Anti-Legend —— An Interpretation of Love in a Fallen City by Zhang Ailing

Ai Xiaoming

Love in the City, like the title of the novel, first gives people a reading hint. When we read a novel, we always start with the title. The title arouses readers' possible reading experience, which is the horizon that the author designed in advance for readers to expect. If this statement is correct, we can imagine that when Zhang Ailing drew up this title, she initially expected readers to agree. Here, we will tell a legend-"romance", that is, a touching love story. In this regard, within the scope of the topic, Love in a Fallen City is not a narrative, but a compound noun. In the tradition of literary vocabulary, it is an adjective. Describe the beauty of women, so beautiful that many people admire and fall in love. There is a word "the whole city has fallen to the country" in the text of the biography of Han consorts: "If you care about the city, you care about the country." When he arrived in Qiliang, Zhong Rong also wrote: "... women are favored by young moths, and then they hope to turn to the country." How can all kinds of responses, the soul of feeling, and non-Chen poems show their meaning? Why not Long song? " [ 1]

According to this, women are beautiful and fall in love with the country. Once they enter the literary narrative, it will obviously imply an extraordinary result. "The emperor of China longed for the beauty that might shake an empire" led to Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow, which created an eternal love legend.

However, after reading Zhang Ailing's novel, we will find that it is an anti-legendary story rather than a legend. Bai Liusu, the hostess in the book, is not beautiful. Tassel and Fan Liuyuan are married, and there are more factors in trading than in love. However, in another sense, the love of the whole city is worthy of the name: overturning, collapsing and falling. The fall of Hongkong helped Bai Liusu and Fan Liuyuan become an ordinary couple.

Obviously, the practical significance of this ending is a subversion of readers' possible expectations. Let's start from here and discuss the drift, vacancy or proliferation of the hidden layer caused by this flip.

One or two times

Reading Zhang Ailing's works is different from reading the works of many writers in that era. Simply put, this different feeling is jet lag.

Ling Ke recalled: "The first time I came into contact with Zhang Ailing's works and herself, it was a very severe period. From 65438 to 0943, more than one year has passed since the Pearl Harbor incident, and two years have passed since the end of World War II and the victory of China's Anti-Japanese War. Shanghai was then an occupied area under Japanese military occupation. " [2]

Lingke summed up his feelings about that era with "severity", which can be seen in many works: Lao She's Four Generations under One roof, and Ba Jin's trilogy Fire. Before and after (around 1943), there were Xiao Hong's life and death fields and Lu Ling's son of a rich man ... These are all historical times in collective memory, severe and autumn of life and death.

From the beginning, Love in a Fallen City involved a completely different time situation: "In order to save the sky, all the clocks in Shanghai were put forward one hour, but Bai Mansion said,' We used old clocks'." Their ten o'clock is eleven. They sing far away from the chessboard and can't keep up with the huqin of life. "[3]

People's eleven o'clock, this is public time, the story of Zhang Ailing, not in this track or music score. She writes personal time, personal time and special time, and weaves stories of people she cares about in this time network. Old Zhong, representing the characteristics of Bai Mansion's daily life, is still the master of parents. When several generations of extended families live together, it is still a property dispute between family members, a change in marriage, and Chen's death. The conflict between father and son and the shadow of the new era in Ba Jin's Home are really out of the question here. It's just like Ye San, tassel's brother, who advised tassel to attend her husband Dai Xiao's funeral before the divorce: "Don't always scare people with the law! The law, change today, change tomorrow, I am just a mortal, with three cardinal guides and five permanent members, but I can't change it! You were born in his house, and death is his ghost. Trees take off, and fallen leaves return to their roots ... ". In this passage, only a few words have been changed, which can be regarded as Bai Mansion's perception of historical time. In other words, it expresses Zhang Ailing's feelings about the relationship between the characters in the novel and the times. Times are changing, but in many families in Zhang Ailing's novel world, everything is as usual. Individuals have nothing to do with the mainstream and torrent in the historical, ethnic and political sense.

