Nostalgia by Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U.

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01 Content 03 Preface: The Nostalgia Issue Dr. Daniel Vukovich 09 我在哪裡，那裡就是阿根廷鄧正健 15

The comforting cage: Nostalgia in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” Miss Julianne Yang

23 Writing Places, Making Places: Sung Wong Toi as a Rock of Nostalgia Miss Helena Wu 32 Paratext, Liu Yi-‐chang and Nostalgia in Wong Kar-‐wai’s In the Mood for Love Mr. Gavin Tse

48 Comparative Literature Festival 2014: Exhibition: “The Veil of Memory” Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2013-‐2014 55 Book Review: 《胭脂扣》林芷諾 58 Film Review: Midnight in Paris Sonia Yu 63 Acknowledgements

Preface: The Nostalgia Issue

Dr. Daniel Vukovich Dr. Daniel Vukovich joined HKU in Fall 2006. He teaches a range of classes, usually in post-‐ colonial and China/PRC studies but drawing on literature, film, media, and – crucially -‐-‐ primary/historical texts from around the world. He also teaches an Intro to world lit/culture and the odd class in American poetry/modernity. His publications are rooted in politics and philosophy(‘theory’). His research and writing deal primarily with the politics of knowledge and representation, and the problem of the universal (or modern, or capitalist, or colonial) versus ‘Chinese’ or other particularity and difference. He is currently working on a successor tentatively entitled Seeing Like An Other State. It extends and revises the critique of orientalism in global intellectual political culture, engages ‘new left’ debates, and is meant as a response to the global rise of libertarianism (or neo-‐liberalism) in China and globally. He focuses on the political culture of China, its protests and views on the Red era (Wukan, Nanjiecun), as compared to “Western” political and social theory about change, development, the state, democratic legitimacy, and so on.

This year’s bulletin is another fine installment by some of our many, many terrific Comp Lit students, alumnae, teaching assistants, and fellow/sister-‐ travelers. Between the Bulletin and Mercury, things are buzzing in the new building. The theme this year is nostalgia, a perennial favorite in popular and highbrow cultures the world over, and perhaps even a “universal” or at least modern human experience. We all have pasts, don’t we? Individual ones and collective or social ones, and imagined ones. And as good analysts of culture we all know that “imagined” does not necessarily mean false or inauthentic. Take away your illusions and you have little else left. But at the same time: Beware of what you wish for; you might get it. Tang Chin Kin takes us on a literary-‐meditative tour to Argentina (in Chinese and English translation), but one mediated through Hong Kong, an American-‐ Paris, Germany, and other places and not least by the World Cup, that most inter-‐national of sporting events that speaks to a world that used to be composed of far-‐tighter borders and boundaries. One of the lessons here is that you don’t need to be tied to a place, or even have been ‘there,’ to feel nostalgic for it. That’s not a weakness or mistake, but a possibility. And an exercise in creative and critical thinking. Julianne Yang, whom we will miss while she does her PhD in Europe, and who will soon be feeling nostalgic for Hong Kong (I assume!) adroitly marches us through a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Indian (South Asian) American writer whose major theme is immigrant experience. Through Yang’s analysis we see more clearly how the central characters are tied to, burdened by their pasts and yet also mis-‐remember them to the point where their present lives are the worse for it. If you dwell in the past too much you not only misread it anyway (the past can’t actually be re-‐captured in its entirety). You also, more fatefully, misread your present realities and possibilities. Yang asks: “When is nostalgia more than mere comfort and instead a source of complacency and naivety, leading to missed opportunities in the present?”

A very good question, and one I would like to ask Hong Kong in the face of mainland realities and imperatives. And one we might, in turn, want to ask to citizens across the border about their own nostalgia for, e.g., the Red and/or Confucian and/or Guomindang-‐Republican pasts from which Hong Kong was largely excluded. How does the backward glance, or warm or sentimental memory, determine what we see in the present? A question that runs through all the pieces in the bulletin. Helena Wu, one of us and still “here” whilst actually residing in Zurich (and I am guessing feeling nostalgic for Hong Kong food and weather), takes us, in a fine cultural studies analysis, to Sung Wong Toi (宋王臺) Garden near the old airport, and in particular to a rock. Or more accurately to a memorial tablet there, said to mark the last spot where the last Song dynasty emperor stood in the last spot of “his” territory before the rise of the Yuan dynasty (all circa 1278). That would in theory give you a long chunk of history to be nostalgic about — Hong Kong as in some sense part of the old China and the glorious Song, that era in which China became effectively modern (well before Europe) and produced a number of conceptual breakthroughs in regard to political governance and bureaucracy. (On this see ‘New Left’ intellectual Wang Hui among others.) And as Wu explains to us, the rock became a site of emotional refuge and contemplation for some exiled literati in Hong Kong, from that same post-‐Song period through the Qing. Still more, the rock ( in the form of a tablet now) was nearly destroyed during the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong. Moved by the colonial government afterwards to its current garden location. How many layers of history and memory, of cultural ‘significance’ and symbolism, must be reflected by this rock thrown up from nature to become a nostalgic symbol? And yet the tourism board here does not even know where it is, and few people today visit the garden, aside from its useful function as a place of respite and marginally fresh air for nearby residents. Fewer still visit to feel moved by its nostalgic value as our 5

connection to a shared, imperial past. The rock has become a place and, once again, a rock (not so much a memorial). Gavin Tse brings us back in to what is no doubt a very familiar film to many of us, one we may even feel nostalgic about from having viewed it so many times: Wong Kar-‐Wai’s art-‐house classic, “In the Mood for Love” (released in 2000; the Chinese title is perhaps better, signifying “flowery years” or “age of blossoms,” and ironic because nothing actually blossoms but only fades). Wong’s famously moody film also turns on nostalgia as much as romantic longing, unrequited love, youth, and the “feel” of early 1960s Hong Kong. But nostalgic for what? What do we makes of these feelings or moods? What Gavin Tse offers is not feeling or moods or merely psychoanalysis but something more fundamental: context. He unpacks the relation of the film to a crucial cross-‐ or para-‐text that inspired it and frames it: the Hong Kong writer Liu Yichang’s [劉以鬯] 1972 novel, Intersection. This immediately makes Wong’s film more “Hong Kong” rooted, rather than just being an art-‐ house and auteur flick custom-‐designed for the cinephile in general, both highbrow and (it may be felt) rather pointless except for Jacques Lacan aficionados. The film then becomes an examination, howsoever indirectly and in terms of the characters’ narcissism and desire and longing (always unfulfilled), of the stultifying 1960s in Hong Kong. (Or if you wish, the differently stultifying 90s as well, and the fear amongst the ‘nativist’ demographic of the return to China and an uncertain future). Now aside from the beauty of the photography and costumes, why would anyone want to go back to such a period of social (and gendered) conservatism and repression (the Hong Kong 60s surely, if not also the 90s)? What are we being nostalgic for here? And what are the characters? They missed their chances, perhaps due to their narcissistic weakness in the face of social propriety. Perhaps the good old days are best buried under mud inside a tree in Siem Reap.

Finally let me close this preface with two brief thoughts that have always struck me about nostalgia. The first is that, on campuses and in academe anyway, it is usually used as an insult or dig at someone. “You are just being nostalgic for X” (to pick a not-‐so random example, for Maoist China; substitute your own alleged false memory here). “Aren’t they just being nostalgic for…… X”(for the good old days during the colonial era, perhaps). The problem here is two-‐fold: one, it is just a way of dismissing someone’s thought, either because you are too lazy to think about it or because you find it disturbing somehow. The other issue is: What is the alternative to “nostalgia”? If you say or assume “The Truth” or the Objective Reality of the past and what happened, then that isn’t any better than the most romantic or fantastic or made-‐up memory and nostalgic feeling. I’m afraid it’s all a bit more complicated than that. We have to be specific and get real with our interpretations and arguments. If you want to go back to the past, you should know why. And if you want to disparage others’ desires for the same, you might think twice and just shut up instead, or at least, again, have a good reason for doing so. Second thought comes from the modern German revolutionary and writer, Bertolt Brecht. He instructed us: “Don’t start from the good old things, but from the bad new ones.” Likewise, don’t start from the good old days but from the bad, present times. This makes sense individually as well as politically. We need to ‘get real’ and that means dealing with present day realities and imperatives and limits. Those are the ones that hurt the most, or that matter the most. And memory is after all fleeting and subjective. Memory and nostalgia (yearning), as with tradition, are important and can be empowering, just as they can also be a trap. Brecht was right: live in the moment, in the present, because it counts more and is what needs changed. The past is already over. Make it new.

You can’t go back, but you can make the past serve the present. That is the sense in which nostalgia can be useful. Even if you had a rough childhood, why wouldn’t it be better to remember it more fondly? You’ll sleep better. If the radical egalitarianism and human and economic development of the Mao era co-‐existed with violence and death and sacrifice, why wouldn’t we nonetheless recover the former so as to intervene in the present? To live only in the present would be a nightmare, and we may need that past to overcome present misery or contemporary problems. It would be enormously arrogant, too, to think we don’t need and can escape the past entirely. But this is about using the past and our memories more than yearning to recapture them. Becoming more conscious of all of this probably requires a BA in the humanities, if not indeed a Comp Lit major.

我在哪裡，那裡就是阿根廷鄧正健香港中文大學文化研究學部博士候選人。

1. 美斯在長雞一鳴後的頽唐，令我想起許多年前一個差不多的場景。那時的電視還是一個肥壯的魔術盒子，名叫馬勒當拿的阿根廷人高舉著世界盃，我想到贏了跟哥的牙骹，不禁沾沾自喜。哥捧西德，而我跟他對著幹，除了意氣，還有一個很羞恥的理由：大人們都說我像馬勒當拿。不是球技，是矮小肥胖身形且略為發黑的膚色，直如那位街童出身的球王樣子。我知道他們都在逗我，但哪個孩子不是在成人善意的羞辱長大呢？於是，我開始對外宣稱：我捧阿根廷國家隊，同時學習想像這個未曾踏足但被逼愛上的國度。正如一場藏在記憶底層的遙遠初戀，我們必須在很久以後才會突然明悟，那種酵母會一直沉睡，直至我們的情感結構在不知不覺間被改樑換柱成另一個樣子，這方可稱為成長。我是在大學之後才重新把阿根廷納入思考日程裡，那幾年阿根廷國家隊持續低迷，積蓄不夠浪遊拉美，只夠我買一張探戈演出的票。是那種把阿根廷探戈裝扮成一場遠古暗巷裡野合調情的炫技秀，每隔一兩年，總會有些以走國際埠為生的探戈舞團路過香港，一種馬戲班式的異色情調，藉無知的驚艷來擊破觀眾的冷靜情緒。我迷上我所不了解的探戈，以及那個所謂的阿根廷。某個調查顯示，三種最可代表這個拉美南方大國的東西是：足球，探戈和烤肉。據說正宗的阿根廷烤肉是一種 overcooked 的牛扒，肉質粗糙，口感欠奉，不合東方人口胃。我沒吃過，也沒興趣勉強自己的舌尖，況且單是足球和探戈已夠我把阿根廷消費半生。今年世界盃我重新大張旗鼓地熱捧阿根廷，是為浪子回頭。可是我從來沒有真正為美斯的魔腳而失態，那麼作為一個自忖為球迷的人，我必須為捧一隊跟自己無關的球隊而說一個理由。一個傳奇的綠茵戰將嗎？一種華麗壯美的戰鬥風格嗎？都不是，而僅是為了一個莫以名狀的瞬間，把

