Remembrances of Huileli

by Mei Jing

The ancient Greek sage Heraclitus once observed: “Character is fate.” Down through the ages innumerable men attempted choosing their own destiny, changing their fate; however, virtually none has been able to break free of the fate predetermined by their character. The concretion of fate is intimately bound up with childhood experiences, which lead to people's ultimate destiny. Allegedly a child's primal dream foreshadows his future life.

The very first dream I remember, I had it in an attic at No. 25, Lane 726, Fuzhou Road , in Shanghai . That place is called Huileli , initially known in old Shanghai as Simalu, an upscale red-light district. I was then around five years old, and my parents had been sent into the southwest interior on development and construction assignments. After birth I was left behind in Shanghai to live here with paternal and maternal grandparents, the families of Big Auntie, Little Auntie, and those of two second cousins, one male, one female. I lived up in the loft with Big Auntie's and Little Auntie's children, to wit Big Coz Xiaogan, 'Lil Coz Xiaoqiang, as well as Big Sis Ahfeng. As I was the youngest, they humored me all along. With no adults around, we would climb up into the attic and roughhouse and horseplay, tossing pillows, turning things upside down. At night we would bed down up there, boys on the left, girls on the right, with little me in between relaying words back and forth. Sometimes when the whisperings turned louder and louder, Big Sis would shout us into silence; and in stone quiet we'd pass into dreamland.

Here's the crux. What those dreams were, I, at age three or four, understood little; I would only tell Xiaoqiang this and that, like I had gone to the heavens and seen another River Whampoo up there. He told me straight away that I was crackbrained and only dreaming, saying whatever is seen after the eyes are shut is but a dream. He also reminded me that we had been to the Whampoo the day before in the afternoon to see the ships. I cried up, wondering, was that a dream? What shape is a dream, square or round? Xiaoqiang right off snapped, “None of your little kiddie questions! The moment Ahfeng turned off the light last night, you went roaring asleep like an Irish piggy. Who'd believe you have dreams?” I pouted in silence, not understanding why people would not call me by my name but rather dub me piggy , and prefix it with Irish at that. Was that because I had a roundish face, a pudgy butt and tummy, and arms and legs like fat lotus roots? Whatever, the nickname has stayed with me since childhood. Now I've grown slim and tall, but my boyfriend likes to address me thus, which gives me the sweetest sensation.

I did indeed dream of the Whampoo, but since nobody would listen to me, I went to Grandpa to tell him about it. At the time red-armbanded Grandpa was busy doing duty in the neighborhood, giving directions to out-of-towners, and he would not listen, either. Before long this dream of the Whampoo faded from my memory.

However, one winter's day about five years ago, I saw things again in my sleep—that dream was not to be effaced from the depths of my mind no matter how I tried. I saw my self dressed in a cotton frock printed with florets, walking on a spacious square, holding that tinplate box of mine, which contained all my toys, like mini pans and bowls, a long-pigtailed rag doll, five color marbles, a little clam shell empty of clam oil, a golden magic wand, which in all seemed to cover all my belongings. I schlepped, hobbling along in small steps with this then unbearably heavy box. Somehow I could not get to the end of the seemingly endless square. I panicked—where was I going with this box? I didn't know what to do if I could not get out. I could only trudge ahead laboriously on the square, on and on… Heavens! I was so bedeviled by my own bearings. I woke up in a fright, feeling unspeakably dejected. If the dream foreboded my future, how wretched that would be! Why could I not dream of cream cakes, eight-treasure plums, big popsicles, and whatnot, as did Maomei, same age as me? In my dreams there never was anything to eat. I told big bro Xiaoqiang about my dream and worries, and he simply said that was fun. Indeed no. Not only my dream was dull and boring, but so was my life, only more so. When I got up in the morning, my cousins were already gone to school. I could only get a small stool and sit by the door, watching Grandma fixing fresh soybeans and veggies, and soon it was lunchtime. I would take a noon nap, of course, and after that, I would eat a few cookies and get the stool out again, just to listen to Madam Liu chat with Grandma. I would go downstairs with the magic wand in hopes of finding a little playmate, but kids my age would not be out and about without adults. Even with Maomei, my classmate from primary to middle school all the way through college, we could only watch each other from the windows. For a time, it got into Grandpa and Grandma's heads to pack me off to kindergarten, a place far away, to be lodged there day and night. All because my mother, herself a broadcast announcer, wanted me to learn to speak Mandarin. I had been there only week before I was back again, waxen-faced, sick big time on account of bowel movements. The nursery had only squat-style toilets, and I had only learnt to sit on a lavatory. I couldn't even stand sitting on a cold spittoon, and to fool the nursery mistresses I just went through the motions of sitting atop a spittoon. Nobody found out that I had not evacuated my bowels in a week, and when I got home, my belly was full to bursting, so much so that I cried pain. A laxative lotion was resorted to, and word of this spread around the neighborhood. Everybody was saying something had gone wrong in the nursery with little Zhuzhu living at No. 25. This was occasionally brought up even when I got into grade school; needless to say, it effectively brought an end to any more kindergarten.

