## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=0s) Linguistic Homogenization and Shanghai's Immigrant DNA
The discussion opens with an observation on how modern global metropolises are rapidly converging into uniform cultural landscapes. Looking back twenty years, a speaker recalls living in Guangzhou for seven years; back then, Mandarin was spoken almost exclusively within the confines of the Guangdong Radio compound, while stepping out beyond the gates immersed one entirely in a Cantonese-speaking world. Today, that distinct regional separation has largely dissolved, with Mandarin pervasive even on the streets of Guangzhou. For Shanghainese natives, watching their local tongue recede evokes an instinctive pang of grief and emotional loss. Yet, as the speakers emphasize, one must maintain an open, inclusive mindset, because modern population mobility is simply an irresistible historical force.
When returning to Shanghai today, the vast majority of people one encounters—outside of a few childhood friends—are non-locals. Relatives might occasionally grumble about driving outsiders away, to which the counterargument is immediate and practical: if all the outsiders left, virtually no friends would remain, as the overwhelming majority of acquaintances in the city center are now from elsewhere. Decades ago, a college friend brought from Northeast China could pick up the gist of the Shanghai dialect within a single week simply by virtue of being immersed in it everywhere. Today, long-term transplants can reside in Shanghai for years without understanding a word because the dialect is seldom heard in daily social spheres. The notable exception lies in grassroots commerce: migrant vendors from Shandong and Anhui running stalls in local wet markets often pick up fluent Shanghainese within a few years because they barter with elderly locals daily. Meanwhile, the delivery workers and domestic helpers caring for local children are almost universally migrants, mirroring precisely the journey that prior generations of Shanghainese undertook when they first arrived.
- Decades ago, Mandarin in Guangzhou was strictly localized to institutional bubbles like the Guangdong Radio compound.
- Migrant vegetable sellers from Shandong and Anhui master the Shanghai dialect through grassroots retail interactions, whereas white-collar arrivals rarely encounter the language.
- Modern service work—couriers, domestic care, market vending—is sustained almost entirely by incoming migrant labor.
---
[01:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=106s) The Commercial Spirit of Shiliupu and the 1836 British Encounter
Addressing the common stereotype of Shanghainese xenophobia, the panel explains that psychological barriers to integrating with locals are largely a misconception, especially in the post-reform era. The perceived insularity was primarily an artifact of the roughly twenty-year period of rigid household registration (*hukou* restrictions), where outsiders could not enter and locals could not depart. In truth, Shanghai’s deeper history is that of an immigrant boomtown carved out of a small coastal county.
To illustrate this innate commercial openness, a historical anecdote is shared from 1836—seven years before Shanghai officially opened as a treaty port in 1843. Two British merchant vessels attempted to trade in Guangdong but were expelled. Stymied, they sailed north to try their luck and cast anchor at Shanghai's Shiliupu (十六铺). Upon their arrival, residents from the old walled city swarmed the docks, brimming with curiosity and commercial ambition. Locals immediately peppered the British crew with inquiries about renting houses and purchasing their cargo. The British were astonished by this uninhibited mercantile spirit: the locals not only bought up everything the ships carried, but promptly convinced the foreigners to spend all their earnings on local silk and textiles before departing empty-handed. Impressed by this hyper-pragmatic commercial exchange, the British sailors vowed to return. The panel notes that, much like the Netherlands, cities lacking a rigid indigenous aristocracy or heavy historical cultural baggage naturally build universally understood commercial languages, welcoming anyone who arrives to do business.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 1836 British Expedition to Shiliupu
accDescr: The sequence of events showing British merchants turned away from Guangdong and successfully trading in Shanghai.
subgraph SouthernRejection["Guangdong Rebuff"]
A["1836: Two British merchant vessels arrive in Guangdong"] --> B["Expelled by local authorities"]
end
subgraph NorthernArrival["Arrival at Shiliupu"]
B --> C["Sail north to try luck at Shanghai's Shiliupu"]
C --> D["Old city locals swarm the docks"]
end
subgraph MercantileExchange["Commercial Absorption"]
D --> E["Locals aggressively rent space and buy ship cargo"]
E --> F["Locals persuade British to buy silk and textiles"]
F --> G["British leave with empty holds but vow to return"]
end
```
---
[04:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=248s) The Dignity Deficit: Hong Kong's Subdivided Flats and Caged Homes
The conversation shifts from rental pressures faced by young professionals—such as mainland graduates moving one ring further outward each year due to rent hikes—to the claustrophobic housing conditions of Hong Kong. A speaker recounts visiting a newly graduated friend who boasted about renting an apartment in prime Causeway Bay. The reality turned out to be a single standard room sliced into four miniature partitions, labeled A, B, C, and D, outfitted with scaled-down furniture where "you walk in and you're already at the bed." Cooking facilities sat directly adjacent to the toilet in a setup resembling a prison cell, with a single worker occupying one unit while a three-generation family squeezed into the adjacent partitioned box.
The panel reflects on the linguistic nuances and human toll of these subdivided flats (*tong fong* / 劏房). While mainland visitors unfamiliar with Cantonese might mistakenly associate the character *tang* (劏) with "soup" or slaughterhouses, the term literally signifies butchering or slicing—cleaving a room into slivers, and metaphorically slicing away human privacy and dignity. The United Nations has repeatedly singled out Hong Kong's subdivided units, caged homes (笼屋), and coffin cubicles (棺材房) as living conditions that violate basic human rights. Even as these spaces are explored in films and photography, the grim reality remains that hundreds of thousands live compressed into stacked wire cages and coffin-sized bunks.
- "Tong fong" (劏房): Cantonese for butchering or slicing, capturing the commodified partition of residential space.
- Layouts in Causeway Bay partitions feature stoves mounted next to toilets, with scaled-down miniature furniture to fit microscopic footprints.
- Living arrangements range from single young professionals to entire three-generation families sharing single subdivided chambers.
---
[05:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=353s) Kowloon Walled City: From Lawless Underworld to Postmodern Icon
Reviewing photographic archives of Hong Kong's housing history, the table pauses on the legendary Kowloon Walled City (九龙寨城). Demolished prior to the 1997 handover, the Walled City has since undergone a cultural metamorphosis, turning from an unsanitary urban blight into an iconic artistic aesthetic replicated globally in movies and Japanese video games. Historically, the enclave was an extraterritorial anomaly: nominally under Qing Dynasty jurisdiction, it became a lawless enclave where British colonial police refused to set foot and municipal building codes were utterly ignored.
The panel sketches the dense, self-contained ecosystem that thrived within its perpetual twilight. Sunlight was completely blocked out by tangled networks of unpermitted, multi-story overhangs, forcing streetlights to burn at midday amidst constant dripping water. Yet inside, the enclave possessed everything needed for survival: unlicensed dental clinics, sweatshops, brothels, drug dens, strip shows, and triad protection syndicates. Figures like Stephen Chow spent formative years in these dense environments. Architectural scholars later lamented the total demolition of the complex, noting it functioned as a three-dimensional, labyrinthine sky-city—exterior walls choked with tangled cables and improvised plumbing, where climbing ten flights of stairs led to an elevated skybridge that opened into the thirteenth floor of an adjoining, uneven tower. The hosts muse on the uncomfortable paradox that "other people's suffering becomes someone else's aesthetic," leading into lighthearted teasing about Professor Xu's classic Shanghainese pragmatic calculation as he prepares to recall his youthful travels across Beijing, Qiqihar, and Harbin.
- The Kowloon Walled City remained outside British colonial administrative enforcement due to unresolved Qing Dynasty jurisdictional claims.
- The enclave operated as an autonomous organism housing factories, unlicensed medical clinics, vice operations, and triad networks.
- Interconnected skybridges linked mismatched high-rise levels (e.g., the 10th floor of one building meeting the 13th of another), leading scholars to retroactively celebrate it as an archetype of raw postmodern architecture.
[08:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=516s) Shanghai Zhiqing, Northern Assertiveness, and Urban Individualism
The conversation begins with a vivid comparison of romance and social behavior between young men from the North and those from Shanghai during their youth. In situations where Shanghai girls stood out for their beauty, young men from the North were remarkably bold and proactive, winning women over in a matter of two hours. By contrast, the young men from Shanghai would linger on the sidelines, neither speaking up nor making a move. They kept everything bottled up inside, appearing hesitant, aloof, or simply watching events unfold like a spectator amused by a private joke, which put them at a severe disadvantage in the romantic arena.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Cultural Comparison of Collective Solidarity vs Urban Individualism
accDescr: Contrasting Harbin educated youth collective solidarity with Shanghai individualist self-preservation.
subgraph Harbin["Harbin Educated Youth (Collective Clan)"]
H1["Strict hierarchy within group"] --> H2["One member threatened or struck"]
H2 --> H3["Entire group retaliates united"]
end
subgraph Shanghai["Shanghai Educated Youth (Urban Individualism)"]
S1["Narrow survival to individual self"] --> S2["Peer attacked or beaten"]
S2 --> S3["'None of my business' / Non-interference"]
end
```
This contrast deepened into a discussion of the Shanghai educated youth (*zhiqing*) sent to the Northeast. A speaker recalls the deep disappointment and cultural clash they witnessed when observing the Harbin educated youth. In the Harbin group, an individual at the very bottom of their internal hierarchy could be verbally abused or beaten by their own peers; however, an outsider from Shanghai was strictly forbidden from touching them. If an outsider laid a hand on even their lowest-ranking member, the entire Harbin cohort would swarm together in violent retaliation. Among the Shanghainese, however, no such collective solidarity existed: if one Shanghainese youth was beaten, fellow Shanghainese would simply look on without intervening or uttering a word of protest.
The speakers analyze this lack of collective behavior as a natural outcome of Shanghai's advanced urban modernization, where survival had long been narrowed down strictly to the individual. Much like in developed Western societies where neighbors remain polite strangers, the prevailing ethos was "It's none of my business" and "What does it have to do with me?" In college, regional hometown associations from other provinces flourished, but a Shanghai association could never get off the ground because the Shanghainese mindset was fundamentally centered on the private self. Reticence—or "not wanting to" speak or act—functioned as an efficient diplomatic buffer to avoid unpredictable entanglements. This extends to linguistic subtleties, such as responding with a noncommittal "hmm," which Westerners struggle to parse as yes or no, whereas in Chinese cultural etiquette it merely signals neutral acknowledgment without committing to attendance or agreement.
- **Divergent Social Codes**: Northern youth practiced proactive aggression and fierce collective defense; Shanghai youth prioritized personal boundaries, emotional restraint, and strict non-interference.
- **The Diplomatic "Hmm"**: Uttering "hmm" functions like a modern WeChat smiley emoji—a polite, ambiguous acknowledgment that carries layered subtext rather than a definitive yes or no.
---
[11:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=696s) Dialects in Literature: The Dilemma of Written Shanghainese
The dialogue shifts to literature and the viability of Chinese dialects in prose writing. A speaker with professional publishing and editorial background asserts that Shanghainese is at a distinct disadvantage when writing novels compared to several other regional vernaculars. Within China, four dialect regions translate exceptionally well onto the printed page: Beijing, Northern Shaanxi, Hunan, and Sichuan. When expressions from these four regions are written down verbatim, reader comprehension remains high while fully retaining their regional texture, rhythm, and vigor.
Shanghainese, however, suffers from a persistent disconnect between spoken phonetic flavor and written characters. To illustrate, when someone in Shanghai refers to eating hairy crab, they pronounce it orally as *"du za ha"*. Yet, if pressed to write it down with Chinese characters, it simply defaults back to standard "big crab" (大闸蟹). Once transcribed into standardized written Chinese, all the phonetic nuances, internal cadence, and oral savor disappear from the page, presenting a profound technical challenge for authors attempting dialect literature.
- **Four Literary Dialect Regions**: Beijing, Northern Shaanxi, Hunan, and Sichuan easily preserve spoken cadence and semantic clarity in written narrative.
- **Phonetic vs. Graphic Split**: Spoken Shanghainese terms (such as *"du za ha"*) lose their native music and atmosphere as soon as they are rendered into formal written characters.
---
[12:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=749s) Dance Hall Etiquette: Masks, Republican Heritage, and Distance
The panel explores the ballroom dancing culture that revived between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, an era when Western classical melodies like Johann Strauss's *"The Blue Danube"* first drifted back into mainland social spaces. The dance halls of Shanghai were remarkably accessible and socially open: a man could walk up and invite virtually any attractive woman to dance, even if she had arrived accompanied by a male partner. Yet this freedom was counterbalanced by delicate personal defenses. Many Shanghai women chose not to remove the winter masks they wore into the venue from the cold outside, keeping the cloth mask on throughout the dance while locked in a physical embrace with a stranger.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Dance Hall Etiquette and Commercial Models
accDescr: Comparison of dance hall dynamics between post-Mao Shanghai and Hong Kong / Republican eras.
subgraph ShanghaiLate70s["Post-Mao Shanghai (Late 70s–80s)"]
direction TB
S_Invite["Open invitations across tables"]
S_Mask["Mask worn to keep social distance"]
S_Invite --> S_Mask
end
subgraph HK_Republican["Hong Kong & Republican Shanghai"]
direction TB
H_Taboo["Strict taboo against asking accompanied women"]
H_Ticket["Stamped tickets per dance: $1 or $5 rate"]
H_Taboo --> H_Ticket
end
```
The speakers debate the emotional psychology behind this masked dancing. On one hand, wearing a mask maintained an unmistakable physical and emotional boundary, signaling: "I'm just dancing and nothing more." On the other hand, the sight of a veiled woman with only her expressive eyes visible stirred romance and imagination. Furthermore, as the speakers humorously point out, a mask allowed a woman to whisper covert remarks to her dance partner—such as asking *"Honey, who am I?"*—without an accompanying escort noticing her lips moving.
Professor Xu Zidong's handsome height sparks teasing from the hosts, leading him to recount an old story from a literary critics' conference in Hainan. A circle of young critics had repeatedly tried and failed to coax a beautiful woman onto the dance floor. Xu arrived late, oblivious to their previous rejections, and casually invited her to dance—and she immediately accepted. The incident left the slighted young critics holding a good-humored grudge for decades, bringing it up whenever they reunited: *"Oh, you remember back then at the meeting in Hainan Island..."*
The discussion contrasts Shanghai's atmosphere with dance halls in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, approaching a woman accompanied by another man was strictly taboo and could provoke serious conflict. Furthermore, Hong Kong's traditional dance halls operated on commercial practices directly inherited from pre-1949 Republican-era Shanghai. Hostesses circulated, and once invited, a stamped paper slip was placed on the patron's table to track the bill—much like ordering dim sum during morning tea. In Republican Shanghai, the caliber of a venue was defined by its dance rates: smaller, cheaper halls offered five dances for a single dollar, while prestigious high-end establishments charged five dollars for just one dance.
- **The Ballroom Mask**: Served simultaneously as a social shield, a winter barrier, and an alluring veil that masked whispered secrets from outside onlookers.
- **Ticketing Practices**: Post-1949 Hong Kong preserved Republican Shanghai's dance-ticket system, where stamped slips calculated costs per dance (ranging historically from $1 for five dances to $5 per single dance).
---
[16:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=979s) College Cafeteria Dances in the 1980s: The Agony of the Walk
The conversation moves to the cultural boundary between conservative social norms and the gradual opening of the 1980s, focusing on the university social dances that swept mainland campuses. Dou Wentao recounts the awkward, intimidating ritual of college dances hosted inside the vast dining hall at Wuhan University. Far from the intimate ambiance of modern nightclubs, the cafeteria was a massive, barren space roughly the width of a football field.
The physical layout created agonizing stage fright for shy students. Female students stood in a continuous line against one wall, while male students lined up along the opposite wall dozens of meters away. Because social convention required the men to initiate invitations, an aspiring dancer had to walk the entire, exposed stretch of the cafeteria floor under the collective stare of the entire room. For thin-skinned students lacking elite dancing skills or absolute self-confidence, making that solitary trek was terrifying. The dances would stall in protracted standoffs, with both sides frozen in place, until an exceptionally brave young man finally mustered the nerve to step forward and cross the empty floor, setting off a scramble based on beauty and poise.
- **The Cafeteria Arena**: University dances took place in cavernous campus dining halls, creating a vast physical divide between male and female cohorts.
- **The Courage Gauntlet**: Initiating a dance required crossing dozens of meters of open space under the silent scrutiny of both peers and potential partners, favoring only the boldest dancers.
[17:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1053s) Campus Dance Halls, Pickup Strategies, and Shanghai's Vanished Social Dancing
The conversation opens with a nostalgic look back at the university campus dance parties of the 1980s, where primal social and biological instincts played out across cafeteria floors caked in dust. In an era marked by intense shyness, conservatism, and social repression, social dancing served as a rare, socially permissible breakthrough in physical boundaries. As the speakers laughingly observe, taking someone by the hand or holding a partner on the dance floor was virtually the only chance a young man had to physically touch a woman. Today, that entire culture of ballroom and social dancing has completely vanished from ordinary civic life in Shanghai, having evolved almost exclusively into neighborhood square dancing (*guangchangwu*) practiced by retired aunties and uncles in public plazas.