陳年電視機裡如我一樣的矮胖黑漢帶到今天，而我也從中辨認出作為球迷的童年樣子。我就是從那個瞬間而來，一切都變得理所當然。這就是一種懷舊嗎？不只如此。世界盃時我熱忱於睇波，幾乎忘記了探戈舞步。阿根廷探戈是唯一一種我要把它植入身體記憶裡的舞蹈，那是一種奇怪的社交舞，素不相識的男女可以單靠身體上的一個接觸點，就能打通兩人的經絡和情緒通，任男的如何高低跌宕，女的也能如影隨形。有好一段時間，我在香港那幾個狹小的阿根廷探戈舞池裡，經過了本來是輪迴百遍才能累積到的戀愛次數，而每次都不過是一個 tanda，即四首探戈樂的長度。根據阿根廷文豪波赫士（Jorge Luis Borges）可能是文學化了的考證，探戈起源於十九世紀末的妓院。作為一個拉美殖民地的繁榮商港，布宜諾斯艾利斯的男女比例嚴重失衡，高出幾倍之數的男性移工為一解鄉愁而湧入妓院，在等待解決生理需要的時候，跟素未謀面的妓女創造出這種即興的兩人舞。我常把這個經典放在口袋裡，作為解釋我迷上探戈，而且必須要讓自己相信，這迷戀是一種終身契約的理據：探戈起源於鄉愁，而當我跟探戈翩然起舞時，我總能回憶起許多年前在那個我不曾存在的時空裡，有一種抽象空無而徒具肉身歡愉的孤寂感，將二零某某年的我跟這個陌生的歷史時空一同綑綁在命運之樹的軀幹上。 2. 強說愁的 nostalgia，在我成長的日子裡倒見過不少。小時候讀過很多奇怪的散文，都是一些作家懷念童年和故鄉的文字，篇名記不住了，後來才知道他們多是隨國民黨遷台的難民，極其隱晦地訴說著祖國分裂的故事。我受殖民地教育忽悠多年，不知道近代中國文人多是身患思鄉病，那些年的中小學教科書裡盡是這種軟性療藥，硬性的，比如說什麼花果飄零，民主祖國之類的

政治論述吧，原來早就跟我的童年處在兩個平行時空裡。所以對我的上一輩來說，鄉愁是很實在很椎心的一件事，哪怕他們用不上 nostalgia 這舶來詞。這關我什麼事？我必須忠實地向自己坦白，那種抽象的鄉愁是假的，即使我懂得用那些散文拿考試高分。鄉愁的基本精神是：為失去之物而憂鬱。故鄉是遙遠的，是童年的，時間和空間上的距離造成失落感。時空的距離是條件，失去是狀態，而憂鬱則是心情。但我總覺得如何失去才是重點。有時我們會把 nostalgia 翻譯作「懷舊」，乍聽好像是說另一回事。懷舊是對舊物的依戀，少了空間性，時間上仍然無可挽回。可是，懷舊之說卻從未指出，這舊物是否曾經為我所擁有？還只是我們想像有過的？於是所謂失去也突然變得很可疑了：如何能對一件我從未擁有過的童年或記憶而哀怨憂愁呢？那坐北京的城樓，上海的弄巷，大明湖的冬天，還有那一列長長的路軌和站台上父親的背影？都是他們的愁，我實在不應強說。我把 nostalgia 想像得很寬鬆，那應是一種對自我慾望的絕對忠誠，與時空無關，也跟擁有與否或是否失去無尤。一種文藝腔的說法：尋找精神故鄉。那可不必然是任何一個可以用肉身或記憶相認的故鄉，而是我們剛好迷上了某種跟自己無關的遙遠或古老之物，再予以追認，投誠和入籍。但羅馬不是一天建成，如果你有幸在年青時代蹓躂過某個氣質獨特而內蘊豐盈的符號體系，那將會在你身上滋長出嫩芽，放花，聚果，再擺出一頓流動的饗宴，永遠等待你衣錦還鄉。之於海明威，當然，就是上世紀二十年代的巴黎；於我，便是那個去歷史化去語境化的阿根廷。為此我決意把湯馬斯‧曼不喜歡到底。曼說，我在哪裡，那裡就是德國。這位流亡的民族主義者最惹人索然沒味的一著是，他把故鄉想得太死了。他話裡之意不外是：他的精神故鄉跟肉身故鄉是同一的，他愛他的日耳曼精血，

也毫不猶疑地刪除了 nostalgia 的種種可能性。反而海明威就有趣得多了，沒有人會認為他很美國，大家只會念念不忘那隻死在非洲山上的豹，那尾加勒比海大海的大魚，還有那個如花似錦的上世紀巴黎。迷人的世界主義，巴黎曾經是世界主義者的都城，而我的布宜諾斯艾利斯，則是拉美的巴黎，就跟聖地牙哥先生同在一片大陸之上。以上是我最 nostalgia 的 nostalgia。 3. 活地‧阿倫嘴巴很賤，把這種想像的 nostalgia 嘲笑得體無完膚。電影《情迷午夜巴黎》（Midnight in Paris）裡有一輛世故得令人雞皮疙瘩的古董汽車，每晚準時午夜，便把失意的文藝中年 Gil 帶回海明威的二十年代巴黎。在活地‧阿倫的鏡頭下，海明威跟費滋傑羅、畢卡索、達利和布紐爾一樣，都紛紛從文藝神壇走下來，變成了一群痴痴迷迷的空想家。難得 Gil 還樂此不疲地幻想著這場不屬於他的流動饗宴，甚要跟神秘女郎 Adriana 私奔。突然，一輛比二十年代更古老的馬車駛過，竟把他們載到十九世紀的巴黎紅磨坊，就是那個 Adriana 以為擁有印象派大師們的美好年代。他們遇見高更、德加和羅特列克，Gil 卻驚訝地發現，三人的精神故鄉居然是更遙遠的文藝復興時代。劇透夠了，所有真偽文青全都無地自容。很多時候，只要你登上那輪古董汽車走一趟，你就知道一切憂鬱愁苦都是自欺的把戲，最 nostalgia 的 nostalgia，就跟最 exotic 的 exotic，或最 orientalism 的 orientalism 一樣，是在一個遙不可及的空洞符號裡釀入你的慾望和缺失，再塞進爐子裡烤至肉香四溢。我從未踏足過阿根廷，但若我真去了，我倒肯定會在 La Boca 前往探戈舞會 milonga 的路上，登上一輛古董汽車回到二十世紀初的某所妓院前，去解救一名遭人調戲的曼妙妓女。而她會猶疑要不要以身相許之間，一邊訴

說身世，一邊告訴我一個小秘密：探戈是墮落之舞，她想念的是數百年前早期殖民者的彪捍勇武。諸如此類吧。這種不負責任且政治不正確的空想，畢竟是最無傷大雅的 guilty pleasure，前提是我們不能把空想浪漫化，而必須讓它演繹成一場知識累積與催逼想象力的雙重訓練。如果只有足球和探戈，我的阿根廷就沒有那麼趣味盎然了。我起碼有我的波赫士，知道他其實跟那位妓女一樣，相信探戈是阿根廷衰敗之象。國家文豪跟國粹自相矛盾，單憑這項，就已經夠我確定一個 nostalgia 客體的本相，居然可以是如此複雜混亂，而不是像那塊烤熟牛扒的鐵板一般。我自然可以把手中書包繼續掉下去：哲‧古華拉是在布宜諾斯艾利斯開始棄醫從騎，再踏上革命之道；王家衛《春光乍洩》中那扣人心弦的配樂出自探戈音樂之王 Astor Piazolla 的手筆，而他卻是在阿根廷探戈息微的獨裁時代，於美國大紅大紫；還有那個惱人的布宜諾斯艾利斯，原來不怎麼阿根廷，若計文化差異，它跟烏拉圭比跟阿根廷南部還親近得多…… 也是諸如此類吧。沒什麼了不起。大概是那位年長十多歲的表姐，說我像馬勒當拿嗎？我忘記了。但這又有什麼關係呢？在曼的祖國捧走大力神盃的第二天，我把那個淺藍和白色間條的小足球放在那本大學畢業不久就買下來的陳年 Lonely Planet 旁邊，剛滿一歲半的兒子便走過來扯我的衣角。我突然記起，兩年前的一個夏夜，我跟在探戈舞池裡認識的妻子正在大傷腦筋，為的是替即將出世的兒子改一個跟阿根廷有關的名字。我在哪裡，那裡就是阿根廷。這是在世界主義的意義下所說的一句戲言。

The comforting cage: Nostalgia in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”

Miss Julianne Yang Julianne Yang is a full-‐time teaching assistant at the Department of Comparative Literature, where she received her BA and MPhil. She loves to teach, learn, write, read, run and draw strangers on the subway without their noticing (see http://citylines.tumblr.com). After seven years in this fascinating city, she is moving back to Norway at the end of the year to begin as a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, where she will study narratives of guilt and privilege in Scandinavian cinema.

