Shanghai. Eileen Chang's Shanghai.
Those streets, those years, for her, she had already started to miss her before she left.
Traveling through half a century of time and space, her lonely figure walks at the forefront, and wherever she walks, she seems to be leading the way for future generations. Halfway through, Zheng Pingru, who was at a young age, flashed, her charming and agile outline, like a flash in the pan. Li An hurried to catch up.
Pushing aside the tidal wave of compliments, through the constant flashing of the spotlight, the hesitant footprints of this Taiwanese director with a strong temperament are still faintly discernible.
Whose past is like a lost thing? Whose secret intentions remain silent? Leaving only a few words, the so-called hesitating, is it allowed to follow the picture?
With the memory of being awakened again, I returned to the city. Between the clear-cut historical clues and the overlapping texts and images, there is the rain of the late autumn cold, loss and search, paranoia and confusion, like the roses in that big and broken night, blooming and falling one after another.
Ping An Grand Theater
Eileen Chang wrote in Lust, Caution:
"The Ping An Theater across the street is the most ideal, there are shadows under the pillars, and the people at the entrance of the theater are also justified, but the space in front of the door is too wide. The distance is too far. I can't see the people in the car.
From Yili Biscuits across the street to Ping'an Cinema, the city's only clean two-wheeled cinema, the facade of gray, red, dark and yellow bricks has the warmth of knitted rough mud I feel that the whole building is round and concave inward, becoming a corner cut by a crescent moon. The front of the door is very spacious, and the opposite is the Kessling Cafe just now, then the Siberia Leather Goods Store, the Lady Green Fashion Store..."
Reading Eileen Chang In the past, I drove this very famous road and passed by this old cinema. I think this revisit should start here: Ping An Grand Theater, the intersection of Nanjing West Road and Shaanxi North Road (formerly known as Moses Road). Zhang Ailing, Zheng Pingru, Wang Jiazhi, Li An... Ren are such different fates, and their footprints have overlapped on the same street corner.
After looking for it intently, seeing it, there was a bang in my heart - "It's too late"! A few months ago, the old signboard of "Ping An" was replaced by ZARA.
This large theater, which was rebuilt from Ankaidi shopping mall in 1932, once set up 532 auditoriums and mainly screened foreign movies, was easily sent to history by a not-so-first-class fashion brand. On the contrary, looking from the opposite side of the intersection, the arc corners, the spacious facade, and the extended arches, the pattern of the old building still retains the style of the past.
ZARA has not yet opened, and workers are busy decorating.
These busy people - it doesn't matter whether they are locals or foreigners - they are the most active cells in the city, diligently metabolizing according to instructions from nowhere, and one night is enough to produce jaw-dropping metamorphosis. This is today's Shanghai, a woman dressed up to go to the future, hurriedly lifted her skirt, her bruised and dazzling old appearance and the dazzling new face, the flying dust made her veil - as a result, away from her Lately people are always complaining, either coughing or unable to open their eyes.
Kaiser Cafe Not far east
from the Ping An Grand Theater is Kaiser Cafe.
Called. Wang Jiazhi came here to wait for Mr. Yi. The cup of coffee in front of me is already cold, and the car has not come yet. "Waiting is the hardest", "I just don't know where I am in the air, I just don't know where I am" - I know that I am waiting to "play".
What kind of "field" is on the field, and what happens after the field?
"Small scenes" that have been played more than once, all of them appear before me, and the heroine wants to be chased, but cannot be chased away. In a turbulent era, the fake dramas and true feelings are all people with great inspiration, but all of them have entered this line of business - is it called making a living?
Obviously trying to kill.
Wave after wave of psychological foreshadowing is literature that cannot be expressed in movies. Tens of thousands of eyes stared at Wang Jiazhi, took out a small bottle of perfume, and wiped the glass stick behind the earlobe - who smelled the short wisp of gardenia that floated after a while?