Jin Yucheng recalls a vivid anecdote from that transitional era—originally told to him by Professor Xu Zidong—which he later incorporated directly into his novel *Blossoms*. A friend of his at East China Normal University boasted that their campus hosted dance parties every single day and invited him to attend. Just as they reached the entrance of the dance hall, the friend pulled him aside to impart some pragmatic tactical advice on chatting up women. He explained that social cues dictated entirely opposite personas depending on who you approached: if a woman looked like an educated college student, you should introduce yourself by saying, "I sell fruit by the back gate," or "I run a small restaurant." In the early years of China's market reforms, the allure of the private entrepreneur (*getihu*) and disposable income made students swoon with enthusiasm. Conversely, if a woman looked like an ordinary city resident from nearby working-class neighborhoods like the Caoyang or Changfeng housing estates, you should instead claim, "I’m a professor at East China Normal University." The cultural prestige of academia would instantly captivate her.
- The cafeteria dance floors were so neglected that dancers stirred up dust with every step, underscoring the raw, unpolished nature of early reform-era social spaces.
- The university dance scene represented one of the few physical and emotional outlets for young people breaking away from decades of strict personal boundaries.
- The social dynamics of the 1980s flipped traditional prestige: students were enchanted by commercial wealth, while local factory and neighborhood residents reaped pride from intellectual status.
---
[19:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1144s) Li Li and A-Bao: The Car Scene, Traumatic Backstories, and TV Idealization
The discussion transitions directly to the stark creative divide between Jin Yucheng’s original novel *Blossoms* and Wong Kar-wai’s television adaptation, focusing on the character of Li Li (played on screen by Xin Zhilei). The speakers note that a television series aimed at a broad mainstream audience could never depict Li Li with the raw, ruthless edge found on the page. They zero in on a scene in the TV series where Li Li falls asleep in A-Bao's car. Some viewers, alongside an admittedly over-interpretive and sensitive Dou Wentao, speculated that the scene hinted at a romantic or sexual encounter. Other speakers push back against this reading, explaining that A-Bao simply stepped outside the vehicle to smoke a cigarette—a gesture signaling deep mutual relaxation and earned trust rather than an implied one-night stand.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Comparison of Li Li in Novel vs Television Adaptation
accDescr: A flowchart illustrating the divergence between the brutal realism of the novel Blossoms and the polished romanticism of the TV adaptation.
subgraph Novel["The Novel Blossoms"]
N1["Brutal Underworld Past"] --> N2["Severe Physical Trauma & Violation"]
N2 --> N3["Dark Bedroom of Broken Dolls"]
N3 --> N4["Raw Lust & Competitive Instincts"]
end
subgraph Series["Wong Kar-wai TV Adaptation"]
T1["Glamorous Restaurant Boss"] --> T2["Restrained Romantic Tension"]
T2 --> T3["Near-Kiss on the Stairs"]
T3 --> T4["Unconsummated Chaste Devotion"]
end
```
The contrast becomes sharper when examining Li Li's literary roots. In Jin Yucheng’s novel, Li Li carries a brutal, harrowing past involving an underworld mob boss who abused and permanently mutilated her private parts. This intense darkness is completely expunged from the television show. The near-miss nature of their television romance is epitomized by a staircase encounter where A-Bao and Li Li lean in until their lips almost brush against each other, only for Li Li to turn abruptly and head upstairs. To go from that deliberate withholding of affection to an off-screen one-night stand would be narrative nonsense.
- Online audience speculation over the car scene revealed how differently viewers read visual intimacy versus platonic comfort.
- A-Bao stepping out into the cold night to smoke while Li Li sleeps illustrates a chivalrous boundary of trust rather than an erotic liaison.
- The television series systematically scrubs away the novel's bodily trauma and underworld cruelty in favor of stylized tension.
---
[20:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1259s) Lu Xun's Brothel Novel Categories and Blossoms as a "Wuxia" Crowd-Pleaser
To contextualize the television show's stylistic choices, the speakers invoke Lu Xun's classic literary classification of late Qing dynasty courtesan novels (*xiaxie xiaoshuo*), which Lu Xun divided into three distinct traditions:
1. **Beautifying / Idealizing (*meihua*):** Works like *Pinhua Baojian* (*A Precious Mirror for Judging Flowers*) and *Qinglou Meng* (*The Courtesan's Dream*), which romanticize relationships into sentimental fantasies.
2. **Exposing Evil / Satirizing (*baolu*):** Works like *Jiuwei Gui* (*The Nine-Tailed Turtle*), which showcase deceit, greed, and moral squalor.
3. **Depicting Truth / Realism (*cunzhen*):** Works like Han Bangqing’s masterpiece *The Flowers of Shanghai* (*Haishang Hua Liezhuan*), which capture human relationships with unvarnished, observational realism.
The speakers agree that Wong Kar-wai’s television adaptation firmly embraces the "beautifying" school. On television, A-Bao is depicted as remarkably pure and chaste. Surrounded by three or four stunning women who remain devoted to him, his personal physical and sexual needs are entirely obscured. As one guest quips from a physician’s perspective, such lifelong chaste self-restraint amidst constant temptation is biologically unrealistic. Instead, A-Bao functions like a hero in a martial arts (*wuxia*) epic—an idealized central figure worshiped unconditionally by female admirers.
In contrast, the novel *Blossoms* belongs to the realistic and unsettling traditions. In the book, when A-Bao wakes up disoriented in Li Li's bed, the morning light reveals a room packed with broken, mutilated dolls—haunting metaphors for shattered childhood dreams and psychological scarring. There is also the raw tension of the glass catwalk and fears of wardrobe malfunctions. The novel’s depiction of their intimacy is driven by the stark flicking on and off of light switches, capturing unvarnished lust, psychological power struggles, and competition rather than pure romantic devotion. Labeling the series a "wuxia drama" can be seen as either high praise for a thrilling, satisfying crowd-pleaser (*shuangju*) or a critique of how it smoothed away the messy, gray moral complexity of the novel to deliver sharp, caricature-like conflicts tailored for mass television audiences.
---
[23:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1436s) Wong Kar-wai's 400-Person Payroll and the Scrapped Triple-Role Plan
Jin Yucheng defends Wong Kar-wai's directorial choices, reminding the panel that a television series operates in an entirely different medium and cultural space than literature, constrained by strict censorship guidelines, broader mass-market demographics, and sheer industrial scale. To build the world of 1990s Shanghai, Wong Kar-wai conducted exhaustive, carpet-style field research. The production's sound department fanned out across Huanghe Road to interview veteran restaurateurs and patrons, going so far as to meticulously plan 255 distinct banquet scenes across the episodes.
Jin reveals a striking behind-the-scenes secret: Wong Kar-wai was so captivated by lead actor Hu Ge that he initially wanted Hu Ge to play all three core male protagonists from the novel—A-Bao, Xiao Mao, and Hu Sheng. Jin immediately warned the director about the technical impossibility of such an idea. If the three childhood friends were to sit down around a table to drink tea together, filming three identical faces would require impossibly convoluted makeup, camera tricks, or head-swapping CGI. Wong Kar-wai ultimately abandoned the concept.
The fundamental divergence between literature and cinema comes down to economic pressure. A novelist works alone with paper and ink, bearing no overhead. On the very first day of filming, when Jin Yucheng called Wong Kar-wai to offer his congratulations, the director gave a sobering, practical reply: "From today on, I have to pay 400 people's wages every day." While earlier arthouse films by Wong Kar-wai like *Chungking Express* thrived on ambiguity, lingering questions, and subtle feelings where audiences wondered whether the characters were even truly in love, the *Blossoms Shanghai* television series had to function as a major commercial vehicle. It resolved ambiguity into clear, satisfying emotional payoffs where male intent and female affection are sharply delineated to gratify contemporary viewers.
- Wong Kar-wai’s team conducted extensive oral-history interviews with real-life Huanghe Road figures to capture the authentic acoustic and culinary texture of 1990s Shanghai.
- Hu Ge nearly took on a triple role playing A-Bao, Xiao Mao, and Hu Sheng before production realities made the concept untenable.
- Film production is fundamentally an industrial enterprise: paying daily wages for a 400-person crew dictates narrative clarity and broad commercial accessibility over quiet literary ambiguity.
---
[26:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1594s) The Novelist as a Keeper of Negative Energy and the Allure of Male-Female Dynamics
When asked how he approaches researching the complex dynamics between men and women in his fiction, Jin Yucheng explains that he does not conduct formal academic research. Instead, his creative wellspring comes from vivid, peculiar memories stored in his mind as shorthand keywords that never fade.
Jin reflects on what truly sets a novelist apart from ordinary people: the compulsion to preserve everything. When regular people encounter grief, betrayal, social ugliness, or psychological pollution, their healthy instinct is to discard it immediately to protect their peace of mind. A writer’s endurance, however, lies in an instinct to hoard discomfort. Instead of turning away, the writer thinks, "I'll keep this, and I'll write it down later." Through the act of storytelling, this preserved negative energy is metabolized, turning artistic creation into a vital form of psychological therapy and self-healing.
The discussion concludes with Dou Wentao and Jin Yucheng examining why the emotional entanglements between men and women remain the eternal epicenter of narrative art. While platonic friendships or professional alliances are comparatively straightforward, romantic and sexual relations between men and women carry unique emotional stakes, volatile social friction, and psychological vulnerability that reveal the deepest truths about human nature.
[28:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1685s) Wong Kar-wai's "Three Crutches" in Adapting *Blossoms*
The discussion opens on the layered nature of romantic relationships in literature. Compared to simpler bonds like friendship or brotherhood, romantic emotion encompasses a turbulent spectrum—affection, love, gratitude, resentment, and outright hatred. Historically, the most compelling novels across domestic and foreign traditions are those that plumb these complex emotional depths because they offer boundless room for imaginative exploration. Shifting back to the television adaptation of *Blossoms*, a panelist observes how cleverly Wong Kar-wai navigated this terrain by leaning on what can be described as "three crutches" to guide viewers through his visual world:
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Wong Kar-wai's Three Crutches
accDescr: The three narrative devices Wong Kar-wai used in the television adaptation of Blossoms to guide the audience.
subgraph Crutches["Wong Kar-wai's Narrative Crutches"]
C1["First Crutch: Original Text Lines<br/>(Tribute to Jin Yucheng, opening quotations)"]
C2["Second Crutch: Voiceover Narration<br/>(Historical dates, stock market fluctuations)"]
C3["Third Crutch: The Cigarette Vendor<br/>(Assistant director on Huanghe Road explaining events)"]
end
1. **Original Textual Quotations:** From the outset, the series explicitly borrows evocative lines from Jin Yucheng's original novel, even paying homage to Jin himself right at the beginning and signaling the entrance of the very first character.
2. **Expository Voiceover Narration:** Frequent voiceovers anchor the setting, spelling out exact years and demystifying the volatile swings of the 1990s stock market out of concern that ordinary viewers might otherwise become lost.
3. **The Informant on Huanghe Road:** The street-corner cigarette vendor on Huanghe Road—played by the production's assistant director—acts as an in-universe explainer. Whenever chaotic events unfold, someone stops by his booth to ask what just happened, and he delivers a crisp exposition directly clarifying the drama for the audience.
The table remarks with amusement that this setup reveals Wong Kar-wai being "unprecedentedly considerate and gentle" toward his viewers, providing handrails everywhere so no one feels left behind. While commercial television has long relied on calculated pacing metrics—such as engineering a fight or a dramatic slap at fixed intervals to stop people from wandering away from the screen—seeing Wong Kar-wai adopt such deliberate audience-retention techniques strikes the guests as a fascinating departure from his notoriously cryptic arthouse reputation.
[30:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1829s) Literature, Decoding, and Accepting Reinterpretation
When asked whether novelists genuinely love the characters they create—given that many writers claim their characters develop autonomous lives beyond authorial control—Jin Yucheng clarifies his own mindset: he certainly *likes* his characters, even if he stops short of calling it "love." However, watching these figures come to life on screen is entirely different. Jin views the act of reading a novel as an intimate decoding process: the writer encodes thoughts into static words, and each individual reader decodes those words to construct personal visual imagery. He compares this dilemma to *Dream of the Red Chamber*: no matter how extraordinary an actress is, the moment she steps forward claiming to be Lin Daiyu, an audience cannot help but feel a cognitive dissonance between the living body and the imagined literary ideal.
Accepting a television adaptation therefore requires mental preparation beforehand: one must acknowledge that the film is fundamentally a brand-new creation where characters often share nothing with their source material beyond their proper names. Jin notes that his interest lies not in demanding absolute fidelity, but in watching how a director with strong, idiosyncratic ideas restructures the narrative, shifts the thematic weight, and breathes fresh vitality into the world. Jin reveals that Wong Kar-wai never sat him down to formally declare, "What I'm making has nothing to do with your novel." In film production etiquette, directors deliberately maintain distance from original authors once shooting begins to avoid interference. Jin was already comfortable with creative divergence because a separate stage adaptation of *Blossoms* had remained scrupulously faithful to the text—a contrast highlighting how theater typically adheres to fidelity while cinema, particularly in the hands of an auteur like Wong Kar-wai, claims total artistic license to interpret classics afresh.
[33:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=1989s) The Story of Xuezhi: Novel Realism vs. Dramatic Fiction
The conversation turns to Xuezhi, the ticket conductor on the Route 13 bus (played on screen by Du Juan), whom both Jin Yucheng and Wong Kar-wai reportedly favored despite her brief screen time. Her artistic aura stands out, yet her narrative arc in the television series diverges sharply from Jin's novel:
- **The Novel's Grounded Realism:** In the book, Xuezhi and A-Bao date with marriage in mind, as was standard for the era. However, Xuezhi's family vehemently opposes the union. Because Xuezhi was the only sibling in her household who avoided being sent down to the countryside during the rustication movement, her entire family relied on her to marry well and reverse their social fortunes. A-Bao's father similarly questions whether A-Bao could ever endure life inside an in-law family that openly despises him. Xuezhi is not a romantic heroine who pledges unconditional, eternal devotion to A-Bao, while A-Bao possesses his own masculine pride, hoping she might fiercely stand by him. When neither bends and Xuezhi's relatives cause an ugly scene at A-Bao's house, the romance quietly collapses. Decades later, when A-Bao has transformed into the wealthy "Boss Bao" and receives a fleeting phone call from her, he simply brushes it aside, saying, "It's not convenient right now, let's talk later," before hanging up.
- **The Television Series' Melodramatic Fusion:** Wong Kar-wai merges Xuezhi with an entirely different character from the novel—a girlfriend of Husheng who abandoned him during the Reform and Opening-up era to marry a businessman from Hong Kong. By fusing these two personas into a singular, tragic figure who chases wealth to Hong Kong and ultimately dies, the adaptation refashions her into a poignant cinematic motivator for A-Bao's rise.
Jin explains that his original text drew directly from the lived experience of a real-life friend. The fundamental core of the novel is that life is inherently "awkward" (尴尬). People exist in shades of gray rather than black and white; nine times out of ten, affairs fall short of expectations, leaving little room for immaculate romantic closure.
[37:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=2231s) Hong Kong Narrative Traditions: One Man and Multiple Women
The panel debates whether television viewers can truly tolerate narrative ambiguity. While conventional wisdom suggests audiences demand clear-cut moral positions, the hosts argue that viewers fundamentally crave romantic ambiguity: without an undercurrent of unresolved yearning, tension, and projection among complex characters, a drama cannot hook an audience. In contemporary screenwriting, romance alone is rarely enough; hit dramas like *The Long Season* or *The Knockout* rely on the propulsive machinery of crime, murder mysteries, and police investigations to keep viewers glued to their seats.