On the first read, the key subject matter in Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “A Temporary Matter” seems to be the passing of time, the transience of things. Focusing on Shukumar, a man in his thirties whose marriage is in a tough period, the story deals with the couple’s current and past situation, exploring how, as the husband puts it, “they weren’t like this before”. Yet, as the story progresses, we begin to suspect that Shukumar’s take on events might not be entirely reliable. This is not because he is an unreliable narrator in the typical sense – Shukumar is not “mad”. He is, however, sad, and most likely quite lonely, making him highly liable to be nostalgic about earlier days. In the following, I will analyze how “A Temporary Matter” represents nostalgia as a complicated source of security. I will focus in particular on how narration, characterization and symbolism is used to enhance the story’s main thematic concern: nostalgia as a force that gives us meaning, yet also traps and limits us. Before we look at Lahiri’s story, let us briefly consider nostalgia as a phenomenon. While psychology research suggests that nostalgia is a pancultural, universal experience among humans (Hepper et al.), most of us are rarely critical or even aware of when and why we feel nostalgic. Were we to scrutinize all our thoughts and pick out the nostalgic ones, the task would be immense, even paralyzing – a bit like thinking consciously of your own breathing or how you walk. The way our memories are triggered by scents, sights and songs, why we long for and revisit particular events in the past – these processes seem intrinsic to the way humans are. In times of loneliness, unhappiness and mourning, nostalgia can be particularly tempting, a near-‐addictive cage of comfort where you can dwell on a reimagined past and protect yourself, momentarily, from a gloomy present. As psychologists have found, nostalgia can imbue our lives with meaning when a sense of purpose or belonging is precisely what we lack (Routledge et al.). In politics, advertising, art, entertainment and other areas, nostalgia is thus a most powerful (and dangerous) tool for stirring up emotions, as it creates a sense of continuity and community and, inversely,

constructs or exaggerates divisions – between the imagined then and now, between imagined us and them. No wonder, then, that nostalgia can be hard for us to detect. It surrounds us, in the form of cultural texts that play on our in-‐built propensity for nostalgia, but it is also part of how we think, how we imagine ourselves and others. In “A Temporary Matter”, Lahiri provides a closer look at one man’s nostalgic thinking, and asks the reader – like most good fiction does – to consider why this character feels and acts the way he does. The story opens with a type of accident: a notice in the mail tells Shukumar and his wife Shoba that their power will be cut for one hour, every evening, in the next five days, due to repair work after a recent snowstorm. Thanks to this sudden change of routine, the couple begins to eat dinner together for the first time in months, sitting in the near dark, illuminated by a few spare birthday candles. “Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again” (19). They even make a habit of sharing secrets with each other but nevertheless avoid the topic that led to their silence in the first place: that six months earlier, their first child was stillborn. Though it has its moments of hope, it is loneliness and sadness that permeate this story, not least because of Shukumar, the central character. The story is told through omniscient narration but this perspective repeatedly merges with Shukumar’s point of view, so much so that it is often unclear whether we perceive the characters as they are, or as Shukumar perceives them. What we need to keep in mind is that Shukumar may be relaying information truthfully to us but that he simply may not know enough. After all, someone like Shukumar, who is sad but on top of that, unable to recognize the depths of that sadness, is liable to misremember the past and miss out on details in the present. In typical Lahirian fashion, the story also spells out its characters’ emotions only subtly and over time, often through minimalist, undramatic descriptions and an absence of authorial commentary. In other words, once Lahiri has chosen to align us with Shukumar’s perspective, she keeps us there, makes us to notice exactly how much, or little, he sees.

One of the first things we learn about Shoba and Shukumar is their shared, quiet sadness and the growing distance between them. Early on in the story, Shukumar thinks of “how he and Shoba had become experts at avoiding each other in their three-‐bedroom house, spending as much time on separate floors as possible” (4). For months, the two have served themselves dinner from the stove, taking their own dinner plates to eat in separate rooms (8). From these passages, the two seem to mirror each other, as if partaking in a synchronized dance of mutual avoidance. At the same time, we also see that Shukumar and his wife differ in several ways. He repeatedly mentions his admiration for how meticulous and organized she used to be, and that she was much more prepared for surprises than him. At the end of the story, when Shoba reveals to him that she has bought a place and decided to move out, this choice still surprises and disappoints him. Clearly, though he senses that he himself has lost not only a baby but also their connection as a couple, he is unable or unwilling to contemplate that his wife might feel as alienated as him. That Shukumar is, despite the odds, caught off guard when Shoba wants to move can reveal both a difference in personality and in the manner they cope with the past. To convey how the characters feel about the past, Lahiri emphasizes their relationship to their house, a symbolic space in the story. Working from home, Shukumar often feels too unmotivated to go outside, let alone finish the dissertation he is struggling to complete. Their home, replete with objects marked by their time together, can evidently symbolize their relationship or the past more generally. That Shukumar, who is always at home, sharply contrasts Shoba, who is active and spends much of her time outside the house, creates an asymmetry that may mimic their attitudes to each other and the past. Even without this symbolic interpretation, though, one’s home is often on a practical level a minefield of memories. In one scene, Shukumar discovers some leftover birthday candles in drawer and is reminded of a big birthday party Shoba threw him a year earlier. He recalls how they had held hands all night among “the friends and the friends of friends they now

systematically avoided” (9). In another scene, Shukumar is cooking, using ingredients Shoba once prepared, bottled and stored, consulting recipes she wrote and dated by hand (7). To not see his wife’s place in his own life would require, it seems, to not live in that house. Does Shoba’s wish to move out of this house, then, suggest that she is to put the past behind her? It is hard to gauge exactly how she feels since Shukumar is closest to the story’s narrator. Still, it seems fair to say that Shoba is trying to change her life by changing and varying her physical environment. Early on, we are told that she often goes to the gym: “She wore a navy blue poplin raincoat over grey sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-‐three, exactly like the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble” (1). Despite the negative tone, this is in fact the description of Shoba coming home from a workout, her getting and out doing something she seems to enjoy. If interpreted more symbolically, it may even suggest that Shoba can do exactly what Shukumar cannot: move on by leaving the house. Yet, how do we know if descriptions of Shoba are accurate? The above passage is one of many that appear to be far from neutral, emerging out of Shukumar’s own concerns. In particular, he clearly longs for an idea of his wife’s earlier self: “Shukumar moved her satchel and her sneakers to the side of the fridge. She wasn’t this way before” (6). The narrator continues, drifting off into the past: “She used to put her coat on a hanger, her sneakers in the closet, and she paid bills as soon as they came. But now she treated the house as if it were a hotel” (ibid.). The story includes many passages of this kind, whereby the narrator describes how Shoba used to be more involved at home and in their relationship. Since these observations are typically from Shukumar’s perspective, we can only assume that she has radically changed, though we cannot be sure. Nor can we know for certain her incentives for changing or not doing so. We do, however, learn a lot about Shukumar from his view on Shoba, and the more we find out, the clearer it becomes that he is far from happy.

This is important to note, as his unhappiness may have an adverse effect on how he perceives his relationship, just as any memory is shaped by the moment at which you recall it. What Sigmund Freud terms Nachträglichkeit, translated as “afterwardsness”, emphasizes precisely how “memory, operating as it does in the present, must inevitably incorporate the awareness of ‘what wasn't known then’” (King 12), experiences one has not lived through yet. In Shukumar’s case, his memory of Shoba in the past is inevitably shaped by the experience of losing their firstborn child and its aftermath. To illustrate, the following scene takes place during the first dinner after the power cut, and describes with great subtlety some of the underlying factors that have led to the distance between Shoba and Shukumar. While their son is not explicitly mentioned, he affects the couple’s dynamics by, paradoxically, his not being there: They weren’t this way before. Now [Shukumar] had to struggle to say something that interested her, something that made her look up from her plate, or from her proofreading files. Eventually he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not to mind the silences. (12) Aside from showing Shukumar’s insecurity, that he feels unable to entertain his wife the way he used to, it also points out how Shukumar, not just Shoba, has been changing his behavior. Even though he may not admit and realize it, we as readers understand that this may have significantly altered their relationship. Another reason might of course be time, and the sense of familiarity or complacency that most long-‐term relationships develop. More important still, however, is probably the sadness of losing their child, and it is not surprising that someone like Shukumar may want the comfort of nostalgic memories. In particular, memories of Shoba from a happier time, when both of them felt stronger, may give a sense of security, however fragile and made-‐up. “It felt good to remember her as she was then,” Shukumar thinks when reflecting on a recent dinner conversation about their earlier

years. “[H]ow bold yet nervous she’d been when they first met, how hopeful” (15). So far, we have focused on how Shukumar is more nostalgic than Shoba, but other scenes in the story also suggest that his relationship to memory is more nuanced than that. One such scene takes place in Shukumar’s study, the room where he works and eats his dinner alone, while Shoba does the same in the living room. When Shoba comes to check up on him before going to bed, we see what she observes in the room – and this is when realize that it was once the baby’s room. In a slightly sad, slightly haunting description, the narrator mentions the “cherry crib under the window, a white changing table with mintgreen knobs, and a rocking chair with checkered cushions” (8). All of these objects are now removed. The quietude and barrenness of the room is further emphasized by the mention of a wallpaper border, now scraped off with a spatula, “of marching ducks and rabbits playing trumpets and drums” (8). Despite the memories linked to this room – or, as we find out, because of them – Shukumar deliberately sets up his desk here: “For some reason, the room did not haunt [Shukumar] the way it haunted Shoba”, and he chooses the room in fact “partly because the room soothed him, and partly because it was a place Shoba avoided” (8). Judging from this scene, is Shoba still the one most able to let go of the past? Aside from this example, we may also recall that when the power is cut and they begin having dinner together, it is Shoba who suggests they play a game of sharing past secrets. That said, what this reminiscing means to Shoba is left unclear in the story. It seems to give both characters a curious, bittersweet way to reflect on the times they have shared. Yet, the secrets she chooses to mention show her younger self in a bad light. Whether consciously or not, Shoba is effectively giving Shukumar a chance to be the opposite of nostalgic: to see her and the past in a more realistic light. As importantly, Shoba is already preparing to leave Shukumar at this point, if not from the very beginning of the story. This suggests that the sharing of secrets, for her, marks a form of closure. In contrast, Shukumar gives no indication of wanting

to end the relationship and is, as we have seen, very much attached to their past together. Would the outcome for this relationship be different if Shukumar had focused less on the past and more on the present? When is nostalgia more than mere comfort and instead a source of complacency and naivety, leading to missed opportunities in the present? These are a few of the questions “A Temporary Matter” leaves us with, and we are given chances to speculate on the answers, often in the form of dramatic ironies that emerge upon a closer reading. For instance, that Shoba decides that she wants to move speaks directly to questions Shukumar asks himself earlier in the story: “What was there left to say to her?”, “What didn’t they know about each other?” (13, 16). As Lahiri suggests, there is always much to be discovered in another person’s past, present and imagined future. That is, if other people are anything like us, knowing anyone with certainty is always a temporary matter – a fact that can be as frightening as it is exhilarating. Works Cited Hepper, Erica G., et al. “Pancultural Nostalgia: Prototypical Conceptions Across Cultures.” Emotion 14.4 (Aug. 2014): 733-‐747. Print. King, Nicola. “Memory in Theory.” Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. 11-‐32. Print. Lahiri, Jhumpa. “A Temporary Matter.” Interpreter of Maladies. London: Flamingo, 2000. Print. Routledge, Clay, et al. “The Past Makes the Present Meaningful: Nostalgia as an Existential Resource.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101.3 (2011): 638-‐652. Print.

