TV series "Flowers"
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Sixty years ago, five-year-old Wong Kar-wai left Shanghai with his parents. He seemed to have retained the memory of Shanghai as a "cosmopolitan club." After he left, the modern tone of Shanghai was somewhat wrapped up in historical discourse. The world during this period was carefully recorded in the pavilions and workers' new villages written by Jin Yucheng.
In the TV series "Flowers", Po's Caoyang New Village years, along with the entire 1960s and 1970s in the original work, have been omitted. Wong Kar-Wai sent Po to the large suite of the Peace Hotel on the "First Floor of the Far East", which resurfaced the city's former miraculous qualities.
This covering and highlighting of "Shanghai" seems to be Wong Kar-wai's restoration of a certain "Shanghai tradition" in his mind. So, what kind of fantasy does he want to project on a metropolis like Shanghai?
The TV series "Flowers"
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From the 1930s to the 1950s, Shanghai brought the most fashionable business and culture to Hong Kong. In 1937, the Japanese army invaded and occupied Shanghai. The raging war caused a large number of intellectuals who had settled in Shanghai to move south. The tycoons in the Shanghai film industry re-established their companies in Hong Kong; department stores such as Wing On and Xian Shi also established their Hong Kong branches; with the prosperity of Shanghai capital in Hong Kong, the textile industry emerged as the times require. "Shanghai tailors" are popping up all over Hong Kong. In the 1950s, Hong Kong experienced a process of "Shanghaiization", and the rapid modernization process was like a mirror image of the legendary metropolis.
Around 1940, writer Zhang Ailing left Shanghai and came to Hong Kong. She has quite mixed feelings about this place. In her opinion, Hong Kong is too noisy after all when imitating the West. This was not the case in Shanghai during the same period, at least not entirely: Shanghai was more elegant and sophisticated. This is evident in language.
Eileen Chang believed that the popular literature in Hong Kong at that time could be represented by the popular bus stop sign: "If you want to park, you can stop here." A kind of model of British Chinese. In Shanghai, you can find words with local spirit everywhere. Zhang Ailing escaped into the market to buy soap, and heard a young apprentice explaining to his companion: "Well, it is the 'Xun' of 'Zhang Xun', the 'Xun' of 'Gong Xun', not the 'Xun' of 'Xun Feng'. "In the opening advertisement of the department store, she saw the parallel Yanghu style advertisement slogans. Regarding the dangers of choosing inappropriate gifts, the conclusion was: "Friendship is not a big deal!" All these things made her sigh: "You are from Shanghai after all!"
On an ordinary working day, I took the elevator up. In the small space filled with morning sleepiness, a man asked me to press the tenth floor button for him. He first said "tenth floor" in Shanghainese, and then said "salut" (meaning of greeting) in French, followed by a well-timed, self-deprecating laugh. When I appreciate the introverted spirituality and playfulness of Shanghainese language, I often think of this scene, which is unique to Shanghainese, humorous, cute, and tortuous self-mockery.
Shanghainese may be one of the youngest dialects in China, which did not gradually take shape until the early Republic of China.
scholar Lu Hanchao said that the essence of Shanghainese temperament is shrewdness, which is created by business. In fact, the same is true for Shanghainese. In an interview, I heard Qian Nairong, a Wu dialect researcher, say, "Shanghai dialect has two characteristics, one is the commercialization of daily life vocabulary, and the other is the daily lifeization of business vocabulary." Such as "unpacking" (dismissal), "matting" Words such as "table foot" (bribery) are all manifestations of the infiltration of life into business. In words such as "showing off one's appearance", "turning over old accounts", "guaranteing" (guaranteed to me), "talking about the weight" (no compromise), etc., one can see the invasion of commercial behavior into daily life. The business savvy in
's words and character does not just mean philistine, but sometimes it means a "brave and decisive imagination of life. To use a Chinese idiom to describe it, it means daring to throw money for long-term interests." Like earth'". (Lu Hanchao's "Under the Neon Lights")
In addition, the charm of Shanghainese lies in that it is a mediator between local dialects and other languages in the world, and it has its own international cultural space.Slowly, Shanghainese changed "lane" into "alongtang", "house" into "hao", "dear" into "嗲"... and gradually internalized the foreign "pattern" into Your own "style".
The anxiety of cultural identity is rarely reflected in Shanghainese. More often, Shanghainese is more willing to internalize foreign things into the continuity, leap and agility of its own language.
Wong Kar-wai's movie "2046"
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At the beginning of the 1970s, Hong Kong began her economic take-off. In the novel "Flowers", Po and Xuezhi are in love, and their conversation is somewhat inseparable from "Hong Kong"; the barber inserts a postcard from Hong Kong on the edge of the mirror, and tries to expose the Hong Kong scenery in the front as much as possible, out of pride He told the customer, "This is from a relative."
"In 1993, I just got a color TV at home, and the movies on it were Jin Yong's martial arts movies and "Criminal Investigation Files". By 2000, the TV was showing Su Yongkang's Maxwell Coffee commercial. For this reason, I specially bought a TV set. The tape "Sadness Stops" was played in Cantonese." This is the memory of colleagues born in the 1980s.
What is interesting is that the Hong Kong style trend sweeping Shanghai reached its peak in "Shanghai Beach" filmed by TVB. In this Hong Kong drama created in the 1990s, Shanghai is still the adventurer's paradise with a mixture of luxury and complex tastes.
According to scholar Ou-fan Lee, the "old Shanghai fashion" in Hong Kong popular culture not only reflects Hong Kong's nostalgia, or Hong Kong inscribes its own anxieties on an old Shanghai, but also because Shanghai's former prosperity symbolizes Some kind of real mystery.
That was the era when writer Liu Yichang wrote "Everlasting" starring Jerry Cooper and Helen Hayes. "Rose Rose, I Love You" and "I Wish We Were Not Married" were sung all over the streets. On the Joffre Road there were Annan patrol officers and Italian sailors with a big red ball on their hats. Filipino musicians in the ballroom were playing waltzes and tangos. Mei Lanfang performs "The Drunken Concubine" on Tianchan Stage. The civilized drama of the big world, the boat on the Suzhou River, the setting sun on Jiaozhou Road, and the morning light on the Huangpu River. The rickshaw driver's foot power competes with the tram, and the golden wind needle of the racecourse shines in the sun...
In Wong Kar-wai's film "2046"
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In the drama "Flowers", Shanghai in the 1990s reiterates its dream of the past. Po, with the simplest good luck and heart, flew for all of us. But such a perfect Mr. Bao is more like a dream. In contrast, the flightless Tao Tao trapped in the seafood market and among the chicken feathers is closer to the reality of all living beings.
beyond's "No More Hesitation" resounded throughout the series, but what moved me the most was Tao Tao's hesitation.
The key to desire was sweating in the palm of my hand, but it could not be inserted into the lock of the little sister-in-law. Should he open this door of temptation and opportunity or not? In the struggle and swing of the key in hand, the most beautiful fireworks went off, and good and bad situations all passed by.
It’s just that in all the hopeless fates that have not taken off, there are always things that have not been run over by the ruts of history. Whether at the Guling Road seafood market or walking into a private room of a hotel on Huanghe Road, the blooming and withering of flowers seems to have nothing to do with them, Tao Tao is just Tao Tao. In this kind of "nothing to do with oneself", there is the unchanging resilience of life itself, which is the most meaningful world sentiment in Shanghai. We know that everyday life can sometimes be close to miracles.
drama "Flowers"
