ileen Chang, also called Zhang Ailing, (born September 9, 1920, Shanghai, China—found dead September 8, 1995, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is one of the great writers of 20th-century China and was revealed to be a genius from an early age. She wrote numerous literary works throughout her life, including novels, essays, screenplays and literary writings. She lived and worked in Shanghai, Hong Kong and the United States, all of which figure prominently in her work.

From middle school time on, I have been a big fan of Eileen Chang, spending many nights diving in her literary works. Now as a postgraduate student in Shanghai, I certainly would not waste such a good opportunity to visit some of Eileen Chang’s former residences. Then last Friday, I started my tour of looking for Eileen.

Shanghai in May is remarked by changeable weather. When I stepped out of the campus, it drizzled. But after one hour’s subway boresome, sun began to shed strong light. Anyway, a five-minute walk from the Jing’an Temple station led to my first destination: the Edinburgh House.

Seated on a narrow and busy road, the Edinburgh House, with its faded walls and rusty windows, looks out of place among surrounding skyscrapers. However, the 85-year-old house has witnessed some of the most important years of Eileen Chang’s life, and the publication of her highly received novels, such as Love in a Fallen City and The Golden Cangue. She has a well-known essay titled with “Pleasures in Apartment Life”, in which she exclaimed that an apartment is the best place to escape from mundane city life. One can better understand her words when standing exactly in front of the Edinburgh House: people and cars head straightly forward, casting no glance at the old house in the downtown.

Since the Edinburgh House is not open to visitors, a coffee shop and a book store is set in the first floor to satisfy visitors’ curiosity. Inside the coffee shop stretches quite a fictional world of Eileen Chang’s novels. The rather dim light, the yellow wallpaper with quaint floral pattern, as well as old style phones all bring people back to the 1930s instantly. It is such a pacifying experience to settle here, drinking a cup of coffee, and watching the busy crossroad through the large floor-to-ceiling window.

After one hour’s lingering, I came to Eileen Chang’s another residence where she was born and brought up with some unpleasant memories. This building is a three-story villa, every floor of which has six to eight rooms and a capacious parlour. Despite the lively red bricks on the exterior walls, the symmetrical black doors and wooden stairs inside present a kind of serious solemn.  

Through those ruthlessly shut doors, I felt I saw young Eileen weeping, after being beaten and locked in a dark room by her father. There is also an exhibiting room carefully-crafted in the style of Chang’s era. Such pieces of wooden furniture as the black rocking chair, the dark brown book shelf and the delicate tea table with black tablecloth dotted with golden embroidery are too stubborn to change with time. Instead, they become a witness of era, as if telling the story of their former owners.

Following Eileen Chang’s steps, my next destination is the Kaina Apartment, where Chang lived with her mother and aunt, enjoying a temporal happy family life. The Kaina Apartment, built in 1932, still serves as a residential area now. In order not to bother people who now live in it, I could only go around this four-story building from outside. It looks too humble to attract attention today, but it used to be one of the most modern and fashionable apartments in the 1930s’ Shanghai. For instance, it boasts of a garage in the basement, and the bathroom wares were imported from the UK.

At length, I arrived at the former St. Mary’s Chapel where Eileen Chang spent her teenage years. She began to show her literary talent during her study here, writing some really interesting articles for the school magazine. Due to unhappy childhood, she was reticent in school, only to be regarded as an eccentric who dress and express herself differently, just like the way how this Chapel is now incompatible with surrounding modern shopping malls.

In 2005, to make room for today’s Raffle’s City, most parts of the old school were demolished and only a bell tower was reserved. Now it seems more like a pity. This has become a problem worth considering during the process of city development that how to address the confrontation between the past and the present.

Eight hours’ traveling in the downtown is tiring but also worthy. Shanghai used to be merely a exuberant metropolis for me. Yet after this trip, the other side of it, the brilliant history and culture of it, begins to reveal, offering serenity for a modern mind.