Love in a Fallen City

Zhenbao has two women in his life: his wife, whom he calls his “white rose,” and his mistress, whom he calls his “red rose.” Zhenbao is a typical, successful Chinese man. He has a degree from a Western university and works in management at a textile company. His wife is educated and from a good family, and they have a nine-year-old daughter. He is a hard worker and, by all appearances, lives a typical life. He came from a poor family and worked his way up in the world.

The first woman Zhenbao had sex with was a sex worker in Paris. While studying in Edinburgh, Scotland (which the text incorrectly identifies as in England), he takes a trip to Paris on his own. While walking down the street, he comes across a sex worker in a red slip. He goes with her and feels ashamed about it. While she is getting ready to leave him, he sees her face in the mirror: It looks like “the face of an ancient warrior” (259). When he gets older, he thinks back to how he didn’t know then how to get what he wanted from a sex worker.

While in Edinburgh studying textile manufacturing, Zhenbao begins dating a half-Chinese, half-English girl named Rose. They go out dancing. She is very carefree. Zhenbao knows he can never marry her. Toward the end of his time in Edinburgh, he drives Rose home after a date. They are intimate in the car, and Zhenbao drops her back at her home while she cries. His friends know him as someone with incredible self-control. Before he graduates, Zhenbao gets a job with a British dyeing and weaving company in Shanghai.

His brother, Tong Dubao, comes to Shanghai to stay with him. Zhenbao hopes to get him a job at the dyeing and weaving company. One of Zhenbao’s former classmates, Wang Shihong, offers to let them stay in his spare room. The day Dubao and Zhenbao move in, they see a woman washing her hair. Shihong introduces her as his wife, Mrs. Wang. She is Chinese from Singapore and has a reputation as a party girl. After moving in, Shihong offers to let Zhenbao take a bath in his bathroom because it has hot water. Zhenbao is tempted to take some of Mrs. Wang’s stray hairs from the floor.

Dubao notes that there are cigarette burns on the furniture and wonders who the previous tenant was. Zhenbao tells him it was a man named Sun. Dubao tells him the staff said that Mr. Wang wanted to kick the man out for a few months and that he had put off his trip to Singapore until Sun left. Zhenbao chastises him for gossiping with the servants.

They eat dinner together. Mrs. Wang is wearing her dressing gown and has a towel in her hair. Shihong tells Zhenbao that he is leaving the next day for Singapore for business. Zhenbao says he is sure Mrs. Wang will take good care of them. Shihong says that she cannot speak Chinese well. Mrs. Wang writes her name, poorly, in Chinese on a piece of paper: Jiaorui. Shihong teases her good-naturedly about her poor writing abilities. Then, Jiaorui eats some candied walnuts, despite having worried earlier about putting on weight, and says they are good for her cough. Zhenbao goes out onto the balcony and thinks about how he is very taken by Jiaorui. Shihong and Jiaorui join him on the balcony. Thinking they might want some time alone before Shihong leaves for Singapore, Zhenbao says goodnight and leaves.

The next day, Zhenbao returns home from work. Shihong has already left for Singapore. He overhears Jiaorui on the phone with Timmy Sun, telling him she is waiting for a boyfriend to come at five o’clock, so he shouldn’t come over. After she hangs up, Jiaorui comes and tells him that Dubao is out book shopping. She offers him tea and biscuits, and he accepts. He asks her if they need an extra plate for the guest she’s expecting. She gives the maid a note to give to Timmy Sun saying that she has gone out. She tells Zhenbao that she changed her mind about seeing him. Zhenbao assumes she is being nice to him to convince him not to tell her husband that she is still seeing the former tenant, Mr. Sun. While they have their tea, the doorbell rings, and Zhenbao goes out to see Mr. Sun leaving. Zhenbao feels bad for him. Jiaorui tells Zhenbao that she falls for all kinds of men, saying, “My heart’s an apartment” (274). Flirtatiously, Zhenbao asks if there is a room for rent in it. Zhenbao asks her how she met Shihong. She says they met in London at a student association meeting. Then, Dubao returns home.