Commander Kai written by Zhang Ailing, "...probably mainly rely on store takeaways, with only a few card slots, although it is dark, there is no sentiment." Today, this cafe is still located on the original site of Nanjing West Road, but it is quite different from the cold and bleakness in the novel: the facade has expanded several times, with three floors up and down, the first floor is for sale, the second floor is leased to other restaurants, and the third floor is high above. It is the cafe, and the whole side of the street is equipped with modern floor-to-ceiling glass.
The First Siberia Fur Shop
Most Zhang fans and literary historians would not object. "Lust, Caution" is based on the "spy to spy" story of a female college student spy Zheng Pingru plotting to assassinate Wang's pseudo-spy leader Ding Mocun. The old Shanghai Aiyan legend that ended in death. The thrilling scene that year happened not in the jewelry store, but in the first Siberian fur store.
Zheng Pingru was born in 1918. Her father was a former member of the Alliance who stayed in Japan, and her mother was Japanese. She was the second eldest in the family, with one older sister and two younger brothers and one younger sister. She was originally unknown, but since she appeared on the cover of the July 1937 issue of "Liangyou" weekly newspaper - the bright and bright "Ms. Zheng" attracted attention and was soon absorbed into the Kuomintang. Zhongtong assigned Zheng to deal with Ding Mocun, the "No. 76 leader", not only because of her good looks, but more importantly, she had studied at Shanghai Minguang Middle School, and Ding Mocun was the principal of the school. Zheng, who was eager to make contributions, took advantage of this "friendship between teachers and students" to actively launch an offensive.
No. 76 Jisifeier Road, old Shanghai is the headquarters of the secret agents of the Wang regime. The historian said: "In the Wang regime, there were too many alcoholic women... Ding Mocun, especially a hungry ghost." What
is different from Mr. Yi in the novel and movie is that Ding Mocun Only the vigilance of real agents.
At the end of 1939, Zheng Li took him to the Siberia fur store to buy leather clothes, which was regarded as a Christmas present for her. Just as Zheng was looking around in the mirror, Ding Tu threw a stack of banknotes on the counter, and said, "You can choose, I'll leave beforehand", and immediately rushed out of the store through another door, leaping into the bulletproof car. , the driver immediately slammed on the accelerator and galloped away.
The assassin in ambush did not expect Ding to come out so quickly.
They didn't even expect that the well-laid bureau would be seen through the beauty's dressing mirror by the wily head of the secret agent.
"Help me, play more accurately, don't make me a mess." These were the last words of Zheng Pingru, who was in her early 20s.
A mainland celebrity can't figure it out: she has a superior background, is surrounded by bees and butterflies, and doesn't have to work hard for money and love. Why is she sacrificing her body and life to please a traitor who everyone despises? With this question in mind, this colleague went to Shanghai to interview Zheng Pingru's relatives and related people. He expected to have tears in his eyes after hearing the story, but the conclusion he didn't want to get was that good luck made people. The family firmly believes that she sacrificed herself for justice and died generously. In the eyes of novelists, she "inertia" to exert power, while her boss believes that she is adventurous by nature, and being a secret agent can satisfy a girl's vanity. In the different narratives of different people, the outline of the hero gradually becomes blurred.
From Zheng Pingru to Wang Jiazhi, from Zhang Ailing to Ang Lee, this ray of beauty, who has long been lying in the coffin, wakes up again and again on different stages; it is said to be the same wave of history, but it makes waves in the hands of different people .
If the novel is about the outline, it is nothing more than birth, old age, sickness and death, joys and sorrows; if it is about the weaving, each person hides his own mind.
The former site of the Siberia Fur Shop, which opened in 1935, is at No. 1135-1137 Jing'an Temple Road (namely Nanjing West Road), and is now moved to No. 878. From the towering row of old-fashioned capital letters "THE SIBERIAN FUR STORE" to the slender and concise black font on the signboard that is almost empty today, the changes are summarized as a few old photos hanging on the store. There was not a single customer in the store at this time, but Ang Lee must have walked in and looked at these black and white images carefully, and then accurately reproduced the Siberian fur store in the movie: the classic signboard, the expensive fur that few people care about in the window, The same lonely look as the model - although it is only a short shot, a glimpse of Wang Jiazhi sitting on the rickshaw after Mr. Yi is released.
