there, it was clear, for the benefit of foreigners. The English come from so far to see China—one has to give them something of China to see. But this was China as Westerners imagine it: exquisite, illogical, very entertaining.”

A minor motif in some of the stories that is especially prominent in “Aloeswood Incense” is the role of Orientalism in the performance and assertion of Chinese traditions. In the Chinese Republic, upper-middle-class Chinese people are adopting Western aesthetic elements and values, like wearing suits instead of traditional Chinese clothing. However, Western visitors to China want to see what they believe “traditional” China looks like, even if it is inauthentic.

“Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn't. If your father finds out, he'll say I've seduced a girl from a good family and stolen her away. What am I to your family? A willful degenerate who ruined the family honor— refused the man chosen by my brothers, went to Liang as his concubine instead, lost face for a family that was already on the way down.”

In this quote, Madame Liang tells her niece why it may not be a good idea for her to come to stay with her, revealing that her family has disowned her for becoming a concubine. However, Madame Liang feels confident in her choice because it gave her access to wealth and independence she would not have otherwise had. The quote contains some foreshadowing as well; Madame Liang does indeed eventually “seduc[e]” Weilong away from her studies and entices her into a life as an escort not so different from her own.

“There's an English saying in Hong Kong: ‘Hong Kong skies, Hong Kong girls.’ It's an apt comparison. Hong Kong girls are just as capricious, just as unpredictable, as the island's steamy climate. And the weather seemed to be listening to George, just like a girl: that night, the moon shone.”

In the stories in this collection, the weather is often indicative of the mood and tone of the events taking place. The moon in particular is a symbol of desire. When Weilong finally gives in to her desire for George Qiao, this is symbolized by the presence of moonlight guiding his way to her bedroom at night.

“‘Those drunken mudfish,’ George said with a smile. ‘What do they take you for?’

‘But how am I any different from those girls?’

Steering with one hand, George reached out with the other to cover her mouth. ‘Talk such nonsense again and—’

‘Yes, yes! I was wrong, I admit it,’ Weilong apologized. ‘How could there not be any difference between us? They didn’t have a choice—I do it willingly!’”

At the end of “Aloeswood Incense,” Weilong compares herself to the children being sexually exploited whom she sees at the New Year market. However, she is especially regretful because she was not forced into that way of life but rather chose it willingly to pursue sexual desire, love, and marriage. Her analogy of marriage to sex work echoes the words of Liuyuan in “Love in a Fallen City,” where he accuses Liusu of seeing marriage as a form of “prostitution.”

“The hatred he felt toward Amah Liu at home was the same hatred he felt toward Yan Danzhu at school. On a bitter-cold day, a person can be frozen numb and it won't bother him, but a little warmth will make him feel so cold that his heart hurts and his bones ache.”

Chuanqing is an essentially tragic figure who has such little love in his life after the death of his mother at age four that he spurns the few sources of affection he has access to: Amah Liu, his mother’s maid, and Danzhu. For him, it is easier to harden his heart to the world than to let in this affection because it makes him aware of all the affection that he lacks. The second sentence in this quote is written in the mode of an aphorism, or a saying that expresses a fundamental truth, which positions Chuanqing’s response to affection as inevitable.

“Chuanqing was cooking the opium. He couldn't keep his eyes—those big wide fearful staring eyes—off his father. Sooner or later…yes, his day would come. But by then, he'd have been trampled on for so long that nothing human would be left. What a bizarre victory it would be!”

Chuanqing’s sense of self is fundamentally unstable. This instability, which ultimately leads to his attack on Danzhu, is foreshadowed in this quote where he reflects that by the time he inherits his father’s estate, “nothing human would be left.” The fact that his father has him cooking opium rather than doing his school work shows the dissolute home life in which Chuanqing has grown up.

“When he thought back to this part, Chuanqing’s heart rose up in resentment against his mother; still, he had to admit that she didn’t have much choice. It was, after all, twenty years ago! She had to think of her family’s reputation, and she had to think of Ziye’s future.”

This quote underscores the theme of Tradition and Modernity in a Changing Society. When Chuanqing’s mother was young, she was more forcibly bound by the traditional expectations of her society: to marry within her class by arranged marriage. Chuanqing, who grew up during the Republic of China era, recognizes that women in his day have more opportunities to make independent choices.

