Pages 151-168
A reading route prepared by Justin (FLAC), Shuqing, Yanglu, Jenny
Image Credit: Hsiang-Lin Shih
欲买桂花同载酒，终不似，少年游——刘过《唐多令》
“Hometown” is a place that only resides in one’s memory. Although memory stays the same as time passes by, the physical “hometown” constantly undergoes reconstruction and changes. Dream is far and distant from everyone’s life. In the writer’s heart, dream is the hometown in her youthful days, which is a evergreen tree in her memory. However, it is hard and disappointing for the writer to pursue it, since the “dream world” is no longer exist. Chu T’ien-hsin paints a picture of rich and lush green nature outside of the coffee shop in which she sits in to express her feelings of alienation and her loss of connection with the reality.
The picture of the world outside the glass window sums up the underlying message of Chu T’ien-hsin’s book “The Old Capital.” The glass separates the author from the real world, but the glass window is invisible. The author is alienated from the outside world, inscribed within the four wall but is unable to see the invisible barrier. Chu T’ien-hsin has become so comfortable with staying in the air-conditioned room that she is unwilling to step outside and feel the heat of the sun and the noise of the winds.
*There were King Arthur, who was as tall as a tree, a colorful Egyptian bas relief, giant sculptures of kings, and a portrait of the real Sphinx. It was like a dream world.—Freud (Page 151)
那儿有像树一样高大的亚述国王、色彩鲜丽的埃及浮雕、巨大的国王雕像、真正的狮身人面像，就像个梦幻世界。
——佛洛伊德(Page 161)
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Maybe you’d had too much fun during the day, and so you fell asleep without exchanging another word, the young bodies of two seventeen-year-olds, like purring cats. (Page 113)
可能白天玩得太疯了，没再来得及交换一句话就沉沉睡去，猫咪打呼一般，两具十七岁年轻的身体。(Page 134)
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Back then, people were so simple, so naïve, they were often willing to sacrifice themselves over a belief or a loved one, whatever their party affiliation. Back then, before commercial real estate had led to an unrestrained opening of new roads, a building boom, and land speculation, trees could survive and grow tall and green, like those in tropical rain forests. (Page 111)
那时候的人们非常单纯天真，不分党派的往往为了单一的信念或爱人，肯于舍身或赴死。那时候的树，也因土地尚未商品化，没大肆开路竞建炒地皮，而得以存活得特别高大特别绿，像赤道雨林的国家。(Page 133)
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It had been many years since you’d last cried, because tears were too salty. Sweat was salty too. You couldn’t say when it started, but a strange and repellant odor slowly began to appear on you. At first you thought it was the result of childbirth. You’d spent a week in the hospital and come home with a pleasant mixture of smells: the hospital’s fresh, clean disinfectant; baby oil; medicine; and breast milk. But it didn’t take long for the fragrance to disappear. The first time you discovered that the strange odor clung to you, you returned assiduously to the shampoo, hand soap, and laundry powder you’d used before. But twenty-odd years of the same odor was gone; it had been with you for over two decades without your noticing it, and you realized you’d had it only after you’d lost it. What remained was a salty odor that easily crystallized; the dirty, salty smell must have had a completely different molecular structure than the salt in the ocean. There were things you could neither avoid nor change, like bodily fluids or sweat, but not tears, and that is why you refused to shed them.
好多年了你都不肯掉眼泪，因为眼泪太咸了，汗也好咸，从什么时候开始，身上逐渐酿成一股陌生但不好闻的气味，起初以为是生过小孩的缘故，从医院住了一星期回家，带着医院里清爽干净的消毒水、Baby oil、药香、奶香混成的好味道，好味道没多久就不再有了，初次你发现了陌生的味道紧钉你不去，你赶忙努力重拾以前的洗发精、香皂、洗衣粉⋯⋯二十几年的味道再也没有了，跟了二十几年你不知道的体味却在消失之后你才知道，只剩下可以轻易结晶成盐的咸味，肯定与海的盐分不同分子结构的脏兮兮咸味，别的无法避免无法改变例如体液和汗水，但泪，是绝不肯流了。(Page 148)
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Your kind of weather has lush and pungent greenery, azure skies, and blinding sunlight, but now you were invariably in a room chilled by air conditions, or in a car, or inside a coffee shop, or in a room by a window, and that cost you your sense of reality, causing you to mistakenly assume that the temperature outside was the same as inside, cold. That and the striking contrast between light and shadow produced the illusion that you were in a country you’d wanted to visit or one you’d visited before. (Page 151)
有一种天气是你喜欢的，草木鲜烈，天空蔚蓝，阳光眩目，而你恰巧在空调凉飕飕的室内、车内或咖啡馆或临窗的屋里，便容易让人失去现实感，以为外面也是如此的气温，冷，再加上反差极大的光影，就以为自己置身在某个你想去或曾去过的国度。(Page 161)
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Over half the sweet gum trees, which had been as old as Chokushi Street, were gone; the beautiful Miyanoshita Road had grown into such a state that it was like countless incurable tumors—ugly, ugly. Mournfully, you avoided the area, but what had died, of course, included part of you. (Page 160)
因為與敕使街道同年歲的楓香不見了大半，美麗的宮ノ下參道變成長了無數腫瘤群醫束手的景象，醜透了，你帶著哀悼的心情走避，死去的，當然包括你的一部分。
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It was a river with no navigational landmarks. But you refused to believe that and many times thought of sticking your foot into that same river. Three thousand years, and still no change. (Page 168)
是一條沒有航標的大河，偏你不信，老想不止兩次插足同一條河流，三千年了，不改。
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Lost of Dream World
- Dream World: Youthful Days
- Dream World: Simple People and Nature