What was to be done if I could not go to kindergarten? That summer, I was running around with Xiaoqiang, who was already a second-grader. Usually we hung around the Bund, or headed out even further to Tibet Road . Xiaoqiang's parents, Big Auntie and Big Uncle, were very strict with him and allowed him little in the way of pocket money, whereas I could always cajole a dime or two from Grandma on the pretext of buying glutinous rice dumplings around the corner. In fact, I would save the change for Sunday, when Xiaoqiang would take me to the streets to buy goodies. Once we bought preserved plums, eight-treasure plums, fresh plums, and a little piece of cream cake. We had planned to go home, but Xiaoqiang ran into classmates and wanted to go someplace farther away without taking me along. He thought up an idea: he would keep an eye on me not far away, and I should burst out crying by the roadside. The upshot was that a cop was attracted my way, came up and held me up caringly, and I spoke as I had been told: “My home is in Huileli. I don't know the way.” More crying. The cop hoisted me up, walked off to buy a lollipop for me, while from over his shoulder I saw Xiaoqiang and his pals grinning, running away. I knew what a trick this was when I grew up, but at the time I really didn't know that with my babyish, piteous face I could elicit so much pity with tears. From then on, each time we went out, we would blow all the money and I would get taken home by a cop. He himself would gallivant around for a long while before coming home, by what means, I never knew.

In the year when I was going on six, we perambulated the area around Huileli, going east to Henan Central Road , or crossing over to Hankou Road, Shanxi South, Shandong Central, etc. All this gadding around thrilled us both, Xiaoqiang and me, and we never tired of it. One day we saw Little Grandpa standing absently at the entrance of a lane on Shandong Central. Out of curiosity we asked him, and he replied that this was where he had worked before Liberation. We took another look. Seeing nothing more than a mere fried-bun joint, we thought Little Grandpa must have made his living frying buns. It was not until my freshman year that I found out that Shandong Central used to be Wangping Street , which, though just a side street of only 200 meters, had once been well-known as the fountainhead of the Shanghai press. My Little Grandpa had for a time worked for the renowned English-language newspaper Shanghai Times, which had been running for eighty-seven years when it folded in 1951. Little Grandpa had had his glory days as a fairly noted newspaperman in Shanghai . I only regret that when I got to know all this, I could no longer pry anything out of the one who knew it all in detail. On a rainy day in 1978, Little Grandpa, who wasn't yet advanced in seniority, tripped over on Baidu Bridge and never stood up again.

Because of Little Grandpa I went to primary school at six. It was the school Xiaoqiang attended, so that he could take me to school. At home there was really no longer anybody to take care of me. Naturally, I learnt the tricks of the slingshot, cockfighting, marbles, cigarette package wrapping and other boys' things. Of girls' games such as rope jumping, I knew nothing and would not care to know anything.