Writing Places, Making Places: Sung Wong Toi as a Rock of Nostalgia

Miss Helena Wu Helena Wu, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich. To quote from Haruki Murakami: “between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Introduction In her investigation of nostalgic object and nostalgia, Susan Stewart puts forward that “objects of souvenirs,” ranging from common everyday life objects, personal belongings, works of arts, books, narratives to bodies, are indispensable in generating psychological effects and emotional responses. The empathetic connection between “objects of souvenirs”, place and person not only highlights the relationship between materiality and meaning, but also indicates the active role of objects inside and outside narrative in generating meaning through materiality. In this paper, Sung Wong Toi is explored as an object of nostalgia from the nature that operates just as Stewart’s “object of souvenir” in generating memories, nostalgic sentiments and so on. As Stewart suggests, "writing gave us a device for inscribing space, for inscribing nature [...] writing serves to caption the world, defining and commenting upon the configurations we choose to textualize" (31) This paper also argues how Sung Wong Toi as a nostalgic object taken from the environment comes to generate a multiple of places and meanings of a place, by pointing out that place-‐writing is also a kind of place-‐making, and vice versa. The Story Begins with a Rock… Near the old Kai Tak Airport, one can find a quiet secluded park called Sung Wong Toi Garden, which is frequented mainly by residents living in the neighbourhood, yet it is in this seemingly unnoticeable place where the memorial tablet of “Sung Wong Toi” is erected. As one might wonder, Sung Wong Toi, also known as Song Emperor’s Terrace, is supposed at least to be a terrace instead of just a tablet. In fact, Sung Wong Toi was originally located in Sacred Hill 聖山, a hill by the shore which is not far away from its current resting place. On the Sacred Hill, there lay a gigantic boulder on which three Chinese characters “Sung Wong Toi 宋王臺” were inscribed—it is said that 24

the rock was where the last emperor of Song had stood as a last remaining part of the Song territory around the year 1278 before the final collapse of the empire, which was brought about by the death (different historic records have named it differently as accident, suicide or martyrdom) of this young emperor. A more colourful version of the story goes like this: upon the arrival of the Mongolian army, the rock split itself open for the emperor to hide away from the sight of his enermy. Whether this is true or not, official accounts of history has told us that the Song dynasty died with the rise of the Yuan dynasty. Yet the rock stays—it is believed that during the Yuan dynasty, Song loyalists had the rock engraved to commemorate the brief refuge taken by the last Song Emperor in Hong Kong during his flee from the Mongols. The rock stays as a nostalgic object. From a Rock to a Place Over the course of history with the change of dynasty and the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong, the rock still stands as a nostalgic object as well as a place for a time past, if not lost. Indicated by another engraving added to the rock later on, a restoration had been carried out in 1807 during the reign of the Qing Emperor Jiaqing 嘉慶. Even after Hong Kong had become a British colony, the Sung Wong Toi relics still managed to catch the attention of the colonizer. In 1899—39 years after the Kowloon peninsula was leased to the Great Britain—Sung Wong Toi as a site “of antiquarian interest” was enlisted to a preservation scheme under the “Sung Wong Toi Reservation Ordinance”. The bill was first initiated by Ho Kai 何啟, who was the first Hong-‐Kongese member ever admitted to the Legislative Council. More than a century ago from now—on the 15th August of 1898—Ho Kai delivered a speech in the legislative council addressing the need to balance urban development with heritage preservation. Concerning Hong Kong, he said, “... the rapid growth of Hongkong itself, from the barren rock of 50 years ago to a most thickly-‐populated place―

more thickly populated per square mile, I should say, than any other city in the world…” (49) Regardless of the accuracy of the figure, what Ho Kai suggested is that Hong Kong had already entered an age of modernity, a seemingly irreversible road that would drive Hong Kong to its frantic growth and development for more than a century and onwards. Taking Hong Kong as a “barren rock” before colonization took place is, no doubt, a highly biased and unjust way of thinking that normalizes and naturalizes colonialism and imperialism where the colonizer retains a powerful, knowledgeable subject position while the colonized are subordinates awaiting to be civilized and enlightened. Yet, when Hong Kong (once) as a rock and Sung Wong Toi (still) as a rock are juxtaposed together, we can indeed see how places are generated by the projection of meanings and sentiments, and at the same time, places are constantly remade to generate meanings and sentiments (particularly in this case: nostalgic sentiment)—as every place, before it becomes a place, can always be described as a rock or any geographical form physically. In the case of Sung Wong Toi, the rock, having assigned with historical significances, becomes a monumental place. As Ho Kai mentioned in his speech, “I wish to preserve for the colony of Hong Kong a monument of some antiquity. There stands on this spot a large stone with an inscription upon it close upon 600 or over 600 years old. Everywhere in this colony we meet with new objects―inventions of modern civilisation―but in this one spot we can gaze upon a monument of over 600 years old.” (50) What Ho Kai had shown is Sung Wong Toi as an object of gaze topped-‐up with a certain historical value, but this is only a tip of the iceberg. A Rock, or the Rock as a Nostalgic Object Behind the scene were indeed a considerable number of scholars and literati who embraced Sung Wong Toi as their object of nostalgia and frequently

visited the site for contemplation to take place. This group was mainly composed of former officials of the Qing imperial court and literati emerged from the imperial examination system, who fled south to British Hong Kong to escape from the unstable political condition in China and, later on, the fall of the Qing dynasty. Upon the collapse of the imperial dynastic system in China, Sung Wong Toi became an object as well as a place for these Qing remnants to vent out their frustration in the lost of homeland and their state of exile. They sought emotional refuge from the rock, as the same rock had stood witness to the very last days of the Song Dynasty. By relating the happenings of their country to the historical past of the Song, by identifying themselves with the Song loyalists who settled in the same area in Hong Kong, these literati projected upon the rock their melancholy and nostalgia for a series of inaccessible pasts as well as their inaccessible homeland. Also by this, they were emotionally connected to the rock, the monumental site and Hong Kong, and simultaneously bonded to one another, to their compatriots in China, to the former settlers in Hong Kong and so on. In Benedict Anderson’s sense, an “imagined community” is created across time and through space, thanks to a rock. Emotional responses and psychological effects might be too impalpable and intangible to be seen, yet nostalgia provoked by Sung Wong Toi found its material presence: the literati community formed by Sung Wong Toi in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century encompassed the activities of scholars (e.g. Lai Chi-‐his 賴際熙), philanthropists (e.g. Chen Buchi 陳步墀), and literati (e.g. Chen Botao 陳伯陶, Su Zedong 蘇澤東)—they all participated in the shaping and re-‐writing of Sung Wong Toi into a site of historical and cultural imagination. Poems and proses sharing the theme of Sung Wong Toi were published collectively in Song tai qiu chang 宋臺秋唱 (Autumn Singing at the Song Terrace) in 1917, and Song tai ji 宋臺集 (Song Terrace Collection) in the1920s. Su Zedong and Chen Buchi, as editors of the two compilations

abovementioned, gave cultural significance and intellectual output to the elitist activities at Sung Wong Toi. In particular, Song tai qiu chang is considered to be the first compilation work ever published in Hong Kong, thus opening up the cultural scene and literary space in the local community under the British colonial rule (Exhibition of Early Hong Kong and Macau Publications, The Chinese University of Hong Kong). Meanwhile, Chen Botao contributed one of the earliest historical studies on Sung Wong Toi and the remnant-‐settlers of the Song dynasty in Hong Kong and the Guangdong area. The result of his work was published in Song Dongguan yimin lu 宋東莞遺民錄 (Records of the Song Remnants in Dongguan) and Sheng chao Yue dong yi min lu 勝朝粤東遺民錄 (Records of the Song Remnants in Canton); whereas Lai Chi-‐his, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, lobbied to the colonial government in 1915 to turn Sung Wong Toi and Sacred Hill into a park. With the financial aid of a local philanthropist Li Sui-‐kam 李瑞琴, a balustrade was built to protect the rock (making it a real terrace as well as a highly “valued” site for visit); monumental gate, pavilions, and walking paths were also installed to facilitate leisure activities to be carried out inside the park. After all, not only the rock, but all these texts and objects associated to Sung Wong Toi can be deemed the objects of nostalgia. When these aesthetic representations and human activities were inspired by Sung Wong Toi, they, in return, came to rewrite and re-‐present Sung Wong Toi—the cultural and historical imagination resulted from these representations mobilizes the actual protection of Sung Wong Toi through legislation; these narratives and activities monumentalize Song Wong Toi into a lieu de mémoire in Pierre Nora’s term1; these texts grant us who do not live in that time an access to Sung Wong Toi as its original form, in its original site—this echoes to what Stewart believes in writing with its ability to inscribe different worlds, and in reading with the possibility to open up different worlds (31).

1 Also see Hon Tze-‐ki. “A Rock, a Text, and a Tablet: Making the Song Emperor’s Terrace a Lieu de Mémoire.”

In Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity. Ed. Marc André Matten. Leiden: Brill, 2011: 131-‐165.

However, outside this literati circle and the elitist class like the government officials, Sung Wong Toi was either totally unknown or of little interest to the rest of the population at that time. The fact is that Sung Wong Toi only speaks to a certain group of people, namely the educated class (or, in another way round, only the educated class speaks to Sung Wong Toi), but the rock itself appeals nothing to the rest (and vice versa) and therefore remains a rock. In other words, the rock, on the one hand, produces a lot of signified to some, and on the other hand, means nothing but just a rock to others. The Story Ends With the Rock… To end the story of Sung Wong Toi: during the Japanese occupation in Hong Kong, a large-‐scaled rock blasting was carried out in Sacred Hill. Sung Wong Toi, among many rocks lying there, was in no exception blown up—it was quite certain to happen as neither the rock nor its inscriptions could transmit any meaning to the Japanese. Yet miraculously the face with the inscription survived and the rock was later on shaped into the size of a tablet for preservation. When Sacred Hill was completely leveled to give way to the expansion project of Kai Tak Airport in the 1950s, the colonial government relocated Sung Wong Toi (now in form of a tablet) to its current location, and a memorial garden was built to accommodate the tablet. In spite of the change in its appearance, the tablet is still a rock, and the rock that had once been an object of nostalgia. However, in today’s Hong Kong, the unattended Sung Wong Toi is not even mentioned in the website of the Hong Kong Tourism Board as a site of any significance. Frankly (if not, cruelly) speaking, we too can hardly be connected to the rock and that part of the history, whether be it culturally, socially or politically. Although Sung Wong Toi seemingly ceases to be a nostalgic object, the rock with its existence in various cultural forms across all these narratives and in different human activities marks itself to be a subject of nostalgia as well as the subject in

nostalgic sentiment, which is, at least, the case demonstrated in this investigation. The writing of a place is therefore in nature a making (up) of a place. After all, one cannot deny that the nostalgic sentiments projected on and generated from this rock indeed build up its personae and set it up as a place—all these cultural and historical imagination, though outdated, are still in effect as long as the rock is still erected and protected as a tablet, however little resonance it can make. -‐End-‐ Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Chen, Botao 陳伯陶. Song Dongguan yi min lu 宋東莞遺民錄. Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chu ban she 上海古籍出版社, 2011. Choa, Gerald Hugh. The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai: A Prominent Figure in Nineteenth-‐century Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000. Exhibition of Early Hong Kong and Macau Publications. The University Library System of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and The University of Macau Library. September 5 -‐ 25, 2006. http://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/Exhibition/HKMacauPub/hk-‐ culture.htm#C Hon Tze-‐ki. “A Rock, a Text, and a Tablet: Making the Song Emperor’s Terrace a Lieu de Mémoire.” In Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity. Ed. Marc André Matten. Leiden: Brill, 2011: 131-‐165.

