The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai

by Han Bangqing, Eileen Chang (Translator), Eva Hung (Translator)

Desire, virtue, courtesans (also known as sing-song girls), and the denizens of Shanghai's pleasure quarters are just some of the elements that constitute Han Bangqing's extraordinary novel of late imperial China. Han's richly textured, panoramic view of late-nineteenth-century Shanghai follows a range of characters from beautiful sing-song girls to lower-class prostitutes and from men in positions of social authority to criminals and ambitious young men recently arrived from the country. Considered one of the greatest works of Chinese fiction, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is now available for the first time in English.

Neither sentimental nor sensationalistic in its portrayal of courtesans and their male patrons, Han's work inquires into the moral and psychological consequences of desire. Han, himself a frequent habitué of Shanghai brothels, reveals a world populated by lonely souls who seek consolation amid the pleasures and decadence of Shanghai's demimonde. He describes the romantic games played by sing-song girls to lure men, as well as the tragic consequences faced by those who unexpectedly fall in love with their customers. Han also tells the stories of male patrons who find themselves emotionally trapped between desire and their sense of propriety.

First published in 1892, and made into a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien in 1998, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is recognized as a pioneering work of Chinese fiction in its use of psychological realism and its infusion of modernist sensibilities into the traditional genre of courtesan fiction. The novel's stature has grown with the recent discovery of Eileen Chang's previously unknown translation, which was unearthed among her papers at the University of Southern California. Chang, who lived in Shanghai until 1956 when she moved to California and began to write in English, is one of the most acclaimed Chinese writers of the twentieth century.

Genres: China, Fiction, Chinese Literature, Historical Fiction, Classics, Historical, 19th Century

592 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1892

About the author

Han Bangqing (Chinese: 韓邦慶; pinyin: Hán Bāngqìng; Wade–Giles: Han Pang-ch'ing; 1856–1894), also known by the given name Ji (寄), courtesy name Ziyun (子雲), and pseudonyms Taixian (太仙), Dayi Shanren (大一山人), Hua Ye Lian Nong (花也憐儂), and Sanqing (三慶), was a late-Qing dynasty Chinese writer from Songjiang, Jiangsu (now a district of Shanghai).

As a child he went with his father to live in Beijing. He failed at the imperial examinations many times and eventually wrote for the newspaper Shen Bao in Shanghai. In 1892, he started what can be considered China's first for-profit literary magazine, the Wonderbook of Shanghai, which lasted eight months, and in which he published his novel Haishang Hua in instalments. The novel has been widely acclaimed as a classic (particularly by Lu Xun, Hu Shih, and Eileen Chang) but is little read today, likely due to its being written entirely in Wu Chinese, unintelligible to Mandarin speakers. It was translated into Mandarin and English by Eileen Chang. After Chang's death in 1995, the translation was discovered among her papers and published in English as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai in 2005 after revision by Eva Hung. Not long after publication of the novel, Han Bangqing died in 1894, aged 38.

(From Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Crane Li said, “These second-class courtesans really have tactics of their own. They’re so used to it, they aren’t aware of they way they act.”
Grace Yan snapped at him, “What’s it got to do you with you? Who’re you to find fault with them?”

Part of the reason why I still read books written by men is so I can find instances to wave in front of the faces of those who whine along the lines of "Well everyone hated women/etc then and historical context always means worldwide ubiquity that can never be criticized or condemned and a boo hoo hoo" fuck you all. More than a century before the Orientalizing trash that is Memoirs of a Geisha was written, there was a work penned by a Chinese man on the subject of myriad courtesans and their culture that doesn't have a single hint of sentimentalization and other flavors of indoctrinating lies. While its GR ratings are none too good, it is esteemed as a classic by those in the know for reasons I have found to be well-earned. Here, at any rate, is one writer who knows what damage exotification wreaks when it is in anyway enabled or excused.

I put this particular aspect to the forefront so much because of how difficult it is to accomplish when dealing with the saturation of themes daily life consists of. Add into the mix that the work is more than five hundred pages long, the main concern is sex work of the late 19th century, and some pretty odious gender roles, and you have something that could easily get away with one instance of misogyny, if not a hundred. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if some met this book with "too serious" because the life, death, sickness, starvation, abuse whether prostitute aspiring to marriage or prostitute trapped by that much valued state, foot-binding, robbery, poverty from gambling, poverty from love, poverty from the wrong decision at the wrong emotion at the wrong time is clearly laid out amongst endless drinking games and more than a hundred characters. The closest I can get to the feeling of social entrapment and especial dangers posed towards women of any station is The Tale of Genji, albeit these are no upper class relations of slow meeting and even slower courtship. This is business, and woe to those who cannot play.