Carrying a prestige drama primarily through interpersonal romance requires a unique structural dynamic, which Wong Kar-wai builds around "one man and four women." The panel connects this setup to a distinct lineage in Hong Kong literary history:
| Literary Tradition | Typical Structural Dynamic | Representative Works & Themes |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **Hong Kong Modern Literature** | **One Man & Multiple Women** | Liu Yichang's *The Drunkard*, Xi Xi's *Sun, Moon, and Star*, Ye Si's *The Gap*, and Ma Jiahui's *Dragon Head, Phoenix Tail*. Explores fractured urban identities and multifaceted romantic entanglements. |
| **Mainland Chinese 20th-Century Literature (Classic/Idealist)** | **One Man & One Woman** | Yu Hua's *To Live*. Centered on enduring emotional loyalty, moral dignity, and shared survival amidst historical adversity. |
| **Mainland Chinese Epic/Social Realism** | **One Woman & Multiple Men** | Chen Zhongshi's *White Deer Plain*. A central female figure surrounded by men who personify clashing political, ideological, and historical forces. |
This structural contrast highlights how *Blossoms* uniquely bridges Shanghai's urban soil with Hong Kong's mid-century aesthetic sensibility, transforming A-Bao's overlapping relationships into a rich literary tapestry rather than a simple television love triangle.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: TV Adaptation Formula of Blossoms
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the dual narrative breakthroughs in the television adaptation of Blossoms regarding Bao Zong and the female leads.
subgraph BaoZong["宝总的情感与物质投射"]
A1["帅气潇洒的外表"]
A2["不计成本的付出<br/>(赠送车房与商业扶持)"]
end
subgraph FemaleLeads["女性角色的自立爽点"]
B1["不依附于男性庇护<br/>(汪小姐拒绝暗中帮助)"]
B2["体面道别与经济独立<br/>(各奔东西做人生赢家)"]
end
BaoZong -->|"迎合受众心理"| Drama["剧集商业爽感与流行"]
FemaleLeads -->|"契合当代独立叙事"| Drama
```
嘉宾们深入探讨了通俗文学与纯文学的本质分野。通俗文学往往带着明确的脸谱化倾向——谁是恶棍、谁是花花公子一目了然，而纯文学则全然不同，最具代表性的便是自然主义文学。以左拉的小说《妇女乐园》（*Au Bonheur des Dames*）为例，故事中的两姐妹同在巴黎的一家百货公司当售货员：姐姐的人生理想平凡质朴，只想嫁给一个小职员，相夫教子、安稳度日；而妹妹酷爱打扮、喜好跳舞，心心念念想挤进上流贵族圈。若按照批判现实主义的传统写法，作者必然要对妹妹爱慕虚荣的做派进行道德鞭挞。然而在自然主义的笔触下，左拉只是平铺直叙：姐姐过着按部就班的日子结婚生子，妹妹则过着月光生活，把钱全花在衣装上，甚至频频找姐姐借钱。故事的最终结局却反套路而行之：妹妹如愿以偿嫁给了一位五十多岁的年长贵族，生活得心满意足；姐姐嫁给了小职员，同样安居乐业。小说通篇没有任何评判，作者只是忠实记录了两个女人各自实现自我的过程。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 标签思维与文学思维的对比
accDescr: 对比网络粗暴贴标签与文学细腻理解人性的两种截然不同的思维路径。
subgraph TagCulture["网络标签思维"]
A["复杂的情感关系与人性羁绊"] --> B["单一标签：'渣男' / '渣女'"]
B --> C["抹杀语境、全盘抹煞、彻底剔除 (Cancel/Erasure)"]
end
subgraph LiteratureMind["纯文学与共情思维"]
D["复杂的人性与生存境遇"] --> E["细腻记录不同生命体验与悲喜"]
E --> F["打破自我局限：理解世上与己不同之人的存在"]
end
```
只需“渣男”这两个字，就可以将一段甚至多段关系背后极其繁复幽微的情感拉扯彻底抹杀。这种一棍子打死的做法本质上是一种“抹煞与清除文化”（culture of erasure and elimination），直接判定死刑，随手扔弃。不管秉持何种意识形态，最终都要回归文学本身与语言叙事。这正如美国作家苏珊·桑塔格（Susan Sontag）对阅读小说的精辟论述：我们之所以读小说，是因为小说让我们意识到世界上存在着完全不同于我们的人，他们以一种迥异的方式活着。那不仅仅是虚构的故事，更是实实在在的生活与悲欢。阅读将人从以自我为中心的狭隘中解放出来，这才是小说最震撼人心的力量所在。
- **大脑神经元连接的映射**：大脑神经元中储存着海量记忆碎片，日常随意闲聊或艺术创作时，不同的神经元相互碰撞连接，瞬间激发出一串记忆；紧接着又与另一组神经元产生化学链接，带出另一段往事。
- **固化思维与艺术创新的对抗**：每天早起刷牙等机械动作，属于经过反复训练后神经突触化学键高度固化的产物；而艺术创作的核心恰恰是鼓励打破惯性，尝试建立崭新的神经元连接，激发全新的想象与联想。文学不仅是心灵的慰藉，更能切实重塑大脑的神经网络。
- **西方意识流的对应范例**：这种叙事神经特征在西方文学中同样有深刻印证，最典型的便是普鲁斯特的《追忆似水年华》（*À la recherche du temps perdu*）。普鲁斯特因长年卧病在床，后期的宏篇巨作全是在病榻上写就，其绵密蔓生的思维之流甚至让出版商校对时都感到望而生畏。
[01:19:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=4783s) The Suzhou Roots of *Blossoms* and the Refinement of the Wu Dialect
The conversation turns to the intimate linguistic and cultural bond between Shanghai and Suzhou, particularly through the lens of the Wu dialect (*Wu yu*). The speakers observe that in Jin Yucheng’s celebrated novel *Blossoms* (*Fan Hua*), readers with a keen ear for language immediately sense that whenever the narrative touches on this regional heritage, the prose flows with effortless, unforced authenticity. There is a distinctive Suzhou flavor embedded within the Shanghainese idiom, lending the prose its unique lilt and natural cadence.
Jin Yucheng readily confirms this observation, explaining that this linguistic texture originates directly from his father. In Shanghai, residents spoke various shades and sub-accents of Shanghainese depending on their family origins, and his father spoke Shanghainese with a pronounced Suzhou accent. Jin Yucheng points out that the Suzhou accent has historically been regarded as exceptionally elegant and cultured. At the heart of that elegance lies Suzhou’s greatest performing art: Kunqu opera. Originating in Suzhou, Kunqu represents the peak of theatrical refinement, possessing an exquisite, highly stylized lyrical quality that stands in stark contrast to the more populist, brassy flair of Peking Opera.
---
[01:20:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=4842s) Singing *Mountain Peach Blossoms*: Childhood Memories and the Olive Note
Elaborating on Kunqu’s refined tradition of "Southern Kun" and "Northern Kun" (*Nan Kun*, *Bei Kun*), Jin Yucheng looks back more than sixty years to his childhood. He humorously distinguishes his own upbringing from the elite, top-tier scholarly dynasties: the first-rate families were steeped in classical scholarship and spent their days studying ancient texts, whereas his own was a ordinary "second-rate family" where people simply earned an honest living and went about daily routines.
Yet, despite that modest designation, the cultural atmosphere within the household was rich. Whenever his father returned home from work in high spirits, he would rally the family together with an impromptu musical session, asking: "Let’s sing a song. What shall we sing? Let's sing *Mountain Peach Blossoms* (*Shan Tao Hong*, the famous aria from Tang Xianzu's *The Peony Pavilion*)." The children would gather around their father, joining in as he sang through the celebrated verses celebrating youth, blooming flowers, and fleeting spring days. Jin Yucheng vividly recalls the breathtaking musicality of those moments, specifically marveling at the mastery of the lingering, tapered "olive note" (*ganlan qiang*) that capped the phrases. In the midst of their spirited, poised singing, his gray-haired father would look tenderly at the young children and sigh with wistful emotion: "How wonderful, you are in the prime of youth, while I am left with nothing but passing years."
---
[01:22:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0RLyCyB2g&t=4926s) The Taiping Diaspora, *The Flowers of Shanghai*, and Literati Culture
The discussion expands to the broader historical forces that cemented Suzhou’s cultural dominance over the entire Yangtze River Delta. For centuries, Suzhou was the undisputed cultural capital of Jiangnan. However, a major historical rupture occurred in the mid-19th century during the Taiping Rebellion, when Suzhou was ravaged and partially burned. Seeking refuge, an enormous wave of scholars, literati, artists, and skilled performers fled en masse to the safety of the foreign concessions in Shanghai, fundamentally transferring Suzhou's cultural wealth to the burgeoning metropolis.
This cultural transplant defined the late-Qing urban demimonde immortalized in Han Bangqing’s classic novel *The Flowers of Shanghai* (*Hai Shang Hua Lie Zhuan*). In that era, any high-class courtesan arriving in Shanghai had to achieve mastery in Suzhou Pingtan storytelling and Kunqu opera; acquiring these arts was mandatory to establish social standing. Performing these arts served as an indispensable cultural symbol, because the patrons who frequented these salons were literati, officials, and scholars rather than common laborers. These educated men lived under the constraints of traditional arranged marriages, where their wedded wives at home were often uneducated or completely illiterate. Consequently, the refined, Kunqu-singing entertainers of Shanghai became the scholars' sole outlet for artistic resonance, emotional dialogue, and romantic sophistication.
[0:00] Cities around the world are becoming
[0:02] more and more alike. Twenty years ago,
[0:04] I spent seven years in Guangzhou, and
[0:06] at that time, only in our Guangdong
[0:07] Radio compound did people speak
[0:09] Mandarin.
[0:09] >> That was just speaking Mandarin within
[0:11] the compound; once you stepped out, it
[0:12] was a completely Cantonese-speaking
[0:13] world. But today, even Guangzhou is the
[0:15] same.
[0:16] >> I hear them speaking it.
[0:17] >> I, I mean, I think on one hand, as a
[0:19] Shanghainese person, you have an
[0:20] emotional attachment to the Shanghai
[0:21] dialect, so you naturally feel a sense
[0:23] of loss, and you can get quite upset.
[0:24] But on the other hand, I really think
[0:26] sometimes we need to have a more
[0:28] tolerant and inclusive mindset. Why?
[0:31] This population mobility is truly
[0:33] unstoppable. When I return to Shanghai
[0:35] now, except for the friends I grew up
[0:36] with since childhood, most of the
[0:38] people I see are not Shanghainese. Some
[0:40] of my relatives keep saying we should
[0:41] drive the outsiders away, and I tell
[0:43] them if you drive them away, I won't
[0:44] have any friends left in Shanghai; all
[0:46] my friends are from other places, right
[0:47] .
[0:48] >> Some of my friends say I live in the
[0:49] city center, and in the last month, the
[0:51] people I've met haven't been
[0:52] Shanghainese at all.
[0:53] >> I remember when I was in college, I
[0:54] brought a friend from the Northeast
[0:56] back to Shanghai for a week, and he
[0:57] could roughly hear and understand the
[0:59] Shanghai dialect. Because he kept
[1:01] hearing it all the time. But now,
[1:02] it’s not that he can, because you
[1:03] don’t hear it as often. Now I know
[1:05] friends who have lived there for years
[1:06] and still don't understand it because
[1:07] they don't encounter the dialect. Right
[1:09] .
[1:09] >> Mhm.
[1:10] >> The only exception is the migrant
[1:13] friends working in the most grassroots
[1:16] jobs at the wet markets. Those
[1:18] vegetable sellers from Shandong and
[1:20] Anhui, they speak the Shanghai dialect
[1:22] so fluently after a few years.
[1:24] >> They deal with the locals every single
[1:27] day, but...
[1:28] >> Those delivery workers...
[1:30] >> Those who help families look after
[1:32] their children—none of them are
[1:34] locals.
[1:35] >> In them, I see how our previous
[1:36] generation of Shanghainese entered this
[1:38] city; that’s exactly how they came in
[1:40] .
[1:40] >> Mhm, we are actually all immigrants
[1:42] ourselves.
[1:43] >> That’s right, it’s all this kind of
[1:45] migration from the outside. So, as two
[1:46] Shanghainese people, can you tell us:
[1:48] is it very difficult for outsiders to
[1:51] integrate with locals in Shanghai? Are
[1:53] Shanghainese people xenophobic?
[1:55] There’s no psychological barrier to
[1:56] integration; it’s actually very easy,
[1:58] and it’s becoming easier now. It’s
[2:00] getting easier because it’s not like
[2:02] the 20-year period of closed household
[2:04] registration, where outsiders couldn't
[2:07] come in and locals couldn't go out.
[2:09] Since the reforms, large numbers of
[2:11] people have come in, which is the true
[2:13] history of Shanghai; Shanghai was
[2:15] originally just a small county town. I
[2:18] read in some material that while the
[2:21] port opened in 1843, back in 1836, two
[2:24] British ships arrived in Guangdong and
[2:27] were driven away. With no other options
[2:29] , the two ships heard they should try
[2:31] their luck further north, so they
[2:33] arrived at Shanghai's Shiliupu. After
[2:35] they docked at Shiliupu, the people
[2:38] from the old city all swarmed over,
[2:40] looking around, asking questions, and
[2:42] chatting them up—asking if they
[2:44] needed to rent a house or what they
[2:46] were looking for. The British said they
[2:48] had never seen people like this. So
[2:51] good at doing business.
[2:53] >> Because in that old place, the people
[2:55] in Shanghai themselves were essentially
[2:57] immigrants from that era. They didn't
[2:59] have any local cultural baggage holding
[3:02] them back. They had all just arrived at
[3:04] this place by the sea and the river, so
[3:06] anyone coming from the outside could
[3:08] easily fit right in.
[3:10] >> I thought at first it sounded a bit
[3:12] like the Netherlands.
[3:13] >> Then, they said they sold everything on
[3:16] those two ships. After selling, they
[3:20] were immediately encouraged to buy silk
[3:22] and all kinds of textiles, so they left
[3:24] with nothing—it basically meant the
[3:26] Shanghainese took all their money.
[3:29] >> Then, when they were leaving, they said
[3:31] this place is interesting; we must
[3:33] remember this place.
[3:34] >> We'll come back, yeah. So notice this:
[3:38] if a place has no true indigenous
[3:40] people in the absolute sense, and
[3:42] everyone is from all over, you'll find
[3:45] that the commercial language they
[3:47] develop is universally understood. You
[3:50] see, it's the same in the Netherlands;
[3:53] if everyone is from somewhere else, we
[3:55] can all communicate here. Speaking of
[3:58] today, I've noticed some university
[4:00] students...while in their four years of
[4:03] college.
[4:04] >> They move one circle further out each
[4:06] year, just because the landlords raise
[4:08] the rent annually.
[4:09] >> Now, those subdivided flats—have you
[4:11] seen those subdivided flats in Hong
[4:12] Kong? I have a friend who, right after
[4:14] graduating, found a job and, wanting to
[4:16] live closer to work, lived in Causeway
[4:18] Bay. I heard that and said, "You live
[4:20] in Causeway Bay right after graduating?
[4:22] That's not bad." But when I went to see
[4:24] it, it was just one room—a
[4:26] normal-sized room partitioned into four
[4:28] , labeled A, B, C, and D. Plus, the way
[4:30] it was furnished, they made all the
[4:32] furniture miniature.
[4:34] >> They squeezed everything in; there was
[4:35] even a bathroom inside where you could
[4:36] cook. I asked, "How does that work?"
[4:38] >> The stove is right next to the toilet.
[4:40] >> Yes, just like a prison.
[4:41] >> Basically, you walk in and you're
[4:43] already at the bed.
[4:43] >> And on top of that,
[4:45] >> you step off the bed and you're in the
[4:46] bathroom. Yes, my friend who is single,
[4:47] he lives by himself in one of those
[4:49] rooms. A family of three generations
[4:51] lives in another room, and I thought,
[4:52] how can they live like this? Oh, I had
[4:54] a misunderstanding about the term "
[4:56] subdivided unit" when I first came to
[4:57] Hong Kong; I thought it was "
[4:59] slaughterhouse."
[4:59] >> There are so many slaughterhouses in
[5:01] Hong Kong, right? That’s interesting.
[5:03] Then why is it written with the
[5:05] character for "soup"? "
[5:06] >> Tang" means to cut in Cantonese—to
[5:08] slice. You take a room and slice it up
[5:10] into several smaller ones.
[5:12] >> So it’s normal that you’d make that
[5:13] connection.
[5:14] >> Right, it’s like slicing away a
[5:16] person's privacy and dignity. Even the
[5:19] UN has condemned it, saying Hong Kong's
[5:22] worst living conditions—people living
[5:25] in these subdivided units—violate
[5:27] human rights and dignity. Can you see,
[5:30] is this a Hong Kong subdivided unit?
[5:32] >> This is a caged home.
[5:34] >> This is a caged home, keep looking down
[5:37] .
[5:37] >> This is a "coffin home."
[5:39] >> This is one,
[5:40] >> They've even made movies about it.
[5:42] >> Coffin homes, they call them coffin
[5:44] homes, just look further down.
[5:45] >> This is a subdivided unit, this room,
[5:47] this room.
[5:47] >> This is a type of subdivided unit.
[5:49] >> I've seen ones better than this, hmm.
[5:51] >> Keep looking down. This is...
[5:53] >> This is the Kowloon Walled City.
[5:55] >> The Kowloon Walled City, the old
[5:56] Kowloon Walled City has been demolished
[5:57] now.
[5:58] >> Demolished, yes. The Kowloon Walled
[6:01] City is a scene you even see in video
[6:03] games.
[6:04] >> You know, this slum has now become a
[6:06] kind of artistic symbol. Many Japanese
[6:09] video games, and even the movies you
[6:12] see now, use the old Kowloon Walled
[6:14] City in Hong Kong as a template. Oh,
[6:17] this place, what kind of place do you
[6:20] really think it was? Back then, it was
[6:22] a place where even British police in
[6:25] the colonial era wouldn't go in.
[6:27] Because of its special historical
[6:29] reasons.
[6:30] >> It was supposedly under the Qing
[6:31] Dynasty's jurisdiction.
[6:32] >> It was a non...
[6:33] >> Right, nominally the Qing Dynasty still
[6:36] managed it, so in reality, it was a
[6:38] lawless zone where nobody cared, and
[6:40] inside...
[6:40] >> These illegal structures, there were no
[6:42] building codes. They were supposedly
[6:45] following Qing Dynasty laws.
[6:46] >> You know, they say many kids, even
[6:49] Stephen Chow, had that kind of life
[6:51] experience back then. In broad daylight
[6:53] , you had to keep the streetlights on
[6:55] because it was pitch black inside.
[6:56] >> Because of all those dense, layered
[6:58] illegal structures.
[6:59] >> It was dripping water everywhere, but
[7:01] it had its own self-contained ecosystem
[7:03] inside. Inside, there were factories,
[7:05] doctors, products being made,
[7:07] prostitutes, all sorts of small
[7:08] businesses and enterprises, and because
[7:10] they had to be self-sufficient and
[7:12] protect themselves, there was even a
[7:14] criminal underworld. Oh, it was a place
[7:16] like that.
[7:17] >> You could even use drugs there.