The first time I heard the utterance “go to Simalu to shoot pheasant” was when I was in the latter half of grade one. I overheard it from a few hoods on my way home on Henan Central. I did not know what that really meant and only said we had no pheasant where we lived. Xiaoqiang, however, rushed over and sailed into them, only to be beaten black and blue. I was astonished to see that normally valiant Xiaoqiang was no match for them. I immediately took out the slingshot form my satchel, and one shot after another got those thugs right in the behind. However, one shot missed and hit a thug in the eye. Who told him to crouch when I fired? He burst out crying, and those several thugs huddled around him. Xiaoqiang meanwhile took my hand and led me away running. At the entrance to the alleyway, Xiaoqiang put away the slingshot under a board outside the small dark room of Auntie Su, all the while telling me not to own up to anything. Sure enough, that kid came along with his parents to Huileli to look for us. I only heard Xiaoqiang say, “Our Zhuzhu is only six, and how does she know how to use a slingshot? She doesn't even know what a slingshot is. I used it, don't blame it on Zhuzhu.” Grandma put in a word for me: “Our Zhuzhu is very obedient and wouldn't know how to play with that kind of rough stuff.” In the meantime, I cried without tears coming out. However, as I cried louder, the neighbors came, and I could see from between my fingers that they were pointing their fingers this way and that. Xiaoqiang was winking at me, and Auntie Su was looking at me, too. I got really worried, but she didn't say anything. Anyway, I only got that boy in the face, on the eyebrow, no big deal. That shiner would be gone in a few days, and so would the whole thing.

From that day on, I started paying attention to usually taciturn Auntie Su. She was charged with cleaning the public toilet and common ground in Huileli. She was inordinately clean, always wearing a face mask and bands and gloves for the job. One day when I got home from school, Auntie Su gave me something wrapped up in paper at the foot of the stairs. I took it and hurried upstairs without so much as looking at her. What was inside was of course the slingshot. I grew flustered, fearing Auntie Su would tell Grandma about it. Several days passed, and nothing happened, and I told Xiaoqiang that Auntie Su knew everything and said nothing. He told me not to have anything to do with Auntie Su, however, saying she must be a baddie. Otherwise how would she go clean the toilet? To be sure, I didn't understand it, either. A close look at Auntie Su would make one suspect something. For her eyes showing above the big face mask were all such sadness and despair, and if you only gazed into those eyes, you'd find how different, how out of the ordinary they were. They were not at all like the eyes of other elderly women, whose eyes had sagging bags. Though the skin around the corners of her eyes were somewhat lax, yet somehow firm, too, and those eyes in contrast showed something unmistakably melancholy, not at all like my Grandma and Auntie Wang next door, who were often laughing, their eyes turned into a line.

I was not yet initiated into things of the world and so hardly one to pay any particular attention to Auntie Su. However, her going it all alone, locking herself up in the small dark room on the ground floor, and having no guests over even during festivals—all this attracted my attention. At first it was all out of curiosity. One day, I was home early from school and surprised to see Auntie Su's door rather surprisingly open. A curtain hung there, and I could not make out what she was up to inside. Still, I gingerly approached the door, hunkered down, and looked up. I saw Auntie Su sitting at a table writing something, which astounded me. Little had I thought that Auntie Su was literate! Quite unlike my Grandma and Auntie Wang, two illiterates who had to make notes after buying even groceries. When Big Auntie got home, Grandma would have forgotten everything, and in spite of the entries in the book, nothing was quite clear, and Big Auntie couldn't care less with her screwy bookkeeping. Only Grandma thought that with so many mouths to feed with Big Auntie's monthly wages, at least she had something to show for the expenses. I went up to Auntie Su's door and gave a cough or two. Sure enough, she turned around, unmasked, but with glasses on. Seeing it was me, she rustled up something of a smile around the corner of her mouth and asked if I was just back from school. I nodded and she asked if had done my homework. I said I couldn't bothered, and she stared at me from above the frame of her glasses with an air of stern admonition. She said for a girl to get some education was not easy, and how could I treat it lightly? She added that whatever was to be done today should be done today, and that's as it should be. So we struck up a conversation with one of us inside the door and the other outside. She did not let me in, and I grew so impatient I asked if she was going over her lessons herself. This time she smiled, saying at her age what school lesson was there to be reviewed? She was only amusing herself writing something, and right off I asked what she was writing and if I could have a look-see. Thereupon she beckoned to me and let me in. You guess what I saw? It was a flower drawn in black ink on a blank page in a notebook. I asked what that was, and she said this is mume, one of the Three Friends of Winter. I looked more closely and saw the mume looked so solitary, a mere sprout sprung from the annual rings of an old mume, just blooming alone by itself. I asked how come she could draw? She said she had learnt it in her younger days. So I took it up admiringly and ingenuously looked up to see if she'd teach me how to draw. She said I could after finishing my homework. Upon hearing her say so, I turned around, saying I was going away to do my home work.