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http://www.discoverhongkong.com Ingram, Michael. Hong Kong: A Cultural History. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jian Youwen 簡又文, ed. Song huang tai ji nian ji 宋皇臺紀念集. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Chiu Clansman Association 香港趙族宗親總會, 1960. Lau Yun Wo 劉潤和, ed. Jiulongcheng Qu feng wu zhi 九龍城區風物志 (A Guide to the Antiquities of Kowloon City District). Hong Kong: Kowloon City District Council, 2005. “Official Record of Proceedings, 1898.08.15.” in Hong Kong Hansard 1898. Hong Kong: the Council, 1898: 49-‐53. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” In Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-‐ Memory, 1989: 7-‐24. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. “Song tai ji 宋臺集.” In Xiu shi lou ji 繡詩樓集. Eds. Chen Buchi 陳步墀, and Huang Kunyao 黃坤堯. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2007. 171-‐192. “Sung Wong Toi Reservation Ordinance, 1899.” In Historical Laws of Hong Kong

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Paratext, Liu Yi-‐chang and Nostalgia in Wong Kar-‐wai’s In the Mood for Love Mr. Gavin Tse Having completed his MPhil degree in 2013, Gavin Tse is currently working as a teaching assistant in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Asian cinema, literary and cultural studies, with a predominant focus on Hong Kong culture.

He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct. If he could break through that dusty window pane, he could return to those vanished years.1 Wong Kar-‐wai’s In the mood for Love (2000), considered by many his magnum opus, ends with the intertitle quoted above which is an abridged quotation of the esteemed Hong Kong writer Liu Yi-‐chang’s ( 劉以鬯 ) Intersection.2 The intertitle at the end of the film is emblematic of the aura of the whole film – a wistful and nostalgic reminisce of the irrevocability of the past and romanticisation of memories of unrequited love. Yet, more importantly, such intertitles also serve as paratextual references in bespeaking the director’s intention to highlight the film’s connection to Liu’s classic novel Intersection in guiding our comprehension of the nostalgic representation within the film. While authorial intention has been rendered suspect by the advent of poststructuralist theories, this essay seeks to explore the significance of Liu Yi-‐chang’s novel in relation to the nostalgic representation within the film, also at the same time providing an alternative perspective to the prevalent argument in academia which almost univocally proclaims the universality of Wong’s cinema at the danger of over-‐ emphasising a decontextualised understanding of Wong’s films. The widespread propensity to value a decontextualised appreciation of Wong Kar-‐wai is inextricably tied to Wong Kar-‐wai’s status as one of the indisputable auteurs whose ascendancy via the international film festival 1 The original passage in Chinese: “那些消逝了的歲月，彷彿隔著一塊積著灰塵的玻璃，看得到，抓不著。

他一直在懷念著過去的一切。如果他能衝破那塊積著灰塵的玻璃，他會走回早已消逝的歲月。” 2 Written in 1972, Intersection marked a turning page in the history of Hong Kong literature for Liu Yi-‐ chang’s remarkable experimentation on style and novel structure. The parallel structure of Intersection foregrounds the paradoxical and intersecting relation of connection and disconnection between the two characters, Chun Yubai and Ah Xing, as they meander in the city space of Hong Kong. The structure of the novella is reinforced by the omniscient point of view of the narrator, delineating the criss-‐crossing but disconnected experience of the two characters: both occupy the same territorial spaces and experience the same events; yet fundamentally unknown to each other, highlighting the city as a site of home/homelessness.

circuit precipitates the tendency to categorise him as an ‘European’ auteur which concomitantly de-‐emphasises his connection to the local tradition. As Li Cheuk-‐to (李焯桃) remarks, what Western critics champion about Wong Kar-‐wai’s films are the universality of his recurrent film motifs and their ability to resonate with contemporary urban experience, such as alienation and the possibility of human communication, instead of the exotic, traditional and oriental appeal stereotypically associated with films made from the East (246). 3 Accordingly, Li also notes that a common tendency in Western scholarship is to place Wong Kar-‐wai in a lineage of international auteurs such as Godard, Resnais and Fassbinder; further amplifying Wong Kar-‐wai’s affinity to the European ideal of the auteur (246-‐7). A corollary of the predominance of decontextualised understanding of Wong’s films is the charge of ahistoricity frequently directed at Wong. As Emilie Yeh and Hu Wang argue, “appreciating Wong’s films demands lesser cultural or linguistic context than works of Zhang Yimou, for instance; instead, viewers are offered moments of dreamlike sounds and imagery intended for universal sensuous delectation” (4; my own emphasis). Thus Yeh and Wang argue that the transcultural appeal of Wong’s film lies in “aesthetic evocation that obscures culturally specific and ethnic details” (1). Their argument is mirrored in other film critics’ discussion of Wong Kar-‐wai’s nostalgic representation of the old Hong Kong. According to the local film critic Long Tin Shum (朗天), the Hong Kong represented in Wong Kar-‐wai’s films is highly personal, stylised and ahistorical: it is an intriguing juxtaposition of the 60s and the 90s, or one can regard it as a retrospection of the 60s from the vantage position of the 90s, a form of reconstruction or fictionalisation. As many people point out, the unique sense of time in Wong’s films 3 For

instance, Chungking Express (1994) was the first film that brought Wong Kar-‐wai to widespread international attention; and it stands in stark contrast to the films made by Chinese Fifth Generation directors that gain significant recognition in international film festivals, such as Chan Kaige’s Farwell My Concubine (1993) and Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern (1991). In contrast to the exoticised and self-‐ orientalising portrayal of backward rural life in China that feature so predominantly in the works of these award-‐wining Chinese Fifth Generation directors, Chungking Express offers a more contemporary portrayal of the ephemeral nature of love and chance encounters in the modern urban space.

dissipates any sense of history: it is as if his characters and stories exist in an ahistorical space. The so-‐called ‘sixties’ becomes an abstract stylised sign awaiting audience identification. (20)4 In a similar vein, Giorgio Biancorosso argues that the ahistorical representations in Wong’s films “bespeak a mythologisation of a time and a place in the mind of these homesick characters which doubles Wong’s own mythologising of the Hong Kong of the early 1960s” (2007, 91). Both Long Tin Shum and Biancorosso’s insights highlight how Wong re-‐presents history and transfigures the old Hong Kong into an abstract and ahistorical space. Such critiques of ahistoricity are also refracted in the critical appraisal of In the Mood for Love. Ostensibly a film set in the 60s Hong Kong (as indicated by the various intertitles), this setting is also curiously devoid of historical significance and realism. As Rey Chow notes, Despite the historically and geographically concrete setting, therefore, the audience does not learn a realistic account about the 1960s in Hong Kong. Instead, it is a Hong Kong remembered in oneiric images – households are shown at partial angles (through windows, doorways, and corridors)...At once objective (that is, available for all to see) and subjective (that is, mediated by a particular consciousness), these visual details raise questions about the exact relationship between the everyday as such and its historical referent). (648) Rey Chow’s critique of the lack of correspondence to the historical referent within the film is echoed in Yeh and Wang’s observation of the absence of historical events of the 60s Hong Kong within the film: “What kind of nostalgia? None of the landmark events of the 1960s is presented explicitly on the screen, save for an oblique reference to political turmoil, with 4 My own translation. The original is as follows: “六十年代和九十年代的並置，當然也可以視為在九十年代回望六十年代，而對之進行重構／虛構的結果。正如不少人指出，王家衛作品的獨特時間感覺令所有歷史感都被抽掉了。他的人物和故事彷彿在一個沒有時代實感的時空出現和發生，所謂「六十年代」的人與事，只不過成為某種風格某種型號放置在等待觀賞呼喚觀賞的位置。” (20)

emigration of Su’s landlords to the US” (9). These criticisms converge to highlight how, despite the almost obsessive and painstaking attention to production design and mise-‐en-‐scène,5 the sense of history is abstracted in Wong’s film. This essay takes these criticisms as a point of departure to look more specifically into how the paratextual references to Liu Yi-‐chang signal a definite attempt on Wong Kar-‐wai’s part to draw viewers’ attention to the importance of Liu’s novel in understanding his portrayal of nostalgia within the film. The paratext, as defined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette, marks a liminal space which is paradoxically a part of and apart from the text: “an ‘undecided zone’ between the inside and the outside, itself without rigorous limits, either towards the interior (the text) or towards the exterior (the discourse of the world on the text), a border” (1991, 261). Genette construes the paratext as a threshold: the paratext positions the readers inside the text yet it also lies outside the material boundaries of the text. As Graham Allen argues, the word ‘para’ suggests a space which is both inside and outside, thus the “paratext does not simply mark but occupies the text's threshold […] it paradoxically frames and at the same time constitutes the text for its readers" (103). Thus, in Genette’s delineation, the paratext includes those elements that lie on the threshold of the text and play a crucial role in conditioning the reception of a text by its readers (Allen 103). The idea of liminality and threshold illustrates how the notion of paratextuality can be extended into filmic analysis, as various elements related to the film as commodity can be seen to occupy such threshold space. Robert Stam and Raengo Alessandra, in their analysis of the practice of film adaptation, insightfully demonstrate the pertinence of the concept to film 5 As Rey Chow notes, “[r]eportedly, Wong was so intent on recreating the ambience of the 1960s that he

hired a chef to cook Shanghai dishes for the case and crew; engaged retired Hong Kong radio announcers, now in their 70s, to record radio programs for the soundtrack featuring bits of Mandarin pop and Chinese opera” (646).

studies: “[i]n film, although Genette does not mention it, ‘paratextuality’ might evoke all those materials close to the text such as posters, trailers, reviews, interviews with the director…The new media, in fact has fostered an explosion of paratextual materials” (28). This pertains to what Genette argues as the single most important aspect of paratextuality, which is to “ensure for the text a destiny consistent with the author's purpose” (1997, 407); and that “the correctness of the authorial point of view is the implicit creed and spontaneous ideology of the paratext” (1997, 408). Given Genette's emphasis on authorial intention and purpose, the notion of paratextuality bears important significance in understanding how an auteur can construe a sense of hermeneutical coherence to their works. As Genette argues, [t]his fringe, in effect, always bearer of an authorial commentary either more or less legitimated by the author, constitutes, between the text and what lies outside it. . .the privileged site of a pragmatics. . .of a better reception of the text and a more pertinent reading-‐more pertinent, naturally, in the eyes of the author and his allies. (1991, 261) Therefore, while the concept of paratextuality originates from literary studies, one can glean its pertinence to the analysis of the significance of intention and agency of the auteur, an aspect in film scholarship virtually eradicated by the poststructuralist dismissal of authorial intention. Thus the paratext embodies an important function in highlighting authorial intention and serves as a bearer of meaning, as Sellors notes, "only by retaining a notion of authorial meaning can a theory of authorship explain authors’ ownership and accountability for their expressions" (5). The inextricability between the paratext and authorial intention sheds light on how the recognition of the importance of Intersection can refine our understanding of the nostalgic representation within In the Mood for Love. As Biancorosso remarks, “without the benefit of the director’s comments, it is in any case hard to detect influences apart from those that are patently

obvious...one is hard put to trace a direct transposition of the motifs and characters of the literary source” (2010, 229). Biancorosso’s observation raises an interesting point concerning the nature and function of the paratext. While Biancorosso’s argument seems to downplay the literary allusions in Wong Kar-‐wai’s cinema, at the same time, it also tacitly acknowledges the importance of paratextual materials in guiding a particular reception and evaluation of the work. The centrality of Liu Yichang’s novel as source of inspiration can be gleaned in Wong Kar-‐wai’s interviews:6 The first work by Liu Yi-‐chang I read was Duidao. The title is a Chinese translation of tête-‐bêche, which describes stamps that are printed top to bottom facing each other. Duidao centres around the intersection of two parallel stories – of an old man and a young girl. One is about memories, the other anticipation. To me, tête-‐ bêche is more than a term for stamps or intersections of stories. It can be the intersection of light and colour, silence and tears. Tête-‐ bêche can also be the intersection of time: for instance, youthful eyes on an aging face, borrowed words on revisited dreams.7

