Eileen Chang
1920–1995
a p enguin since 2007
Eileen Chang
Jasmine Tea
Translated by Eileen
Chang, Karen S. Kingsbury and Eva Hung
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These translations of ‘Jasmine Tea’ and ‘The Golden Cangue’ first published in the USA by New York Review 2007 and in Great Britain by Penguin Classics 2007. This translation of ‘Traces of Love’ first published in the UK in Penguin Classics 2007.
This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2025 001
Copyright © NYREV, Inc., 2007
Stories copyright © by the Estate of Eileen Chang, 1943
Translation of Jasmine Tea © Karen S. Kingsbury
Translation of Traces of Love © The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000
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ISBN : 978– 0– 241– 75230– 2
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Jasmine Tea
This pot of jasmine tea that I’ve brewed for you may be somewhat bitter; this Hong Kong tale that I’m about to tell you may be, I’m afraid, just as bitter. Hong Kong is a splendid city, but a sad one too.
First, pour yourself a cup of tea, but be careful – it’s hot! Blow on it gently. In the tea’s curling steam you can see . . a Hong Kong public bus on a paved road, slowly driving down a hill. A passenger stands behind the driver, a big bunch of azaleas in his arms. The passenger leans against an open window, the azaleas stream out in a twiggy thicket, and the windowpane behind becomes a flat sheet of red.
Sitting by that window was Nie Chuanqing, a young man of something like twenty. Twenty, perhaps, though he looked much older around the eyes and mouth. Then again, his skinny neck and thin shoulders could have been those of an adolescent. Wearing a blue gown of lined silk, he leaned sideways in the seat, with his head propped against the window and a stack of books in his lap. There, in the rosy sateen gleam of the flowers, his oval-shaped Mongolian face, with its faint eyebrows and with the downturned corners of the eyes, had a feminine kind of beauty. But the nose was too sharp; it clashed with the delicate softness of his face. A peach-colored bus ticket was stuck between his teeth, and he seemed to have dozed off.
The bus came to a sudden stop. Forcing his eyes open,
Eileen Chang
Chuanqing saw one of his classmates boarding: it was Professor Yan’s daughter, Yan Danzhu. He frowned. He hated bumping into people he knew on the bus, he couldn’t hear what they said over the engine roar. He was a bit deaf, his hearing damaged by the blows to the ear he’d taken from his father.
Yan Danzhu’s hair looked freshly shampooed, with the center part drawn straight while the hair was still wet and the ends touched up with a curling iron. Her hair fell vertically to her shoulders, like an Indian girl’s in an American cartoon. She had a smooth, round face, tanned to a coppery color, with jet-black brows and shining eyes; she wasn’t very tall, but she had a nicely curvy figure. Once on the bus, she smiled and nodded at Chuanqing, then came over to sit beside him.
‘Going home?’ she asked.
Chuanqing leaned over so he could hear. ‘Yeah.’
The conductor came to collect the fare. Chuanqing reached for his wallet, but Danzhu said, ‘Oh – I’ve got a monthly pass.’
‘What classes will you be taking this semester?’ she continued.
‘Same as before, no big change.’
‘Are you still going to be in my father’s History of Chinese Literature?’
Chuanqing nodded.
‘Did you know I’m taking it too?’ she laughed.
‘You’re going to be your father’s student?’ Chuanqing was surprised.
‘That’s right!’ Danzhu giggled. ‘At first he wouldn’t let me! He’s never had a daughter sitting with the other students while he lectures, and he was afraid he’d be embarrassed. And then, since we’re used to joking around at home, he thought maybe I’d be too casual in class, pester him with questions the way I
Jasmine Tea
usually do, maybe even argue back – and then how could he keep a stern face? So I gave my solemn promise never to open my mouth in his class, no matter how little I understood, and finally he agreed.’
‘Professor Yan . . . he’s a nice man!’ Chuanqing lightly sighed.
‘What? So he’s not a good teacher?’ Danzhu laughed. ‘You don’t like his class?’
‘Take a look at my grades and you’ll see that he doesn’t like me.’
‘What do you mean? He’s harder on you because you’re from Shanghai, and your Chinese is better than the Hong Kong students’ Chinese. He often praises you. He says you’re a bit lazy, that’s all.’
Chuanqing made no reply, turning away instead, and pressing his face against the glass. He couldn’t keep leaning toward her, listening so intently when she spoke. Anyone who saw them would draw the wrong conclusion. Already lots of people were spreading rumors, all because Danzhu kept coming up to him. At school, people gave him the cold shoulder, and since he knew he wasn’t liked, he stayed away from the others. But he couldn’t escape Danzhu.
Danzhu – he didn’t know what she had in mind, since she certainly had plenty of friends. Even though she’d been at South China University for only half a year, she was one of the most popular girls on campus. Why on earth did she want to befriend him? He stole a sideways glance at her. Her full breasts and tiny waist were sculpted by a white wool-knit vest, as if she were a plaster statue. He turned away again, rubbing his forehead on the glass. He didn’t like looking at girls, especially pretty girls with good figures: they made him feel especially dissatisfied with himself.
Danzhu was talking again. He frowned, forcing a smile. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that.’
Raising her voice, she repeated her words, but again, halfway through, he could not follow her. Fortunately, since he was so often silent, she wasn’t at all disturbed by his failure to answer. But then he happened to catch one part of what she’d said, the very last part. She had lowered her head and was tugging at her wool-knit vest; she pulled it down, but it crept back up again.
‘What I told you the other day – about the letter Dequan sent me – please forget about it,’ she said. ‘Just pretend I never said anything.’
‘Why?’ asked Chuanqing.
‘Why? . . . It’s quite obvious. I shouldn’t have told anyone. I’m such a child – I can’t keep anything back!’