Another commonality this work shares with Shikibu's opus is how little experience readers are likely to have with this breed of fiction. The world of this book is very, very, very new to those who don't regularly peruse the annals of Chinese fiction, so the way this edition was put together is worthy of applause. Not only are there multiple introductions that clearly lay out the context of this work in terms of its author, but also a great deal of care was put into the translation and explicating of why things were cut out and particular footnotes included. One eventually gets some grasp on the material after more than five hundred pages if one sticks with it, but it doesn't lessen the effectiveness of the ending essay titled "The World of the Shanghai Courtesans" that clarify any muddles the reader may have. Considering how small the English audience is for this sort of book, those who had a hand in putting this together knew exactly what the amateur reader of Chinese fiction who picked this up because of an interest in Eileen Chang (aka me) would need.

“Now you’re a lady. Perhaps you’re so bored with being a lady, you have come to a sing-song house to have some fun, too? It’s a pity we don’t have clients for a tea part just now. Otherwise, I’d tell them to hold you down and rape you. How would you face people back home then? Even if you sue us at the new yamen, sex in a sing-song house is nothing out of the ordinary.”

There are lovers' quarrels and touching romances and funny incidents of alcohol induced composition, all of which have in common the fact that this society is very high maintenance, extremely corrupt, and brutal beyond all extent of the laws of the international jurisdictions that compose Shanghai. Read this work and you will learn of world that had its moments of beauty and skill on the backs of patriarchal structuring, one that continues today to work in the pockets of outlawed descendants and misjudged practices. This work, at least, does not feed into the abuse accepted in all its kindred of similar genre.

[Tocotin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Yes, the translation is a bit dry at places, but the story, or rather stories, and the world, are fascinating; yes, there are moments when I’m not sure why a particular character is reacting in a particular way or what is the meaning of a particular smile or silence, but I’m going to reread this, so it doesn’t matter. What does matter to me is that this book is an incredibly rich, detailed, nuanced, and vivid portrait of a small and long-gone world, a portrait penned by someone who had experienced this world himself and knew what he was writing about, and did so with a lot of sympathy and understanding for his characters and their plight.

It is a huge novel about the red-light district of Shanghai at the end of the 19th century. The main characters are courtesans and their patrons, and the background for most of the scenes is a brothel, rarely a teahouse or a private residence. The brothels are small, family-like businesses, with a madam called Mother, who might or might not have her real daughters working under her care – they are nothing like the huge brothels of Japanese licensed quarters. There are so many stories here, from tragic to mundane to funny, but the ones I liked best were not necessarily about the relationships between the courtesans and their patrons; the tender story of the little “virgin courtesan”, River Blossom, and the young gentleman Jade Tao, comes to mind, as well as the story of the friendship of the two actresses, Pendant and Hairpin, with the courtesan White Orchid. The endless comings and goings of the servants and maids, cleaning, boiling water, making the morning toilet, preparing tea and meals, giving banquets, all these details of everyday life in the background, and then the squabbling, the lying, the hoping for just little bit of love, loyalty, friendship, freedom – all that is exactly what I live for.