[7:18] >> Oh, so it was that kind of place.
[7:20] >> And you could watch strip shows. It's
[7:22] been torn down now, right?
[7:23] >> It was demolished a long time ago. None
[7:25] of you have been there, right? It
[7:26] shouldn't have been completely torn
[7:27] down, because we felt at the time that
[7:29] this area had cultural and even
[7:30] architectural value; later, many
[7:32] scholars explored it and unfortunately
[7:33] considered it the earliest example of
[7:35] postmodernism.
[7:35] >> You could have preserved it, just moved
[7:37] the people out.
[7:38] >> Yes, move the people out, because that
[7:40] place was like a natural playground.
[7:43] Let me tell you, don't even talk about
[7:44] going into a building; first of all,
[7:46] the streets and the building exteriors
[7:47] were covered in electrical wires and
[7:49] water pipes crisscrossing everywhere,
[7:50] just rigged up haphazardly. Then, you'd
[7:52] climb the stairs to the tenth floor—
[7:54] no elevators—and suddenly, there
[7:56] would be a tiny passageway, which
[7:58] turned out to be a skybridge connecting
[8:00] to another building. And when you went
[8:02] into that other building, you’d find
[8:04] yourself on the 13th floor; how could
[8:05] it be the 1st floor here and the 13th
[8:07] over there? Because the buildings were
[8:09] all different heights, the whole place
[8:10] looked like a three-dimensional city
[8:12] from a sci-fi novel, interconnected and
[8:14] complex.
[8:14] >> Actually, other people's suffering
[8:16] becomes someone else's aesthetic;
[8:18] I’ve realized that Professor Xu is a
[8:20] bit of a calculator. I don't think
[8:22] there's anything wrong with that.
[8:23] >> The shrewdness of Shanghai culture is
[8:25] clearly embodied in you.
[8:27] >> I was just telling Professor Ma, when I
[8:29] was young and went to Northeast China,
[8:32] Shanghai girls would go there—
[8:34] relatives from Beijing, Qiqihar, Harbin
[8:36] —everyone saw how pretty the Shanghai
[8:39] girls were. It was a great opportunity
[8:41] to fall in love. And this is where you
[8:44] could describe how the young men from
[8:46] Shanghai would just stand on the
[8:47] sidelines, not making a move. They just
[8:50] wouldn't act; it's not that they were
[8:52] stupid or mute, they just stood there,
[8:54] keeping it all inside, not knowing how.
[8:57] >> Because young men in the North are very
[8:59] proactive in their pursuits.
[9:01] >> Exactly.
[9:02] >> But the young men from Shanghai were
[9:04] just watching from the sidelines—or
[9:06] not just watching, they just wouldn't
[9:07] make a move, you never knew what they
[9:09] were thinking. Meanwhile, the others
[9:11] would win over a girl in two hours, you
[9:13] know?
[9:13] >> Then aren't you at a disadvantage?
[9:15] >> A big disadvantage. In the battlefield
[9:17] of romance, you were effectively...
[9:19] >> No, "not wanting to" could also mean
[9:20] he's just watching a joke unfold,
[9:22] perhaps.
[9:22] >> Right.
[9:23] >> Right, right, right. So when we
[9:26] Shanghai educated youth were in the
[9:28] Northeast, what was the biggest source
[9:30] of my disappointment? For example,
[9:31] among the Harbin educated youth, the
[9:34] person at the very bottom of their
[9:36] group could be scolded by anyone.
[9:38] >> Hmm.
[9:39] >> They could be hit or scolded at will.
[9:41] But you, as a Shanghainese, couldn't
[9:44] touch them. If one of you Shanghainese
[9:46] touched them, a whole group would come
[9:48] up and beat you.
[9:49] >> But for us Shanghainese, if someone
[9:51] among us—There wasn't that sense of
[9:54] collectivity; if you were getting
[9:56] beaten, we wouldn't interfere.
[9:58] >> We wouldn't say anything, wouldn't
[10:00] speak up.
[10:01] >> That's because, as I said, Shanghai's
[10:03] development narrowed individual
[10:06] survival down to just yourself. Aside
[10:08] from your own self, nothing else
[10:10] concerns you—why would I care about
[10:12] anyone else? "It's none of my business,
[10:14] ""What does it have to do with me?"
[10:15] >> It's just like in developed countries,
[10:17] where neighbors are like strangers,
[10:19] each looking after their own.
[10:20] >> There is no collective behavior,
[10:22] because those Harbin youths were very
[10:25] tight-knit; if you bullied one, a whole
[10:27] bunch would come and fight you.
[10:29] >> When I was in college, there were all
[10:31] sorts of hometown associations, but
[10:32] Shanghai ones couldn't get off the
[10:34] ground. Instead, the concept was always
[10:36] centered on the individual. You mention
[10:38] "not wanting to"—that's actually an
[10:40] efficiency, because if I say something,
[10:43] things might become more troublesome,
[10:45] or I'm not sure what the outcome will
[10:47] be, so I just don't want to. "
[10:49] >> Not wanting to" is equivalent to a
[10:51] diplomatic non-answer.
[10:52] >> But I think, I think you've put it well
[10:55] .
[10:55] >> And there's another thing; when I deal
[10:56] with foreigners, they always ask—I
[10:58] don't know if it's Shanghainese or all
[10:59] Chinese—I always say "Hmm," and they
[11:01] ask what that means. I say "Hmm," and
[11:02] they ask, "Is that a yes or a no?"
[11:04] >> I tell them, "I just mean 'hmm'."
[11:07] >> It just means I acknowledge the matter.
[11:09] >> I feel there should be a mutual
[11:11] understanding between us; this is
[11:13] Chinese culture. Yes, Chinese people—
[11:16] for instance, Wentao, if I ask if
[11:18] you'll come to a gathering on the 15th
[11:21] of next month and you say "hmm," it
[11:24] doesn't mean you're going.
[11:25] >> Exactly.
[11:27] >> It has very complex implications; this
[11:28] is the core of Chinese culture. Like
[11:30] when you send a smiley face on WeChat,
[11:32] you don't know if they are truly
[11:33] smiling or not—it's just like that,
[11:35] especially when we talk about novels
[11:36] and dialects.
[11:37] >> Among these dialects, Shanghainese
[11:38] doesn't have an advantage; you can't
[11:40] write novels in Shanghainese.
[11:41] >> It's true, you really can't.
[11:43] >> Definitely can't write them. I am, I am
[11:45] , I am a professional editor. I once
[11:47] specifically talked about which
[11:48] dialects are advantageous for writing
[11:50] novels. There are four major dialect
[11:52] regions in China that are great for
[11:54] writing novels: first is Beijing,
[11:55] second is Northern Shaanxi, Hunan, and
[11:57] Sichuan. When these dialects are
[11:59] written on paper, you can understand
[12:01] the text.
[12:02] >> Shanghainese, if you just go by your
[12:04] Shanghainese—take the simplest
[12:05] example—when I got to Shanghai, they
[12:07] said "eat big crab," they said "du za
[12:09] ha,""
[12:09] >> Du za ha."
[12:10] >> I said, "Write down the characters for
[12:12] 'du za ha' for me," and once written,
[12:14] it's still "big crab."
[12:15] >> Yes.
[12:15] >> It’s just that when written, it's "
[12:17] big crab." But they call it "du za ha,"
[12:19] is that different pronunciations for
[12:21] the same characters?
[12:22] >> That doesn't work. In its overall
[12:25] expression, when you write it down, all
[12:27] the rhyme and flavor are lost, teacher.
[12:29] >> Because the dance halls in Shanghai at
[12:32] that time......
[12:33] >> were relatively very open. Later, when
[12:35] I went to Hong Kong, I was warned: you
[12:37] can't just see a beautiful woman
[12:39] sitting there and ask her to dance. But
[12:41] in Shanghai, you really could ask
[12:43] anyone, even if she was with a guy.
[12:45] >> But some women, while they were willing
[12:48] to dance with you,
[12:49] >> they still wanted to keep a certain
[12:51] distance from a stranger they were
[12:53] embracing.
[12:54] >> So they wouldn't take off their masks;
[12:56] they wore them when they came in from
[12:58] outside. So they’d wear a mask while
[13:00] dancing with you, keeping a certain
[13:03] distance, signaling that I’m just
[13:05] dancing and nothing more. Shanghai was
[13:07] the easiest place to find beautiful
[13:09] women to dance with.
[13:10] >> Mm.
[13:11] >> Back then.
[13:13] >> Oh, and how did the men dancing with
[13:15] them feel about that?
[13:16] >> Wouldn't it feel a bit unnatural?
[13:19] >> Don't you think? I feel like it invites
[13:21] endless imagination—a person wearing
[13:23] a mask.
[13:24] >> It's like a veiled woman, with a pair
[13:26] of beautiful eyes.
[13:27] >> Better looking, even more beautiful.
[13:30] >> Even more beautiful.
[13:31] >> That was basically from the late 70s to
[13:34] the early 80s. Mm.
[13:36] >> That was when things like "The Blue
[13:37] Danube" and such started coming in.
[13:39] >> Professor Xu is so tall and dashing;
[13:41] you must have been a very active
[13:42] participant in the dance halls back
[13:44] then. You aren't short yourself.
[13:46] >> True, I was envied by them for many
[13:48] years, a group of young critics. The
[13:51] reason was they were having a meeting
[13:53] and there was a dance. They went to ask
[13:55] this beautiful girl to dance, but she
[13:57] wouldn't budge for any of them. Mm.
[14:00] >> I came in later and didn't know what
[14:01] had happened between them, so I went to
[14:03] ask him to dance, and he danced with me
[14:05] . Well, those guys ended up holding a
[14:07] grudge for decades.
[14:08] >> Every time they met, they'd say, "Oh,
[14:10] you remember back then at the meeting
[14:11] in Hainan Island, so and so..."
[14:13] >> But what he said about the mask
[14:15] reminded me of something. It was a very
[14:17] subtle winter thing; she could take it
[14:19] off, but by wearing it, she was saying,
[14:22] "I'm just here to dance, that's all."
[14:24] But looking on the bright side, she
[14:26] wears a mask when she's out with you.
[14:28] So others don't see her talking. They
[14:30] don't see her lips moving.
[14:32] >> Oh, you're even more devious.
[14:34] >> No, because, because
[14:36] >> The two of them—outsiders wouldn't
[14:37] know what this woman is saying to him.
[14:38] >> That's right. "
[14:39] >> Honey, who am I?"
[14:41] >> Right, because as you just said, even
[14:43] if there's a guy beside her, you can
[14:45] still ask her to dance. She just can't
[14:47] let the guy see her lips moving while
[14:49] she talks to you. When I got to Hong
[14:51] Kong, a friend took us dancing. It was
[14:53] just dancing, people were dancing. My
[14:56] Hong Kong friend warned me, "Don't just
[14:58] ask anyone to dance; if there's a guy
[15:00] sitting next to them, it could lead to
[15:02] big trouble." So I said, "Are there no
[15:04] places to dance in Hong Kong?" They
[15:06] have dance halls. I went to one later,
[15:09] and the dance hall was really sketchy.
[15:11] It was just like what my father
[15:13] described about the time before '49.
[15:14] The women would come over; you could
[15:17] ask them to dance, or not. But once you
[15:19] asked them to dance, they’d put a
[15:21] slip of paper with a stamp on your
[15:23] table.
[15:23] >> What, like paying the bill?
[15:25] >> Not paying the bill, it’s more like
[15:27] ordering morning tea.
[15:29] >> Just like selling drinks.
[15:31] >> This is for one dance.
[15:32] >> Oh, that's for one dance. Dance halls
[15:36] were all like that in the past. In
[15:38] Shanghai, it seems they categorized
[15:40] dance halls based on how many dances
[15:42] you got for a dollar. I mean, in the
[15:44] Republican era, the price per dance
[15:46] determined the class.
[15:48] >> Oh, one dollar,
[15:49] >> One dollar—either one dollar per
[15:51] dance or one dollar for five dances,
[15:52] the bystanders would say.
[15:54] >> One dollar for five dances. For us, it
[15:56] was five dollars for one dance.
[15:57] >> One dollar for five dances.
[15:59] >> For us, five dollars for one dance.
[16:01] Inflation, inflation. The price was
[16:03] because, if they charged more, it was a
[16:05] high-end dance hall; if they charged
[16:06] less, it was a smaller one.
[16:07] >> Oh, Shanghainese people.
[16:09] >> Mr. Zhichun told me about these details
[16:12] in great detail.
[16:13] >> Back then, many underground party
[16:15] activities and cultural salons were
[16:17] held in dance halls like those. Oh my,
[16:19] hearing you guys talk about this
[16:21] reminds me: actually, the most
[16:23] interesting things are the boundaries
[16:25] between one world and another, or
[16:27] between one era and another. the
[16:29] boundaries, because back then it was
[16:31] still very conservative. What you’re
[16:33] saying reminds me of the cafeteria at
[16:35] Wuhan University, back in the 80s when
[16:37] we just started learning social dancing
[16:39] in college. You know, it was really
[16:40] strange; it wasn't like what you’d
[16:42] imagine, there in the cafeteria. Right.
[16:45] >> Exactly. And the cafeteria was about as
[16:49] wide as a football field. The girls
[16:51] would stand in a row against one wall,
[16:53] and the boys would stand in a row
[16:55] against the other, you know? Oh, for
[16:57] someone thin-skinned like me, you
[17:00] really had no courage. It meant that
[17:02] the boys had to go ask the girls to
[17:05] dance, so who would walk that long
[17:07] stretch of several dozen meters?
[17:09] >> Under everyone’s gaze, you generally
[17:11] had to be the best dancer, you had to
[17:14] have that confidence. Someone like us,
[17:16] you know? We could only watch others,
[17:18] and we wouldn't even dare to ask.
[17:20] >> Right.
[17:21] >> And oh, walking across like that—but
[17:23] you know, for a long time, it just
[17:24] couldn't start. Because at first
[17:26] everyone was...
[17:27] >> people.
[17:28] >> Finally, one guy in the row would
[17:30] muster the courage to walk over, then
[17:31] another, and then, based on their looks
[17:33] , you could see the biological patterns
[17:35] at play, right? And then they’d just
[17:38] start dancing. I remember, I’ll
[17:40] always remember that it was hard to
[17:43] dance because the cafeteria floor was
[17:45] covered in dust—you see, at that time
[17:48] , we were so shy, conservative, and
[17:51] closed off.
[17:53] >> It was the only chance you had to
[17:55] actually hold a girl.
[17:57] >> It was a breakthrough in our boundaries
[17:59] . Looking back today, it sounds like a
[18:02] joke.
[18:02] >> Now, dancing has basically turned into
[18:04] square dancing, the kind old men and
[18:06] women do in Shanghai.
[18:07] >> Ordinary people don't really do it
[18:09] anymore.
[18:09] >> It's gone; social dancing is just gone.
[18:11] I remember what Professor Xu said. I
[18:13] wrote that part into "Blossoms." I had
[18:16] a friend at East China Normal
[18:17] University, and he’d say, "We have
[18:19] dance parties here every day, you
[18:21] should come over." And when I was about
[18:23] to reach the dance hall, he would coach
[18:25] me. He said, "Let me tell you, when you
[18:29] get in there and ask a girl to dance,
[18:31] if she looks like a student, you should
[18:34] introduce yourself by saying, 'I sell
[18:36] fruit by the back gate,' or 'I run a
[18:39] small restaurant.'""Then she’ll be
[18:42] very enthusiastic toward you."
[18:44] >> He said if you see a woman who doesn't
[18:47] look like a student—like someone from
[18:49] the Chaoyang or Changfeng residential
[18:51] areas, a regular woman from the city—
[18:54] then you should say, "I’m a professor
[18:56] at East China Normal University."
[18:59] >> And then they would be very, very
[19:01] interested in you.
[19:04] >> So, what I mean is, regarding "Blossoms
[19:06] Shanghai," I really want to tell people
[19:09] that the TV series and the novel are
[19:11] different.
[19:12] >> Take Li Li, whom you just mentioned,
[19:14] for example.
[19:15] >> Yeah.
[19:16] >> I don't think a TV series can portray
[19:18] her as ruthlessly.
[19:20] >> For instance, in the story of "Blossoms
[19:22] ," there's this idea that she ends up
[19:24] having a one-night stand with A-Bao—
[19:27] though why it's called a "one-night
[19:29] stand" is unclear. Some people are
[19:31] incredibly sensitive, like Wentao, whom
[19:34] I've discovered is very sensitive and
[19:37] prone to over-interpreting. In reality,
[19:39] there's no one-night stand; she's just
[19:42] tired and sleeping in the car. But I
[19:44] saw people online claiming that this
[19:47] scene implies something happened
[19:49] between them.
[19:50] >> But I didn't see it that way. To me, it
[19:53] was just A-Bao getting out of the car
[19:55] to smoke.
[19:56] >> It shows he trusts you enough to be
[19:59] completely relaxed.
[20:00] >> Oh, no wonder you both love driving.
[20:04] >> I just never felt that way, you see.
[20:07] You two are just more sensitive.
[20:09] >> No, no, I'm just forgetful now. Why do
[20:13] I remember such a brutal plot point
[20:15] about Li Li? It was about her past, a
[20:18] specific experience she had.
[20:20] >> It was about some mob boss from back in
[20:23] the day who messed with her, and...in
[20:25] the novel, he did something to her
[20:28] private parts.
