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Miss Shanghai <nyt_headline></nyt_headline><script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">[script]null[/script]</script><script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">[script]null[/script]</script><div id="toolsRight"><div class="articleTools"><div class="toolsContainer"><ul class="toolsList" id="toolsList"><li class="email"><a id="emailThis" href="http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Prose-t.html"><font color="#333333">Sign In to E-Mail or Save This</font></a> </li><li class="print"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Prose-t.html?ref=books&pagewanted=print"><font color="#333333">rint</font></a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Prose-t.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all"></a></li><li class="post" id="post"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Prose-t.html?ref=books#"><font color="#333333">Share</font></a> <ul class="hide" id="postList"><li class="digg"><a href="&#106;avascript:articleShare('digg');"><font color="#004276">Digg</font></a></li><li class="facebook"><a href="&#106;avascript:articleShare('facebook');"><font color="#004276">Facebook</font></a></li><li class="mixx"><a href="&#106;avascript:articleShare('mixx');"><font color="#004276">Mixx</font></a></li><li class="yahoobuzz"><span class="yahooBuzzBadge-form" id="yahooBuzzBadge-form"><a href="http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/new_york_times/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2008%2F05%2F04%2Fbooks%2Freview%2FProse-t.html"><span style="padding-left:20px;cursor:hand;line-height:16px;position:relative"><span style="display:block;background:url(http;left:0px;width:16px;cursor:hand;position:static;top:0px;height:16px"><font color="#004276"></font></span>Yahoo! Buzz</span></a></span></li><li class="permalink"><a href="&#106;avascript:articleShare('permalink');"><font color="#004276">ermalink</font></a></li></ul></li></ul><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">[script]null[/script]</script><script src="http://d.yimg.com/ds/badge.js" ____yb="1" badgetype="text">[script]null[/script]</script><div id="adxToolSponsor"><table height="53" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="93" border="0" style="margin-top:3px;margin-bottom:3px"><tbody><tr valign="bottom"><td width="93"><div style="margin-right:2px"><div align="left"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/books/review&pos=Frame4A&sn2=65994535/89d2fccf&sn1=dec10fe5/e6aed6f3&camp=foxsearch2008_emailtools_810903c-nyt5&ad=UTSM4.2.8&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/underthesamemoon/" target="_blank"><font color="#004276"><img height="20" alt="Article Tools Sponsored By" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/fox/article-sponsor.gif" width="62" border="0" /><img height="31" alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/fox/2008/UTSM_88x31_6.gif" width="88" border="0" /></font></a><br /></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div><nyt_byline type=" "></nyt_byline><div class="byline">By <person idsrc="nyt-per" value="movies::::::http://movies.nytimes.com/person/314036/francine-prose|||arts,automobiles,books,business,college,dining,education,fashion,garden,giving,health,jobs,magazine,movies,multimedia,nyregion,obituaries,realestate,science,sports,style,technology,theater,travel,us,washington,weekinreview,world:::more articles about francine prose.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/francine_prose/index.html|||arts,automobiles,books,business,college,dining,education,fashion,garden,giving,health,jobs,magazine,movies,multimedia,nyregion,obituaries,realestate,science,sports,style,technology,theater,travel,us,washington,weekinreview,world:::more articles about francine prose.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/francine_prose/index.html"></person><alt-code idsrc="nyt-per" value="prose, francine"></alt-code>FRANCINE PROSE<person></person></div><nyt_byline></nyt_byline><div class="timestamp">ublished: May 4, 2008</div><div id="articleBody"><nyt_text></nyt_text><p>Midway through Wang Anyi’s extraordinary novel “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” its heroine, Wang Qiyao, is on her way to a pawn shop when she runs into Mr. Cheng, a friend she hasn’t seen in 12 years. A portrait photographer, Mr. Cheng had taken Wang Qiyao’s photo in the late 1940s; the picture appeared in a magazine, and she went on to win third place in the Miss Shanghai beauty contest, the pinnacle of her career. By the time they meet again, it is 1960. Tragedy and ill-starred romance have ruined Wang Qiyao’s reputation; she is pregnant with the child of a lover whose identity she refuses to reveal. Food shortages have pushed China to the brink of famine, so Mr. Cheng, taking pity on her, invites Wang Qiyao to share his modest lunch of rice and salt pork. At his apartment, “after her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she saw that the little world inside had barely changed; it was as if the little room had been encased in a time capsule. ... Wang Qiyao failed to understand that it is precisely this myriad of unchanging little worlds that serves as a counterfoil to the tumultuous changes taking place in the outside world.” </p><div id="articleInline"><div id="inlineBox"><a class="jumpLink" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Prose-t.html?ref=books#secondParagraph"><font color="#666699">Skip to next paragraph</font></a> <div class="image"><div class="enlargeThis"><a href="&#106;avascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/05/04/books/Prose-t.html',%20'Prose_t',%20'width=436,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><font face="Arial" color="#004276" size="2">Enlarge This Image</font></a></div><a href="&#106;avascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/05/04/books/Prose-t.html',%20'Prose_t',%20'width=436,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><font color="#004276"><font face="Arial" size="2"><img height="234" alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/04/books/prose-190.jpg" width="190" border="0" /></font> </font></a><div class="credit">Yuko Shimizu</div><p class="caption"></p></div><nyt_pf_inline></nyt_pf_inline><div class="sectionPromo"><div id="reviewInfo"><div class="story"><h4><p class="nitf">THE SONG OF EVERLASTING SORROW </p></h4><h5><p class="nitf">A Novel of Shanghai. </p></h5><p class="summary">By Wang Anyi. </p><p class="summary">Translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chang Egan. </p><p class="summary">440 pp. Columbia University Press. $29.95. </p></div></div></div><nyt_pf_inline></nyt_pf_inline><div id="sidebarArticles"><h4>Related</h4><h2><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/chapters/first-chapter-song-of-everlasting.html?ref=review"><font color="#004276">First Chapter: ‘The Song of Everlasting Sorrow’</font></a> (May 4, 2008) </h2></div></div></div><a name="secondParagraph"></a><p>These observations could stand as an epigraph for this beautiful novel, which considers, among its many themes, the question of what endures and what remains the same — what resists the passage of time and what succumbs to the forces of cataclysmic social change. The scope and sweep of the book, which begins in 1945 and ends 40 years later, as well as its focus on the lives of women, may seem reminiscent of “Wild Swans,” Jung Chang’s memoir of her family’s travails under the draconian policies of Chairman Mao. But in fact the two works are remarkably different.