Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [53]
The clubs May and I once frequented have disappeared. Where are their taxi dancers, musicians, waiters, and bartenders now? Dead, shipped off to the interior for land reclamation, or working in a factory like the former dancing girls in my family home. The White Russians who lived on the Avenue Joffre are also gone, but so is the Avenue Joffre. It’s now called Huaihai Road, which commemorates the second great campaign of 1949, when Mao’s soldiers advanced from the Huai River to the sea, putting them in position to take Shanghai. The Race Club off the Avenue Edouard VII in the International Settlement, where my father lost so much money, has been turned into People’s Square on what is now called Yen’an Road.
Dead babies no longer lie discarded on sidewalks. They used to be so common that I can remember walking past one or two or three a day without stopping or thinking about it. I haven’t seen rickshaw pullers or beggars who’ve starved or frozen to death overnight either. Still, I’ve seen plenty of death: a man—probably an unreformed capitalist, who jumped from a building far enough off the Bund that no nets had been strung as a barrier; and another man—a reputed piece of “bourgeois vermin,” who was beaten to death by his former employees right on the street.
Once prostitutes were like flowers decorating the city. Now people dress so identically and inconspicuously—in trousers, shirts, and gray caps—that sometimes you can’t tell who is a man and who is a woman. Surprisingly enough, Western-style clothes still hang in department store windows—leftovers from better times. In shops, I’ve found Pond’s cold cream and Revlon lipstick. They’re outdated and won’t be replenished, but I buy them when I see them because I might not have another chance. Once I run out, I’ll have to start using Russian-made toiletries, although the scents are sometimes repugnant.
How is it that I can feel nostalgia for prostitutes and beggars? But then I miss everything—the purring foreign cars, the elegant gentlemen in their tailor-made suits and jaunty hats, the laughter, the champagne, the money, the foreigners, the aromatic French and Russian bakeries, and the sheer fun of being in one of the great cities on the planet. I wish I’d brought my camera so I could send photographs to May. Nothing I write could be as vivid or believable as seeing it with her own eyes.
What haven’t disappeared are rats. They’re everywhere. So here’s what I don’t understand: Old Shanghai, my Shanghai, had plenty of sin on the surface but was shored up by the respectability of banking and mercantile wealth underneath. Now I see the so-called respectability of communism on the surface and decay underneath. They can sweep, strip, and cart away all they want, but there’s no changing the fact that my home city is decomposing, rotting away, and turning into a skeleton. Eventually, the only things left will be dust and memories.
As usual, I find bits of May and me on my assigned route. I don’t know if other paper collectors have ignored these advertisements pasted on walls or if they just haven’t gotten to these streets and alleys yet, but it’s strange to peel and scrape away our noses, smiling faces, pretty hairdos, and clothes. I take these pieces—sometimes just an eye or a finger—and slip them into my pocket. One poster I’m able to pull completely from the wall. I roll it up and tuck it inside my jacket. At the end of the day, I’m supposed to turn in everything I’ve collected, but I’ll keep the poster and the other fragments of my sister and me that I have in my pocket to add to what I’ve already hidden at home.
I turn a corner and