This is also Zhang Ailing's discovery of the times and society. While many writers, especially those in the 1940s, are eager to capture the social changes, historical footsteps and the phantom of the new era, Zhang Ailing is peeking behind it-behind the times and society. It is a side that sinks into darkness, has no future, and is getting more and more chaotic. Today, we can safely say that, just like Hemingway's metaphor of "iceberg", it really sinks into the water, which is much thicker and heavier than the bright part above the water. Zhang Ailing's explanation of the cover of Legend is rather a portrayal of the female writer's own posture: "The cover was designed by Yan Ying. Borrowing a picture of a fashionable lady in the late Qing dynasty, it shows a woman playing dominoes vaguely there, sitting next to a wet nurse holding a child, as if it were a common scene after dinner. But outside the railing, a human figure with a wrong proportion suddenly appeared, like a ghost. Very curious, very diligent to peek inside, is a modern person. " [4] This modern ghost reflects the author's own tastes and interests.

Mystery files was born in such an almost frozen era. This is a woman who wants to create her own destiny. Her creation can be said to be the time to struggle out of the time track of Bai Mansion and start her personal life. This enlightenment began at a special moment-the death of her ex-husband. Mrs. Xu came to pay homage, and tassel faced a choice. Her brother and sister-in-law unanimously accused her and forced her to return to the widow. Tassel can't help but find a home for herself. This home can't live any longer.

Different from the runaway women in Ba Jin's works, tassel can't see the temptation of any new ideal. She wants to go, which is the cry of life itself at this moment, and the cry of life instinct. This instinct of life needs activity, which is the only remaining capital of tassel. Here, Zhang Ailing has a vivid description of a period:

In the middle of nature, there is an enamel clock in the glass cover. This machine has been out of order for many years. Red couplets are hung on both sides, golden birthday flowers are shining, and a flower holds a Chinese character dripping with ink. In the twilight, every word seems to float in the air, far from the paper. Tassel felt that she was just a word on the couplet, floating in vain and not falling to the ground. The White Mansion is a bit like a fairy's abode of fairies. A day has passed here, and a thousand years have passed on earth. But after a thousand years here, the same day is almost the same, because every day is the same monotonous and boring. Tassels crossed their arms and hugged their necks. 78 passed in the blink of an eye. Are you young? Never mind, you will be old in two years. Here, youth is not rare. They have plenty of youth-children are born one by one, new bright eyes, new red and tender mouths and new wisdom. After years of tempering, eyes are dull and people are dull, and the next generation is reborn. This generation has been absorbed into the brilliant background of scarlet, and a little pale gold is the timid eyes of the former people.

The struggle and resistance of tassel finally turned into a positive result, and finally got the goal of everyone's attention, Fan Liuyuan. In this marriage, they encountered a war of collective time rather than personal time. I think this is an encounter, not a participation. This is still the difference between Zhang Ailing and those writers who pay attention to expressing collective feelings and national consciousness. As a threat to this individual's life time, the war intervened in the relationship between tassel and Fan Liuyuan, which forced them to reconsider the value of their relationship, thus speeding up the procedure of concluding a formal engagement. In such a process, we can see how Zhang Ailing transformed the traditional beauty "Allure" into a realistic "Allure". Under the high wall of a mountain on Repulse Bay, Fan Liuyuan said to tassel, "This wall reminds me of something for some reason, like the end of time. ..... One day, our civilization was completely destroyed, and everything was finished-burned out, bombed out, collapsed, and perhaps this wall was left. Tasso, if we meet ... tassel was under this wall, maybe you will be a little sincere to me, maybe I will be a little sincere to you. "

This scene was once called by Fu Lei: "What a vast and broad-minded realm!" [5] In fact, this is not only the feelings of the characters, but also the feelings of Zhang Ailing on the relationship between personal time and historical time when they meet. In that era when many writers thought it was very severe, what was more important to Zhang Ailing was its threat to individual life. Compared with many writers' national standard, Zhang Ailing is individual standard. This is her understanding that personal time meets historical time. She said more than once: "Even if individuals can wait, the times are hasty, they are already being destroyed, and more destruction is coming." One day, our civilization, whether lofty or flashy, will become a thing of the past. If the word I use the most is' desolation', it is because there is such a threat of desolation in my ideological background. " [6]