[20:29] >> That’s in the novel. It's not like
[20:31] that in the series. The reason I didn't
[20:35] think they were together is because
[20:37] there's a scene where A-Bao is standing
[20:39] at the stairs, and Li Li walks up to
[20:42] him; their lips are almost touching.
[20:45] >> We thought we were about to see a kiss,
[20:48] but then she turned and walked upstairs
[20:51] . How could they go from that to being
[20:53] together in the blink of an eye? It’s
[20:56] impossible. That’s my reasoning. Lu
[20:59] Xun analyzed late Qing Dynasty brothel
[21:02] novels and categorized them into three
[21:04] types. One is "beautifying."
[21:07] Beautifying.
[21:08] >> Is it "beautifying"? Yes, he was
[21:10] talking about works like "Ping Hua Bao
[21:11] Jian" and "Qing Lou Meng."
[21:13] >> Another is "exposing the evil."
[21:15] >> Like "Jiu Wei Gui."
[21:17] >> And the third is "depicting the truth,"
[21:19] or getting close to reality.
[21:21] >> That refers to "The Flowers of Shanghai
[21:24] ." Hmm.
[21:26] >> That novel is more realistic.
[21:30] >> Hmm.
[21:31] >> Closer to reality.
[21:33] >> Right, closer to reality. The series,
[21:36] however, is "beautifying." I mean, look
[21:39] at these relationships; Bao is so pure.
[21:42] He’s surrounded by three or four
[21:44] women, and we have no idea how his
[21:46] physical needs are met, right? To a
[21:48] doctor, that’s completely unrealistic
[21:51] . You can only understand it from the
[21:53] perspective of a martial arts novel,
[21:55] with so many women worshiping him from
[21:57] start to finish, right? That is simply
[22:00] beautification.
[22:01] >> To achieve greater social impact for
[22:03] the TV series, he beautified, he
[22:04] idealized the Li Li from the novel
[22:06] quite a bit. Mm-hmm.
[22:07] >> Right? He ends up in her bed, confused,
[22:10] and when the lights turn on, the room
[22:12] is filled with broken dolls.
[22:14] >> Mm-hmm.
[22:15] >> Right?
[22:16] >> Yes.
[22:17] >> Those things are all damaged.
[22:19] >> Sleeping in Li Li's room.
[22:21] >> Exactly, it’s terrifying. From a
[22:23] man’s perspective, you sleep with a
[22:26] woman, and the next day when the lights
[22:28] come on, all these dolls—which are
[22:30] symbols of dreams—are broken. And
[22:32] then there's the glass catwalk, the
[22:34] fear of a wardrobe malfunction. The way
[22:37] he portrays this star, Li Li, and their
[22:39] scenes together—it’s also the most
[22:41] realistic sexual relationship for A-Bao
[22:43] in the entire novel, right?
[22:44] >> Right.
[22:45] >> That’s competition.
[22:47] >> Mm-hmm.
[22:48] >> That’s competition.
[22:50] >> It’s not competition, if I remember
[22:52] correctly.
[22:54] >> There are several passages in it with
[22:56] lights turning on and off, very direct
[22:58] expressions of lust.
[22:59] >> You're talking about the novel, right?
[23:01] >> Yes, in the novel. So when he calls it
[23:04] a "wuxia drama," you say you aren't
[23:06] quite sure what he means. I'm good at
[23:08] interpreting those words; they can be
[23:10] taken as a compliment or as a criticism
[23:12] . Calling it a "wuxia drama" in a
[23:14] positive sense means it’s a "
[23:16] satisfying" show. Ordinary people love
[23:18] it; you can’t deny its massive
[23:20] success. Everyone likes watching it.
[23:24] But the reason they like it—for
[23:26] instance, some TV masters, these
[23:28] masters understand the audience's
[23:31] psyche: it’s just satisfying. But
[23:34] does this "satisfying" aspect imply
[23:36] that for a show to be especially
[23:38] satisfying, the conflicts must be
[23:40] intense, the character traits must be
[23:43] extreme, and the characterizations must
[23:45] be so sharp that they border on
[23:47] caricature? To the point where it might
[23:50] have smoothed over the richness and
[23:52] gray complexity found in the novel?
[23:54] What is your take on this?
[23:56] >> Right. I think they are truly different
[23:59] ; they are indeed different, the space
[24:02] they occupy is just different. The
[24:05] target audiences they are set up to
[24:07] consider are also different. There are
[24:11] other regulations and such, so being
[24:14] able to achieve what he did was already
[24:16] the only option. That's why I mentioned
[24:22] the masked woman earlier; what I meant
[24:24] was that he conducted a carpet-style
[24:27] investigation at the time. In the sound
[24:30] department, they had a bunch of people
[24:33] interviewing others on Huanghe Road,
[24:35] covering everything—was it shooting
[24:37] 255 dinner scenes for 25 episodes? He
[24:40] had considered all of that. What else
[24:42] did he think about shooting? He also
[24:44] thought about having A-Bao play all
[24:46] three male leads: Xiao Mao, Hu Sheng,
[24:48] and—
[24:49] >> Those are the three characters from the
[24:51] novel.
[24:51] >> The three of them, because he really
[24:53] likes Hu Ge. Because Wong Kar-wai
[24:56] really likes him. He said he wants this
[24:58] one person to play all three roles
[25:00] himself.
[25:01] >> Oh my, I said that’s incredibly
[25:03] difficult. If the three brothers meet
[25:05] one day, what are you going to do? He
[25:07] has a way, and you really shouldn't
[25:08] underestimate him. How would you do it?
[25:10] Swap heads for the three people? It's
[25:12] not just swapping heads; these three
[25:14] look identical. Makeup for three people
[25:16] like that is very difficult.
[25:18] >> Film them separately?
[25:19] >> If you film separately, what if the
[25:21] three brothers are meeting for tea? How
[25:23] would you shoot that?
[25:24] >> Let’s stop worrying about him.
[25:26] >> That’s what I’m saying, he just has
[25:29] so many ideas, so many different
[25:31] methods. So in the end, that’s the
[25:34] path he chose. He’s not like a
[25:38] novelist who only needs one person. So
[25:41] the day he started filming, I said, "
[25:44] Hey, congratulations to you," and so on
[25:46] . He just said, "From today on, I have
[25:49] to pay 400 people's wages." That’s
[25:52] what it means. Everyone has different
[25:55] priorities.
[25:55] >> A film is first and foremost a business
[25:58] , right. In the past, for example with
[26:00] Wong Kar-wai's films like*Chungking
[26:02] Express*, many people reacted by saying
[26:04] , "I don't get it." Like, what exactly
[26:06] is the relationship between this man
[26:08] and this woman? Are they in love? Are
[26:10] they good? Are they really good? It’s
[26:13] a kind of ambiguous, subtle thing. But
[26:15] look at the*Blossoms Shanghai*series;
[26:17] why do people say it’s like a martial
[26:19] arts drama? That’s why I commented
[26:21] the other day, saying this show is
[26:22] truly about a man having intentions and
[26:24] a woman having feelings—it’s just
[26:26] that clear-cut. Maybe it’s because
[26:28] today’s society wants satisfaction,
[26:31] wants to be moved; perhaps they
[26:33] conducted research.
[26:34] >> And what about your research? The
[26:37] relationships in your novels, your
[26:39] research.
[26:40] >> In novels, it's not research; it’s
[26:42] just that in my memory, there are
[26:45] relationships that are particularly
[26:47] interesting or unique. I don't need to
[26:49] write them down; I just store them away
[26:52] . They become keywords, stored in my
[26:55] mind, and I won't forget them.
[26:57] >> Why do you seem particularly interested
[26:59] in stories about men and women?
[27:01] >> Uh, I’m not exactly interested;
[27:04] it’s just because they are special.
[27:07] The place where a novelist is actually
[27:10] different from everyone else is that
[27:12] they want to preserve everything. Now,
[27:16] normal people, if they encounter
[27:19] unhappy things, negative energy, or
[27:21] mental pollution, they usually want to
[27:24] throw it away immediately.
[27:26] >> Hmm. I think a writer's endurance comes
[27:31] from their ability to preserve things,
[27:34] and they won't get sick because they
[27:36] say, "I'll keep this, and I'll write it
[27:38] down later," because
[27:40] >> Writing is a form of therapy, keeping
[27:42] things preserved—whether it's
[27:43] negative energy or anything else—
[27:45] through the act of creation, you're
[27:47] actually healing yourself.
[27:49] >> You were just asking why I seem
[27:50] particularly interested in the affairs
[27:52] between men and women.
[27:53] >> Right, and you are too. I think I’m
[27:55] interested in everyone, men and women
[27:58] alike. I think there is an answer,
[28:00] because for example, platonic feelings
[28:03] or other bonds are simpler compared to
[28:05] romantic emotions, which are far more
[28:08] complex. There’s affection, love,
[28:10] gratitude, resentment, and hatred.
[28:13] There are so many different layers;
[28:16] compared to friendships or brotherhoods
[28:19] , it has more facets. In terms of
[28:21] creation and fiction, it offers more
[28:24] territory for you to explore and
[28:26] imagine. I think that's why if you look
[28:29] at literature throughout history,
[28:31] domestic and foreign, the more moving
[28:33] novels are, the richer their depiction
[28:35] of romantic emotions. But getting back
[28:38] to that TV series, it’s very clever;
[28:40] I’d say the director used three
[28:42] crutches to help him walk the path.
[28:44] What was the first crutch? He often
[28:47] quotes lines from the original "
[28:49] Blossoms," right? Even right at the
[28:52] start, he pays tribute to Professor Jin
[28:54] , doesn't he? Reminding people who the
[28:57] very first character to appear is.
[29:01] Turning back, that’s using lines from
[29:03] the original. So, what is the second
[29:07] crutch? He has some narration, doesn't
[29:10] he? Explaining which year it is, how
[29:12] the stock market went crazy, rising and
[29:15] falling, fearing the audience might not
[29:17] understand. And then there’s the
[29:19] third crutch, especially that small
[29:21] street vendor on Huanghe Road, isn't
[29:23] there? The one selling cigarettes?
[29:25] Often
[29:26] >> The assistant director—the TV series
[29:28] 'assistant director.
[29:29] >> Really? Occasionally someone goes up
[29:32] and asks what happened, and that guy
[29:34] provides an explanation, so the
[29:36] audience understands. This is Wong
[29:38] Kar-wai being unprecedentedly
[29:40] considerate of the audience.
[29:43] >> He's so afraid you won't get it that he
[29:45] gives you three crutches to help you
[29:47] understand. The "Blossoms" in his lens
[29:49] isn't necessarily the "Blossoms" in the
[29:52] text. I often mix up the pronunciation
[29:55] of "Blossoms," sorry, my pronunciation
[29:57] isn't great.
[29:58] >> You like flowers blooming and bearing
[30:00] fruit.
[30:00] >> Yes, I think he is unprecedentedly
[30:03] considerate and gentle.
[30:05] >> This is the first time I've heard
[30:07] someone say that about Wong Kar-wai,
[30:09] but professionals in this field surely
[30:11] have all kinds of data to say, "We
[30:13] should have a fight here," or "Someone
[30:15] should get slapped here," or something
[30:17] like that. Didn't TV series used to
[30:20] follow a specific pattern? It's all
[30:22] because they're afraid you'll get up
[30:24] and do something else halfway through
[30:26] watching.
[30:26] >> Right, he wants you to stay here and
[30:29] not move.
[30:29] >> Hey, I have a question: do you like the
[30:32] characters in your novels? Because many
[30:34] writers say they have feelings for
[30:36] their characters; sometimes, they
[30:37] can’t even control how they develop.
[30:39] I want to ask, do you love the people
[30:42] in your novels?
[30:43] >> Of course I like them. I wouldn't call
[30:45] it love, but I do like them, yes, I
[30:48] like them.
[30:49] >> So, when you watch the TV adaptation,
[30:51] do you like the corresponding character
[30:53] in the show?
[30:54] >> Why is that? Because a novel is a
[30:57] decoding process. We encode through
[31:00] words, and you generate images through
[31:03] those words. Think about, for example,
[31:06] *Dream of the Red Chamber*. Someone
[31:08] plays Lin Daiyu, and we watch Lin Daiyu
[31:11] . You see even the most excellent actor
[31:13] , and they say they are Lin Daiyu. How,
[31:15] how can you accept that? Well, you have
[31:18] to be prepared beforehand that what
[31:19] you're watching is something new.
[31:21] It’s impossible for it to match the
[31:23] text exactly. The only thing that
[31:25] matches is the name; they share the
[31:27] same name.
[31:28] >> Have you already given up on your
[31:30] imagination of the novel? No, I just
[31:35] feel that my interest lies in seeing
[31:37] how they...
[31:39] >> Present the character,
[31:41] >> Structure the story, how it develops,
[31:44] and where they place the focus. I knew
[31:46] early on that a director with such
[31:49] strong ideas would create something new
[31:52] , a new life, this is...
[31:54] >> Did he talk to you beforehand? Did he
[31:57] ever sit you down early on? "Dear
[31:59] teacher, I'm telling you, what I'm
[32:01] doing has nothing to do with your novel
[32:03] ," did he give you a heads-up?
[32:05] >> He wouldn't tell me; he wouldn't tell
[32:08] me that. Besides, in the beginning, we
[32:11] talked about the story and chatted
[32:13] about this and that. But when it came
[32:16] to the actual part...
[32:18] >> It's because I also had a play.
[32:20] >> Hmm.
[32:22] >> There was another group working on a
[32:23] stage play.
[32:24] >> Which was relatively faithful to the
[32:26] original work. Plays that are faithful
[32:28] to the original—I don't know why,
[32:30] stage plays are almost always faithful,
[32:32] rarely are they otherwise, it seems to
[32:34] be...
[32:35] >> A professional convention, though most
[32:37] films are also faithful to the original
[32:39] .
[32:39] >> Wong Kar-wai is the exception.
[32:42] >> What kind of movies do you watch? For
[32:44] instance, I’ve seen so many versions
[32:46] of*Anna Karenina*.
[32:47] >> That’s just like*Dream of the Red
[32:48] Chamber*; with great classics, everyone
[32:50] has the right to interpret them. Yeah,
[32:52] yeah, yeah. Actually, when they, when
[32:55] Wong Kar-wai was really getting into
[32:57] the thick of things, he wouldn't tell
[32:59] me. He was afraid that if he told me, I
[33:04] might go there, or maybe I wouldn't.
[33:07] It's just industry protocol, even
[33:09] though I'm an outsider. I heard, and I
[33:13] don't know if it's true, that
[33:15] personally speaking, apart from filming
[33:18] this series, you and Wong Kar-wai
[33:20] actually both preferred the girlfriend
[33:22] who appeared the shortest amount of
[33:24] time.
[33:25] >> Are you talking about Xuezhi?
[33:27] >> Xuezhi.
[33:28] >> Is that right?
[33:29] >> Yes, yes, yes. Why?
[33:31] >> Because she's more artistic, right?
[33:33] She's a more artistic girl.
[33:34] >> Buying tickets at Sanlu. Do you like
[33:37] the actress Du, or the Xuezhi in the
[33:39] novel?
[33:40] >> Right, right, because the character's
[33:42] trajectory in the novel is completely
[33:45] different from the TV series.
[33:47] >> It's different.
[33:49] >> In the novel, the beginning is the same
[33:52] —her dating A-Bao and all that—but
[33:55] later, it's because her family strongly
[33:57] opposed her marrying A-Bao. Back then,
[34:01] dating wasn't like it is now; you could
[34:04] date for five or ten years. Back then,
[34:08] you dated to get married. So A-Bao's
[34:11] father also said, "Look at a family
[34:13] like that; the whole family dislikes
[34:16] you. They have a house, but if you
[34:19] marry into that kind of family, can you
[34:22] actually make it work?" Xuezhi was the
[34:24] only one in her family not sent to the
[34:26] countryside; her older sisters and
[34:28] brothers were all sent away. She was
[34:30] the only one left, and the whole family
[34:32] relied on her to turn things around. So
[34:35] , in this situation, it fits her
[34:37] character that she never said to A-Bao,
[34:40] "I'll love you forever, and wherever
[34:42] you go, I'll follow." But on A-Bao's
[34:45] side, after his parents opposed it, he
[34:47] hoped Xuezhi would say, "I'll never
[34:49] leave you, I'll stick with you." A-Bao
[34:51] has his pride, too. He hoped this woman
[34:54] would—well, men like it when a woman
[34:56] is devoted to them and follows them—
[34:58] but she didn't. So, it was natural for
[35:02] them to just end it, especially since
[35:04] her family caused a scene at A-Bao's
[35:06] place. After they broke up, many years
[35:13] later, once A-Bao became "Bao Zong," he
[35:16] ran into Xuezhi at some kind of event.
[35:20] >> That was in the novel. Speaking of the
[35:23] very end of the novel.
[35:24] >> Mm-hmm.
[35:25] >> It's just, just.
[35:27] >> Seeing A-Bao again.
[35:29] >> He heard A-Bao talking on the phone,
[35:31] and then a call came in. A-Bao is
[35:32] walking with Hu-Sheng when the phone
[35:34] rings, and a voice says, "A-Bao, this
[35:36] is Xue-Zi." A-Bao replies, "It's not
[35:38] convenient right now, let's talk later.