- False Dream World: Air-Conditioned Room/Car
- Lost of Dream World
- Never Return
Dream World: Youthful Days
In this quote, the protagonist shows her yearning to the energy, innocent and healthy in her youthful days. In her mind, life is filled with enthusiasm in people’s youthful days, no matter what they do. To the protagonist, who is in middle age now and has experienced a lot, youth is a dream world for her to miss and remember: she is not be able to retrieve feel and emotion in her young age. For example, the friendship with A is part of her years of burning passions, but when she thinks about it and decide to meets A again in her middle age, there are much more things that she has to consider and hesitate. The dream world of youth can only exist in the protagonist’s memory.
Dream World: Simple People and Nature
Everyone values his or her youthful days, and even everything that relate to it. In this quote, the people and views in the protagonist’s youth age consists of her dream world, which she misses for the rest of her life. However, time has brought huge development to the city she lived, and changed her familiar memory with the city and it’s people. What is more, the memory of the dream city has already been beautified in her mind by time and her imagination. The fact is, dream world is only dream and can not become reality; she will neither be able to go back to such a dream world nor find the lovely people in her memory. What is more, the natural views in her memory also changed. More and more people focus on economy in the country instead of the natural views, so the green in her memory can no longer exist.
The Odor
Besides the differences mentioned above, the odor of people is also different through ages. The nature and people were simpler in her youthful years. So was her odor. After struggled and experienced a lot, even her odor was deeply influenced by the complicated society. The cruel thing that happens to the writer is that she has already lost the odor of youth, which always reminds her that she was no longer young, and her youth dream world has gone far away from her life.
False Dream World: Air-Conditioned Room/Car
The image of King Arthur lurks in the natural scenery with the pleasing green grass and the open clear skies. Nevertheless, the author is unable to emerge herself in the pleasurable nature. She can only admire the scenery through the window pane of the coffee shop. This reflects the glaring issue in urban areas: people living in urban areas are comfortable in the air-conditioned coffee shops, and the habit of living in air-conditioned rooms disallow them to connect with the real world. The author cannot know if the air outside is equally cold as the air inside, therefore, the window pane is a metaphor for the blockage between the author and the real world. The preplacement of nature is the demise of King Arthur. The author expresses her sorrow at the loss of nature when she says the things in front of her eyes made her lose her sense of reality. Everything that is present is cold not only in terms of temperature but also in terms of its sensational void. This quotation also captures the meaning of the whole novella “memories and dreams do not mean anything in this constantly changing world.” The contrast between light and shadow is the contrast between her memory of the place and her current impression of the exact same place. Her beloved hometown is now no more than a foreign city and she is a passerby.
Lost of Dream World
King Arthur is a representation of nature, lively and magnificent just like the sweet gum trees. However, the conversion of the old greenery city into a busy industrial city signifies the death of King Arthur. The author directly and forthrightly expresses her dissatisfaction with the industrialization of her home city. Everything that she holds dear, everything that ties the author with the land has been replaced with buildings and offices that are so void of history. No events or memories are tied to the skyscrapers and the office. These new buildings emits a sense of ignorance towards history, and this irritates the author. Ignorance is ugly, and industrialization is ugly. The disappearance of the author’s childhood city symbolizes the death of a big part of the author.
Never Return
One cannot step into the same river twice because the currents renew the river and wash away everything that is old. The river in her imagination is one with no landmarks. The author is lost not only in her imagination but also in her very own home city. This sentence depicts her alienation with her home city. Her hometown continually undergoes new constructions, just like a river with new currents flowing in, never staying the same. Although her childhood city will stay the same in her memory and her love for it will stand against the test of time, the physical appearance of the city is another story. A story of which the author was never a part. No matter how hard the author tries to spot out the resemblances between her childhood city and the current city, she surrenders to the dramatic changes and admits that there is no navigational landmarks for her to spot out the resemblances. The author is simply a passerby that step into a river, lost and has given in to the changing course of nature.