I don’t really have a conclusion for this review other than I’m looking forward to rereading the whole book, together with all the footnotes, the translator’s note, the cast of characters, the foreword and the afterword. Right now I have a sad. I have a black hole in my heart. I’m looking at the cover and marveling at my luck, which allowed me to find this at BookOff for only 170 yen in one of the few bright moments of 2020.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nineteenth century account of the red light district in Shanghai. Prostitution was illegal in China, so the houses were established in the foreign concessions, such as Canton, or in this case, Shanghai. Eva Hung, the editor (working from manuscripts left by Eileen Chang, of "Lust, Caution" fame), makes the case that they started out as places where scholars could seek refined entertainment, intimacy, and the illusion of romance, and were taken over by businessmen who entertained there. The culture ended, not with the Revolution of 1911, but with the revolution in customs, as it became modern to one's own partner in the twenties and thirties. Bangqing Han clearly frequented the houses long enough to see their madams, courtesans, servants and clients with clear eyes, and in the early stages that works to the detriment of the novel, in an endless parade of finger drinking games (only explained in Hung's essay in the back) and more than 100 characters, many with similar names. The men's names are particularly ironic (Prosperity Luo, Benevolence Hong, or the brothers Modesty and Amity Zhu) and sometimes prophetic, as with Simplicity Zhao. Gradually, many of the characters emerge as remarkably individual characters. There are no hearts of gold here; the women, whether they ultimately seek clients or to become a concubine or wife (some did evidently marry out of the trade) knew that they were gambling on a profession with a short career path. Particularly moving are the tragic, independent Water Blossom; the businesslike Green Phoenix, who buys her freedom (many of the girls were sold into the trade as young girls and groomed for the profession, and had to pay to go into business for themselves; the negotiation over Green Phoenix's freedom is brutally mercantile); LIttle Rouge, who dares to have an affair and is accused of infidelity by her main client, without whose patronage she cannot maintain a house; and Simplicity himself, so inept at the life of leisure, gambling and sex he craves that he drags his sister and her friend into the business, his mother becomes a madam, and he has to marry a servant girl he cannot keep away from. This is a sorrowful book, as much as it purports to celebrate the houses, it is fundamentally a savage critique of a life of illusion. Green Phoenix has to call the woman she haggles with over her freedom "mother"; the "scholar" clients quickly turn away from a funeral to play a drinking game based on words used in the Chinese classics; girls are called "virgin courtesans" after their seduction, no doubt so that additional clients will pay the premium for that virginity. Above all, there is the false intimacy and romance of the houses, as the women have to calculate how cheaply they can purchase their freedom or how expensively they can sell themselves (without resorting to a violent lout like Lao the Turtle), how to keep their house afloat, how long to wait for the rich man who has promised them marriage and then gone away, how to obtain and keep that rich client, and, above all, what it all means for their future.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It shows the relationships between Chinese men and Courtesans, but not in a licentious way. It shows the intricacy of this particular society and I found it strangely fascinating.

[Karen Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

A look into another time in another world that fascinated me. The original author frequented this world and I am a lover of all Chinese literature. I really enjoyed this book.

[Mauberley]

Fascinating to a point but not compelling enough to finish. I was almost two thirds of the way through when I abandoned the book.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, this isn't the easiest novel to read, largely because of the massive number of characters who are introduced to the reader rather quickly. However, once you get the major characters sorted out, and figure out what their general characteristics and social positions are, it's an entertaining and enlightening read. The novel follows the lives of several high-class prostitutes and their patrons in late 19th century Shanghai. The novel is essentially episodic in nature, and portrays the sights and sounds of Shanghai in that era, as well as the complex social scenarios created by Western presence in the city.

[Kate M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting fictional view of Chinese elegant brothels; the translation is a bit dry in places.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

100+ characters in crazy sing-song society...

[Sharon Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty difficult to get through, but worth it for the detail of a vanished way of life.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

sets the standard for the-prostitute-as-tragic-heroine genre...a classic

[Serra İnderim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clocking in at 600 pages, it's a hefty read with multiple character arcs that might take some time to fully digest. Yet, the rich storytelling and nuanced characters make it worth the effort. Despite occasional moments of listing of random details (might feel like torture at the time of reading), the novel's exploration of desire and its consequences keeps you hooked till the end. It’s a journey through late imperial China, diving deep into the swarming streets of fin de siècle Shanghai.

I'd definitely recommend this Chinese La Dame aux Camélias. Already looking forward reading it again to fully appreciate its richness.

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest novels ever written in any language, but the complex, shifting-viewpoint narrative needs patience.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

張愛玲說：看官們三棄海上花 我說：看這本小說還真的急不來，跟書中人一天一天的過日子，才能讀出一些心事來。

[miri · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very beautiful book that suffers from the insane decision to translate character names (which i know is common in translations of this time and maybe even more forgivable here given the context but still makes it pretty tough to remember who is who for the first hundred pages or so). i cried

eta: 3 years later i'm fully pro translating character names now BUT i stand by it making it really hard to remember who is who

[Ira Sanchez]

fthrey