Wang Anyi's fiction piece "The song of everlasting sorrow" as the encyclopedia of shanghai society in 1940-1980's

The article examines a novel written by one of the most popular Chinese women writers of the late 20th century, Wang Anyi. The author analyses social and cultural changes taking place in the history of Shanghai from the period of 1940s until 1980s. On the surface, the novel reads as the story of beautiful woman Wang Qiyao, «Miss Third Place» in the Shanghai Beauty Contest. Throughout the story, this girl from traditional Shanghai slums is trying to get the pass to the high society life, become an icon of luxury and splendour in semi-colonial Shanghai. Finally, when she has almost reached such level, the fate of the city and her own fate change radically. The novel is divided into three parts that show redevelopment of the Chinese nation and Wang Qiyao herself. Part 1 chronicles the heroine’s brief moment in the limelight, her love affair with a powerful government official. Part 2 tells of Wang Qiyao’s life during the years of the Communist rule, and, finally, part 3 starts after the Cultural Revolution and introduces the last decade of Wang’s life in the light of China’s new economic growth and the massive changes to the nature of Chinese society. While reading the novel, we can see that it is not just a vivid story of Chinese new, «liberated» woman of the 20th century, but it is the city’s modern history that forms the backbone of the tale, creating the «everlasting sorrow» and melancholy of the modern consumer society in which the identity of the heroine is completely dissolved. Just like Wang Qiyao, modern Shanghai has never controlled its fate, following to the forces of Western colonization, communist «liberation,» and finally Deng Xiaoping’s Chinese way of capitalism. Shanghai, historically the most «foreign» Chinese city, has been the quintessential symbol of modernity in China. The young and talented girl Qiyao grew up in an atmosphere of parties, jazz, beautiful dresses and fashion shops. Wang Qiyao indulges in the decadent pleasures of pre-liberation Shanghai, secretly playing mahjong during the Anti-Rightist Movement and exchanging lovers on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. She is going through difficult years of the Cultural Revolution, trying to keep small shreds of the past life. She surrounds herself with people who are also nostalgic for the past. This past deprived of a real human feelings, is illusive. In the same way, new Shanghai, absorbed by greed, money, and the new capitalist values, seems empty and illusory.