eBook Love in a Fallen City (New York Review Books Classics) ePub

Banal

After the film adaptation of Lust, Caution, interest in Eileen Chang's work has resurfaced, and I think that the half a dozen stories anthology features some of her better stories.

Love in a Fallen City contributes to a view of love that might leave the reader a little disillusioned with love, but is certainly worth reading, as her stories make a rich impression. Each features a heroine often burdened by social and familial expectation when she encounters love, as in the titular story. Because of such burdens, love becomes an escape or even an illusion built in her mind and becomes a fascinating study of the female psyche as well as of the female voice during the development of the modern China.

Chang's prose is lyrical and the stories will go by quickly if read for pure pleasure, but take a moment to slow down and absorb the characters and settings. The symbolism is sometimes raw and sometimes subtle, but the stories always rich with emotion and sincerity.

Yar

I got into this book. China. The 20s. A narrative and relationships different from our own but told in a way we can digest and understand, thinking too that just around the corner after the British are the Japanese, WWll, 1949 and the communists. Oh my then in 1978 there is Nixon and Kissinger leading us straight into now. Throughout all of this each person has her narrative, her life, her story and we have not even begn to hear them.

Thetalas

This collection of short stories by Eileen Chang, encompasses a half dozen of some her best works of writing. Chang unlike many of the writers of her time in China, focuses on the romantic, more trivial, aspects of life rather than the larger political movements that were occurring. Although events in her stories play are tied to real historical happenings such as the bombing that takes place toward the end of Love in Fallen City. The subjects of her writing are the lives and relationships of her characters. Chang plays with the two major themes of impermanence and disillusionment. Her works, although banned during the Mao period have made a comeback in China and worldwide and have gained extreme recognition and popularity in the years following Chang's death.

Impermanence is a theme that plagues Chang's romances because her protagonists have an ideal of love being permanent. Chang's characters always find themselves questioning their love at some point in the story and through her writing Chang shows that love if fragile and can go as quickly as it comes. In Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, Weilong's romance with George is both imperfect and fleeting. "Cigarette dangling from his lips, he struck a light. On the bitter winter's night the flame flashed before his mouth like an orange blossom. The blossom bloomed, then died. The cold and the dark returned" (76). Chang uses metaphors to beautifully portray how love can be fleeting. The use of "the flame flashed" emphasizes with the word "flash" to show that the love is merely temporary. Chang's metaphor of love being a plant that first blossoms then dies shows a true example of how her writing is able integrate images into thought. The idea of love and happiness in Chang's stories is shaped through the idea that it is fleeting, which makes her writing even more moving by highlighting what is truly important in life even when Chang's characters are so focused upon material and social status gains.

Disillusionment is a theme Chang plays with in all her romance stories. Time and time again, love is forced into oblivion and disappointment by fate and the circumstances of the characters. In Sealed Off the romance that Zongzhen and Cuiyuan briefly have, only ends in disappointment. "She trembled in shock- he hadn't gotten off the tram afterall! The she understood his meanings: everything that had happened while the city was sealed off was a nonoccurrence. The hole city of Shanghai had dozed off and dreamed an unreasonable dream" (251). The illusion of the possibility of love is evident in this quotation because of Cuiyuan's "shock" when Zongzhen had merely returned to his seat instead of getting off the tram, acting as if they were strangers once again after having an intimate moment when they met and fell in love. The use of the word "nonoccurrence" is important because it marks just how irrelevant this false spark of love had been because once circumstances returned to normal "Shanghai awakens from its unreasonable dream" and reality has once again set in, their love is no longer possible.

Eileen Chang brings these themes to her readers in a complex and intriguing pattern of metaphors, imagery, and even irony. Her works are truly a masterpiece because they delve into the human psyche through a unique historical and cultural lens. Chang's writing are woven together through these two common themes and they help to portray the lives of her characters by probing at emotion, displaying longing and grief that form the essential basis for moving stories of love. Her writing is both emotionally moving and meaningful to the larger historical context by rendering away politics and establishing her literature as a work of art freed from alternative motives as a form of pure expression.

Darkshaper

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang is a collection of short novellas set in Shanghai narrating the stories of the privileged elite. The six novellas are titled, "Aloeswood Incense", "Jasmine Tea", "Love in a Fallen City", "The Golden Cangue", "Sealed Off", and "Red Rose White Rose". Eileen Chang is known as The Lady of Shanghai and she used her literary works to redefine the concept of "Chinese womanhood". She uses refined and detailed prose and symbolism to capture her reader's attention and convey her characters stories.
There are many central themes throughout Love in a Fallen City marriage being one of the subtle yet more prevalent ones. Chinese society and Asian culture view the institution of marriage as just that, an institution, something like a business contract made between a man and a women with complete disregard to emotions and feelings. In "Love in a Fallen City" the dialogue between the Bai family shows how a marriage is to be well constructed; the reader can see the thought and decision-making processes behind the marriage of the family's sons and daughters. Financial security and status were two main factors that drove the execution of a marriage. One could not simply marry anyone; you were expected to marry either within or above your social class. Since women became a part of their husband's families they were expected to marry someone with money who would able to care or them financially. The reader can see how essential marriage was to a female's security for life when Fourth Mistress says (2741) "...in times like these I have to think of their needs too. I've got a conscience, and I have to think of them- can't weigh them down and drive them into poverty." Here she is implying that marrying a daughter off to the right companion is the difference between a life of comfort and security, and a life of poverty and misery. Fourth Mistress hints at the shame Lisu brought onto her family when she decided to divorce her first husband when she says "Is divorce such an easy thing, that you can get divorced anytime you want?"
Liuyuan's view on marriage is not one that is portrayed as full of love, admiration and emotion either. Liuyuan's upbringing leads him to view woman as "just the mud under his feet." Which touches on one of the other central themes of this novel, the representation of women. In the novella "Red Rose, White Rose" women are represented in two ways. There is the pure white rose who seems like the perfect wife but then there is also the red rose, the tempting seductress. One single woman could not represent both these entities and making a choice between the two was very difficult. For a while these two women were interchangeable, a man was able to see his red rose when he wanted to all the while knowing that his white rose was dutifully waiting for him. In the end however a choice had to be made and it was the white rose the pure rose that was chosen. The white rose symbolizes the empowerment of Chinese women and begins to douse the notion and stereotype that all Chinese women are red roses the symbolism for prostitutes.
For me marriage should be a representation of how two people who love each other can join in matrimony, a successful marriage shouldn't be based on status or financial security. Some may call me a hypocrite because my opinion on this subject shifts sometimes. Culturally I'm expected to marry someone who is either equivalent to me or higher in financial standards, but I believe you should be able to marry whom ever you want no matter how financially stable they are. I can personally relate to the novellas in Love in a Fallen City" because of how similar the Asian and Muslim cultures are. I personally disagree with the philosophy of marrying solely for money and status though I understand the reasons behind it. Sometimes there is no option but to get married no matter whom they are.

Skunk Black

Still have it on my shelf. A book I kept after my college class.

Modifyn

Unexpectedly original and unique writing. And an insight into a world that previously I'd only viewed from outside. Eileen Chang has given me a view of that world from inside .....

Monn

I loved this book! So compelling. The translation is right on, it did its job of creating amazing images.