[35:41] " And then he hangs up the phone. It
[35:43] says that Xue-Zi came to find A-Bao,
[35:46] but others told him that she’s a—a
[35:48] —a noble lady now. I mean, that’s
[35:51] how it is in the novel.
[35:54] >> But the director wrote it so that she
[35:56] is with someone else, another boyfriend
[35:58] of Hu-Sheng, during the Reform and
[36:00] Opening-up period when a man from Hong
[36:03] Kong arrived, and she broke up with
[36:05] Hu-Sheng to marry the man from Hong
[36:07] Kong; he combined these two people.
[36:10] >> He merged them.
[36:12] >> These two people were combined to form
[36:14] the latter part of Xue-Zi’s story,
[36:16] then she died, and so on; that’s the
[36:18] director’s interpretation.
[36:20] >> But in fact, when you wrote about this
[36:22] relationship, didn't you say everything
[36:25] had a real-life prototype? I’d like
[36:27] to hear what this story was like in
[36:30] real life.
[36:31] >> The story in real, actual life is
[36:33] basically like this.
[36:35] >> It’s true.
[36:36] >> Including that...that...
[36:38] >> The one you encountered yourself?
[36:40] >> This is about a friend of mine, so
[36:42] it’s basically like this; the theme
[36:45] of the novel is that life is very
[36:47] awkward. Everyone you meet isn't black
[36:50] or white; you always encounter things
[36:53] that are unsatisfactory. Things go
[36:55] wrong nine times out of ten; living a
[36:57] whole life is just always encountering
[37:00] awkward situations.
[37:01] >> It means it’s not that romantic.
[37:04] >> It can be, of course, very romantic,
[37:06] but if you get the romance, you also
[37:09] get...it's all......
[37:11] >> beyond reach. Do you think most TV
[37:14] drama audiences dislike ambiguity and
[37:18] prefer clear attitudes?
[37:21] >> No, they enjoy the ambiguity precisely
[37:24] because they enjoy the relationships
[37:26] with those women. Without a sense of
[37:29] longing, curiosity, interest, or even
[37:32] personal investment in these
[37:34] relationships, you couldn't keep
[37:36] watching the show. TV dramas need to
[37:39] hook people now.
[37:41] >> Mm. The most crucial secret weapon is
[37:44] detective work. Homicide—look at "The
[37:47] Long Season" or "The Knockout,"
[37:49] there’s fighting and killing in every
[37:52] episode, and there’s a murderer;
[37:54] trying to hook the audience with just
[37:56] romance is......extremely difficult.
[37:59] >> Then only one man and three women will
[38:01] work.
[38:02] >> Actually, it’s one man and four women
[38:04] ; that’s actually a tradition in Hong
[38:06] Kong, as I mentioned last time.
[38:09] >> Hong Kong literature—Liu Yichang’s
[38:12] "The Drunkard," Xi Xi’s "Sun, Moon,
[38:15] and Star"—those are all famous Hong
[38:17] Kong works, including Ye Si’s "The
[38:20] Gap.""
[38:21] >> Dragon Head, Phoenix Tail."
[38:23] >> Dragon Head, Phoenix. OK. So, many
[38:26] classic Hong Kong stories involve one
[38:29] man and multiple women.
[38:30] >> Ah.
[38:32] >> This is quite unique when viewed within
[38:34] the history of 20 th-century Chinese
[38:36] literature.
[38:37] >> Mm. Usually, we either have one man and
[38:40] one woman, like the noble themes in*To
[38:42] Live*.
[38:42] >> Mm.
[38:43] >> Or it's one woman with multiple men,
[38:45] where different men represent different
[38:47] political forces—most typically in*
[38:49] White Deer Plain*, with figures like
[38:51] officials, bandits, and landlords.
[38:53] There are also stories of one woman and
[38:55] multiple men where the men represent
[38:56] different political choices, like in*
[38:58] Song of Youth*.
[38:59] >> Mm.
[39:00] >> But rarely one man with multiple women.
[39:02] Navigating between several women.
[39:05] >> That's the*Dream of the Red Chamber*
[39:07] tradition, but I'm talking about since
[39:09] the 20th century.
[39:10] >> Usually, people worry that audiences
[39:12] won't watch a show like that, although
[39:14] there are exceptions, but nowadays
[39:16] people also fear being criticized.
[39:18] >> Right.
[39:19] >> As a "scumbag"?
[39:21] >> Mainly that, right?
[39:22] >> Don't you think?
[39:24] >> So this adaptation has two major
[39:26] breakthroughs; one is focusing on that
[39:28] sense of satisfaction. It portrays
[39:30] women who seem unable to keep a man as
[39:33] winners. Mm.
[39:35] >> Each one is as elegant as Bao Zong, and
[39:37] in the end, we say goodbye and go our
[39:39] separate ways, right? I am the winner.
[39:42] >> Yes, and in the end, they are all
[39:43] self-reliant; they don't depend on men
[39:45] but on themselves. Even when Bao Zong
[39:48] secretly tries to help, Miss Tang knows
[39:50] it, and she won't have it.
[39:51] >> Exactly, but these men still meet their
[39:54] ideals. Those ideals are twofold; the
[39:56] first is being handsome, right? The
[39:59] second is that they start by throwing
[40:00] money at you, you know? Like for Ma
[40:03] Yili, right? "You're working here? I'll
[40:06] buy you a shop in Shanghai, right?""
[40:08] Miss, you're having trouble, right?""A
[40:11] Cadillac, right?" Giving away cars,
[40:14] look how affectionate and loyal that is
[40:16] , that's just...
[40:17] >> It's satisfying to watch.
[40:18] >> Right from the start, it's very
[40:20] satisfying deep down. You know women
[40:22] will say, "This man is great, it's so
[40:24] gratifying," right?
[40:25] >> No, but having said that, Jin just
[40:27] mentioned that life is awkward, and
[40:29] that’s what I’m most interested in,
[40:32] because regardless of whether it’s
[40:34] pretty, dramatic, or whatever novel or
[40:36] TV show it is. Whatever the plot, we
[40:39] will see it. At least for me, whether
[40:41] I’m reading a novel, watching a show,
[40:44] or a movie. What moves me the most is
[40:47] what? After realizing that life is
[40:50] awkward, what next? How do you respond
[40:53] to that awkwardness? What method do you
[40:55] use to move past it? Some people,
[40:57] whether through traveling to find
[40:59] independence or through love and hate,
[41:02] some people really do move past it, yes
[41:04] . Unfortunately, for people, your
[41:06] second choice in responding to this
[41:09] awkwardness often drags you, and even
[41:11] the ones you love, into another, even
[41:14] greater awkwardness. I think the latter
[41:17] part is where many creative novels and
[41:19] film works are truly moving; there’s
[41:22] nothing new under the sun. But how one
[41:25] responds to that awkwardness involves
[41:28] both human agency and a bit of fate. So
[41:32] the most moving part is when Ma Yili
[41:35] finally breaks up with Mr. Bao; she
[41:38] leaves, stops as if to say one more
[41:41] thing to him, but then continues on.
[41:44] >> Mm.
[41:46] >> This scene is exactly what you were
[41:48] talking about—the awkwardness that
[41:50] this situation causes for people.
[41:53] >> But you mentioned the idea of a woman
[41:56] being self-reliant and so resolute that
[41:59] she won't accept any secret help from a
[42:01] man. Right, he is very dissatisfied
[42:04] with Miss Wang, though I quite like her
[42:07] .
[42:07] >> I agree with Wen Tao on this point as
[42:10] well. Perhaps from a male perspective,
[42:14] we wouldn't see it that way, but maybe
[42:17] it's a current requirement—that women
[42:20] need to be more empowered or assertive
[42:22] in this regard. Because honestly, in my
[42:30] own view, generally speaking, if two
[42:32] people had a past relationship, even if
[42:35] things aren't good now, if someone is
[42:38] willing to help you—given how few
[42:40] people in this society actually will—
[42:43] it's very rare. If someone helps you,
[42:49] you’d immediately notice it or feel
[42:52] it. There’s no reason to say, "If you
[42:58] help me, I won't have it; I must do it
[43:00] all by myself." I think this might be a
[43:07] certain kind of demand, or perhaps the
[43:10] production side is working based on
[43:12] some kind of data. So you realize that
[43:19] behind such a hit TV series, aside from
[43:22] the art, there must be a lot of
[43:24] deliberation and reference to
[43:26] mainstream values, and even political
[43:28] correctness.
[43:30] >> Right.
[43:31] >> She is safeguarding her self-esteem. Mm
[43:34] .
[43:35] >> Besides, she also has the Xia family by
[43:37] her side. Even though she doesn't love
[43:39] the Xia family, it's a step backward
[43:41] economically; is that how we explain
[43:43] why Miss Wang is being unreasonable?
[43:46] Right?
[43:47] >> Actually, I really feel that, I
[43:49] remember years ago, there was this lady
[43:51] , of course she found a very powerful
[43:54] man, but she always liked to say—I
[43:56] found this understandable—she said, "
[43:59] Don't think I'm relying on a man; I'm
[44:01] relying on myself." I can completely
[44:03] understand that, but later I said to
[44:06] her, I said, "Actually, why say it like
[44:08] that?"
[44:09] >> I think your man also relies on you.
[44:11] >> Between people,
[44:13] >> the character for "person"(人) is just
[44:14] two strokes leaning on each other; who
[44:16] can be independent?
[44:17] >> Right.
[44:18] >> We all support each other, don't we?
[44:20] Husbands and wives, colleagues, teams,
[44:22] even boyfriends and girlfriends, right?
[44:25] Of course, you surely depend on your
[44:27] man to some extent, but at the same
[44:29] time, the man must also rely on you to
[44:32] some extent. That is what's real. Why
[44:35] is there such a strong urge now to
[44:37] emphasize, "I am me, I am..."
[44:39] >> My thoughts and hers
[44:41] >> who doesn't rely on anyone in this
[44:42] society?
[44:43] >> are quite consistent. I just feel, why
[44:45] draw such a clear line? Isn't that
[44:48] right? What is the reason? My, my
[44:50] thinking has really changed. I need to
[44:53] go back and reflect on this. When we
[44:55] look back at many biographies of female
[44:57] travelers, since the early Ming Dynasty
[44:59] , quite a few famous women have refused
[45:01] to rely on men—it’s not that they
[45:03] didn't rely, but they refused to.
[45:05] Because of divorce or breakups, men
[45:08] would say, "I'll give you money, I'll
[45:10] give you connections," and even use it
[45:12] as an enticement: "You can't make it;
[45:15] we're divorced, you have children to
[45:17] raise, you'll surely starve. I'll watch
[45:20] you starve, you'd better come back and
[45:22] follow me; I'll support you, they're my
[45:24] kids anyway." They all refused, refused
[45:27] , and then through very hard work and
[45:30] effort, they achieved a level of
[45:32] success. I don't think these people are
[45:34] ...so sometimes even if I reject you,
[45:37] it's still a human relationship; it's
[45:40] not what you call independence.
[45:42] Independence, well, my feeling is that
[45:44] independence means having nothing to do
[45:47] with you. But using my rejection of you
[45:49] as a driving force for my own
[45:51] self-improvement is also building a
[45:53] relationship with you. Your
[45:55] interpretation is very clever; your
[45:57] interpretation is what Buddhists call "
[45:59] adverse conditions as a stepping stone.
[46:00] ""
[46:01] >> Adverse conditions as a stepping stone"
[46:03] means
[46:03] >> I want to thank, so to speak, I want to
[46:05] thank my enemies; I want to thank the
[46:06] person who abandoned me, as it gave me
[46:08] more fighting spirit and led me to
[46:10] where I am today. This is also a kind
[46:12] of "destiny" in adversity, an adverse
[46:14] stepping stone. So you see, the reality
[46:16] of life, I think, is complex. But you
[46:18] know, in this era of short-form videos,
[46:21] you often sense a certain...people
[46:23] don't like a world that's ambiguous.
[46:25] Tell me, is he a good guy or a bad guy?
[46:28] Which side is this person actually on?
[46:30] It’s all about extreme simplicity and
[46:32] clarity. That’s why I wanted to talk
[46:34] to you three writers, to discuss
[46:36] something specific. Actually, I feel
[46:37] literature is the fortress that
[46:39] safeguards human compassion.
[46:40] >> Mm. And what is compassion? Compassion
[46:45] is sympathetic understanding. It means
[46:48] not reducing people to simple
[46:50] black-and-white terms; everyone is...
[46:53] well, it’s like what Jesus said,
[46:55] right? "Let any one of you who is
[46:58] without sin be the first to throw a
[47:00] stone at her," right? You see, society
[47:02] needs certainty—like the law, which
[47:05] isn't without justice. Criminals must
[47:08] pay the price and face punishment, but
[47:10] haven't you noticed? A society with
[47:13] only laws is cold and heartless. Strict
[47:15] laws and harsh punishments—look at
[47:17] the Qin Dynasty, for example, how it
[47:19] collapsed. I’m drifting off topic,
[47:21] but I mean, society is multifaceted.
[47:22] >> Mm.
[47:24] >> I think the role of literature is to
[47:26] show you the immense complexity in
[47:28] people and events. I don't mean to call
[47:31] you "old," but given your achievements,
[47:34] I'd want to, though it's more fun to
[47:36] call him "Old Jin." Right, it's more
[47:39] fun to call him "Old Jin." And later, I
[47:42] really enjoyed pondering this man's
[47:44] language. We invited him a few years
[47:47] ago to be on*Round Table*. Right. I
[47:50] discovered a unique characteristic in
[47:52] how he speaks. Generally speaking,
[47:53] people at this level, we focus on "
[47:55] viewpoints." Everyone loves to share
[47:57] their opinions. Haven't you noticed? In
[48:00] today’s shows, and even in team
[48:01] meetings, everyone asks: What is his
[48:03] point of view? Audiences love hearing
[48:05] opinions. They want a person to have a
[48:07] clear stance. I always ask, can you not
[48:08] live without a viewpoint? Why are we so
[48:10] obsessed with opinions instead of
[48:12] telling stories?
[48:12] >> Exactly. In the end, we found some of
[48:15] our colleagues were a bit disappointed,
[48:16] saying, "This guy doesn't have a point
[48:17] of view."
[48:18] >> He has no viewpoint.
[48:19] >> He’s just a person who is full of
[48:21] stories. But have you noticed? His
[48:24] stories don't carry praise or blame;
[48:26] there’s no clear attitude. It’s
[48:28] exactly what you mentioned earlier,
[48:31] Professor Xu—this "truthfulness."
[48:33] Within that, there is a kind of
[48:35] naturalism they talk about. In the past
[48:37] , we’ve viewed naturalism far too
[48:40] narrowly.
[48:41] >> Actually, when it comes to the essence
[48:43] of life, don't rush to take a stand.
[48:46] You need to take a look first, see what
[48:48] the whole thing is about from start to
[48:51] finish. This reminds me of what you
[48:54] said about A-Bao; some call him a jerk,
[48:57] but the TV series actually wrapped that
[48:59] up quite well. Right, but the other day
[49:03] I heard an interview with Lao Jin that
[49:06] went viral online, where he shared his
[49:08] views on what a "jerk" is. Maybe it's
[49:11] because of our fast-paced society that
[49:13] people want to categorize you, just
[49:16] using a few simple labels. But as
[49:19] someone in literature, I tend to be
[49:21] more nuanced. When I look at people,
[49:24] it's complex—there's good in the bad
[49:27] and bad in the good. That’s what we
[49:30] call pure literature. If it were
[49:33] popular fiction, this guy would be a
[49:35] scoundrel, that one a playboy, and
[49:38] another something else entirely.
[49:43] That’s just how the definition
[49:45] differs between literature and popular
[49:47] fiction. For example, take naturalism.
[49:51] What exactly is naturalism? For
[49:54] instance, I remember Zola wrote a novel
[49:57] called*The Ladies' Paradise*. The two
[50:02] sisters were both working as shop
[50:04] assistants in a Parisian department
[50:06] store. The older sister's lifelong
[50:10] dream was just to marry a low-level
[50:13] clerk, have kids, and live a peaceful
[50:15] life—that was her ideal. What about
[50:18] the younger sister? She loved dressing
[50:21] up and dancing. Her lifelong dream was
[50:24] to enter high society, to join the
[50:27] social circles of the aristocracy. Now,
[50:31] if you were writing in the style of
[50:33] critical realism, you would certainly
[50:35] have to criticize the younger sister.
[50:38] But in the naturalist style, the author
[50:40] just describes how the sister lived,
[50:42] how she eventually married and had kids
[50:45] , while the younger sister lived
[50:47] paycheck to paycheck, spending all her
[50:49] money on clothes and borrowing from her
[50:52] sister. But what is the ending of this
[50:55] novel? The younger sister also achieved
[50:57] her goal, marrying an elderly nobleman
[50:59] in his 50s, and was perfectly happy.
[51:01] The older sister married a clerk and
[51:04] was also completely satisfied. There
[51:06] was no criticism at all. And what does
[51:09] that mean? It means the author simply
[51:11] encountered these two sisters and
[51:13] portrayed how they both fulfilled their
[51:16] own personal ideals. As for so-called
[51:20] criticism, I feel that people nowadays
[51:22] don't really need to be judged or
[51:24] criticized, because I've always said
[51:27] that readers are smarter than authors.
[51:30] Exactly.
