LOVE (爱)

Written in Chinese by Eileen Chang (张爱玲)

(Originally published in the April 1944 “Magazine” Monthly Volume 13 No. 1)

(Translated by P.Y. Toh in Oct-2007)

This is real.

There was this girl in a middle-class family in a village. She was pretty and had received many marriage proposals, but none was successful. She was only fifteen or sixteen that year. It was a spring evening. She stood by the back door, her hands holding on to the peach tree. She could recall that she was wearing a beige dress. It was the young man living in the opposite house. They had met but had not spoken. He walked over, stood at close range and said gently, "Oh, are you here as well?" She said nothing. Nor did he say anything else. After standing there for a while, each walked away.

That was the end. 

The lady was later conned by her relative, who sold her as a concubine to a faraway place. The trade was repeated a couple of times. After countless adventurous encounters, she could still remember that incident long ago when she grew old. She often spoke about that particular spring evening, under the peach tree at the back door, that young man.

Meeting someone whom you have met among the millions of people, within the dimension of millions of years. In the wilderness of the boundless time, not a moment earlier and not a moment later, and you have met by chance. You will just have to ask gently, "Oh, are you here as well?"

[Disclaimer: The translator accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the loss or diminution of reading pleasure or consequence of any nature, as a result of any inaccuracies or imperfections in the translation or for any reasons. For maximal reading pleasure and benefits, please refer to the original work in Chinese by the author.]

About Eileen Chang the Author

Eileen Chang was born on 30 Sep 1920 in Shanghai to a renowned Chinese family. Her paternal grandmother was the daughter of Li Hong-zhang, a key late Qing dynasty cabinet minister in charge of foreign affairs. Her parents were separated when she was young. She did not have a happy childhood, and lived with her aunt later. Eileen already exhibited her writing talent in a school magazine when she attended the St. Mary Girl’s High School of the Anglican Church in Shanghai. She aced the entrance exam in the Far East of the prestigious University of London in 1938, but did not make it there as the Pacific war broke out. Instead, she enrolled into the University of Hong Kong in 1939. She did extremely well in her studies, attaining full scholarships for tuition fees and living expenses. However, Hong Kong’s fall to the Japanese invaders in December 1941 disrupted her final year studies, and she returned to Shanghai in early 1942. She soon shot to stardom as a renowned author in Shanghai, with many hugely popular novels, plays and essays to her credit. After the Communist Party gained control of China, she left for Hong Kong in 1952, and subsequently to USA in 1955. She stayed in USA till she passed away alone in 1995, with short visits to Taiwan in between.

She got married twice in her life. The first marriage was in Shanghai at the age of 24 to 37-year-old Hu Lan-cheng (who served as a junior minister in the pseudo Wang Jing-wei cabinet supported by the invading Japanese military), which lasted 3 years before Hu fled China sometime after WWII. The second marriage was in New York at the age of 36 to 65-year-old Ferdinand Reyer (an unsuccessful scriptwriter), which lasted 11 years until Reyer died of sickness. Both marriages were filled with melancholy, as did her entire life.

Chang’s literary works are acclaimed for the feminine minute description and a classical sense of beauty, as well as the amazing grasp of the characters’ emotions. Her creations have captivated generations of Chinese readers from the 1940’s to the 2000’s. To the readers who love her works, Eileen Chang is the one-and-only author and is simply irreplaceable.

Literary Appreciation & Analysis

This is a unique essay cum micro novel.

The author outlines the lady’s undulating life paths in brief within a couple of sentences. She has also sketched out the multi-facets of love and emotion.

The concise words are subtle, yet the emotions run deep through the heart and bones. The essay has fully reflected the author’s profound appreciation and comprehensive portrayal of the earthly emotions, and is indeed a “Uniquely Eileen Chang” piece of work.

Carefully crafted by the author, the blanks in between the story leave much to the imagination of the readers. Does the lady’s subsequent encounters in life have much impact on the ending? Have the unfortunate aftermaths caused her to cherish on the fine aspiration and innocent affection in her youth? If she were to live a happy life thereafter, with loving husband and offspring, would she have remembered that single spring evening in her life? Let us just compose our respective answers and storylines.

Should we meet at the Hanlin Reading Society one day, would we have said gently, “Oh, are you here as well?”