Fig. 1: The cover of the Chinese version of Intersection featuring a pair of tête-‐bêche. Source: http://blog.yimg.com/2/1_dYE5R7s5_84g8y8Hn3paL93IEBrEpD2TlHnH93u.qVAlc8j4nNFQ-‐-‐ /39/l/e4HhFLaS1ykpiNHhWzV_sA.jpg

6 As the local film critic Shu Kei (舒琪) remarks, when In the Mood for Love was screened in competition at

Cannes, leaflets detailing the biography of Liu Yi-‐chang and the genesis of the quotations were distributed to the audience, highlighting the importance of Liu Yi-‐chang as Wong’s source of inspiration. 7 Wong Kar-‐wai, Tête-‐bêche: A Wong Kar wai Project (Hong Kong: Block 2 Pictures. 2000), no pagination

Wong’s emphasis on the inspirations of tête-‐bêche thus actively foregrounds the myriad associations to Liu Yi-‐chang’s Intersection. As Lawrence Pun (潘國靈) argues, the emphasis on tête-‐bêche illustrates how Wong Kar-‐wai draws inspirations from Liu’s novel which concomitantly informs both the structure and theme of the film. In philately the term tête-‐bêche refers to a pair of inverted stamps placed next to each other or connected to each other in an inverted manner (fig. 1). Liu, being both an avid stamp collector and literary writer, appropriates and translates it into a trope connoting the “meaning of a double, or upside-‐down reflection, used as a trope for contrast or juxtaposition” (Luk 211). Thus the idea of tête-‐bêche resonates with the structure and theme of repetition and doubles that occur throughout the novel and the whole film. In Intersection, the novel adopts a parallel plot development, reinforced by the omniscient point of view of the narrator, to delineate the criss-‐crossing but disconnected experience of the two main characters, Chun Yubai and Ah Xing. Both occupy the same territorial spaces and experience the same events; yet fundamentally unknown to each other. The focalisation alternates between the two characters, highlighting their different responses to the same events. This creates a disjunctive continuity between the two characters and underscores their inability to connect, thus rendering the condition of their homelessness. The structure of double and repetition is transfigured into the film in different ways. First of all, the whole film is structured as an “extended series of short vignettes that have a cumulative effect aimed at enhancing our emotional relation to the principal character than our involvement of the plot” (Brunette 77) in its delineation of the everyday world of the protagonists. Chow Mo-‐wan (played by Tony Leung) and Su Li-‐zhen (played by Maggie Cheung) move into the same apartment in the same day, and a subtle and delicate relationship begin to grow between the two of them as they brush past each other daily in the narrow corridors of the apartment. As Tony Rayns argues, “the repetition is purposeful, as Wong has said that he deliberately repeated these scenes and the background music – as well as those shots of staircases and corridors – because ‘we can see 39

these two people change against this unchanging background’” (qtd. in Brunette 94). Rayns’ observation highlights how “repetition as a signifier of change becomes a motif throughout the film” (Teo 127). More importantly, the repetition of everyday details “functions for a purpose rather distinct from their empirical objective presence: they are deployed, as it were, in order to conjure a subjective, yet pervasive, mood of melancholy” (Rey Chow 646). For instance, the repetition of the sweeping, non-‐diegetic “Yumeiji Theme” that accompanies Su Li-‐zhen during her daily chores connotes a sense of wistful melancholia to the scenes. Repetition signifies time as a denominator of change, suggesting the lost opportunities for the protagonists to develop their mutually unrequited love. The omniscient presence of mirrors also serves as an emphatic symbol indicating the idea of tête-‐bêche that connects the novel and the film. In the novel, the mirror functions as a reminder for the passage of years and Chun Yubai’s inevitable waning of youth as he stares at his own reflection in the mirror: “the man in the mirror seemed to have become someone else” (Liu 91). For Ah Xing, the mirror becomes a tool that fuels her narcissism and fantasy, “[admiring] her own beauty in a mirror as if it were a work of art” (Liu 90). Thus the mirror functions as a symbol foregrounding the protagonists’ dissatisfaction with the present. The use of mirrors within the novel as a tool of self-‐reflection and fantasising vanity is displaced in the film as a way to delineate the nostalgic filmic space and hint at the subtle and delicate interaction between the two protagonists. In the film, Chow Mo-‐wan and Su Li-‐zhen are often seen through their reflections in the mirrors, indicating the indirectness of the protagonists (fig2). At the same time, the omniscience of mirrors within the film also serves to highlight the conservative social milieu in which the relationship takes place. The two protagonists are not only being gazed at by the audience, but the omniscience of mirrors also suggests how they are under the constant surveillance and scrutiny of their neighbours living in the same apartment block (fig.3). As Luk

argues, “it is true that the use of mirrors creates an illusion of spaciousness, but the director is interested in showing the contrary effect – the characters are coerced under the pressure of social propriety and mores” (215). Along with the use of framing in which almost every scene is shot through some kind of hindrance – a doorway, a lamp, behind the curtains – the mirrors and frames delineate a claustrophobic urban space, at the same time symbolising the conservative social milieu of the 60s and the high pressure faced by the protagonists in their nascent illicit yet pristine relationship (fig.4).

Fig.2: The protagonists often depicted through reflections in the mirrors. Source: http://m.niusnews.com/upload/imgs/default/12NovN/sexyhotel/sexy0.jpg

Fig. 3: The complex interplay of gazing. Source: http://www.criterion.com/films/198-‐in-‐the-‐mood-‐for-‐love

Fig.4: The camera that almost always ‘looks’ through some kind of hindrance. Source: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=10015

According to Brunette, the omnipresence of mirrors also serves a specific function in relation to the representation of nostalgia within the film. Capitalising upon the last intertitle shown at the end of the film (“He remembers those vanished years/As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see but not touch/And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct”), Brunette argues that the whole film can be conceived as a representation of Mo-‐wan’s thoughts and feelings. According to Brunette, the camera that sees through the dusty window pane (recall the abundant barriers that stand in the way of the camera which serves the dual function of delineating a claustrophobic urban space and distancing the characters) is de facto the perspective of Chow Mo-‐wan as he reminisces these scenes of bittersweet moment with Su Li-‐zhen. Brunette’s argument of the film as the consciousness of Chow Mo-‐wan is supported cinematically by the frequent use of close-‐ups that fragments the human body, which suggests the absence of a unifying omniscient viewpoint, but slices of memory filtered through the consciousness of the character. The episodic nature of the film also resembles the disjointed nature of memory as a person recollects the past. Similarly, Paul Arthur argues that the film can be read as an “interiorised landscape of desire as memory” (qtd. in Brunette 93). According to Arthur, the predominant setting within the film – the claustrophic apartment spaces in which Chow and Su live – can be seen as “tropes for the labyrinthe quality of

the mind, its ceaseless movement along the same unending pathways of remembered experience” (qtd. in Brunette 93). Brunette and Arthur’s interpretation of the film as an expression of Chow’s consciousness thus runs in tandem with the introspective and retrospective narration of Chun Yubai, and demonstrates how the concurrence of the centrality of memory in both the novel and the film emblematises how the paratextual materials can lead to new insights into the film. Brunette and Arthur’s argument is also supported by Biancorosso’s theory of ‘aesthetics of the self.’ Biancorosso looks into the polyphonic and multi-‐vocal nature of pre-‐existing song in Wong Kar-‐wai’s films, and argues that very often pre-‐existing songs also signify to viewers that they have entered a “zone in which desire, fantasy, or delusion reign supreme” (2013, 123), an imaginary zone where characters perform the ‘aesthetics of the self’, “a memorable, if fleeting, cinematic self-‐representation” (2013, 117). According to Biancorosso, such cinematic self-‐representations represent a sphere of imagination and self-‐projection of the characters in which they are both subjects and authors of such imaginary spheres of fantasy that lie outside the diegesis of the story (2013, 117). In his analysis of In the Mood for Love, Biancorosso cites the scene in which the song “Hua Yang De Nian Hua” is heard on the radio as the two protagonists sit in their own kitchen, separated by a thick cement wall. The camera first focalises on Li-‐zhen’s apartment and then slowly pans towards the left, moving across what is dubiously a thick portion of the wall that separates the two apartments, to register Chow Mo-‐ wan’s presence at the other side of the wall (fig. 5-‐6). The complicated play of proximity, distance and connectedness is highlighted by the diegetic song “Hua Yang De Nian Hua,” whose intertextual connections to the film An All-‐ Consuming Love,8 suggest insights into the characters’ inner motives, desires and fears. The song is “for the protagonists an ennobling affirmation of love 8 According to Biancorosso, Wong Kar-‐wai’s decision to title his 2000 feature film after the song “Hua Yang

de Nian Hua” in Hoh Siu-‐Cheung’s An All-‐Consuming Love (1947) underscores the connection between the two films; for instance, “both films tell the story of a great passion that is repressed against the background of a betrayal (martial in the new film, political in the older one)” (2013, 117).

and an escape into some kind of ‘melodramatic grandiosity’ away from the constraints of their mundane circumstances; as such, it is also a rationalisation of their inaction” (Biancorosso, 2013, 121). As Biancorosso argues, despite the fact that the music is justified realistically, the sequence as a whole stretches the limits of what is plausible; its almost excessive precious-‐ness and all-‐too captivating symmetries defy the impression that it is an unmediated rendering of reality, suggesting instead the productive – and beautifying – filter of memory, fantasy, or worse, self-‐fulfilling prophecy. (2013, 121) Fig. 5-‐6: Su Li-‐zhen and Chow Mo-‐wan, separated and connected in their own worlds: the “almost excessive precious-‐ness and all-‐too captivating symmetries defy the impression that it is an unmediated rendering of reality” Source: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=10015

Thus this scene can be read as an “aesthetics of the self”, a self-‐representation of their forlorn love affair by the characters. Biancorosso’s interpretation of the scene as the beautifying effects of memory runs in tandem with Brunette and Arthur’s argument that the film can be read as the retrospective and introspective consciousness of Chow Mo-‐wan, a wistful and nostalgic account of the unfulfilled love affair between him and Li-‐zhen. As Biancorosso remarks, “it is one of the most enduring sources of fascination of Wong Kar-‐wai’s cinema that these moments of self-‐ representations . . . have inspired maximum virtuosity and ingenuity on the part of the directors and his collaborators – to wit, the securest marks of his own authorship” (2013, 117), which points to the paradoxical function of such cinematic representations of the ‘aesthetics of the self’ in highlighting the ‘agency’ of the auteur. This interpretation runs in tandem with the prevalent tendency in academia to champion the universality of the auteur at the danger of downplaying the importance of local literature as source of inspiration. As Audrey Yue suggests, some of these theorisations “celebrate Wong’s style often at the expense of undermining the specificity of Hong Kong, where the Hong Kong popular emerges only as a mood that is hip in current theorisations about the cinema and as a mode that structures a genre of the film, maintaining the universality of film-‐as-‐art formula” (130). Through exploring the centrality of the paratext, this essay attempts to reassess the importance of Liu Yi-‐chang’s Intersection as a guide of comprehension of the film that informs our understanding of nostalgia as both theme and structure within the film.