Li An's intentions are not only that.
From the original book to the movie, Mr. Yi seems to have no name in the impression; I accidentally flipped through a still photo of "Lust, Caution" that night, and suddenly caught a detail, only to find that Li An quietly named Mr. Yi: on the photo The Liang Chaowei frowned and sat in front of the case, with a glass framed "Freedom, Equality and Fraternity" hanging on the wall behind it, with small characters "Respectfully recorded the legacy of the Prime Minister", and then signed: "Mengcheng".
Taking a word from the names of Ding Mocun and Hu Lancheng, combining historical archetypes with individual memories, Li An endowed an original unnamed novel character with a full name and intriguing meaning.
However, I am afraid that there is no audience in the cinema so sharp-eyed?
She poured her heart into places that others can't see - this may be why Zhang Ailing wrote for nearly 30 years, from the start of writing in 1950 to the publication in 1978, in just 20,000 words.
Looking back after 30 years of hard work, she said everything in a light voice:
love is not asking whether it is worth it or not.
Indian Jewelry Store and the End I wandered like a tourist
on Nanjing Road, thinking that maybe I might bump into an Indian jewelry store.
Zhang Ailing's close friend Yanying opened a jewelry store. Yan Ying's father is from India, and her mother is from Tianjin, and the jewelry store is located in the area of the Ping An Grand Theater, but since she sells jewelry, "it has to be a bit of a posture" - I want to come to Zhang Ailing when she wanders overseas, every time she After rewriting "Lust, Caution" again and again, the old scene of a friend's pavilion emerges.
It is said to be a casual look, and I don't expect to find it, but the kindness of Mr. Fang, an old Shanghai native who drove for us to find our way, is hard to ignore. When he reached a place, he suddenly stopped, pointed to an industrial and commercial bank next to Kaysing, and said, "This is it. It seems that there used to be a gold shop.
In the wet and cold dusk, the sky was getting darker and darker, and I took a photo hastily. The moment the shutter clicked, my heart moved, I don't know if it was vicissitudes or suspicion.
I went back to check the information, but I still made a mistake. However, the information is not clear. It is said that it is adjacent to the Kessling Cafe, and it is said that it is on the ground floor of the Garden Apartment: it is obviously two places, and there is a crossroad in the middle. There are various clues. In short, the jewelry stores that changed hands several times were swept into the dust of history along with the "Four Olds" during the Cultural Revolution.
Well, I told myself that some places are still there, and some places are no longer. Maybe this is more like a search.
"Every butterfly is the ghost of a flower in the past, coming back to find itself." These are Yan Ying's words, Zhang Ailing wrote at the beginning of "Yan Ying Quotations".
Zhang Fan must have a lively Yan Ying in his heart, because Zhang Ailing wrote about her many times. Here alone, to be honest, the person who said this is not like Yan Ying, but the person who wrote it down is like Zhang Ailing. She used Yan Ying's mouth to metaphorize her own life motives, and also made a footnote for the relationship between her and the era she failed to catch up with - although the heavy makeup and layered rewriting of literature have already Blurred the sketch of the departure.
After understanding this point, Ang Lee no longer insisted on faithful rendition of the original work. Compared with Mr. Yi, a veteran who accompanies Huanchang women to buy things and secretly proud of "no drugs and no husband" written by Eileen Chang, Yi Mocheng, created by Ang Lee - he coldly watched the fears of his colleagues and dignitaries that could not be concealed, and wanted to explore why There was no such shadow in Wang Jiazhi's eyes; he reactivated his numb ego through violent sex, and was willing to wait to be her prostitute in a tavern in Hongkou; Bright diamond ring, his eyes were dull and slack, when the death knell suddenly sounded, as if a part of him was broken - what Yi Mocheng lost was that Zhang Ailing didn't think there was something, and Li An firmly believed that it was something worth looking for?
* Published in Lianhe Zaobao in February.
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