Because of this feeling, the husband and wife in Zhang Ailing's novels have gained unusual significance, and they have become the representatives of a completely troubled life form. The people in troubled times have no intention of promoting history, nor do they fantasize about being integrated into the public for collective immortality. All they want is a personal life and the existence of this life. The so-called "floating life is like a dream", the so-called "green hills are still there, and the sunset is a few degrees red" is nothing more than this sense of impermanence that people in troubled times can't get rid of. Seeking constancy in impermanence is the best state in the marriage meeting between tassel and Fan Liuyuan, and it is also a passage quoted by Fu Lei:

Sitting on the fringe, listening to the sad wind. She did know that a gray brick wall near Repulse Bay must still be there ... She came to the foot of the wall like a dream and came face to face with Liu Yuan ... In this turbulent world, money and real estate, everything eternal, are unreliable. Only the tone in her mouth and the people sleeping next to her are reliable. She suddenly moved to LiuYuan side, hugged him across the quilt. He reached out from under the covers and took her hand. They looked at each other transparently, only for a moment of thorough understanding, but this moment was enough for them to live in harmony for ten or eight years. [7]

Because of this urgent concern for the loss of individual life time based on the value of individual life, Love in a Fallen City contains special feelings such as displacement, health disaster and survival in troubled times, and is compatible with the bleak memories of generations of China people who have left their homes and drifted overseas in troubled times. From this point, we can easily understand Zhang Ailing's kindness and popularity. It is not difficult to see why such feelings have accumulated into a basic motif in the works of modern and contemporary overseas Chinese writers.

Second, space: leaving, cities and cities

Plop, a Russian critic, gave us enlightenment in the morphology of folk stories: "First of all, narrative literature can be divided into two levels, namely, the level of concrete content and the level of abstract structure." "Second, the level of narrative structure can be separated from the text for analysis." "Third, narrative function is the basic element of narrative structure, and the relationship between narrative functions constitutes the basic structure type." [8]

According to the narrative function of plop summary, we can use it to analyze Love in a Fallen City, and we can see what kind of narrative structure mode Zhang Ailing's works are based on. With the help of this structural model, we may find something pregnant in the theme of "Fallen City".

Initial situation:

Tassel, divorced at the age of 28 and returned to her family, has passed seven or eight years, and all the money under her name has been spent by her parents. Bai Xia is anxious to send her out.

Action one, Bai Liusu accompanied his concubine, seven younger sister Paul, on a blind date, and took the initiative to make Fan Liuyuan, who was originally introduced to Paul.

In action two, Mrs. Xu invited tassel to Hong Kong. At Repulse Bay Hotel, tassel saw Fan Liuyuan again. In this communication, after probing, teasing, perfunctory and delaying, tassel decided to return to Shanghai.

Action 3: Liu Yuan sends the tassel back to Shanghai and returns to Hong Kong alone. Tassel was patient at home. When she couldn't bear it, she received a telegram from Liu Yuan and went to Hong Kong again.

In action 4, tassel lives with Fan Liuyuan. A week later, Fan leaves Hong Kong for England.

Action five, the gun went off that day, and Liu Yuan returned. They took refuge in Repulse Bay Hotel again.

Action six, after the armistice, the two began to live at home.

Action 7, release the wedding notice. Soon, both of them returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong.

We divide the narrative content into these seven actions according to the plot and scene changes. It can be seen that this basically corresponds to the first seven functions of Plop in the preparation stage of thirty-one narrative functions. These seven functions are:

1. A member of this family ran away from home.

2. Issue some kind of ban on heroes.

3. violation of the ban.