“He spat the words out: ‘I’ll tell you—I wish you were dead! If there’s you, there’s no me. And if there’s me, there’s no you. Get it?’

With one arm he squeezed her around the shoulders hard, then, with his free hand, he jammed her head down as sharply as he could, as if to jam it into her chest. She shouldn’t have been born into this world, he wanted her to go back.”

In “Jasmine Tea,” Chuanqing becomes fixated on the idea that his mother should have married Yan Ziyhe rather than his dissolute father and therefore that he should rightfully have Yan Danzhu’s life. This obsession leads him to grow increasingly resentful of Danzhu. This resentment is coupled with his sexual desire for Danzhu, which is likewise thwarted. In response, to prove his “manhood,” Chuanqing brutally beats Danzhu in a twisted desire to take her place, illustrating the complex, insidious relationship between patriarchy, desire, and violence.

“Shanghai's clocks were set an hour ahead so the city could ‘save daylight,’ but the Bai family said: ‘We go by the old clock.’ Ten o'clock to them was eleven to everyone else. Their singing was behind the beat; they couldn't keep up with the huqin of life.”

In the description of the opera in the preface, Chang describes how the huqin instrument provides the backing music to the story, which expresses modern ideals in a traditional frame. Chang uses this operatic framing in the opening of “Love in a Fallen City” to illustrate how the conservative Bai family is unable to keep up with the “play” of modern life.

“As she performed in the mirror, the huqin no longer sounded like a huqin, but like strings and flutes playing a solemn court dance. She took a few paces to the right, then a few to the left. Her steps seemed to trace the lost rhythms of an ancient melody.”

This description of Liusu watching her reflection demonstrates how the mirror is a motif of self-reflection and illustrates how, despite her seeming modernity, Liusu is nevertheless a traditional woman who dances to “the lost rhythms of an ancient melody.” In an extension of the operatic motif at work throughout the story, it is as if Liusu is the woman in a traditional play who nevertheless articulates modern ideals by divorcing and marrying for love.

“She fell back against the mirror, her back tightly pressed to its icy surface. His mouth did not leave hers. He pushed her into the mirror and they seemed to fall into it, into another shadowy world—freezing cold, searing hot, flame of the forest flowers burning them all over.”

In this moment from “Love in a Fallen City,” Liusu and Liuyuan finally give in to their sexual desire for one another. It is an erotic, intense moment, “freezing cold, searing hot.” The presence of the mirror here recalls the theme of self-reflection. However, Liusu has her back to it, indicating that she is not reflecting on her actions at that moment but simply following her emotions and “fall[ing] into it” instead.

“Hong Kong's defeat had brought Liusu victory. But in this unreasonable world, who can distinguish cause from effect? Who knows which is which? Did a great city fall so that she could be vindicated? Countless thousands of people dead, countless thousands of people suffering, after that an earthshaking revolution…”

At the end of “Love in a Fallen City,” the language recalls the ancient Greek legend of Helen of Troy, who was so beautiful that she sparked the Trojan War after she was abducted by Paris. In drawing this comparison, Chang suggests that even relatively conventional love stories like that of Liusu’s could be at the heart of cataclysmic events like the Battle of Hong Kong.

“Dragons breed dragons, phoenixes breed phoenixes—as the saying goes. You haven't heard her conversation! Even in front of the unmarried young ladies she says anything she likes. Lucky that in our house not a word goes out from inside, nor comes in from outside, so the young ladies don't understand a thing.”

In this quote, Little Shuang, Ch’i-ch’iao’s maid, tells the newest enslaved girl about Ch’i-ch’iao’s volatility and scandalous manner of speech. The saying “dragons breed dragons” indicates that Ch’i-ch’iao must come from a volatile, hot-blooded family and that she will likely pass this quality on to her own children. In her description of the household, Little Shuang reveals how isolated the women are within the house during the Qing dynasty. This description indicates the prison of the “Golden Cangue” in which Ch’i-ch’iao has been living despite having a greater understanding of the outside world than the others, having been raised working in her family’s sesame oil factory.

“No, she could not give this rascal any hold on her. The Chiangs were very shrewd; she might not be able to keep her money. She had to prove first whether he really meant it.”

After the deaths of her husband and mother-in-law, Ch’i-ch’iao guards her wealth and independence ferociously. This leads her to be suspicious of her brother-in-law when he confesses his feelings for her, despite her romantic feelings toward him, illustrating the Instability of Sexual Desire, Romance, and Marriage. Ultimately, she throws him out of the house.

