When I was fifteen, I wrote a semi-autographical story about two sisters. They were forbidden to meet as often as they wished because of family disputes. Even when they met, family pressure forced them to act as if they were estranged. At the end of the story, the two sisters had to separate for many years. Holding the hands of her younger sister, the elder one recited the poem, “To stay together till death and end/ for far, for near, hand, oath, accord:/ Never alive / will we keep that word.” I remembered my Chinese literature teacher underlined the ending paragraph, commenting that was the most sincere part of the whole story. When I quoted the poem as an ending, I was not thinking about its original connotation, but rather how Liuyuan reinterpreted the same poem to Liusu in Eileen Chang’s novella “Love in a Fallen City”. At the darkest moment of the night, Liuyuan, reciting the poem from the other end of the phone, felt the unbearable heaviness of the fate and the lamentable powerlessness of any individual trying to take control. The lines in the quoted poem were no longer sentiments between lovers, but rather an elegy in the style of Greek tragedies. Liuyuan and Liusu saw the monstrous Wheel of Fortune rolling towards them, and they were ready to give up struggles and accept fate as it is. However, Chang decided to show mercy on her characters, and let the Japanese invasion in Hong Kong make their marriage possible.

      This novella, published in September 1943, had a rare happy ending among all Eileen Chang’s works. Earlier that year, she wrote a Vanity-Fair-style story about a blossoming debutante who ended up selling herself to climb the social ladders. One month after “Love in a Fallen City”, she wrote about how the marriage to a disabled rich man destroyed a woman. Chang arranged cruel endings for these heroines who fought against the fate, thus Chang’s mercy towards Liusu and 10 Liuyuan was rather for the reason that the two had already understood too well the cruelty behind everyday life. In this regard, Chang acted as a just God, striking the hopeful, offering consolation to the hopeless.

      Chang’s work has always had a strong influence on me. She introduced me to a colorful world, and at the same time reminded me that beneath this color lay the deepest abyss. Through the world she wove, I learned about unusual passions: incest, adultery, homosexuality, which were often more sincere than the orthodox marriage. I learned about wars and colonization, but not in a fearful way, because the most fearful judgment and punishment always happened in the subtlety of everyday life. I even re-learned about my hometown Shanghai; in Chang’s words, Shanghai was no more than a dazzling metropolis sunk in the abyss, a tender Sodom intoxicated to its last days. Without Chang, Shanghai will lose half of its dazzle as well as half of its heaviness.

      Chang spent her lifetime writing for this dazzling Sodom. She said, when writing “Love in a Fallen City”, “I thought about the Shanghainese every single minute, as I was observing Hong Kong from a Shanghainese point of view.” Adapting Chang’s original novella into a play, I had to revise and reinvent a substantial amount. Every time I had to change the original work, I tried to follow Chang’s intention and observe the fictional world from “a Shanghainese point of view”. I hope this play is able to present this Shanghainese philosophy to the American audience.

      Finally, I would like to pay homage to Professor Hsia Chih-tsing, who single-handedly restored Chang’s prominence in the Chinese literary world. After 1949, Chang moved to Hong Kong and then to the U.S., and was quickly forgotten by the Mainland. In the 50s, Prof. Hsia, then a research fellow at Yale, started to draft A History of Modern Chinese Fiction under the support of Rockefeller Foundation. In this seminal 11 work, Prof. Hsia spent a whole chapter discussing Chang’s literary achievement in the context of such giants as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and James Joyce. Without his insightful critique, Chang would not have been “re-discovered” and popularized by the Mainland since the 80s.

Dedicated to my cousin sister.

– Lily Shen