4. Test your head.

5. The opponent gets information about the object he is trying to capture.

The enemy tried to deceive his victim in order to possess or belong to him.

The victim was cheated, so he helped his enemy unconsciously.

These seven functions can be defined as: leaving home-prohibition-prohibition-reconnaissance-obtaining information-trapping-compliance. [9]

As a summary of the structure, this is undoubtedly a simplified method. Plop thinks that the core entanglement and conflict of the story began after Function 8, which is defined as a crime, and refers to hurting or infringing a family member, including kidnapping, extortion, expulsion, murder and imprisonment. From function 18 to function 3 1, it basically belongs to task completion or difficult solution, so I won't discuss it here for the time being. As far as Love in a Fallen City is concerned, the story has ended in the seventh function, and the protagonist Bai Liusu and his opponent Fan Liuyuan have reached an agreement. However, strictly speaking, she is not a victim. She clearly knows that she has actually gained something by combining with Fan Liuyuan. Therefore, the eight functions of plop-the possible conflict operation of the story-are briefly mentioned in this work: "Liu Yuan never plays with her now. He kept his one-liners and told them to the women nearby. This is a good phenomenon to be thankful for, which means that he completely regards her as his family-a justified wife. "

From the perspective of summarizing Love in My Heart into seven actions corresponding to the narrative function of plop, we can further assume that Love in the City is based on such a basic structure: running away-going home, seeking-obtaining, lacking-satisfying. Of course, there are a series of spatial displacements between these two poles: Shanghai-Hong Kong, Hong Kong-Shanghai, Baigongguan-Repulse Bay Hotel-Barton Road's residence-Shanghai Van Bai's residence. Finally, Bai Liusu returned to a small family, instead of everyone forbidding her to stand up.

However, for Liu, what is home, acquisition and satisfaction? To be exact, this is just a house. This house can also be used as a synonym for economic source, life destination and marriage. If Fan Liuyuan seduced the tassel with some tricks, this is also reflected in the house. He provided her with a two-story home in Repulse Bay Hotel, room 120. Such a marriage achievement can not help but remind people of the metaphor of "besieged city" in Qian Zhongshu's novels. In this way, love in the city can be interpreted as a battle between a woman and a man to conquer the city. However, we can't say who is the real winner and who is the loser. In fact, they all want what they want. The man wants the beauty left by tassel, and tassel wants the house he bought. The deal is fair, but isn't this city empty? The author wrote this scene, which is the feeling of the night when tassel sent Fan Liuyuan away:

She staggered into the next room. Empty rooms, room after room-an empty world. She thinks she can fly to the ceiling. She walked on the empty floor, as if walking on a clean ceiling. The room is empty, so she can't install lights in it. The light is still not enough. She must remember to turn on some stronger light bulbs tomorrow.

"The fall of Hong Kong completed her", which is the final ending of the work. Geographically speaking, Hong Kong is a working city. However, what helped her? Her marriage with Fan Liuyuan is only nominal. What this marriage lacks is love. "Love in the City", after love poured out, the city was empty. This is another city in the works, a city of marriage and family, "besieged city", a figurative city, an empty city without love. Tassel thought, "Good job!" But she knows the question: "How will she spend the rest of her life?" "She can control myself not crazy? The three rooms upstairs and the three rooms downstairs are all lit in an open place. " The fall of the city of Hong Kong is temporary, and war is not the norm in life after all. After the armistice, I returned to Shanghai, but tassel's life was still very long. The difference between the empty years and the traditional "eternal life hall" love shows the distance between novels and legends.