</p><p>Though politics play a role in the deaths of two of the men Wang Qiyao loves, history more often seems to happen offstage. It enters the characters’ consciousness like the gossip — “made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice” — that dominates the culture of Shanghai. Its residents, we are told, “hewed to the little things of life, which left them stranded on the margins when it came to politics.”</p><p>Throughout the novel, Shanghai, with its distinct and mysterious <span class="italic"><em>longtang</em></span> — neighborhoods circumscribed by narrow alleys — is as powerful a presence as its citizens and provides the occasion for the most poetic writing, as in this description of young girls’ bedrooms, “where anything can happen, where even melancholy is noisy and clamorous. When it drizzles, raindrops write the word ‘melancholy’ on the window. The mist in the back <span class="italic"><em>longtang</em></span> is melancholic in an ambiguous way — it unaccountably hastens people along. It nibbles away at the patience she needs to be a daughter, eats away at the fortitude she must have to conduct herself as a woman. ... Every day is more difficult to endure than the last, but, on looking back, one rues the shortness of the time.”+</p><p>For the young girls who yearn to escape these rooms, history is filtered through the lens of fashion. The advent of Communism replaces their delicately embroidered cheongsams with blue “liberation suits”; the Cultural Revolution tears the curtains from the windows and fuels bonfires with high-heeled shoes. Rebelliousness asserts itself “in the slight curls at the tips of otherwise straight hair, in shirt collars peeping out from underneath blue uniforms, and in the way scarves were tied with fancy shoestring bows. It was remarkably subtle, and the care people put into these details was moving.” We know a more liberal era has begun when clothing stores open along the boulevards, a mania for shopping infects the population, and Wang Qiyao’s daughter and her friends rush to adopt “the hottest fashion on the street.” Meanwhile, the city itself changes almost beyond recognition. By the final chapters, old Shanghai has become a polluted modern metropolis, the maze of its <span class="italic"><em>longtang</em></span> shadowed by high-rises and hideous new construction.</p><p>In contrast, the novel’s characters each possess, for better or worse, a unique and unalterable core that remains unaffected not only by the lessons of history but by those of personal experience. No amount of enforced “liberation” can make Wang Qiyao’s neighbors transcend their conservative mores and forgive her for having lived in sin with the rich and powerful Director Li. When Wang Qiyao’s girlhood friend, Jiang Lili, becomes an ardent Maoist, she wears a military uniform and struggles to substitute self-discipline for her former self-indulgence. Only her soul is resistant to political re-education. Her youthful “odes to the wind and moon had been replaced by devoted words about steely determination and selfless sacrifice. Now, as then, however, the style smacked of theatrical exaggeration and was not entirely persuasive.” And Jiang Lili still adores gentle Mr. Cheng, whose heart has belonged to Wang Qiyao ever since he photographed her in his studio.</p><p>Ultimately, it is Wang Qiyao who suffers the most and changes the least. And it is Wang Anyi’s complex and penetrating portrayal of her heroine that best displays her gifts as a novelist. Michael Berry and Susan Chang Egan’s graceful translation, only rarely marred by jarring Americanisms (“grunt work,” “deal breaker”), helps us understand why Wang Anyi is one of the most critically acclaimed writers in the Chinese-speaking world.</p><p>Though we are told what Wang Anyi’s heroine is thinking and feeling at almost every moment, her essential qualities become apparent to us — if not to her — only as we observe the patterns that reappear throughout her life. She compulsively or inadvertently places herself at the apex of triangulated relationships and fails to see the pain she causes in the process. Resourceful and essentially decent, she is nonetheless unable to fully comprehend the intensity of other people’s emotions. </p><p>The novel is particularly illuminating and incisive on the subject of female friendship, on what draws girls and women together and then drives them apart. Wang Qiyao has less affection for her somewhat plodding daughter than for her daughter’s best friend, whose effortless and original fashion sense recalls the glamour of Wang Qiyao’s youth. </p><p>By the time Wang Qiyao understands and, in some cases, returns the passion her beauty inspires in men, she has hurt them so much they have no choice but to leave her. Yet despite her flaws she is never unsympathetic. An unusually pretty but otherwise ordinary woman, she is too easily dazzled by style, wealth and pleasure, and too slow to recognize the value of loyalty and kindness. As “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” moves toward its violent, melodramatic and distressingly appropriate ending, readers may feel a Proustian nostalgia for the novel’s lost time, a sadness that mirrors the melancholy that haunts Wang Qiyao and pervades the fascinating, mostly vanished <span class="italic"><em>longtang</em></span> of Shanghai.</p><nyt_author_id></nyt_author_id><div id="authorId"><p>Francine Prose’s most recent book is “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them.” Her new novel, “Goldengrove,” will be published in September. </p></div><nyt_author_id></nyt_author_id><nyt_update_bottom></nyt_update_bottom><nyt_update_bottom></nyt_update_bottom><nyt_text></nyt_text></div> |
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