[51:31] >> People can see everything clearly
[51:34] themselves; why do you still need to
[51:36] explain what's good or bad? Why do you
[51:38] think people like going to the
[51:40] supermarket? A supermarket is where you
[51:42] make your own choices about what to buy
[51:45] ; nowadays on the internet, we choose
[51:47] for ourselves too. I don't need you to
[51:50] introduce products at all—why don't
[51:52] you notice this point? I mean, in the
[51:54] past, if you walked into a store and
[51:56] someone pestered you, saying how good
[51:58] their clothes were, you would
[51:59] definitely run away. There is simply no
[52:03] need for anyone to introduce things or
[52:05] do anything like that. We are all like
[52:09] this; today’s audience, compared to
[52:11] the past in Chinese history, is in my
[52:14] opinion the most broad-minded and
[52:16] knowledgeable generation across all
[52:19] dynasties.
[52:20] >> They have seen it all.
[52:22] >> They have seen everything and
[52:23] understand everything. No matter how
[52:25] messy a film you pick, people can
[52:27] understand it. They understand
[52:29] everything—things even I as an author
[52:31] might not, others can still understand.
[52:34] So I think in literature, as long as
[52:36] you write out a complex story or
[52:38] complex human nature that you know, you
[52:41] don't need to criticize; how could
[52:43] people not understand it? Right? So
[52:47] once I saw a reporter interviewing Lao
[52:49] Jin about critical realism—our
[52:51] literature once went through a phase
[52:54] that was very critical-realist—and
[52:56] Lao Jin said that our society has
[52:59] already had too much criticism. He said
[53:02] there have already been too many
[53:04] judgments, adding that his "
[53:05] non-judgment" is actually a state of
[53:07] non-judgment that comes after a great
[53:09] many judgments. Hmm.
[53:11] >> This has to do with his experience,
[53:13] because he served as an editorial
[53:14] director.
[53:15] >> He spent decades reading all kinds of
[53:17] criticism.
[53:18] >> So he thought, "I'll just tell stories.
[53:20] " His storytelling has a layer related
[53:23] to the French naturalism concept; in
[53:25] fact, I had the same realization when I
[53:27] read Maupassant's*Bel-Ami*.
[53:28] >> When I was young, I read it and was
[53:30] disappointed that the guy in*Bel-Ami*
[53:32] wasn't punished; I thought this rascal
[53:35] actually ended up doing quite well.
[53:37] Later, I realized this was just the way
[53:39] Maupassant wrote. That is naturalism,
[53:42] but he also has his own unique intent
[53:45] —regarding your mention of viewpoints
[53:48] , his work is like scattered points;
[53:50] it’s story by story, not observing
[53:53] the bustling world from a single line.
[53:56] You can't find one, including his
[53:59] protagonist who is most similar to him,
[54:01] Ah Bao; his life is somewhat similar,
[54:04] yet there is no consistent system for
[54:06] judging things. Conversely, in the eyes
[54:09] of us critics, it creates an effect
[54:11] like the*Along the River During the
[54:13] Qingming Festival*scroll. This is
[54:15] precisely a trend in the development of
[54:17] Chinese novels over the last 20 years.
[54:20] There is a work that is very similar to
[54:22] his novel. That is*One Sentence Worth
[54:24] Ten Thousand*. Liu Zhenyun is the same;
[54:27] you don't know what story he's telling,
[54:29] he tells so many fragmented stories. In
[54:31] the end, you can only say, "Oh." The
[54:34] farmers in Henan live just like that,
[54:36] and his novels are the same, just
[54:39] contrasting these two eras of men and
[54:41] women, just...
[54:44] >> And then, as Teacher Ma said...
[54:46] >> Well, let me follow that up—
[54:48] regardless of criticism or what kind of
[54:50] language is used, going back to terms
[54:53] like "scumbag"(zhanan), yes, starting
[54:55] with labeling, in my view, "scumbag" is
[54:57] just like ""(zhajia nu), and now
[55:00] besides scolding men, they also scold
[55:02] women. Yes, and terms like "leftover
[55:04] woman" or "mistress," I don't think
[55:06] these are humanitarian labels.
[55:08] >> The point is the language part; this is
[55:11] such crude language.
[55:12] >> Right, hmm.
[55:14] >> With just those two words, "scumbag" or
[55:17] "," they wipe out the complex
[55:20] emotions behind a relationship, or
[55:22] several relationships. It's like
[55:25] hitting you with a single label to
[55:28] finish you off; "scumbag," kill it,
[55:30] it's a culture of erasure and
[55:32] elimination, just kill it, discard it.
[55:35] So I think whether you criticize or not
[55:38] , or whatever the ideology, it all
[55:40] comes back to literature itself, the
[55:43] writing and language, and telling
[55:46] stories makes me think of the American
[55:48] writer Sontag, she said, why read
[55:51] novels? She said, reading novels makes
[55:54] us realize that there are people in the
[55:57] world who are truly different from us,
[55:59] living in ways that are different from
[56:01] our own. OK, they have those so-called
[56:05] stories; it’s not just stories, it's
[56:07] their lives, their joys and sorrows,
[56:10] and they are different from us. Reading
[56:13] novels helps us understand that it’s
[56:15] not just about me, it liberates me, and
[56:17] that is where the moving power of
[56:19] novels lies.
[56:20] >> What—what were you just going to say?
[56:22] >> I suddenly forgot. Hey,
[56:24] >> Did you watch it? I forgot it all of a
[56:26] sudden; I was just about to talk about
[56:28] that.
[56:28] >> Hmm.
[56:29] >> I feel like...why do I have such a
[56:32] resonance with Lao Jin? His path has
[56:35] some similarities with my own.
[56:38] >> Hmm.
[56:39] >> You know his storytelling—I
[56:40] discovered this trait of his a long
[56:42] time ago, from the very beginning.
[56:44] >> Hmm.
[56:44] >> He almost never finishes a single story
[56:47] , you know? Just like his novels, he
[56:49] branches off here—like I told you
[56:51] about this grandma, yes, yes, yes, he
[56:52] was talking about this grandpa, and
[56:54] then this grandma, her cousin—if you
[56:56] look closely at his novels, many have
[56:58] this kind of structure. It makes me
[57:00] think of*The Sing-song Girls of
[57:02] Shanghai*that we talked about.
[57:04] >> The "Sing-song Girls of Shanghai,"
[57:06] written by Han Bangqing, presents a
[57:08] style that I feel shatters the concepts
[57:11] we were taught in middle school essays.
[57:14] For instance, in middle school essays,
[57:16] we were told to have a clear theme or a
[57:19] central idea. Oh, that really
[57:21] frustrated me; I always wondered why
[57:23] there must be a central idea.
[57:25] >> Why must there be one for exams?
[57:27] >> Exactly, for exams.
[57:29] >> If you don't have a central idea, how
[57:31] can I grade you?
[57:32] >> Right, but sometimes, reality is just a
[57:34] raw depiction of life. And honestly, I
[57:37] have a term of endearment for this
[57:39] writing style—though it might sound a
[57:41] bit exaggerated. I see this novel by
[57:43] Han Bangqing as being somewhat like "
[57:45] Water Margin." You look at traditional
[57:47] Chinese serialized novels, they start
[57:49] with one person...
[57:51] >> By the second chapter, you think they
[57:53] are the protagonist? They disappear for
[57:55] dozens of chapters, or don't even
[57:57] appear by the end. Then they meet
[57:59] someone else in the third chapter, and
[58:01] you have to wonder, where is the center
[58:03] in all this? But it is a reality; it's
[58:05] just like the truth of life. My term of
[58:08] endearment makes me think of Confucius
[58:10] saying, "It passes away just like this,
[58:11] not ceasing day or night." This style
[58:14] is like flowing water. People use "
[58:16] flowing account" as a derogatory term,
[58:19] but I actually love chatting this way.
[58:22] It just keeps running, it keeps moving
[58:25] forward. Later, based on my interest in
[58:28] the brain in recent years, I realized
[58:30] this is how brain neurons connect. Yes,
[58:33] that’s right.
[58:34] >> This style of writing.
[58:36] >> It actually aligns better with the
[58:37] brain's fundamental state.
[58:38] >> Right, you all should look into brain
[58:40] science.
[58:41] >> Our way of writing, or even our daily
[58:43] casual conversations, completely
[58:46] follows the connection methods of brain
[58:48] neurons. Because your neurons store
[58:51] countless memories, you never know
[58:53] which one will trigger...These two
[58:56] connect, and it sparks this memory.
[58:58] Then those two connect and spark that
[59:00] memory; sometimes you even have to pull
[59:03] it back. That’s why we say some
[59:05] people have rigid thinking. For example
[59:07] , brushing your teeth in the morning is
[59:09] a trained behavior. The connections
[59:11] between these neurons have been made so
[59:14] many times—these chemical links have
[59:16] solidified—that you feel you simply
[59:18] can't go without brushing in the
[59:20] morning. But in reality, what does
[59:22] artistic creation advocate? It
[59:24] encourages trying new neuronal
[59:26] connections and letting children
[59:27] develop different associations.
[59:29] Actually, in a way, that's why I say
[59:31] literature isn't just about comfort; it
[59:34] can actually forge new neural
[59:36] connections in our brains.
[59:37] >> What you said today is really excellent
[59:40] . Why? Let’s look at "In Search of
[59:44] Lost Time," the novel by Proust.
[59:47] >> Even though it's not written in the
[59:49] Chinese style. But because this author
[59:53] had poor health and was bedridden, he
[59:55] wrote his later work while lying in bed
[59:57] ; whenever a manuscript was ready for
[60:00] publication, the publishers were
[60:02] terrified of showing him the proofs.
[60:05] Because once he saw the proofs, he
[60:07] would change the manuscript so
[60:09] drastically that—
[60:11] >> It would essentially have to be
[60:12] completely typeset all over again.
[60:14] Because new ideas would sprout up—
[60:16] just like the neurons you mentioned—
[60:18] since the novel is structured entirely
[60:21] by a madeleine cookie triggering
[60:23] memories of one person after another,
[60:25] eventually leading them all to a
[60:27] gathering. For example, if we are here
[60:29] talking, and behind us we hear someone
[60:31] gossiping about others 'relationships,
[60:33] just a few drifting snippets of
[60:35] conversation. You turn around and
[60:37] there’s no one there; that’s just
[60:39] how life is as a whole. I remember when
[60:42] they adapted the play "Blossoms," they
[60:45] created a character map, making the
[60:47] main characters' names larger and the
[60:49] minor ones smaller, forming a complex
[60:52] network. I once gave a talk about this,
[60:56] using a PowerPoint to display this
[60:59] chart, and the audience seemed
[61:01] completely stunned, just going "Wow."
[61:04] They asked—I said, what is there to
[61:06] be surprised about? Our own
[61:10] interpersonal relationships are exactly
[61:12] like that; I met someone in middle
[61:14] school, that person becomes important,
[61:17] but later we lose touch, or a
[61:19] girlfriend meets someone else, and so
[61:21] on. We are just wandering through a
[61:26] maze, and the friends you make along
[61:28] this route, at every stage of your life
[61:31] , are all fragmented. They are all like
[61:33] that; only our group, us few people,
[61:35] have managed to stay in touch until now
[61:37] . If it were anyone else, they would
[61:39] have drifted apart long ago, right? And
[61:41] we’ve had plenty of conflicts, too.
[61:43] >> Haven't we? It’s just a normal
[61:45] process of development, like root
[61:47] systems; a tree encounters a rock on
[61:49] one side, it doesn't try to pass
[61:51] through, it just grows in another
[61:53] direction—that’s a perfectly
[61:55] reasonable thing.
[61:56] >> So why would there be a central theme?
[61:58] That is just how life is, by its very
[62:01] nature.
[62:01] >> Exactly.
[62:02] >> You tell me, right? What was the "theme
[62:05] " of your entire day yesterday?
[62:07] >> Right, actually, some people find his
[62:09] novels particularly interesting, just
[62:11] like some people who listen to our show
[62:13] ; they say it's quite fun to listen to,
[62:15] but afterward, they can't remember what
[62:18] was said.
[62:18] >> That is exactly why they keep listening
[62:21] over and over again. Really, many of
[62:23] them have told us they’ve listened to
[62:25] many of our episodes five or six times.
[62:27] >> No, so, I’m not afraid of offending
[62:29] you, but I have another reflection
[62:31] after watching this TV series. I
[62:33] don’t know if you’d call this style
[62:35] a weakness, but after watching Wong
[62:37] Kar-wai's series, I’ve forgotten the
[62:40] novel*Blossoms*. Because the writing
[62:42] style of the novel*Blossoms*does have
[62:44] an issue: your memory of it isn't clear
[62:47] .
[62:47] >> Mm.
[62:48] >> What I got from reading your novel was
[62:51] a certain tone. A kind of feeling, but
[62:53] then Wong Kar-wai's*Blossoms*series has
[62:56] such vivid characters and stories.
[62:58] >> After I finished it, I realized I’d
[63:00] forgotten the novel's explanations of
[63:02] who was involved with whom, so I
[63:03] started thinking about it from the
[63:05] other direction.
[63:06] >> So, what is the value of this style, or
[63:09] this method of his? I think it’s the
[63:12] joy of reading; at the time you read it
[63:15] , seeing him speak like that, yeah,
[63:17] it’s incredibly satisfying, just so
[63:19] satisfying. But indeed, with so many
[63:22] complex and sprawling details, if you
[63:24] ask how clearly you remember it after
[63:26] finishing, you really can't remember it
[63:28] very clearly.
[63:29] >> Mm.
[63:31] >> It ends up having this kind of effect.
[63:33] As I read his novel—because of my
[63:35] professional habit of doing literary
[63:38] criticism—I inevitably have to
[63:40] summarize those details into a certain
[63:43] theme.
[63:43] >> In my preliminary summary, he writes
[63:46] about two periods. One is about a group
[63:50] of young people in the 60s living in
[63:52] different districts, their lives
[63:54] fragmented and romantic—well,
[63:56] fragmented, I don’t know if Xiao
[63:59] Mao’s part counts as romantic, being
[64:01] peeped at, but that's another thing—
[64:03] and the other is the 90s. Regarding the
[64:07] 90s part, when I was reading it, I was
[64:10] actually more interested in the first
[64:12] part. I wrote a critique. I said if the
[64:15] 90s section could have incorporated
[64:17] more about class differentiation and
[64:20] social transformation, it would be
[64:22] better; I feel his descriptions of the
[64:25] 90s are a bit repetitive. A bit too
[64:27] much, every table is about this or that
[64:29] mistress, anyway, no good men or women
[64:31] —though, of course, some have...
[64:34] >> What good men or women? They’re all
[64:36] just rotten pairs. Some passages are
[64:38] written brilliantly, and they really
[64:41] make us think; like the four people
[64:43] staying in a hotel having to draw lots,
[64:45] you have to admit that’s really
[64:47] exciting, right?
[64:48] >> And then several people chatting on the
[64:50] rooftop, a man and a woman, suddenly
[64:52] disappearing for a while.
[64:53] >> Gone, and then below they are still
[64:55] talking about the pipa performance,
[64:57] saying it was so quiet. This is
[64:59] actually the house Wong Kar-wai
[65:01] originally took a fancy to; he intended
[65:03] to film this part there, he really
[65:05] liked that house—let me add that. But
[65:08] if we want to elevate it in terms of
[65:10] significance, it's because he wrote
[65:13] about the early 1960s, the state of
[65:15] survival in Shanghai that you could see
[65:17] right from the maps.
[65:20] >> Mm.
[65:21] >> What kind of people lived in prime
[65:24] locations like Nanchang Road? Wealthy
[65:26] people, right? A-Bao's family.
[65:29] >> Mm.
[65:30] >> That is a reality. And Xiao Mao lived
[65:33] in a workers 'residential area. Why is
[65:37] it that in the same city of Shanghai,
[65:39] some people lived like that—that’s
[65:42] not their fault, right? A-Bao and the
[65:44] others, it’s just because of their
[65:46] family background, while the workers'
[65:48] area lived like that—why do you feel
[65:50] so deeply about this point? Because my
[65:53] family also lived in the area near
[65:55] Beijing Road and Maoming Road.
[65:57] >> Ah.
[65:58] >> At the time, I was a worker at Shanghai
[66:00] Steel Plant No. 8, which was at Wuning
[66:02] Road Bridge. This part in the
[66:04] masterpiece is exactly what I
[66:06] experienced with the workers I
[66:07] interacted with and the environment
[66:09] where I lived. Wang Shuo once wrote "
[66:12] Transient Walls," which tells a story
[66:14] like this—the relationship between
[66:16] capitalists and workers over decades—
[66:19] saying that this wall, this great wall,
[66:21] can't be torn down. Many leftist
[66:23] theorists today—I find it strange—
[66:26] they haven't really expressed any
[66:28] opinions on your work.
[66:29] >> I feel like both the left and the right
[66:32] quite like this book. Yes, yes, yes,
[66:34] that's why you see, they won't take a
[66:37] stand. Because it talks about the
[66:39] corruption of 1990s Shanghai, which
[66:41] echoes the ending of the long novel.
[66:44] >> Mm.
[66:45] >> The end of the long novel shows
[66:46] Shanghai's economy developed, but the
[66:48] society was degenerating. It is not a
[66:50] celebratory TV series; that’s another
[66:52] matter. The TV series is a bit more...