“Although Cousin is no outsider, men are all rotten without exception. You should know how to take care of yourself. Who’s not after your money?”

Ch’i-ch’iao seeks to isolate her children in the same way that she was isolated within the Chiang home. When Ch’ang-an and her male cousin are playing around, Ch’i-ch’iao throws him out of the house and warns Ch’ang-an to be suspicious of all men. Despite changing Expectations for Women in the Republic of China, in order to maintain economic independence, upper-class women in Love in a Fallen City are forced to be ruthless about love and marriage so as to not lose their fortunes.

“The moon of thirty years ago has gone down long since and the people of thirty years ago are dead but the story of thirty years ago is not yet ended—can have no ending.”

While elsewhere in the collection the moon is used to symbolize desire, here it is used to describe the passage of time. The changing months and years can be recorded by following the changing phases of the moon. However, the planetary body of the moon remains essentially the same over centuries. Like the changing and yet unchanging moon, stories like Ch’i-ch’iao’s persist even in modern China.

“Life was like the Bible, translated from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, from Latin to English, from English to Mandarin Chinese. When Cuiyuan read it, she translated the Mandarin into Shanghainese. Some things did not come through.”

Cuiyuan is initially described as looking like a “young Christian wife” (240). This comparison is furthered in this quote, which suggests that Cuiyuan has spent too much time in formal study, and perhaps religious study, to understand the real world. In this context, Mandarin is formal, academic Chinese while Shanghainese is the dialect spoken by “real people” like Zongzhen.

“The street erupted in noise as two trucks full of soldiers rumbled by. Cuiyuan and Zongzhen stuck their heads out to see what was going on; to their surprise, their faces were drawn into sudden proximity. Seen near up, anyone's face is somehow different—tension-charged like a close-up on the movie screen. Zongzhen and Cuiyuan suddenly felt they were seeing each other for the first time.”

Throughout “Sealed Off,” the latent threat of military conflict and occupation is ever-present. This moment, when trucks of soldiers drive down the street, is the only time this threat is made clear and explicit. It is also the moment that Zongzhen and Cuiyuan first feel real desire for one another because it draws into focus the life-or-death context of their meeting.

“In the end she'd probably marry, but her husband could never be as dear as this stranger met by chance…this man on a tram in the middle of a sealed-off city…it could never be this natural again.”

Cuiyuan is very naïve and has an unrealistic ideal of love and affection. After Zongzhen leaves her on the tram, she tells herself that she will never love anyone the way she loves him. The statement that “it could never be this natural again” is ironic as there is nothing “natural” about their situation meeting during a military lockdown of the city.

“Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is ‘moonlight in front of my bed.’ Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart.”

This quote highlights the essential dramatic tension of the Instability of Sexual Desire, Romance, and Marriage. For many characters in the collection, the “red rose” of sexual desire is grotesque when realized and does not lead to marriage, and the “white rose” of romance must be idealized and held at a distance. Once romance turns into marriage and the desire for romance is sated, it loses its appeal and becomes “a grain of sticky rice,” while the forbidden sexual desire transforms into longing, “a scarlet beauty mark.”

“From that day on, Zhenbao was determined to create a world that was ‘right,’ and to carry it with him wherever he went. In that little pocket-size world of his, he was the absolute master.”

After having sex with a sex worker in Paris, Zhenbao comes to believe that he can exercise control over his desires to an unrealistic degree. However, this belief becomes his fatal flaw as he cannot truly control his desires. The suppression of his desire leads to him acting increasingly dissolute and erratic.

“For these two lovers, he reserved a sensitive spot, a sacred corner of his heart. Wang Jiaorui and Rose gradually became so mixed up in his mind that they became one: a naive, passionate girl who had doted on him, a girl with no brains, or anything to cause him any trouble, though he—with his self-denying logic and steely, superhuman will—had left her.”

Because he does not truly know or understand them, Zhenbao maintains an unrealistic and idealized view of Rose and Jiaorui, the two modern women with whom he has sexual relationships. The irony is that had he married either of them, his sexual desire would have been sated and he would have become just as disillusioned with them as he is with his wife. It is further ironic to describe his “superhuman will” as he demonstrably frequents sex workers and in the final scene of the novella acts violently toward his wife.