Love in a Fallen City

Nie Chuanqing is the protagonist of the short story “Jasmine Tea.” He is a 20-year-old student who is described as having an “oval-shaped Mongolian face [with] a feminine kind of beauty” (79). Chuanqing has a tragic home life that echoes elements of author Eileen Chang’s autobiography. Like Chang, Chuanqing’s father has an opium addiction and his new wife is abusive toward her stepson. Chuanqing comes from a wealthy family, but nevertheless, his living conditions are poor and described as a “desolate scene.” His own bedroom, for example, is full of opium smoke from his father’s and stepmother’s habit and he cannot use the family mansion’s tennis court because it is used for drying opium. Chuanqing’s mother, Feng Biluo, died when he was four years old, and he knows very little about her except for her hatred of his father.

In part due to shame about his home life, Chuanqing is extremely isolated at school and has no friends except for Yan Danzhu, the daughter of one of his professors. Danzhu is pretty, intelligent, and popular. She goes out of her way to socialize with the loner Chuanqing. For his part, Chuanqing is attracted to her but tries to avoid her, as “he [doesn’t] like looking at girls, especially pretty girls with good figures: they [make] him feel especially dissatisfied with himself” (81). Danzhu’s father, Professor Yan, who is scholarly and modern, once proposed to Chuanqing’s mother, but she turned him down. This leads Chuanqing to fixate on Danzhu. His extreme self-loathing as well as his envy of her for having a better father than he does leads him to act violently toward her when she rejects his advances.

Bai Liusu is the protagonist of the novella “Love in a Fallen City.” Liusu is a 28-year-old woman from the conservative Bai family living in Shanghai. As a very young woman, she was married to a man whom she quickly divorced around the age of 21. After the divorce, she moved back in with her family, who treat her with disdain. Liusu is more modern than her family members as represented by not only her divorce but also her ability to dance and, crucially, her decision to go to Hong Kong with Mrs. Xu and pursue a marriage for love with Fan Liuyuan, a wealthy businessman.

Despite her modern qualities, Liusu is still more conservative and traditional than some of the other women around her. It is this conservativism that Liuyuan finds attractive about her. Liusu’s conservativism comes into focus when contrasted with her foil Saheiyini, an Indian woman who is depicted surrounded by men wearing a dress with a “plunging neckline [that] formed a narrow ‘V’ all the way to her waist; it [is] the latest fashion from Paris, called ligne du ciel” (136). Saheiyini is comfortable with the attention of men and indeed attracts Liuyuan’s attention, although she is unable to hold it in the same way Liusu does. By contrast, Liusu holds Liuyuan at arm’s length, metaphorically, and does not permit him to fulfill his desire for her, which only heightens his interest.

Ts’ao Ch’i-ch’iao is the protagonist and antihero of the novella “The Golden Cangue.” The term “antihero” is appropriate for Ch’i-ch’iao because while she is the main character of the tale, she displays negative personality traits, including narcissism and verbal abuse. Ch’i-ch’iao comes from a lower-middle-class family that owns a sesame oil factory in a working-class neighborhood. As a young woman, Ch’i-ch’iao’s family arranges for her to marry the second son of the wealthy Chiang family who is chronically ill with “soft bone illness” or osteomalacia (190). Ch’i-ch’iao is miserable in the Chiang family. To cope, she takes to smoking opium with her husband and acting with volatility and aggressiveness toward the other members of the Chiang family. She also has a flirtatious relationship with her brother-in-law Chiang Chi-tse, who is known as a glutton and a playboy. Indeed, the reason she agreed to marry into the Chiang family is because “it was fated she should be in love with [Chi-tse]” (201). Despite their mutual attraction for each other, their affection is never consummated because Ch’i-ch’iao is paranoid that Chi-tse is simply after the money she receives following the death of her husband.

Ch’i-ch’iao has a son, Ch’ang-pai, and a daughter, Ch’ang-an. She seeks to control her children in the same way that the Chiang family controlled her. To accomplish this, she works to get them both addicted to opium so that they do not spend time outside of the home. She is aggressive with Ch’ang-pai’s wives, both of whom die very young, one by suicide. She also thwarts Ch’ang-an’s attempt at marriage. Ch’ang-an’s prospective suitor, T’ung Shih-fang, describes Ch’i-ch’iao as “a mad person” who chills him to the bone (231).

Wu Cuiyuan is the protagonist of the short story “Sealed Off.” She is a serious, studious young woman who is professionally successful as an educator teaching English at the university in Shanghai. Despite her success, Cuiyuan has low self-esteem as she is not respected either by the people at university or her family. She is described as looking like “a young Christian wife” with “an uncertain, unfocused, timid kind of beauty, always trying not to offend” (240).

Despite, or perhaps because of, her professional success, Cuiyuan does not have much experience with romantic relationships. This lack of experience leaves her vulnerable to the advances of Lu Zongzhen, who is a middle-aged married man. Zongzhen takes advantage of Cuiyuan’s kind, understanding nature to complain to her about the state of his marriage and eventually proposes that she become his concubine. Despite Zongzhen’s proposition, Cuiyuan is flattered by his attentions, blushing and encouraging their conversation.

Cuiyuan’s interactions with Zongzhen are generally characterized by romantic idealism that does not correspond with reality. She believes, for example, that he will act more decently “in response to the subtle influence of her own fine character” (245). She also demonstrates this romantic idealism when she believes that if his affection for her is true love, he will remember her phone number without writing it down and even believes she will be brought to tears if he calls after abandoning her. By the end of the tale, however, this romantic idealism is shattered when she realizes he left her but did not get off the tram.