That was the first time I went into her home. Later on I went there more often and found out she was not only lettered but was adept at Suzhou embroidery, too. It was a pity she was getting on in years, not sharp-sighted as before and had a little difficulty passing a thread through the eye of a needle. In those years girls under ten had to learn handicrafts under the supervision of adults, such as crocheting, embroidery, and the operation of the pedal sewing-machine. At age six and a half I took up the broidery thread in Auntie Su's home and embroidered the first sunflower on a blouse collar. Thereafter I learnt from her other fancywork so that even today, a table-cloth I hand-embroidered would amaze many a person. Among people my age, there were not many who were so skilled. Grade one was soon over, and at the time textbooks were all revolutionary quotations, such as: Speed up grain production, step up cloth production, blah blah blah. So within three days I had finished all my summer homework for language arts and arithmetic. After that it only remained to have fun, and yet there was not much fun to be had. Just take swimming. Though I had obtained a swimming card after a physical at the community hospital, I could only splash around with little kids of four or five. The sight of Xiaoqiang and them having a ball like fish in water made me hate myself for not growing fast enough, having been “born in wrong times.” That summer I was rather disgruntled that my height had not reached that required for swimming in the adults' section. Once, and I don't know how this happened, I smuggled myself into the adults' section. I looked into the rippling water at the deep end and grew a bit scared. As I was gawking down into the water with my butt upturned, Xiaoqiang kicked me from behind, and I plunged in. I struggled, and though the movements must have been anything but graceful, I did not drown down but rather learnt to swim. Still, this kick deprived me of my swimming privilege again, because both Grandma and Big Auntie agreed that I had to reach nine before I would be allowed to swim again. Though I can swim now thanks to those crawls and kicks in childhood, I am not accomplished in this field probably because I had to stop just when I had the greatest interest in swimming, which may have stunted development of my swimming skills in the optimal period.

After I was barred form the swimming-pool, I had to stay idle at home, though I could find company in Maomei and have some fun. She was the kind of girl to go into tears at the slightest provocation, and the mere sight of a hairy worm was enough to frighten her away. Palling around with Maomei enabled me to show my heroic colors again, but absent he bigger kids, I grew listless during the vacation much too long. So during the latter half of the vacation, I took up with some grannies and listened to their gossip. One time I happened to be sitting by the door helping Grandma clipping winkles. Auntie Su returned after sweeping the grounds, still that armed-to-the-teeth look. When she passed, all the grannies clammed up. I stood up quite at ease and followed her, but my Grandma hollered after me to stop. Auntie Su embarrassedly walked off. I was quite unhappy that Grandma would not let me go to Auntie Su's home, nor would she tell me why. Only Auntie Li, who lived on the ground floor, spoke up and said that it served Auntie Su right, as she had had her time in a Changsan Mansion . What comfy glory days those must have been! Now it was all done for, and after Liberation it was time she did some serious self-reformation. Right away I asked where was this Changsan Mansion . Grandma said kids do not understand things of this kind and should not ask such questions. I did not pry further at the time, but a child's reverse psychology made me grow closer to Auntie Su.

In all fairness I have to say the remaining half of the vacation I spent in gaiety and wonder. I was really fed up with these grown-ups' endless babblings. People seek ever wider interest in proportion as their interests are narrowly confined. Sometimes I pricked up my ears to listen to adult gossip, especially when they lowered their voices to talk about Auntie Su and Changsan Mansion . All this seemed like a flash of lightning from the far end of the sky, auguring a totally different world. As the erstwhile Huileli and Auntie Su grew fainter in my mind, what on earth did all this signify?