Three. Existing and vacant

Fu Lei is the earliest witness of Zhang Ailing's works, but his evaluation of Love in the City is not high. He believes: "Because it is a legend (as the author said), there is no seriousness, sublimity and fatalism of tragedy;" The contrast between light and shade is not strong. Because it is a legend, lust has no thrilling performance. Flirting, which accounts for almost half of the space, is full of cynical hedonistic psychological games; Although so smart, elegant and funny, it is the product of a delicate society that is almost morbid. Just like the parallel body of the Six Dynasties. Although bejeweled, my heart is empty, and there is neither real joy nor deep sadness. " Fu Lei's criticism is finally summed up in two points: "The outline is not deep enough" and "Cai Hua is stronger than the backbone"

Not convinced, Zhang Ailing wrote My Articles as a reply. Fu pointed out that she didn't write deeply about the transition between Fan Liuyuan and tassel, and Zhang Ailing answered:

I like the writing of uneven contrast, because it is closer to the truth. In Love in a Fallen City, the tassel coming out of a decadent family and the baptism of the Hong Kong War did not transform her into a revolutionary woman. The Battle of Hong Kong influenced Fan Liuyuan, making him lead a plain life and finally get married, but marriage did not make him a saint, and he completely gave up his old habits and style. Therefore, the ending of Liuyuan and tassel, although healthy, is still vulgar; As far as things are concerned, this is the only way. [ 10]

Comparing criticism with the author's self-defense, we can see that the difference lies in this key point: Fu Lei regards Love in a Fallen City as a legend, and he thinks it is a romance that changes the fate of the characters from a fairyland (Change that Shakes the World). "The center of the work is too biased towards naughty and elegant flirting." Zhang ailing doesn't think so. She thinks she is realistic and emphasizes desolation. "The reason why desolation has a deeper aftertaste is because it is like green with powder, which is an uneven contrast."

Did Zhang Ailing just write a superficial flirting story, or did she write a desolate revelation as she pursued? I think different reading methods are involved here, at least focusing on the reading of the hero and the reading of the heroine, and it may be said that it is reading as a man and reading as a woman.

As mentioned above, Love in a Fallen City is involved in the classic works in the literary tradition, and its semantics are traditionally expounded: "A woman is favored, and then she hopes to fall in her hometown." On the other hand, some traditional works also use the ambiguity of "tendency" to insinuate that women are mistaken for the country, which leads to the collapse of the country. Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow is an example. It has a long history and represents the general view of "the love of the whole city" in traditional cultural psychology. This view includes two aspects: first, the resentment against the imperial concubine and the king's mistake to the country, even if the emperor didn't kill the beautiful lover, are not enough to make the people angry: "None of the men in the army will move until they are under their hooves, and they may trample on those moths. One is the praise of eternal love beyond life and death: "We want two birds to be one, fly in the sky, live and grow together on the earth, two branches of a tree." .. "To put it bluntly, it's not good to blame China, but it's still good when two of a kind is endless. Of course, there is a contradiction here. In the patriarchal society, stunning beauty is a national treasure and naturally belongs to the emperor with the highest level of patriarchy: "The emperor, from then on, gave up his early hearing. "The criticism of the king in the poem is based on a potential premise that beauty is a disaster. In this regard, Zhou Zuoren wrote: "Who is the beauty in China folk or folk literature? Let's take a step back and look at history and novels. There are a few, but they are all unfortunate, that is, bad people, who ruined the country and lost their lives. For example, da ji was beheaded by the King of Wu, drowned by the King of Yue, and committed suicide. The Story Of Diu Sim received a broadsword from Master Guan. "[1 1] beauty is doubly harmful, which is the definition of women in patriarchal feudal society. The Song of Eternal Sorrow separates this definition from the concrete realistic context and opens up the realm of heaven. It dispelled the cruelty of the six armies not sending troops and demanded the death of a woman with the thought of a king. The death of a woman realized the reputation of Tang Xuanzong's eternal lover. Of course, as a traditional work, we may not consider the Song of Eternal Sorrow from the above point of view, because there have been a series of conventional explanations about it. However, once readers introspect their female identity or read as female readers, they may find similar concerns in their general male works. Contemporary feminist critics point out that the way of such works needs to be vigilant: "In this way, the dramatic structure in these novels induces women to join the illusion that women are obstacles to freedom. Catherine is a very infectious image in A Farewell to Arms, but her role is the most obvious. Her death freed Frederick Henry from the burden she brought, so as to carefully construct an idyllic love and regard himself as a' victim of world opposition'. [12] "Fitley concluded:' If we shed tears after reading this book, it is for Frederick Henry, not Catherine. All our tears are ultimately only for men, because in this book world, men's lives are the most precious. When a woman reads this classic love story, she realizes the moral of this ideal female image, which is simple and clear. Even with such and such problems, the only good woman is just a dead person' (7 1 page). Whether the moral is so simple or not, one thing is true, that is, the reader must accept Frederick Henry's point of view to appreciate the sadness at the end. "[13] In other words, only by accepting the viewpoint of Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty can we appreciate Song of Eternal Sorrow.