Works Cited Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Print. Biancorosso, Giorgio. “Global Music/Local Cinema: Two Wong Kar-‐wai Pop Compilations.” Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image. Ed. Kam Louie. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 229 – 246. Print. -‐-‐-‐. “Romance, Insularity and Representation: Wong Kar-‐wai’s In the Mood for Love and Hong Kong Cinema.” Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures: Volume 1 Number 1, 2007. 88 – 95. Print. -‐-‐-‐.“Songs of Delusion: Popular Music and the Aesthetics of the Self in Wong Kar-‐wai’s Cinema.” Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV. Ed. Arved Ashby. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 109 – 125. Print. Brunette, Peter. Wong Kar-‐Wai. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Print. Chow, Rey. “Sentimental Returns: On the Uses of the Everyday in the Recent Films of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-‐wai.” New Literary History, Vol. 33, No. 4, Everyday Life (Autumn, 2002). 639 – 654. Print. Genette, Gérard. “Introduction to the Paratext.” New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Spring, 1991), 261 – 272. Print. -‐-‐-‐. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print. Li, Cheuk-‐to [李焯桃]. “Wangjiawei Dianying de Haiwai Jieshou”. [“王家衛電影的海外接收”, “The Overseas Reception of Wong Kar-‐wai”]. WangJiawei de Yinghuashijie. [王家衛的映畫世界, The Film World of Wong Kar-‐wai] Eds. Bono Lee [李照興] and Lawrence Pun [潘國靈]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 2004. 238 – 249. Print. Liu, Yichang [劉以鬯]. “Intersection.” Translated by Nancy Li. Renditions. No. 29 & 30, 1998. Web. 21 March 2010. Luk, Y. T. “Novels into Film: Liu Yichang’s Tête-‐Bêche and Wong Kar-‐wai’s In

the Mood for Love.” Eds. Sheldon H Lu and Emilie Yueh Yu Yeh. Chinese 46

Language Films: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005. 210-‐219. Print. Rayns, Tony. “In the Mood for Edinburgh.” Sight and Sound. Web. 29. 8. 2014. Sellors, Paul. Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths. London: Wallflower Press, 2010. Print. Shu Kei [舒琪]. “Xianggang Dushi Wenxue yu Chengshi Dianying: Huayang Nianhua” Vs Dui Dao.” [“香港都市文學與城市電影：《花樣年華》Vs 《對倒》”; “Hong Kong Urban Literature and City Films: In the Mood for Love Vs Intersection.”] 3 Sept. 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2014. Shum, Long Tin [朗天]. “Hou Bajiu yu Wangjiawei Dianying.” [“後八九與王家衛電影 ”, “Post-‐89 and Wong Kar-‐wai Cinema”]. WangJiawei de Yinghuashijie. [王家衛的映畫世界, The Film World of Wong Kar-‐wai] Eds. Bono Lee [李照興] and Lawrence Pun [潘國靈]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 2004. 19 – 27. Print. Stam, Robert and Raengo Alessandra. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation”. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Raengo Alessandra. Malden, Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005. 1 – 52. Print. Teo, Stephen. Wong Kar-‐Wai. London: British Film Institute, 2005. Print. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-‐yu and Hu Wang. “Transcultural Sounds: Music, Identity and the Cinema of Wong Kar-‐wai”. Hong Kong: David C. Lam Institute for East-‐West Studies, 2007. LEWI Working Paper Series no 69. Print. Yue, Audrey. "In the Mood for Love: Intersections of Modernity." Ed. Chris Berry. Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. London: BFI, 2003. Print.

Comparative Literature Festival 2014:

Exhibition: “The Veil of Memory”

Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2013-‐2014

The Comparative Literature Festival is an annual event organized by Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U. The theme of this year is "Nostalgia" (懷舊). We hope to re-‐evaluate nostalgia from multiple perspectives and in a new light. We particularly wish to provide students with an opportunity to explore on the meaning of nostalgia, to reflect upon the nostalgic feeling of oneself and the phenomena related to nostalgia in the society. The Exhibition, titled ‘The Veil of Memory’, had uncovered illusions of memories and encouraged viewers to look at nostalgia from a brand new perspective.

揭開回憶的薄紗 The Veil of Memory 「人類的時間不會走圓圈，而是直線前進，這正是人類得不到幸福的緣故，因為幸福就是渴望重複。」米蘭．昆德拉 ‘Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.’ Milan Kundera 您有沒有嘗過這樣的一刻？也許耳邊響起熟悉旋律的一刻，也許是翻到與舊友合照的剎那；又或是勞碌一天過後，自己躺在床上獨處之際。過往的回憶一下子湧進心坎裡翻滾著，你不禁想起以往的時光…… That second when… you hear a music piece that sounds so familiar. you flip over an old photo taken with your old friends. you are lying on the bed and your head is filled with memories of the past. Have you ever experienced a moment like these? 如何回到當時？If I could turn back time… 回憶是我們過去經歷的載體，往往是我們懷舊的目的地。希望回到昔日時光，欲再一次度過以往事情的心態，可稱作「回復性懷舊」(Restorative nostalgia)。例如在電影《回到 17 歲》中，麥克感到生活親情工作皆失意，因而盼望重拾青春的時光。往日看似是快樂幸福，但也有可能只是對現況感到不滿，因而美化昔日的光景來逃避現實，借此回到自己的舒適區 (Comfort zone)，讓自己找回

一份緣自熟悉環境的安全感。這是一個將回憶碎片化的過程：拾起過往事情的某個片段，自動抵制和過濾自己討厭的部份，並把這種理想化的幻想視為完整的記憶。正如哈佛大學教授薄茵 (Svetlana Boym) 所提及：懷舊是渴望一個不再存在的地方，或是一個根本不曾存在的地方。

Memory is the vector of our past experience. It is also the destination of nostalgia. The desire to turn time back and experience the past again is called ‘restorative nostalgia’. In 17 Again, Mike is dissatisfied with his current life, so he longs to go back to his teenage years. The past may seem great and merry, but it could be possible that you are just not so happy with the present. Therefore you would glorify the past so that you could escape from the reality. It lets you go back to your comfort zone and make yourself feel safe, because you are in a familiar situation inside your head. It is like breaking your memories into pieces -‐ you resist and filter the parts that you loath, idealize the remaining parts, then treat them as a complete memory. Svetlana Boym, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University, defines nostalgia as ‘a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed’. Being nostalgic could be a process of deconstructing your memories. You recall a memory, then you resist and filter the parts that you loath, and treat the idealistic memory as the true original memory. 想回到過去的原因是也可以是為了修補遺憾，或是想改變現況。日本電視劇《求婚大作戰》裡，岩瀨健嘗試回到過去把握向青梅竹馬吉田禮表白，以扭轉現在「新娘結婚了，新郎不是我」的局面。《真愛每一天》中提姆為了阻止妹妹受重傷而穿越時空，改變未來。無奈世上沒有時光機器讓我們改寫以往的錯誤，與其回頭後悔，倒不如接受現實迎接未來。 We wish we could turn time back because we want to fix the mistakes that we have made and change the present. In Operation Love, a Japanese TV drama, Ken Iwase ‘s love interest, Rei Yoshida, is getting married to someone else. Therefore he tries to go back in time to confess his love to her, in hopes of preventing her

marriage to happen. In About Time, Tim travels back in time to prevent his sister from getting hurt. However, in reality, there is no time machine to help us wipe out our past. Instead of regretting over the past, why don’t we accept the reality and face the future? 懷舊亦不是完全嚮往回復以前的生活。回復性懷舊 (Reflective nostalgia) 便是藉著過去現在的不連續性，以批判距離明白回憶只是一種主觀且不存在的想象。電影《再見列寧！》中，雅歷的母親是個忠貞的東德共產信徒，她因一次意外昏迷，甦醒後德國已經統一了。雅歷為避免母親再受刺激，嘗試以不同方法讓母親感覺到共產政權仍然存在，例如與友人編製虛構的東德新聞以欺騙母親，保留家裡東德共產政權的海報，然而母親早已知道真相。在這種懷舊中，人們很清楚過去根本無法重來，倚靠一些過去的象徵物來懷古是不真實的，腦海中的以往亦可能是自己製造出來的假象。 However, nostalgia is not entirely about longing to go back. ‘Reflective nostalgia’ is skeptical about the reliability of the memory. It thinks of nostalgia critically as a subject imagination. In Good Bye, Lenin!, Alex’s mother, a supporter of the capitalist East Germany, suffers from heart attack and falls into a coma. After she awakes, East Germany has already joined with West Germany. In order to protect his mother from shock, Alex keeps the truth from her by making up news and keeping the GDR posters in their apartment. She eventually knows the truth but it turns out that she is ready to continue with her new life. In ‘reflective nostalgia’, people know very well that the past cannot be relived. Living on symbols of the old days is unrealistic and our memories may contain illusions.