Later that summer, whenever I had the opportunity, I'd go to that small dark room of Auntie Su's. After I went in, Auntie Su would always close the door firmly behind us, and we never talked loudly. In that neat, tidy room there was only the voices of the two of us talking gently. My heart at that tender age, summoned by a mysterious call, went to the world of vicissitudes of an aging woman. My appearance must have stirred up waves in her heart, not just breezy ripples, but something absolutely tumultuous. Her words gushed endlessly as if from her very bosom. Only then did I know that Auntie Su not only had a very capable husband in Shanghai but also a son by the name of Su Peihu. On the eve of Liberation, her husband left them both behind. As for Su Peihu, he left home one day after finishing middle school, never to return. Sometime in 1977, he wrote a letter saying he was in Xinjiang. All was well with him, and he would never return to Shanghai again. When talking about this, Auntie Su never shed a tear, and I thought that her heart must have been broken to the extreme, just like dead water. All she did was to heave a sad sigh: all this was fate! Of things before this, she mentioned little, except that she had been pretty in her youth and could recite poetry and sing songs and play musical instruments. She was from Yangzhou —and Yanzhou has been known since antiquity for beautiful women—and when she first came to Shanghai , she had quite a name.

Outside influences on a person could be tremendous, and sometimes leave lasting imprints in one's memory, or rather, on one's heart and mind, to such an extent that they can never be forgotten, no matter how much time has elapsed. When I think of Auntie Su, I never fail to think of that damp, dark little room, which acquired a vivacity of its own because of Auntie Su. What made it all so endearing to me was that at age six and a half I had a glimpse of the vagaries and tragicality of the world. I saw a woman's real despair and heartbreak: she was living, but she was already sound asleep, never to awake again. In the new term after the vacation, we all went back to school prettily dressed. The first day of the semester was for a meeting as well as general cleaning. I put the broom over the door, and whoever pushed the door would be hit by the broom falling down. I had intended it for a dandizette, but somehow the first to come in was the headmaster. Under so many eyes, it was impossible to slip away, and all I could do was to disown responsibility. The master called the roll rather annoyedly. When he asked me, I made like I really knew nothing, claiming I had been engrossed in a pictorial story and never raised my head. When he asked Maomei, she said nothing and merely turned her eyes my way, which gave it all away. The master said I had an honest face but treacherous bowels. So the first day school began, I was detained, until Big Auntie came to fetch me after getting off work. I was really pissed off and did not speak to Maomei again. No matter how she tried to make up to me, I simply brushed her off. And I was hatching a plot to get my own back.

My scheme for vengeance was quite diabolical. Hatred rankled in my mind for days. On a gloomy rainy day, the bell rang for the class, yet I remained in the toilet room until everybody was gone. Gritting my teeth, I took out the chalk I had in my pocket and vented my wrath on the wall. I had planned to write with my left hand, “Down with Maomei!” However, before I could finish the last character, somebody came in. This was the person to clean the toilet and would not leave any time soon. So I had to come out. Never did I know that with my exit I missed the opportunity and brought about a disaster!

This slogan of hate, missing the last character, lent itself to counter-revolutionary suspicions. Everybody in the class was summoned to have their handwriting checked against that of the slogan. I was really scared inwardly, but I had made up my mind not to admit to anything. Anyway, I could make like I could not write with my left hand. My feint paid off, as none of the teachers suspected me, and only I was aware that if I did not admit it, nobody would. Yet I had celebrated way too early. After a round of checks, the teachers zeroed in on several suspects, among them Maomei. Under cajolery and threats, she was frightened out of her wits and admitted she had written the slogan. I went agape on hearing of this. Though Maomei came from a family with questionable background, and her mother was a Rightist, she would not go so far as to be so counterrevolutionary. And I, the culprit, had been holding my peace. I was at a loss as to what to do, and I dared not admit it, because from the way the adults treated it, I had sensed how direly serious that was.

I wandered around with a heavy heart for a long while before returning to Huileli. Just as I entered the alleyway, I saw teachers from our school walking Maomei in the direction of her home. They went into the building and quite some time had passed and nobody came out. Distraught, I ran home and watched from the window. Later the teachers left, and from inside the building opposite came rants and cries. It must be Maomei getting beaten by her mom. I felt so sorry. Although Maomei and I used to watch each other from windows just a courtyard apart, and this was hardly the first time I had heard her get a beating or tongue-lashing, this time it was so excruciating I could barely keep body and soul together. I could not ignore her suffering, but there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't have the courage to fess up to the teacher, nor to Maomei. Each morning when I woke up, I'd have jitters just thinking about having to go to school and meeting Maomei. Because this had got out of hand, after school there would be boys behind Maomei, shouting, “Counterrev slogan, you bad egg!” Later on it so developed that Maomei dared not show up alone at school, and she turned taciturn and would not greet anyone.

