A self-proclaimed fashion critic, Ailing had drawn a series of sketches of Shanghai-style clothing, which was reprinted at the end of the book. But Peiqin became more interested in the personal story of Ailing. Ailing started publishing early and became well-known for her stories about Shanghai. She endured a heartbreaking marriage with a talented womanizer, who later made a small fortune by writing about their ill-starred marriage. After 1949, she went to the United States, where she married an aged, impoverished American writer. As in a Tang dynasty poem, “Everything turns out sad for a poor couple.” The biographer diagnosed her marriage as self-deconstructive. After the death of her second husband, she shut herself up in her apartment in San Francisco, where she died alone. No one was aware of it until several days later.
Peiqin read the tragic story, hoping to gain insight from a historical perspective into the popularity of the mandarin dress. By the end of two hours’ reading, however, she had learned little. If anything, her research only confirmed her earlier impression that it was a dress for well-to-do or well-educated women. For someone like Ailing, but not for a working woman like Peiqin. Tapping on the book, she absentmindedly noticed a tiny hole in her black wool sock.
She was intrigued by the biographer’s analysis on the “selfdeconstructive” tendency of Ailing. Chen, too, was engaged in a so-called deconstructive project, she had heard. She wondered what the term meant.
There was a knock on the door. She looked up to see Chef Pan standing in the doorway, carrying an earthen pot in his hands.
“A special pot for you,” he said.
“Thank you.” She did not have the time to clear away the books displaying an array of mandarin dress pictures.
“What are you reading, Peiqin?”
“I’m trying to make a dress for myself. So I’m comparing designs.”
“You are really a capable woman, Peiqin,” he said, putting the pot on the desk. “And I’ve been meaning to mention something to you. We’ve been losing money for almost half a year. The socialist system has gone to the dogs and people are talking about the new management system.”
Peiqin took the lid off the pot and smiled. “Wow, wonderful,” she said. “The food, I mean.” It was the chef’s speciaclass="underline" the carp head covered in red pepper on a bed of white garlic at the bottom.
“The pot keeps things warm for a long time. It’s still very hot,” Pan went on, rubbing his hands. “A middle class is rising fast in China. They come to a restaurant for something special, not for homely dishes they can cook themselves. So we need to change too. How about you taking over the management? I’ll back you up. Socialist or capitalist, this restaurant is ours.”
“Thank you, Pan. I’ll think about it,” she said, “but I may not be qualified for the job.”
“Do think about it, Peiqin,” he said, backing toward the door. “We never know what we can do until we try.”
Helping herself to a spoonful of the soup, she thought to herself that she might indeed be able to do a better job for the restaurant-or at least a more conscientious job than the current management was doing. But what about her family? Qinqin was studying hard for the college entrance examination. For his future, a first-class college was a must. Yu, too, had reached a critical stage in his career. She had to take care of things at home.
After lunch, she found it hard to concentrate on the books again. Downstairs, a squabble seemed to be breaking out in the kitchen. Hua called in, saying that he wouldn’t be coming in that day. Peiqin had another idea about the red mandarin dress, so she decided to take the afternoon off.
She might be able to learn something about it from the movies. The dress could have some specific meaning that she was not aware of in her lusterless daily life. She walked out, heading toward a DVD store on Sichuan Road. The afternoon had turned cold. She wrapped herself more tightly in the cotton-padded army jacket, one of the few remainders from her army farm days in Yunnan. Ironically, the imitation army jacket, too, seemed to be getting popular again.
The store was huge, with thousands of VCDs and DVDs displayed in various sections. To her amazement, she saw quite a few new movies that had not been officially released.
“So how can there be DVDs so quickly?” she asked the storeowner, who was also a customer at her restaurant.
“Easy. Someone sneaks into a preview with a camcorder,” he said with a broad grin. “We guarantee the quality. You can return the DVD for a full refund.”
She thanked him and looked around. In the section of Western classics, she came upon a movie entitled Random Harvest, adapted from the novel by James Hilton. It was the first English novel Chen had read in Bund Park, Yu had told her. The Chinese version had a fascinating title: A Pair of Mandarin Ducks’ Dream Re-dreamed. In classical Chinese poetry, a pair of Mandarin ducks stood for inseparable lovers. So this must be a love story. She put the movie into her shopping basket.
In the domestic section, she picked up A Nurse’s Diary, a movie made in the fifties. She remembered having seen a poster of the young nurse wearing a mandarin dress. Another love story, judging from the glamorous DVD cover. She also chose Golden Lock, a Hong Kong movie based on a novel by Ailing.
But she failed to find a documentary movie about the dress, nor any movie with a title directly connected to it.
The moment she got back home, she turned on the DVD player. There were still a couple of hours before she had to worry about dinner. She took off her shoes and socks, stretched herself out on the sofa, and covered her feet with a cushion.
She watched Random Harvest for only ten minutes. Too old-fashioned Hollywood for her. What would Chen think about the movie, she wondered.
A Nurse’s Diary was a different story: it was about a group of young people dedicated to building a new socialist China. By today’s standards, it didn’t come close to being a romantic story. The young nurse was too busy making the revolution to have many romantic thoughts. In fact, romantic affairs were far from encouraged at the time. The movie appealed to Peiqin, however, particularly for the idealistic theme song: “‘Little swallow, little swallow, / you come back here every year. / Can you tell me why?’ / The little swallow replies, / ‘The Spring is most beautiful here,’…”
The most beautiful “here” in the song, she contemplated, must refer to somewhere along the northwest borders, still impoverished, undeveloped, forsaken. No one would ever think of going there today.
“The Spring is most beautiful here.” On the screen, the slender nurse, played by the actress Linfeng, was humming the song, her face lit up with the passion of the socialist revolution. Years later, Linfeng emigrated to Tokyo, where she was said to be running a Chinese vegetarian restaurant. There she sang the song occasionally for overseas Chinese customers, her figure out of shape and too much makeup on her face. Of course, it would be naïve to expect an actress to keep playing such a role-or showing such a figure-all her life.
As it turned out, in the movie the dress was worn by the nurse’s mother, a middle-aged lady of the upper class in the old society, still resistant to the socialist revolution. But Peiqin was not exactly disappointed. As in her initial impression, mandarin dresses-in movies and in life-were mostly for those women moving about in fashionable upper-class.
As she was about to watch Golden Lock, her glance fell on a book she had brought home. The white-haired author looked strangely like her late father. She read the short biographical information beneath the picture on the cover. “Shen Wenchang, a well-known poet before 1949, and after 1949, an internationally known expert on the history of Chinese clothing.”