懷舊不只是單純想念往日的美好，也有其積極意義。懷舊可以是借古鑑今，以批判現在的開題。例如近日在 Youtube 熱播的影片〈香港將於 33 年後毀滅〉，當中十年後的香港就與回歸前的香港非常相似，藉此表達對香港現在被大財團壟斷、樓價高企和水貨客等問題的不滿。由此可見，追憶過去並非只是悲觀的想法，也可以是創造更好未來的工具。 Therefore, there is a positive side to nostalgia. We can learn from the past and reflect on, or even criticize the present. Recently there is a popular video on Youtube called ‘Hong Kong will be destroyed after 33 years’. The Hong Kong in 2024 depicted in the video is similar with the old Hong Kong before the handover in 1997 – no property hegemony and parallel goods trader. By bringing back the old days on screen, the video shows what is wrong in Hong Kong now. Remembering the past can be optimistic and can help us create a better future. 你在懷什麼舊？What are you feeling nostalgic for? 近年商界總喜歡打著懷舊的旗幟作宣傳，不過當中有多少是真正呈現那已消失了的情懷？想想兩年前領匯「尋味時光」的宣傳活動，旨在推廣旗下商場的老舖食肆，然而領匯一直以來暗地裡大幅加租逼走小商舖。又例如北角的香港飯

堂，把店舖打造成老香港的街道，有電車頭模型、舊電影海報等元素，配合馬賽克地磚和仿水晶吊燈，讓人彷似回到了老香港般；不過其菜單上卻有美式早餐和牛肝菌意粉等新派菜式。在後現代主義來說，這只是一種拼湊 (Pastiche)，藉著提供某段歷史圖景，傳達一種非關歷史的過去性。換句話說，是在仿造過去，是不真實的。那麼，到底我們是懷舊，還是只在消費這個已變得商業化的歷史形象呢？

In recent years, companies like to make use of people’s nostalgia to sell things. But are they presenting true images of the past? Or are they just commercial moves? The Link, a real estate investment trust in Hong Kong, organized an activity to promote ‘nostalgic’ restaurants in its malls. Ironically, The Link has been squeezing traditional restaurants out with high rents. Another example is ‘Hong Kong Canteen’ in North Point. The restaurant recreates Hong Kong in 1980s and it is decorated with old movie posters, nostalgic mosaic tiles and chandeliers. However, its cuisines are not entirely traditional. From a postmodernist point of view, this is called a ‘pastiche’, which means an imitation of the style of something else. It provides you with a nostalgic environment, yet what it delivers is not truly historical. In other words, it is just an illusion. So, what are we chasing after when we are being nostalgic? Is it a feeling of pleasure when you think about the past, or is it just a commercialized illusion? 另一邊廂，香港人的步伐確實太快，往往忽略了身邊的事物。當事物將要消失，才醒覺其存在，才醒覺要懷緬。老店相繼結業的新聞這幾年來並不罕見。每當有老店宣佈停業，不少香港人便蜂湧趕到店鋪關門前吃一回「老香港味道」。然而當中有多少人是食店的老顧客，希望在老店消逝前留下最後的回憶？或不過是趁熱鬧，只求拍張照片放上 Facebook 及 Instagram「呃下 like」？若是如此，這只是一種漫無目的的為懷舊而懷舊，純粹視其為情懷的態度，而非因為

與將逝去的物品斷裂而感到「渴望回去」的情緒。試試問問自己，你腦海中還剩下多少間真的懷念的老食肆？ The pace of life in Hong Kong is so fast that people often overlook things around them. Only when something is missing do people miss it. There are always news about old shops ceasing operation in recent years. And whenever a restaurant with long history closes down, people flock to there to have a last taste of its food. But how many of those people are regular customers of the restaurant? Perhaps they are just part of the mob psychology and all they want is a picture on Facebook or Instagram which gains ‘likes’ for them. If that is the case, they are not feeling nostalgic because they are going to lose the bonding with the past. Instead, they are just being nostalgic for the sake of being nostalgic. Now ask yourself a question. How many traditional shops are there on your mind that you truly miss?

Book review: 《胭脂扣》林芷諾文學院二年級生，雙主修中國語言文學及比較文學。二零一三至二零一四年度香港大學學生會文學院學生會比較文學學會學術秘書及學生代表。

作者：李碧華出版社：皇冠出版年份：1985 年（圖為 1989 年，皇冠出版之電影版小說封面）

《胭脂扣》所記敘的是女鬼如花來到八十年代的香港，尋覓失散情人十二少，其中幸得情侶袁永定及凌楚娟之協助。

與袁楚二人相處當中，如花隨隨道著自己的經歷：如花生前為石塘咀名妓，與紈絝子弟陳振邦（十二少）一見鍾情。如花貴為紅牌阿姑，縱有傾慕者千百，卻只為一人醉心。然而礙於兩人身份地位相懸，未能幸福相愛，決定吞鴉片殉情，相約來生再續前緣。

在八十年代的香港，石塘咀的紅粉青樓早已被警方掃除，在這面目全非的時代裡，如花依舊不掩當年名妓的氣焰。這大概是青樓女子唯一剩下的尊嚴，過濾回憶中的傷痛，只留下昔日美好的時光，幻想為完整的記憶。

如花死後化鬼，黃泉路上苦候不果，拒絕喝下遺忘前生的孟婆湯。寧可來生減壽七年，不惜犯險回到人間尋回所愛。這裡反映了如花的執迷不悟，情願死守過去，也不忘記背後，投胎轉世。

其後永定找到有關如花自殺的報導，發現她和十二少並非相約偷情，而是如花早已暗中在十二少的杯中落下大量安眠藥，再以試探其真心為由要求他吞下鴉片。可惜，十二少沒有如她所願，只是安眠藥毒發致重傷，搶救後苟活於人間。

這事實完全推翻了先前如花的論述，到底是如花的意想不到，還是她對現實的逃避：不相信十二少會拋棄自己。這種信念也許篡改了自身的記憶，才讓如花堅持要找回自己的愛人。

故事最後袁凌二人來到了十二少工作的片場，卻不見了如花的蹤影。也許如花不想面對十二少已老邁的現實，偷偷離開；也許如花發現現實中的十二少和回憶中的相差什遠，只好黯然離開；又或許如花與十二少久別重逢，細談多年辛酸。到底如花有否重遇十二少，作者刻意沒有清楚交代。不過，無論結果如何，如花也該是時候放下多年來回憶的負荷，重新上路。

Film Review: Midnight in Paris

Sonia Yu

Currently a BSc Year 2 student in HKU, majoring in Food and Nutritional Sciences and Comparative Literature. Publication Secretary of Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2013-‐2014.

Director and Writer: Woody Allen Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams Year of release: 2011

Everyone has a golden age in his or her mind. There are art and culture, people and objects that fascinate ones into a particular era. The era becomes the legacy and dream that one will dream to live in. The film Midnight in Paris explores the golden age of the 1920s by bringing the protagonist back to the past; conveying the idea of reminiscing and interpreting the past. Midnight in Paris, written and directed by Woody Allen, is a film set in the present and the 1920s. It explores the self-‐discovery journey of the protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson) by getting back in to his golden age in the 1920s. Gil, a Hollywood screenwriter, is on a pre-‐marriage vocation with his fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Although he is affluent and successful in love, he is not content with the present, feeling that there are imperfections in his life. His fiancé is manipulative, where she discourages Gil to be a writer. When he is at the stage of wonder and doubt of his life, he encounters an antique car accidentally one day and got one the car; the car fortuitously brings him back into the 1920s, where most of his fascinated writers live in, Gil meets them and emerges in their circle. Figure 1: Gil and Inez (Adapted from Midnight in Paris)

Living the presence is often instinct with constrains and exasperations that leads to desperations and helplessness; meanwhile the past comparatively imbues legacy which brings desires for ones to re-‐enter. Gil experiences frustrations from his wife as his writings and hard work are

not appreciated. He lives in constrains exerted by family, which manipulates his ideal life. He hardly finds anyone who relishes his writings. Contrastingly, the imaginary past is veiled by perfections. When Gil first entered the 1920s, he is unmitigated fascinated by artists and writers whom he admires the most. He meets legendary writers like Ernst Hemmingway, Pablo Picasso, Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and his writings are read and appreciated by them. The past projects perfect sensations when Gil first enters the past, as he has the opportunity to live like his idols do. The embellished illusion brings delusion to Gil; it recurrently triggers his eagerness to stay.

Figure 2: Gil meeting in the 1920s (adapted from Midnight in Paris)

Although the 1920s is the golden age where Gil immensely plunges himself into, he discloses flaws when he spends more time living there. He discovers that he underestimates difficulties those legendary figures confront back in their times; he also realizes there is another golden age back in the those people’s time too. Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a French girl whom Gil loves in the 1920s confesses her fantasy of the ago of late 1800s and says “I'm from the '20s, and I'm telling you the golden age is la Belle Epoque”; although she lives in the golden age where Gil aspires for, she is nostalgic to another time period in the past. Adriana’s action serves as a reflection to Gil. Her reminiscence and desires to stay there reflect Gil’s situation. Being nostalgic ameliorates the presence and disregards the past, leading to underestimation of the negative sides of the past. “Adriana, if you stay here through, and this becomes your presence then pretty soon you’ll start

imagining another time was really your time,” Gil’s response to Adriana’s decision of staying in the past reveals his awareness of the unrestrained vortex triggered by nostalgic thoughts. He realizes that the past is impartial; they become golden ages in one’s mind as people disregards the negate sides of the past. Figure 3: Adriana and Gil (Adapted from Midnight in Paris) Figure 4: Adriana meeting people in the 1890s (Adapted from Midnight in Paris)

Although Gil chooses not to stay in the past like Adriana does, the journey of travelling back into the past gives him inspiration and motivation of changing his life in the present. One of the lines Gil expresses near the end of the movie says, “That what the presence is. It is a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying.” The line here asserts the self-‐realization of Gil of confronting the presence, bringing a message that the presence is not prefect but it is unwise and absurd to evade form the present. The ending of the film where Gil breaks up with his fiancé and desires to live in Paris suggests a notion that he decides to change the present into a better one by setting himself free from the entrapments. The ending scene where he wanders in the rain and meets a girl signifies the success of living a new life. The scene neutralizes the differences between the past and the present, conveying a

message to the audience that the present can be fascinating, depending on how it is viewed. Traveling back to the past can be a fascinating experience; it is, however, a trap if one immensely dwells himself into the past. To quote Paul, Gil and Inez’s know-‐it-‐all friend, “Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present…the name for this denial is golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in – it’s a flow in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”

Acknowledgments Dr. Daniel Vukovich 鄧正健 Miss Julianne Yang Miss Helena Wu Mr. Gavin Tse 林芷諾 Sonia Yu

Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2013-‐2014 Executive Committee Chairperson Internal Vice Chairperson External Vice Chairperson General Secretary Financial Secretary Academic Secretary & Student Representative Publication Secretary Publicity Secretary & Sports Captain Social Secretary Welfare Secretary

Lai Yuen Chi (Frances) Lau Chung Wa (Roger) Leung Tsz Kei Katy Chan Man Yi (Albee) Wong Tsz Yan (Tiffany) Lam Chi Lok (Colette) Yu Sin Hang (Sonia) Lam Ka Wai (Kristy) Li Wai Chu (Christy) Kwok Chun Hei (Alvin)

Nostalgia

Bulletin 2014 Editor: Sonia Yu (email: yusinhangysh@gmail.com) Published by Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2013-‐2014 Address: Room 2A01, Fong Shu Chuen Amenities Centre, the University of Hong Kong Email: scomplit@hku.hk ; hkuscomplit@gmail.com Website: http://www.scomplit.hkusu.hku.hk Date of issue: 27th October 2014 Pages: 63

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