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177 She is a person with weak affective sensibility and strong defenses. In reality, only her mother and Zhiyong have given her a hard time.1 In the above extract from her autobiographical novel Little Reunion (小團 圓, 2009), Eileen Chang describes the book’s protagonist, Julie Sheng (Jiuli Sheng)—Chang’s literary alter ego—as someone who is not duochou shangan (多愁善感, sentimental). “Chou” means sorrow, worry, and apprehension, and duochou shangan literally means “prone to sorrow.” The term is often used to describe women who are oversentimental about nature, people, and events around them. Duochou shangan has an implicit gender tag, and clearly implies excess, as well as bearing the negative connotations of ignorance and indulgence. This concept is not easily translated into English, but I think the word “affect” best sums it up, as this psychological term also signifies womanly passion, sensation, and inward disposition. When I was reading Little Reunion, this short description caught my attention, as I find it an intriguing depiction of a self that is both introverted and engaged, and therefore intricately related to my reading of Little Reunion as an autobiographical novel. If Julie is understood to be Chang herself, then I believe many readers would agree that Eileen Chang, too, was not duochou shangan. Chang does not seem attached to her characters, and she writes in a way that displays little ardor or anguish. The most naïve relationships and emotional responses, as penned by Chang, become calculated—if not malicious—and many of her characters are gloomy, feeble, and detestable. Chang’s lover Hu Lancheng (胡蘭成, whose counterpart in Little Reunion is Zhiyong) describes her thus: “She is not a benevolent person. She shows no care for others, and she has no mercy or compassion . . . She is very selfish, and she can be vicious. Her selfishness can be visualized as an individual attending a big festive event, where her existence 9 “A Person of Weak Affect” Toward an Ethics of Other in Eileen Chang’s Little Reunion Laikwan Pang 178 Eileen Chang is especially noticeable.”2 Chang is typical of a girl growing up in a declining noble family—she despises both herself and others. Hu’s cruel description of Chang can easily be applied to Julie in Little Reunion. Julie’s earliest memory is of the tug-of-war between herself and her nurse Nanny Han over a spoonful of baby food. She remembers being fed with a copper spoon that had a fishy smell of iron that she hated. She pushed the spoon away repeatedly until it hit the ground loudly: “She knew it was a bad deed. She had won, but was now lost.”3 Even in her infancy she understood selfother relationships in terms of battle and victory, rather than love and attachment . Julie does not lament, even at the outbreak of the Second World War: neither life nor death is heavy, and their differentiation is unclear. Julie is also concerned with money. After returning to Shanghai from Hong Kong, Julie worked hard to repay the tuition money she owed her mother; she also made sure she gave whatever she could to Zhiyong to assist him in his flight. This strong urge to repay her debts is intended only to free her of any connection to her mother and lover. The question is this: Can someone who does not connect with people be a writer? This indifferent Eileen Chang was actually one of the twentieth century ’s most influential Chinese writers, and one who influenced masses and elites alike. Despite her aloofness, she has also written of many tender and touching relationships, and one cannot ignore the tremendous amount of care and love she invested in her own creation. Although Chang tended to see only the darker side of human nature, the characters she created have touched many readers. In traditional Chinese literature, the prototype of the sentimental female writer is clearly Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢). Writer Su Tong has noted that Eileen Chang reminds him of Lin Daiyu,4 and many other critics have also connected the characters created by Eileen Chang with Lin Daiyu— an ironic association, given that the writer confessed to having little capacity for affect.5 Chang’s lover describes her as malicious and merciless, while her fans see her more affectionate and sensitive side in the characters she created. Her coldness provides a stark contrast to the Eileen Chang fever that has never subsided in Chinese literary circles. The pivotal...

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