Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Gossip always carries with it an exhalation of gloom. This murky air sometimes smells like lavender in a bedroom, sometimes like mothballs, and at other times like a kitchen chopping block. It does not remind you of the smell of tobacco plugs or cigars, nor is it even faintly reminiscent of the smell of insecticides like Lindane or Dichlorvos. It is not a strong masculine scent, but a soft feminine one — the scent of a woman. It combines the smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, the smell of cosmetics and cooking oil, mixed in with a bit of sweat. Gossip is always trailed by clouds and a screen of mist. Shadowy and indistinct, it is a fogged-up window — a windowpane covered with a layer of dust. Shanghai has as many rumors as longtang : too many to be counted, too many to be told.

There is something infectious about gossip; it can transform an official biography into a collection of dubious tales, so that truth becomes indistinguishable from gossip. In the world of rumor, fact cannot be separated from fiction; there is truth within lies, and lies within the truth. That gossip should put on an absurd face is unavoidable; this absurdity is the incredulity born of girlish inexperience, and is at least in part an illusion. In places like the longtang , it travels from back door to back door, and in the blink of an eye the whole world knows all. Gossip is like the silent electrical waves crisscrossing in the air above the city, like formless clouds that enshroud the whole city, slowly brewing into a shower, intermixing right and wrong. The rain comes down not in a torrent but as a hazy springtime drizzle. Although not violent, it drenches the air with an inescapable humidity. Never underestimate these rumors: soft and fine as these raindrops may be, you will never struggle free of them.

Every longtang in Shanghai is steeped in an atmosphere of gossip, where right and wrong get twisted and confused. In the elegant apartment-style longtang on the west side of town, this atmosphere is free of clouds, refreshing and transparent as a bright autumn day. Moving down among the modern-style longtang neighborhoods, the atmosphere becomes a bit more turgid and turbulent, blowing to and fro like the wind. Lower down still is the fractious atmosphere of the old-style longtang neighborhoods with the stone gates. Here the wind has died, replaced by the vapor of a humid day. By the time one gets to where the slum-dwellers live, all is enveloped in mist — not the roseate mists of dawn, but the thick fog that comes before a torrential downpour, when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.

But regardless of the type of longtang , this atmosphere penetrates everywhere. You could say that it is the genius loci of Shanghai’s alleys. If the longtang of Shanghai could speak, they would undoubtedly speak in rumors. They are the thoughts of Shanghai’s longtang , disseminating themselves through day and night. If the longtang of Shanghai could dream, that dream would be gossip.

Gossip is base. With this vulgar heart, it cannot help wallowing in self-degradation. It is like sewer water, used, contaminated. There is nothing aboveboard about it, nothing straight and narrow; it can only whisper secrets behind people’s backs. It feels no sense of responsibility, never takes the blame for the outcome — whatever that outcome may be. Because of this, gossip has learned to do as it pleases, running wild like a flood out of control. It never bothers to think things over — and no one ever bothers to think it over. It is a bit like verbal garbage, but then again one can occasionally find small treasures in the garbage. Gossip is made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice. These bits and pieces have faces that are not quite decent; always up to something, they are spoiled merchandise. They are actually made from the crudest materials. However, even the girls in Shanghai’s west-end apartments feel compelled to stockpile some of this lowly stuff, because buried deep inside this shamefully base material is where one can find a few genuine articles. These articles lie outside the parameters of what is dignified; their nature is such that no one dares speak of them aloud — and so they are taken and molded into gossip.

If gossip has a positive side, it is the part of it that is genuine. The genuine, however, has a false appearance; this is what is known as “making truth out of falsehood, fact from fiction”—it is always dishing itself up in a new form, making a feint to the east while attacking from the west. This truth is what gives you the courage to go out into the world and not fear losing face, or the courage to become a ghost — to go against prevailing opinions. But there is a kind of sorrow that comes with this courage — the sorrow that comes from being thwarted, from being kept from doing what one wishes. However, there is a certain vital energy in this sorrow, because even in the midst of it one’s heart surges with high-flying ambition; in fact, it is because of these surging ambitions that one feels such bafflement and loss. This sorrow is not refined like Tang dynasty poetry and Song dynasty lyrics, but belongs to the world of vulgar grievances aired out in the streets. One can feel the weight of this sorrow as it sinks to the bottom. It has nothing of the airy-fairy — the wind, flowers, snow, and the moon dancing on the water — it is the sediment that accumulates at the bottom. Gossip always sinks to the lowest place. There is no need to go looking for it, it is already there — and it will always be there. It cannot be purified by fire or washed clean with water. It has the tenacity for holding onto life that keeps the muscles intact when the bones are shattered, that enables one to swallow the teeth broken in one’s mouth — a brazen-faced tenacity.

Gossip cannot help but be swashbuckling and sensational. It travels in the company of monsters and goblins; rising with the wind, its elusive tail can never be caught. Only in gossip can the true heart of this city be found. No matter how gorgeous and splendid the city may look on the outside, its heart is vulgar. That heart is born of gossip, and gossip is born of the Shanghai longtang . Magnificent tales of the Far East can be heard all over this Paris of the Orient; but peel away the outer shell and you will discover that gossip lies at its core. Like the center of a pearl — which is actually a rough grain of sand — coarse sand is the material of which gossip is made.

Gossip always muddles the senses. Starting with inconsequential things, it winds up trying to rewrite history. Like woodworm, it slowly chews up the books and records, eating away magnificent buildings like an army of termites. Its methods are chaotic, without rhyme, reason, or logic. It goes wherever it wants, swaggering like a hooligan, and wastes no time on long-winded theories, nor does it go into too much detail. It simply spreads across the city, launching surprise attacks; by the time you turn around to see what sneaked up on you from behind, it has already gone without a trace. It leaves in its wake a chain of injustices with no one to take the blame and a string of scores with no one to settle with. It makes no big, sudden movements but quietly works away without stopping. In the end, “many a little makes a lot,” and trickling water flows into a great river. This is what is meant by the saying, “Rumors rise in swarms”; they indeed drone and buzz like a nest of hornets. A bit contemptible, maybe, but they are also conscientious. They pick up discarded matchsticks to make a fire. If they see a lone piece of thread on the floor, they will take it up and begin to sew. Though always making trouble, they are nevertheless earnest and sincere.