Zhang Ailing's Love in a Fallen City is anti-legendary at this fundamental point, and she shows a cynical and ironic attitude on two levels. One aspect is that beauty has nothing to do with the whole city. As far as the heroine of the novel is concerned, "the fall of Hong Kong has fulfilled her. But in this unreasonable world, who knows what is cause and what is effect? Who knows? Maybe just because she wanted to fulfill her, a metropolis was overturned. Thousands of people died, thousands of people suffered, followed by earth-shattering reforms ... Tasso doesn't think her position in history is subtle. She just stood up happily and kicked the mosquito-repellent incense tray under the table. "

The so-called "perfection" is actually irony, because the logic inside is absurd and grotesque. As Zhang Ailing argued: "People live in an era, but this era sinks like a shadow, making people feel abandoned. In order to prove our existence and grasp some real and basic things, we have to turn to ancient memories, memories of human life in various times, which are clearer and more intimate than looking forward to the future. So he had a strange feeling about the reality around him, suspecting that it was an absurd and ancient world, dark and bright. " [14] Lonely, abandoned individuals and absurd sense of dislocation between ancient and modern times are modern people's consciousness of their own situation. Moreover, in Zhang Ailing's view, "they are the vast burden of this era." They are ordinary and have nothing to do with the major events that dominate the social and political situation. If they are related, they will be absurd. This ordinary and numerous irrelevance must be a "desolate revelation" that Zhang Ailing hopes to express.

If "Allure" is regarded as a force that unreasonably interferes with the fate of the characters, we can also see that "love" and love legend did not exist before and after this. Zhang Ailing's explanation of Love in a Fallen City with such a story is a mockery of the love myth constructed in male texts throughout the ages. As a male reader, Fu Lei saw that "flirting, which accounts for almost half of the length, is a spiritual game of cynical hedonists". This comment is appropriate for Fan Liuyuan, but it is too light to describe it with tassels. This is the genius of Zhang Ailing's works. As soon as she stepped onto the literary world, she scoffed at her disdain for love fantasies. Compared with many writers who have expressed love and marriage since the May 4th Movement, Zhang Ailing is unique in this respect. Most of her descriptions of men's and women's marriage are closely related to money interests. Money turns women into commodities and makes them conscious commodity salesmen, fighting with each other to sell themselves or their children. Here, there is no humanity, seven days of loneliness is the enemy, and women are the enemy. Zhang Ailing wrote about the metamorphosis and depravity of women in a society where feudal decadent atmosphere and stinking westernization interests are intertwined. Her favorite "uneven contrast" is applied to Fan Liuyuan and Bai Liusu. We can see that behind tassel's flirting is the anxiety and helplessness of survival, which is completely different from Fan Liuyuan. We use an ancient poem mispronounced by Fan Liuyuan to illustrate the difference. Fan Liuyuan lamented that tassel didn't love him and quoted a sentence from the book of songs "Drumming" (Wind): "Life and death are rich, and children are happy"; But we know that the original text is "talking to Zicheng". Cheng said that the contract he was referring to was an oath for husband and wife to grow old together. Fan Liuyuan read Cheng Shuo as Xiang Yue, which was not Zhang Ailing's slip of the pen, but his wish. There is nothing wrong with flirting. But tassel wants not flirting, but "success". She wants a paper engagement. Instant love, lifelong engagement, Liu Yuan and tassel have no eternal love. Therefore, here, economic interests are present and love is not present. Liu's original intention is to seek pleasure, and tassel's purpose is to seek survival, which is the fundamental sorrow of women and the insight of Zhang Ailing. Therefore, in her works, Fan Liuyuan's flirting is active and advanced, while tassel is in a state of fighting and weak prevention. "She was nervous, as a result, nothing. At first, she felt uneasy, as if she had missed a step when going down the stairs, and her heart was extremely palpitation. Later, she got used to it. " Or "She put her hand on her cheek, but her palms were cold." This is the difference between tassel and Fan Liuyuan. In contrast, tassel is always sober in her calculations. She can calculate: "Maybe one day he will come back to her with better conditions." She also knows her bottom line: "One autumn, she was two years older-she couldn't afford to be old. If she goes to Hong Kong again, she will be a loser because of this kind of submission: "There is also family pressure-the most painful component. "Even on the night when Liu Yuan finally succeeded, Zhang Ailing didn't let go of the sadness of tassels in shattered glass:" He loves her. This vicious person, who loves her, is so kind to her! She can't help shuddering. " While capturing and observing this kind of psychology, Zhang Ailing conveyed her attitude of not being "naughty and elegant". For example, she said, "I don't remember two sentences in the Analects of Confucius:' When you get love, you should be sad but not happy.' These two sentences impressed me deeply. We know the inside story of a thing, and we are all' sad but not happy' about a person's inner twists and turns. "

