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    <s id="1:1">Peace Lane</s>
    <s id="1:2">SHANGHAI MUST HAVE at least a hundred Peace Lanes, some occupying a large area connecting two major streets, others connected to other longtang, forming a vast network of twisted, dirty lanes where one can easily get lost.</s>
    <s id="1:3">As confusing as they may be to outsiders, each has developed a distinct identity simply through having survived for so many years.</s>
    <s id="1:4">Under moonlight, these blocks of crumbling wood and brick look positively serene, like something out of a painting executed with minute brushstrokes; they too hold memories and aspirations.</s>
    <s id="1:5">The ringing bells make their evening rounds, reminding residents to watch their cooking fires, evincing a trace of warmth and goodwill from those who live there.</s>
    <s id="1:6">Mornings, however, begin with night-soil carts, clattering in to collect waste for fertilizer, and the raspy noises of brushes scrubbing out commodes.</s>
    <s id="1:7">Amid the smoke of coal burners, laundry soaked overnight is taken out to be hung, banner-like, on bamboo poles.</s>
    <s id="1:8">Every action, every gesture comes across to the onlooker as a boastful swagger or perhaps an exaggerated fit of pique; why, the collective provocation would be enough to darken the rising sun.</s>
    <s id="1:9">Each Peace Lane has a few residents who are as old as the neighborhood.</s>
    <s id="1:10">Being history's witnesses, they observe newcomers with knowing eyes.</s>
    <s id="1:11">Some are not averse to mingling with newcomers, and this creates an impression of continuity.</s>
    <s id="1:12">But on the whole they like to keep to themselves, adding an air of mystery to the neighborhood.</s>
    <s id="1:13">Wang Qiyao moved into the third floor of 39 Peace Lane.</s>
    <s id="1:14">Different batches of tenants had left their plants on the balcony.</s>
    <s id="1:15">Most had withered, but a few nameless ones had sprouted new leaves.</s>
    <s id="1:16">Insects swam in the stagnant liquid of moldy jars in the kitchen, yet among them was a bottle of perfectly good peanut oil.</s>
    <s id="1:17">On the wall behind the door somebody had written, "Buy birthday present on January 10," and a child had scrawled "Wang Gensheng eats shit."</s>
    <s id="1:18">One could only speculate about the birthday celebrant and the object of the child's resentment.</s>
    <s id="1:19">Rubbish lay, piled up at haphazard—one could make nothing coherent out of all this.</s>
    <s id="1:20">Having put her things down among other people's debris, Wang Qiyao decided to make the place her own by hanging up her curtains.</s>
    <s id="1:21">The room did seem different with the curtains.</s>
    <s id="1:22">However, with no shade over the light bulb, the objects in the room simply looked naked rather than illuminated.</s>
    <s id="1:23">Outside it was a typical evening in May.</s>
    <s id="1:24">The warm breeze carried with it whiffs of grease and swill, which was the basic odor of Shanghai, although the typical Shanghainese was so steeped in it he scarcely noticed.</s>
    <s id="1:25">Later in the night would come the scent of rice gruel flavored with osmanthus blossoms.</s>
    <s id="1:26">The smells were familiar, the curtains were familiar, and the evening outside was familiar, but Wang Qiyao felt strange.</s>
    <s id="1:27">She needed to reattach herself to life here; fortunately for her, the lines where attachments could be made were clearly marked on the fabric.</s>
    <s id="1:28">Wang Qiyao was grateful to the large flowers on the curtains, which, no matter where they were placed, remained in full bloom, faithfully retaining the glory of bygone days.</s>
    <s id="1:29">The floor and the window frames emitted the odiferous warmth of decaying wood.</s>
    <s id="1:30">Scurrying mice conveyed their greetings.</s>
    <s id="1:31">Soon, bells reminding people to watch their cooking fires began ringing.</s>
    <s id="1:32">Wang Qiyao underwent three months of training as a nurse in order to be certified to give injections.</s>
    <s id="1:33">She hung out a sign advertising injections outside the entrance to her apartment on Peace Lane.</s>
    <s id="1:34">Similar signs could be seen along the entrances of other longtang—following those signs inside, one could find Wang Qiyaos of all different shapes and sizes eking out a living.</s>
    <s id="1:35">They all woke up early, put on clean clothes, and straightened up their rooms.</s>
    <s id="1:36">Then they ignited the alcohol burner to disinfect a box of needles.</s>
    <s id="1:37">The sun, reflected from the rooftops across the alley, left rectangles of light on the wooden floor.</s>
    <s id="1:38">After switching off the burner, they reached for a book to read while they waited for patients.</s>
    <s id="1:39">The patients tended to come in batches, morning and afternoon, but there might be one or two in the evening.</s>
    <s id="1:40">Once in a while, when someone requested a house call, they hurried off in white cap and surgical mask.</s>
