Love in a Fallen City PDF
Preview Love in a Fallen City
LOVE A IN FALLEN CITY EILEEN CHANG DATE DUE BrodartCo NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS Fiction Zhang Zhang, Ailing Love in a fallen city L( 31111022840514 BEL-TIB p/ot) EILEEN CHANG (1920-1995) was born into an aristocratic familyin Shanghai. Her father, deeply traditional in his ways, was an opium addict; her mother, partlyeducated in England, was asophisticatedwoman ofcosmopolitan tastes. Their unhappymarriage ended in divorce, and Chang eventually — ran awayfrom her father who had beaten her for defying herstepmother, then locked her in her room for nearlyhalfa year. Changstudied literature at the UniversityofHong Kong, but theJapanese attackon the cityin 1941 forced her to return to occupied Shanghai, where shewas able to publish the stories and essays (collected in two volumes, Romances, 1944, and Written on Water, 1945) that soon made her a literarystar. In 1944 Chang married Hu Lancheng, aJapanese sympathizer whose sexual infidelities led to their divorce three years later. The rise ofCommunist influence made it increasinglydiffi- cult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then immigrated to the United States three years later. She remarried (anAmerican, Ferdinand Reyher, who died in 1967) and heldvarious posts aswriter-in- residence; in 1969 she obtained a more permanent position as a researcher at Berkeley. Two novels, both commissioned in the 1950s bythe United States Information Service as anti- Communist propaganda. TheRiceSproutSongand Naked Earth, were followed by a third. TheRougeoftheNorth (1967), which expanded on her celebrated early novella, "The Golden Cangue." Chang continued writing essays and stories in Chinese, scripts for Hong Kong films, and began work on an English translation ofthe famous Qing novel TheSing-Song Girls ofShanghai. In spite ofthe tremendous revival ofinterest in herwork that began inTaiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s, and that later spread to mainland China, Chang became ever more reclusive as she grew older. Eileen Changwas found dead in her LosAngeles apartment in September 1995. KAREN S. KINGSBURY has lived in Chinese-speakingcities for nearly two decades. She taught English in Chonqing on theWhitman-in-China program, studied Chinese inTaipei and, for fourteen years, taught English language and literature atTunghai University inTaichung. Her Columbia University doctoral dissertation was on Eileen Chang, and she has pub- lished previous translations ofChang's essays and fiction in Renditionsand in The ColumbiaAnthology ofModern Chinese Literature. She lives in Seattle. LOVE IN A FALLEN CITY EILEEN CHANG Translatedby KAREN KINGSBURY S. and EILEEN CHANG NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS nvrb New York THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 1755 Broadway,NewYork,NY10019 www.nyrb.com Copyright© 2007byNYREV, Inc. Storiescopyright© 1943, 1944, 1947bytheEstateofEileenChang Translationsof"PrefacetotheSecondPrintingo^Romances" "Aloeswood Incense:TheFirstBrazier," "JasmineTea,"and"Red Rose,WhiteRose" copyright© 2007byKarenS. Kingsbury © Translationof"LoveinaFallenCity"copyright 1996bytheChinese UniversityofHongKong Translationof"SealedOff"copyright©1995byColumbiaUniversityPress All rightsreserved. PublishedbyarrangementwithCrown PublishingCompany, Ltd.,Taiwan "LoveinaFallenCity"hasappeared, inslightlydifferentform, in Renditions: A Chinese-English TranslationMagazine, No.45 (Spring1996) andisreprinted bypermissionofRenditions. "TheGoldenCangue"hasappearedinModem ChineseStoriesandNovellas, 1919-1949,eds.JosephS.M. Lau,C.T. Hsia,and LeoOu-fanLee(ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1981) andisreprintedbypermis- sionofC.T. Hsia. "SealedOff"hasappeared, inslightlydifferentform, in TheColumbiaAnthologyofModem ChineseLiterature,eds.JosephS.M. Lau andHowardGoldblatt(ColumbiaUniversityPress,1995) andisreprintedby permissionofColumbiaUniversityPress. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Zhang,Ailing. IQingchengzhilian. English] Loveinafallencity/byEileenChang;translatedbyKarenS. Kingsburyand EileenChan—g. p.cm. (NewYorkReviewBooksclassics) ISBN-13:978-1-59017-178-3 (alk.paper) ISBN-10: 1-590—17-178-0(alk.paper) 1. Zhang,Ailing TranslationsintoEnglish. I. Kingsbury, Karen. S. II.Title. PL2837.E35Q56132006 895.r348—dc22 2006021075 ISBN-13:978-1-59017-178-3 ISBN-io: 1-59017-178-0 P1ri0nte9d i8n t7he6Un5ite4d3Sta2tes1ofAmericaonacid-freepaper Translator's dedication For C. T. Hsia CONTENTS INTRODUCTION • ix PREFACE TO THE SECOND PRINTING OF ROMANCES ALOESWOOD INCENSE: THE FIRST BRAZIER • 5 JASMINE TEA • yy LOVE IN A FALLEN CITY 109 • THE GOLDEN CANGUE 169 • SEALED OFF • 235 RED ROSE, WHITE ROSE • 253 NOTES 315
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