Love in the City is Zhang Ailing's version of What happened after Nora left. A thousand years ago, the poem "The Book of Songs and the White Boat" revealed the feeling that abandoned women had nowhere to live, and a thousand years later, Zhang Ailing rewrote the story of abandoned women with the poem "The White Boat". Whether it's the imperial concubine who ascended to heaven in Song of Eternal Sorrow or the tassels that smell like mosquitoes and cigarettes in Zhang Ailing's works, the tragedies of their lives and feelings are not tolerated by the "love of the whole city" in male texts. Zhang Ailing said, "I especially like that metaphor, such as bandits washing clothes. I'm afraid the smell of dirty clothes piled up by the basin is invisible to male readers. Zhang Ailing did not directly give the answer to Nora's question, but she expressed "that kind of messy and congested sadness". What can you say about such sadness when you read that "most people who fall in love with their country in legend are like this"?

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[1] Zhou Wei Minhe and Xiao Huarong: Notes on Poems, Zhongzhou Ancient Books Publishing House, 1985, 1, p. 48.

[2] Ling Ke: "Send Zhang Ailing to a distant place", see Jin Hongda and Qing Yu: "Complete Works of Zhang Ailing", Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House, July 1992, 1 version, Volume 4, p. 434.

[3] Zhang Ailing: "Love in the Whole City", see "The Complete Works of Zhang Ailing" volume 1, the following quotations are the same, no other note.

[4] Zhang Ailing: "There are a few words to tell readers", see "Complete Works of Zhang Ailing", Volume 4, p. 266.

[5] Fu Lei:' On Zhang Ailing's Novels', included in' Complete Works of Zhang Ailing' Volume 4, see page 424 for quotations.

[6] Zhang Ailing: "Preface to Reprint", see "Complete Works of Zhang Ailing" Volume 4, p. 138.

[7] Same as 5.

[8] Luo Gang: Introduction to Narratology, Yunnan People's Publishing House 1 May 9941Edition, p. 28.

[9] See Luo Gang: "Introduction to Narratology", Chapter II, Section II, with the book on page 28-34.

[10] Zhang Ailing: See "Complete Works of Zhang Ailing" Volume 4, page 177.

[1 1] Zhou Zuoren: Beauty. See Shu Wu's catalogue: the discovery of women. Culture and Art Publishing House, Beijing, 1,1February 1990, p. 142.

[12] jonathan kalle. Reading as a Woman. See Zhang Jingyuan. Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism. Peking University Publishing House, 1992, 1, p. 52.