I had to engage in introspection over and over again over this. Time is all-important, and in time this incident would be forgotten. I slept and woke in this ineluctable beautiful halo of my own devising. One breezy day, with sunbeams scattered around, everything was tranquility itself. I saw Auntie Su's door ajar, pushed and got inside. A cup of tea—what kind I knew not—was exuding its refreshing fragrance around, and Auntie Su was distraitly sitting by the window, bathing in the sunshine coming in. The moment I entered, that peace was disturbed. Often even before I said anything, Auntie Su would have psyched me out. Outside the door somebody was barking, “Red soya sauce, white soya sauce!” Maomei was going over with a sauce bottle in hand, and both Auntie Su and I saw it. We seemed to have come to some sort of tacit understanding and just watched her. After a long while, I said, “Auntie Su, nobody pals around with Maomei any longer, all because of that counterrev—” Auntie Su glanced at me quietly and said, “You should chum with her, right? I looked at her in some surprise, for I had never mentioned this to anyone and had only reproached myself in my heart. Could it be that Auntie Su had known about it all? “You'd be kind to her. Maomei is such a good gal, and ya're too, right?” From that day on, I approached Maomei on my own initiative, and it was from that time on that we came friends close and inseparable as body and shadow, all the way through high school and college. I always felt remorseful towards Maomei, because even after primary school, the incident was brought up occasionally to her prejudice. When I was eighteen, I confessed to Maomei, and she just smiled mildly, saying she had known all along that I had written those several characters against her. I was so astonished. That year I was only seven, and Maomei eight, and she had such a heart to swallow a wrong and shoulder the consequences. I admired her, and held her in the highest regard; at the same time I felt grateful to life for giving me such an extraordinary bosom friend to keep me company.

That winter as Maomei and I were busy preparing for the finals on campus, we did not go home for two weeks running. By the time the exams were over and we went back to Huileli, something big had happened. Auntie Su had passed away on a snowy night. According to the forensic surgeon, it was myocardiac infarction, and nobody at been at her side when she died. At the time I already knew that Auntie Su had an elegant byname Autumn Cloud. I heard say her son had come back but had not bothered about ceremony. After Auntie Su was cremated, he departed. I had only had one glimpse of her son when he came to clear the room. He locked the door and went away, and I thought this had to be Su Peihu. Several years later, another person opened the door to Auntie Su's room, and that was said to Auntie Su's grandson, come to Shanghai to do business. Huileli was supposed to be vacated and dismantled at the time, and this guy accordingly got a small studio on Jinian Road . In college I had written an essay on folk customs entitled “Simalu, Shanghai .” I felt so much had happened there that were stories of joy and sorrow, separation and reunion. It was here that I verified so much about Simalu from documentary literature, finally realizing that Huileli at the west end of Simalu had been an upscale red-light district in Old Society. The Changsan Mansion was the kind of place that only the rich and powerful like Chiang Kai-shek, Huang Jinrong, Du Yuesheng, Hu Shitang could patronize. The courtesans in Changsan Mansion were likewise girls of exceptional talent and beauty. Huileli bordered on Tibet Road , which had been just a waterway, opposite the celebrated Hippodrome, which was part of the French Concession. A walk east on Simalu down to Qipan Street would reveal another streetscape, which happens to be today's Henan Central. Within the confines of this quarter had been established, before the outbreak of the August 13 Sino-Japanese Conflict, dozens of newspapers, hundreds of magazines, and some 300 bookshops new and old. In 1939 the Anti-Japanese was raging on, and of the 245 bookshops in the city ninety-two were concentrated here. In 1948, there were, all told, over 500-odd bookshops and over 1,000 newspaper stands in the city, and most were concentrated here. The largest, best known, on this street would be the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Books, and World Books, the three biggies in publishing. They were representative of the book industry in Shanghai and harbinger of the modern Chinese publishing industry.