Later, Zhenbao thinks about how he is dangerously attracted to Jiaorui. He decides to try to avoid her. He moves his brother into a dorm because it is easier to look for a new place to stay on his own. He spends all day away from the apartment. One night, he hears the phone ring, and he goes to answer it, running into Jiaorui in her pajamas in the hallway. She answers the phone—a wrong number—and they flirt.

Two weeks later, he comes home at lunch to get his coat. He sees Jiaorui sitting on the couch underneath his coat, burning the butts of his cigarettes. He realizes that “now that she’d run into someone with an ounce of resistance, she dream[s] only of him” (279). That night, Zhenbao goes out to dinner and returns home. Jiaorui is playing the piano and he watches her, feeling emotional. He sits next to her on the piano bench, and they kiss. Then, they go to bed together.

From then on, Zhenbao rushes home to see her after work. She tells him she loves him, but Zhenbao isn’t sure if he believes her. They try to impress each other. They talk about what they will do when her husband comes back. Jiaorui says she will tell him about their affair, they will divorce, and she will marry Zhenbao. Zhenbao tells her they should talk to a lawyer before doing anything.

One evening, Zhenbao and Jiaorui go out for a walk after work. They run into family friends of Zhenbao’s, a British woman named Mrs. Ashe and her daughter. They share family news. The four of them walk down the street together for some time. After they say goodbye to Mrs. Ashe and her daughter, Jiaorui says that Zhenbao is a good person. That night, when Zhenbao is smoking a cigarette in bed, Jiaorui wakes up and tells him she will be good. He cries, and they make love.

The next morning, Jiaorui tells him that her husband will return soon and that she has sent him a letter telling him about the entire situation. Zhenbao is shocked. He walks away, has a few drinks, convinces himself he has cholera, and checks into a hospital. His mother and Jiaorui come to see him in the hospital. His mother scolds him for not having a wife, and he sends her away. Jiaorui stays, throws herself on top of him, and weeps. He tells her that he can’t marry her and to tell her husband that she was just joking in the letter. Jiaorui leaves.

Later, he learns that Shihong and Jiaorui divorced. His mother arranges his marriage with Meng Yanli. She is quiet and old-fashioned. They get married, and his mother moves in with them. Zhenbao spends most of his earnings on socializing, so they do not have much money in the household. Zhenbao grows bored with his wife and starts regularly seeing sex workers. Zhenbao’s mother often scolds Yanli. Eventually, his mother moves out. Dubao, his brother, gets a job at the factory but does not perform well.

One day, Dubao and Zhenbao are on a bus when they run into Jiaorui with her young son. They make small talk. She says she loves her new husband, Mr. Zhu. Zhenbao starts to cry. He gets off the bus and goes to work. That afternoon, he returns home and tells Dubao to come over to pick up a gift for someone at work. When Dubao arrives, Yanli starts to wrap the gift, two silver vases, but she makes a mess of it, and Zhenbao snaps at her. As Dubao leaves, Zhenbao’s daughter returns home. Yanli is in the kitchen listening to the radio for company, even though she doesn’t really understand Mandarin, because she is lonely and isolated. Zhenbao doesn’t often bring people home to socialize with her because his friends don’t like her.

Eventually, Zhenbao sends his daughter to boarding school. Yanli develops a problem with constipation, but treatment doesn’t work. One day, Zhenbao returns home from work early to pick up his raincoat and catches Yanli in a suspicious scenario with the tailor. When he returns home, they don’t discuss it, although Yanli wonders if he will. Zhenbao begins going out, drinking, and seeing sex workers more. One day, Zhenbao asks the maid to have the tailor come to work on his shirt, and she says he hasn’t come in a long time. Later that night, Zhenbao goes out with a sex worker and stops back at the house with her to pick up cash to pay her. Yanli sees and despairs. After some time, Zhenbao comes home and interrupts his brother and friends discussing his bad behavior with Yanli. That night, Zhenbao throws a lamp at Yanli. The next day, he makes a fresh start.