[66:54] more cheerful.
[66:55] >> So, Mr. Jin, in writing this novel,
[66:58] what would you say was the most
[67:00] difficult part?
[67:01] >> The most difficult part was the
[67:02] beginning. Because you have to accept
[67:05] that I was using a serialized writing
[67:07] method.
[67:08] >> I had to write every day; it was like
[67:10] live-streaming every day.
[67:11] >> Mm-hmm.
[67:12] >> It was a column, right, at the time?
[67:14] >> It was a website at the time called "
[67:15] Nongtang Wang"(Alleyway Net), where
[67:17] Shanghainese from all over the world
[67:18] were on it. Mm.
[67:20] >> They told all kinds of stories in the
[67:22] Shanghai dialect. There was this site,
[67:24] or whatever it was called, it doesn't
[67:27] exist now. When I saw everyone inside
[67:29] talking about Shanghai matters in the
[67:31] Shanghai dialect, I thought it was
[67:33] quite fresh, so I picked a name and
[67:35] went on it.
[67:36] >> Once I got on—yes, it was called "Du
[67:38] Shang Gelou"(Reading on the Attic).
[67:40] >> And once I got on, I saw a familiar
[67:42] face there too. Telling gossip about
[67:45] people with famous names. I didn't
[67:47] think it was quite right; I said that
[67:49] gossip about nameless, faceless people
[67:51] is the only kind that's interesting.
[67:53] >> So, I started doing it. After I started
[67:56] , what kind of difficulties did I
[67:59] encounter? It was that what started as
[68:02] casual writing eventually became
[68:04] something I couldn't stop. When I
[68:06] couldn't stop, I took a break for two
[68:08] days. Because at that time, many people
[68:11] came up and said, "Yashuo, are you
[68:13] someone's alias?" They were suspicious
[68:15] of me. Yes, they suspected I was
[68:18] someone or other. I said I was just a
[68:20] newcomer, and they kept asking who I
[68:22] really was. You know, there were
[68:24] already people who liked reading it. So
[68:27] I said I’d play around for another
[68:29] two or three days and then quit, but
[68:31] later I realized this was actually
[68:33] something. I wrote three or four
[68:36] hundred words one day; it was mostly
[68:38] dialogue, no line breaks, just commas
[68:41] and periods, one single block of three
[68:44] or four hundred words. I happened to
[68:46] have some free time that day, and I
[68:48] looked at it and thought, "Hey, I've
[68:49] never seen this style of writing before
[68:51] ."
[68:51] >> Hmm.
[68:52] >> I think this period was the hardest. I
[68:55] was thinking, you need an outline
[68:57] before you start, but I felt I couldn't
[68:59] hold back anymore; that was the first
[69:01] thing, and second, I felt I had to
[69:03] write in this specific way. When I was
[69:06] writing, people would push back,
[69:08] because back then I was writing about
[69:11] 1,500 to 3,000 words every day.
[69:13] >> That's quite a lot.
[69:15] >> Without line breaks, people below would
[69:18] beg me. One person said reading it made
[69:20] their eyes pop out, and asked if I
[69:22] could use line breaks.
[69:24] >> I ignored him, because I realized no
[69:26] one had ever written like this before.
[69:30] Then he went and re-posted it with his
[69:32] own line breaks.
[69:34] >> He posted it and it turned into a
[69:36] script— "Ah Bao said," and so on—
[69:39] but I still ignored him. After I
[69:42] ignored him, I realized that people
[69:44] just...once you reach a certain point,
[69:47] all the readers get used to it.
[69:49] >> So, as Wentao just said, it's like
[69:51] entering a certain linguistic
[69:53] environment.
[69:54] >> It forces you; if you want to keep
[69:56] reading, you have to accept this tone.
[69:58] >> Right. And then they just got into it.
[70:01] This phase went back and forth, but
[70:03] once I got used to this style, I
[70:05] actually felt more relaxed, because I
[70:07] had previously seen some tabloids from
[70:10] the May Fourth era, with a few veteran
[70:12] journalists. Hong Kong must have
[70:14] inherited this tradition, too; there
[70:16] was an old gentleman, I forget his name
[70:19] , who serialized three columns and
[70:21] three novels in three newspapers every
[70:23] single day. Oh my, back then I was so
[70:26] impressed by this old gentleman; he
[70:28] would just have a little lunch. He’d
[70:31] start smoking opium in the afternoon.
[70:33] >> He’d lie on his opium couch smoking,
[70:36] thinking things through. Outside, there
[70:39] were three young assistants—errand
[70:41] boys—waiting for him. As soon as he
[70:44] finished a pipe, one of them would
[70:46] immediately bring over a sheet of paper
[70:48] . He would quickly write a passage,
[70:50] I’d guess about seven or eight
[70:52] hundred words or so.
[70:53] >> This kind of serialization isn't like
[70:55] how things are serialized today. Once
[70:57] finished, he’d hand it to the
[70:59] assistant who would rush off to have it
[71:01] typeset, then the next assistant would
[71:03] come; he had the whole story planned
[71:05] out in his head. I realized later that
[71:08] once you’re in that groove, it’s
[71:10] quite easy, because he lived in that
[71:12] world all day long.
[71:13] >> He did nothing else.
[71:15] >> Called.
[71:17] >> It’s like doing a livestream now;
[71:19] you’re very anxious the first few
[71:21] days, wondering what you'll say
[71:23] tomorrow, but after thirty days, I find
[71:25] I’m thinking about it all day long.
[71:29] Every section, say 2,000 words with a
[71:32] line break, was how they ended things
[71:35] back then. So, the endings were
[71:41] different from standard novels; they
[71:43] had a "cliffhanger" style, like a
[71:45] sudden stop or a deliberate brake,
[71:48] leaving the audience waiting for more.
[71:53] >> Very expectant.
[71:54] >> So there is a part in there about Xiao
[71:57] Mao. The woman who lived downstairs.
[71:59] She called Xiao Mao in because it was a
[72:01] hot summer day and she was taking a
[72:03] bath. While bathing, she told Xiao Mao.
[72:06] "Help me grab a bar of soap," she said,
[72:08] already in the bath, and Xiao Mao
[72:10] wouldn't look at her, just stared out
[72:11] the window at the rain. She said, "Xiao
[72:14] Mao, turn your head around and help me
[72:16] get a piece of soap." Right at that
[72:18] moment, I stopped.
[72:20] >> No, the readers were dying of anxiety,
[72:22] saying, "Oh my," so I switched to
[72:24] talking about 90s affairs; it was the
[72:27] same in the novel and online, telling
[72:29] three segments before jumping back to
[72:32] the 90s. Then, when it was compiled
[72:35] into a novel, the editor reached this
[72:37] part and said, "You might as well
[72:40] finish it; just have him hand over the
[72:42] soap."
[72:45] >> It’s quite interesting; the hardest
[72:47] part is deciding what style of language
[72:50] you will use to pin it all down. Look
[72:52] at Jia Hui, he originally wrote his
[72:55] novels in Cantonese. I suggested to him
[72:57] that since Cantonese people are
[72:59] different from Shanghainese—look at
[73:02] Cantonese papers, they don't care about
[73:04] anyone else and just use their own
[73:06] local dialect words.
[73:07] >> But for me, I wanted to reach a wider
[73:10] audience, so I had to remove those
[73:12] dialectal expressions. But Cantonese
[73:15] speakers are used to it. When I go to
[73:17] Guangzhou and read the newspapers,
[73:19] there are some I can't understand.
[73:21] >> This also stems from my time as an
[73:22] editor; when I’d receive manuscripts
[73:25] with local dialects, My judgment was
[73:27] that if a Mandarin reader couldn't
[73:29] understand it, I’d ask the author to
[73:31] revise it, or if they couldn't, I would
[73:33] help them.
[73:34] >> Yes, yes, Professor Jin gave me a great
[73:37] reminder back then, so I revised it
[73:39] later. But later I discovered that even
[73:43] if I wasn't using Cantonese, the nuance
[73:46] was still Cantonese. So when readers
[73:49] read it, even though it was clearly
[73:52] standard Chinese—my descriptions and
[73:54] even many of the dialogues were in
[73:56] standard Chinese—They still felt that
[73:59] it was Cantonese-influenced writing.
[74:02] >> Exactly, because it's your mother
[74:04] tongue. Just like us southerners, we
[74:06] aren't from the northern dialect system
[74:09] , we were all educated in a second
[74:11] language, meaning when we want to write
[74:13] , we immediately use that second
[74:15] language. So when I was writing this,
[74:18] seeing everyone else writing in
[74:20] Shanghainese, I started doing it too.
[74:23] And since I used an editor's approach
[74:25] to ensure I avoided hard-to-understand
[74:28] characters,
[74:29] >> The one thing I found most enjoyable
[74:32] was how fluent the dialogue became.
[74:35] >> Because I was using my mother tongue.
[74:38] When I used to write novels and
[74:40] dialogue in Mandarin, I’d finish
[74:42] today and look at it tomorrow, feeling
[74:45] that the tone of the characters 'speech
[74:47] always needed tweaking. But when you
[74:50] write in your mother tongue, you don't
[74:52] have to worry at all, and it feels
[74:54] quite lively,
[74:56] >> It feels quite joyful, actually.
[74:59] >> Furthermore,
[75:00] >> Come. Shanghainese people don't say "
[75:02] shuo"(to say/speak), do they?
[75:04] >> Shanghainese people say "nong gang, wo
[75:06] gang."
[75:06] >> Why did you change it to "shuo"?
[75:08] >> You rarely say it. In fact, what I had
[75:11] in mind was that this novel could
[75:12] function entirely as a script for oral
[75:14] storytelling. What do you mean by a
[75:15] script for oral storytelling? It means
[75:17] a storyteller could perform it without
[75:20] changing a single word; if they could
[75:22] memorize it, they could use it to
[75:23] perform oral literature.
[75:25] >> So what is "shuo"? The word "shuo" is
[75:28] actually something Shanghainese people
[75:30] don't use.
[75:30] >> Hmm.
[75:32] >> In this, I used the Shanghainese with
[75:35] my father’s Suzhou accent. It’s
[75:38] like...(
[75:40] >> Phonetic/dialect example) So what is it
[75:46] , actually? It is a formal written term
[75:50] . "
[75:50] >> Gang" is actually the dialect term.
[75:53] >> Yes.
[75:54] >> For example, when I tell Professor
[75:57] Zidong about Wentao's port murder, I'm
[75:59] paraphrasing, so I use the spoken style
[76:02] .
[76:04] >> Mm-hmm.
[76:05] >> But if it's written down literally as
[76:07] him speaking, then I use the
[76:09] storyteller's style.
[76:11] >> Another rule is that I don't use
[76:13] exclamation points or question marks.
[76:16] >> I have a book at home called "Tang
[76:19] People Selecting Tang Poetry," which is
[76:22] a 1949 edition. It still uses the
[76:26] old-fashioned layout.
[76:29] >> For example, Tang poetry doesn't use
[76:32] commas and periods. It uses circles to
[76:35] punctuate the text.
[76:37] >> This is Chinese punctuation; that's why
[76:39] old books are called "punctuatable"—
[76:41] ancient Chinese printing had no
[76:43] punctuation.
[76:43] >> Right.
[76:44] >> You circle and dot as you read.
[76:47] >> Or break the sentences.
[76:49] >> Right.
[76:50] >> So, I wanted to create a kind of
[76:52] Chinese punctuation style. You have to
[76:54] use some punctuation, but I used the
[76:56] simplest Western marks—just commas
[76:58] and periods—so after writing this
[77:00] book...At the time, Mr. Hao Mingjian,
[77:03] the authoritative editor-in-chief of
[77:05] the magazine "Yaowen Jiaozi," was in
[77:07] Shanghai.
[77:08] >> Mm-hmm. When Mr. Hao met me, he kept a
[77:11] straight face and spoke to me. He asked
[77:14] why I didn't use exclamation points or
[77:17] question marks in my novel. And why I
[77:20] used traditional Chinese characters in
[77:22] the novel. I was quite startled. Then
[77:26] he laughed. He said, "Fiction is
[77:29] different." Since he spent every day
[77:32] picking out other people's mistakes, he
[77:35] couldn't do much with fiction. My
[77:37] intention was to commemorate our
[77:39] traditional characters. So, whenever
[77:42] the book mentions old books or poetry,
[77:44] I ask the editor to set it in
[77:46] traditional characters. It looks great.
[77:50] I told Chu Anming, who runs the
[77:52] publisher in Taiwan, "I've discovered
[77:55] the biggest flaw in traditional
[77:57] characters." He asked, "What flaw?" I
[78:01] said that when my novel is printed
[78:03] entirely in traditional characters,
[78:05] that distinction disappears.
[78:06] >> It all becomes uniform, and the
[78:09] contrast is lost.
[78:11] >> Because the main body is in simplified
[78:13] characters, and then traditional
[78:15] characters suddenly appear. But when
[78:17] it's all printed in traditional
[78:18] characters, that effect is completely
[78:21] gone. So, I have an obsession with
[78:23] great literature. I always feel that a
[78:26] truly top-tier novel isn't just about
[78:29] telling a good story. To create a
[78:31] language, and for that linguistic
[78:33] experiment to actually succeed—
[78:35] creating a language like that is
[78:37] something people outside of literature
[78:39] might not fully grasp the importance of
[78:41] . But, for instance, let me use my own
[78:43] field as an example. What does it mean
[78:46] to create a language, and what is its
[78:48] significance? For example, 100 years
[78:50] ago—no, a few decades ago—all our
[78:52] hosts would start with a specific kind
[78:54] of language. What was it called? "Dear
[78:57] audience friends, hello, today we..."
[79:00] We all did it like that. Every one of
[79:02] us was like that. So, you know, the
[79:05] first person to say, "Hey everyone,
[79:07] you're here, today we’re going to
[79:09] chat..."
[79:09] >> That first host to speak that way was
[79:12] remarkable.
[79:13] >> Mm.
[79:14] >> It meant they had pioneered a new
[79:16] language, right? So I'm saying, if you
[79:20] compare it to that, and furthermore,
[79:22] within this language, I really think
[79:25] there is a deep sense of a scholar's
[79:27] temperament embedded in it. For example
[79:30] , regarding Professor Jin, some people
[79:33] noticed that in "Blossoms Shanghai," he
[79:36] uses Shanghainese. I even learned from
[79:38] him that Shanghainese actually has
[79:40] different accents. One lineage is from
[79:43] where we are, which is closely related
[79:45] to Suzhou—that is, the Wu dialect,
[79:48] right? That Shanghainese with a Suzhou
[79:51] flavor.
[79:52] >> Some people noticed that in the
[79:53] language of his "Blossoms," those with
[79:55] a keen sense for language noticed that
[79:57] whenever he writes about this place,
[79:59] it’s like, how should I put it, it
[80:01] just comes naturally.
[80:02] >> Yes, yes, that is probably more related
[80:06] to my father.
[80:08] >> My father—his speech was very close
[80:11] to the Suzhou dialect. It was
[80:13] Shanghainese with a Suzhou accent.
[80:16] There are various accents in
[80:18] Shanghainese, and my father's was the
[80:21] Suzhou one. Now, why do I say the
[80:24] Suzhou accent seems especially elegant?
[80:29] It’s because Suzhou has the most
[80:31] elegant form of theater, which is Kunqu
[80:34] Opera. Kunqu is from Suzhou. It is much
[80:39] more elegant than Peking Opera.
[80:42] >> It is extremely lyrical and refined,
[80:44] with the so-called "Southern Kun" and "
[80:46] Northern Kun." At our age, when we were
[80:49] growing up, maybe over 60 years ago,
[80:51] those who had some culture—like us
[80:53] second-rate families; the first-rate
[80:55] ones were reading classics all day—
[80:57] >> Second-rate families just did their
[80:59] daily work. When Dad came home from
[81:02] work, if he was happy, he would say, "
[81:05] Let’s sing a song. What shall we sing
[81:08] ? Let's sing' Mountain Peach Blossoms.
[81:11] '" Then all us kids around would gather
[81:14] , and as he sang, we would—You Flower
[81:28] Beautiful Day Have The last olive note,
[81:48] oh my!
[81:51] >> to places, and when we were singing
[81:54] with great passion and poise, my father
[81:56] , then with graying hair, would sigh
[81:59] with emotion, "How wonderful, you are
[82:01] in the prime of youth, while I am left
[82:04] with nothing but passing years."
[82:06] >> With such a cultural background,
[82:08] coupled with Suzhou's long and enduring
[82:10] history. It has always influenced the
[82:15] Yangtze River Delta, at least this part
[82:18] of the region, and eventually, because
[82:20] Suzhou city was half-burned during the
[82:23] Taiping Rebellion, plus the concessions
[82:25] in Shanghai, a large number of talented
[82:28] people fled to Shanghai. During the era
[82:33] of "The Flowers of Shanghai," any girl
[82:35] arriving in Shanghai had to learn
[82:37] storytelling; only then could you.
[82:39] >> Kunqu, you had to sing Kunqu,
[82:42] >> you had to sing Pingtan, everything had
[82:45] to be refined, a type of
[82:47] >> cultural symbol, because the people
[82:50] they entertained were all scholars, not
[82:52] ordinary people.
[82:54] >> Ah,
[82:56] >> these scholars, their own marriages
[82:59] were all arranged, and their own wives,
[83:02] some were even illiterate.