Changsan Mansion happened to be located at Huileli. However, according to Biography of Sai Jinhua , brothels in Shanghai fell into several classes, the highest being Shuyu . Next came Changsan ; and still next below, Yao'er ; and further down, the likes of Flower Smoke House , Pheasant , and so on. Shuyu used to addressed So-and-so Shuyu, and changsan So-and-so Yu—a missing character signified a difference in rank. Yao'er used to be called So Tang, and above the doors of Shuyu and Changsan hung plaques bearing the names of the girls. It could thus be inferred that the use of Changsan Tangzi as a general term for upscale brothels was relatively a latter-day appellation.

To think that the place where I had been born and reared should have been brothel quarters! Above each door would have hung a plaque, and each house had something special to offer. Herein allegedly lies the greatest difference between shuyu and changsan girls: Shuyu girls had to be good at singing, a prerequisite, and on first acquaintance a girl was supposed to sing for a patron, which was the so-called “Tang Song”; whereas with Changsan, no singing was necessary. Shuyu girls did not sleep with patrons, and if from time to time this should happen, it was only after the girl had quite some friendship with the patron and only if the girl wished the patron to stay. Changsan girls would go to bed with patrons somewhat more readily; still this would take considerable time, after some familiarity and banqueting.

It is only now do I understand those provocations arisen out of Simalu. As for Auntie Su, I had only seen that part of her afterlife when she was at her poorest, having a hard time self-reforming. She would have lived at Huileli all along, but was she a Shuyu girl or Changsan? If so, it should come as no surprise at all that she was literate. What was most surprising for me was the literature I had seen about Li Shutong, who in time was to become a high priest of great virtue, the reverend Hongyi. In his youth he had lived in Shanghai and frequented those fleshpots of pleasure. His literary fame spread across Shanghai high society in this period, and he was known as a celebrated libertine, the cynosure and toast of the literati. Li Shutong was no run-of-the-mill man of letters. The occurrence of the Gengzi Indemnities rendered him unable to forget about the miseries of the land while indulging himself in sensual pleasures. He had written a poem in the course of his dalliance with a courtesan by the name of Autumn Cloud:

Wind and rain stir up memories of old,

Regrets and pleasures stem from karma;

Fleeting flower barely shows its shadow,

Fair brows and eyes hardly cast a glance.

The heart dies ere the worm's silk is spun,

Old country, cold sky, dream not spring;

The world in the eye is but a sea of tears,

Who makes you sad, who makes you pine?

We could perhaps sense something of the reason why he later gave up mundanities to become a monk. The name Autumn Cloud held me in shock and awe. Could she be a namesake of Auntie Su of Huileli? Or could it be the one and the same person? Li Shutong, as a scion of nobility, of course had the means to afford the pleasures of wine and poetry, women and song without having to worry about making both ends meet. He should have patronized shuyu, and in this he was so much more fortunate than Yu Dafu.

The Huileli we lived in had been reconstructed in 1925 and was therefore called New Huileli. Upon Liberation in 1949, there were still ten licit, shingle-hanging brothels in Huileli. In September 1949, the municipal government of Shanghai issued an edict banning prostitution and closed down all brothels. The houses that had been brothels were up for sale or rent, and thereafter this once red-light district gradually turned into a residential neighborhood for commoners. Further research shows that all houses had once been occupied by brothels, except for No. 25, which had housed the Gaoyuan Pharmacy. Only then did I realize that the two rooms on the ground floor of our building were particularly spacious. The one Auntie Su had occupied probably had had been the storage room of the pharmacy. Now that Huileli has been vacated and dismantled, a new skyscraper will rise up on this plot that had been a symbol of the old times. My family has already moved to Pudong New District. Before moving away, we took a photo at the entrance to Huileli, and it was to be mailed to Xiaoqiang on the other side of the Pacific. This is Huileli, the place where we grew up. These houses that had witnessed human joys and sorrows are already gone. Who would remember all this? It was a most desolate sight when half razed, as lots of buildings had been rid of their roofs and let in light—a bleak sight of absence and emptiness.

Our life validated the first dream within memory that I had at Huileli. I went from Shanghai to Beijing , and then from Beijing to Sichuan , thence further to Shenzhen, and now I have come to Haikou . Where will be my next stop, I know not. I guess this is a life of wandering.

Huileli has disappeared, and I have lost my birthplace, as if never to see my roots again. These are things past, things bygone, just like wind, and whatever is to come will be new.

Last updated: May 18, 2004