第一爐香（張愛玲短篇小說集之二）

by Eileen Chang, 張愛玲

Genres: Fiction, Chinese Literature

245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Eileen Chang is the English name for Chinese author 張愛玲, who was born to a prominent family in Shanghai (one of her great-grandfathers was Li Hongzhang) in 1920.

She went to a prestigious girls' school in Shanghai, where she changed her name from Chang Ying to Chang Ai-ling to match her English name, Eileen. Afterwards, she attended the University of Hong Kong, but had to go back to Shanghai when Hong Kong fell to Japan during WWII. While in Shanghai, she was briefly married to Hu Lancheng, the notorious Japanese collaborator, but later got a divorce.

After WWII ended, she returned to Hong Kong and later immigrated to the United States in 1955. She married a scriptwriter in 1956 and worked as a screenwriter herself for a Hong Kong film studio for a number of years, before her husband's death in 1967. She moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1972 and became a hermit of sorts during her last years. She passed away alone in her apartment in 1995.

Reviews

[Marjan]

I can’t describe how euphoric reading this novella felt.
Set in 1930s Hong Kong, written by an alumna of my university, and read during the exact same rainy season while looking out at those same foggy green mountains, I felt like a time traveller.

It is unbelievable that this was Eileen Chang’s debut. The story itself is a cocktail of grand hopes, the battle between clarity and passion, and the inescapable reality that we are all just products of our environment.

In Chinese, there’s a saying: 常在河邊走，哪有不濕鞋 (If you walk by the river often enough, you're bound to get your shoes wet). When Weilong walked into Madame Liang’s house, she already knew it would cost her, but her naivety blinded her to the true extent of that price. I will definitely be reading this again in the original Chinese. (Such a privilege I know! 😭)

[Bolin]

沉香屑 茉莉花片 心经 玻璃瓦 连环套

[Taylor]

最开始的时候有点读不懂，必须要慢下来才能感受到张爱玲的描述。都怪自己最近看小说，对于一些环境描写直接下意识地跳着看（坏习惯）。 仔细阅读了一下，发现有很多隐喻。

剧情方面，葛薇龙清醒地沉沦真的很可怕，明明是为了来香港读书，怎么隔了一阵子就开始卖身了。她姑妈也不是人啊，是亲故妈吗，直接卖自己的侄女。他们家也好吓人，专门养人来留住男人，从而供养自己的豪宅和每一次的聚会，也太乱了，情欲就这么重吗？ 乔琪乔这个人也是情场高手，但又片叶不沾身，最后和葛薇龙结婚也是葛姑妈说可以利用她赚钱。太吓人了那个年代的香港，但是这种事现在还有在世界上的某个地方发生吗？

张爱玲在22岁写出来的，确实有一点东西，最后也停留在大家都知道结局不好的时候，并没有完整写出来葛薇龙不能赚钱了而被抛弃的剧情，让读者也是意犹未尽。

总的来说，7.2/10