Chuanqing leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and smiled. Danzhu leaned forward at his side. ‘Chuanqing,’ she said quite seriously, ‘you aren’t taking this the wrong way, are you? When I told you about that, I wasn’t showing off. I can’t just . . . not talk to people. The words build up inside and I have to let them out. And then, when I refused him, I lost Dequan as a friend. I want to be friends with him, I want to be friends with lots of people. As for anything more than that, we’re too young, we can’t even talk about such things yet. But they . . . they all get so serious.’
A few moments passed. ‘Chuanqing, are you upset?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know why, but there are some things I can’t tell anyone except you.’
‘I don’t know why either.’
‘I think it’s because . . . well, to me, you’re like a girl.’
A bitter smile swept across his face. ‘Really? You have a lot of girlfriends, so why choose me?’
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‘Because you’re the only one who can keep a secret.’
But Chuanqing replied coldly, ‘Of course – I don’t have any friends, so there’s no one I could tell.’
Quickly she replied, ‘You’re taking it all wrong again!’ They both fell silent. Then Danzhu sighed. ‘I didn’t say it the right way, but . . Chuanqing, why don’t you try to make some friends? Then you’d have someone to study with or have fun with. Why don’t you invite us to your house to play tennis? I know you have a tennis court.’
Chuanqing laughed. ‘There isn’t much chance of playing tennis on our court. It’s usually full of laundry hung out to dry, and when the weather’s warm, they cook opium there.’
Danzhu stopped, unable to say anything more.
Chuanqing turned back and looked out the window. The bus took a fast, hard turn, and the azaleas in the standing passenger’s arms were sent flying about. When Chuanqing looked at Danzhu again, he gasped a little in surprise. ‘You’re crying!’
‘How could I be crying? I never cry!’ But then, with a sad, hard sob, she confronted him: ‘You . . . you always make me feel as though I’ve done something wrong . . . as if I have no right to be happy! But my happiness doesn’t do you any harm!’
Taking her books from her, Chuanqing wiped the cover of the top one dry. ‘Is this the new edition of Professor Yan’s lecture notes? I haven’t bought it yet. You might think it funny, but I’ve been in his class for half a year now, and I still don’t know his given name.’
‘I like his name. I’m always telling him his name looks sharp – sharper than he does, by a long shot!’
Chuanqing had found the name on the book cover. He read it out loud: ‘Yan Ziye.’ Putting the book aside, he tilted his head in thought. Then he picked the book back up and read
Jasmine Tea 5
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the name again: ‘Yan Ziye.’ He felt somehow doubtful the second time, as if he couldn’t quite make out the characters.
‘Not a good name?’ Danzhu asked.
‘Yes, of course it’s good!’ Chuanqing laughed. ‘We all know that you’ve got a good father! Good in every way, except that now you’re way too spoiled!’
Danzhu hissed back at him through pursed lips. She stood up. ‘This is my stop. See you later!’
When she had gone, Chuanqing leaned his head against the windowpane. Once again he seemed to doze off. The passenger with the azaleas got off too – and with the azaleas gone from the window, there was only the gray street behind. When the backdrop changed, his face grew dark and yellow.
The bus turned another corner. Palm-tree leaves swished against the window. Chuanqing jumped up, pulled the bell cord, and descended at the next stop.
He lived in a big mansion. Within a few years of their moving here from Shanghai, all the flowers and trees that had once filled the yard had wilted, died, or been cut down, and now the sun beat down on a desolate scene. The housemaid had turned over a rattan chair on the grass. She was sluicing it out with a kettle of boiling water, killing bedbugs.
Inside, the hallway was heavy with darkness. The only gleam of light came from the dark red banister that twisted up, around, and away. Chuanqing crept up the stairs cautiously; then, seeing no one there, he slipped toward his room like a thin cloud of smoke. But the tired old floorboards squeaked loudly. Amah Liu heard, came out, and stopped him in his tracks.
‘Young Master is home! Have you gone to see Master and Mistress?’
‘I’ll see them later, when we eat. What’s the rush?’
Amah Liu grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘Here we go again!
What have you done this time? Sneaking around, trying to avoid seeing anyone! Better go in right away, see them now and get it over with. If you don’t, there’ll be another angry scene!’
Chuanqing suddenly started acting like a boy of twelve or thirteen: he grit his teeth, he absolutely refused to go. The harder Amah Liu tugged at him, the harder he pulled away. Amah Liu was his mother’s personal maid, the one who’d been sent along with her when she got married. The hatred he felt toward Amah Liu at home was the same hatred he felt toward Yan Danzhu at school. On a bitter-cold day, a person can be frozen numb and it won’t bother him, but a little warmth will make him feel so cold that his heart hurts and his bones ache.
In the end, his loathing for Amah Liu made him give in; just to get rid of her, he agreed to see his father and stepmother. Nie Jiechen, his father, was wearing a grease-spotted vest of light green satin over his undershirt. Chuanqing’s stepmother – all in black, her hair disheveled – was reclining on the two-person opium couch, facing her husband. Chuanqing stepped forward and greeted them. ‘Father, Mother!’ They both gave barely attentive grunts. Then, at long last, the stone in his heart fell away: it looked as though they hadn’t got wind of any offense of his today.
‘Did you hand in the tuition fee?’ his father asked.
Chuanqing sat down on an upholstered chair next to the smoking couch. ‘Yes.’
‘What courses are you taking?’
‘History of the English Language, Nineteenth- Century English Prose –’
‘All that English you’re doing – why bother? A donkey can jounce along after the horses, jounce till his legs break, and still it won’t amount to anything!’
His stepmother smiled. ‘He wants to put on the airs of a