    <s id="1:41">Lugging a straw bag containing the needles and medicinal cotton, they looked very much like professional nurses as they scurried down the street.</s>
    <s id="1:42">Wang Qiyao always wore a simple cheongsam.</s>
    <s id="1:43">In the 1950s these were becoming rare on the streets of Shanghai, a symbol of nostalgia as well as style, at once old-fashioned and modern.</s>
    <s id="1:44">When she crossed the streets on house calls, she was often struck by a sense of déjà vu—the places were familiar, only the roles were changed.</s>
    <s id="1:45">One day she called on a patient in a dark apartment where the waxed floor reflected her shoes and stockings, and was led into the bedroom.</s>
    <s id="1:46">There, under a green silk blanket, a young woman lay.</s>
    <s id="1:47">Wang Qiyao had the curious sensation that the woman was herself.</s>
    <s id="1:48">Having administered the shot, she put her things away and left, but her heart seemed to tarry in that apartment.</s>
    <s id="1:49">She could almost hear the woman complaining to the maid that the shrimps from the market were too small and not fresh enough—didn't she know the master would be home for dinner that night?</s>
    <s id="1:50">At times she stared into the blue flames of the alcohol burner and saw a resplendent world in which people sang and danced for all eternity.</s>
    <s id="1:51">Once in a while she caught a late movie, one of the ones that started at eight, when street lamps were reflected on the face of the silent streets.</s>
    <s id="1:52">Only the theater lobby would be bustling, as though time had stood still.</s>
    <s id="1:53">She only went to old movies: Zhou Xuan in Street Angel, Bai Yang in Crossroads, and others.</s>
    <s id="1:54">Although they had no connection to her present situation, they were familiar and they spoke to her.</s>
    <s id="1:55">She subscribed to an evening newspaper to fill the hours of dusk.</s>
    <s id="1:56">She read every word in the newspaper, making sense perhaps of half the reports.</s>
    <s id="1:57">By the time she finished it, the water would be boiling and it would be dinner time.</s>
    <s id="1:58">There was an exciting element of unpredictability to her work.</s>
    <s id="1:59">Hearing footsteps on the staircase at night, she would speculate, Who could it be?</s>
    <s id="1:60">She was unusually vivacious on these occasions and often talked a bit too much, asking this or that as she reignited the alcohol burner to sterilize the needle.</s>
    <s id="1:61">If the patient was a child, she would put out all her charm.</s>
    <s id="1:62">She would feel sad after the patient left.</s>
    <s id="1:63">Pondering over the recent commotion, she would forget to put things away, and then discover that the pot had boiled dry.</s>
    <s id="1:64">Such interruptions in her tranquil routine gave rise to a vague feeling of anticipation.</s>
    <s id="1:65">Something was fomenting, she felt, from which something might just develop.</s>
    <s id="1:66">Once, awakened in the middle of the night by urgent and frightened calls for help at the door, she threw a jacket over her nightgown and rushed downstairs, her heart pounding, to find two men from the provinces carrying someone on a stretcher.</s>
    <s id="1:67">The person was critically ill.</s>
    <s id="1:68">They had mistaken her for a doctor.</s>
    <s id="1:69">After giving them directions to the nearest hospital, she went back upstairs but could not sleep a wink.</s>
    <s id="1:70">All kinds of odd things happened in the night in this city.</s>
    <s id="1:71">Under the lamp at the entrance to the longtang, the shingle advertising "Injection Nurse Wang Qiyao" looked as if it was waiting patiently to be noticed.</s>
    <s id="1:72">The passing cars and the windswept fallen leaves hinted at concealed activities in the dark night.</s>
    <s id="1:73">People came to Wang Qiyao in an unending parade.</s>
    <s id="1:74">Those who stopped coming were quickly replaced by others.</s>
    <s id="1:75">She would speculate about her patients' professions and backgrounds and was pleased to find most of her guesses correct as, with a few casual remarks, she pried the facts out of them.</s>
    <s id="1:76">Her best sources were nannies accompanying little charges—these eagerly volunteered all kinds of unflattering information about their employers.</s>
    <s id="1:77">A number of patients had nothing wrong with them, but came for routine health-enhancing shots, such as placenta fluid.</s>
    <s id="1:78">They became so comfortable with her that they would drop by to gossip.</s>
    <s id="1:79">Thus, without going out of her house, Wang Qiyao learned a great deal about the neighborhood.</s>
    <s id="1:80">This hodgepodge of activity was enough to fill up half her day.</s>
    <s id="1:81">Sometimes she was so busy she could hardly keep up with all the goings-on.</s>
    <s id="1:82">The hustle-bustle on Peace Lane was both invasive and highly contagious.</s>
    <s id="1:83">Wang Qiyao's tranquility gradually gave way to frequent footfalls on the stairs, doors opening and shutting; her name was regularly hollered by people on the ground with upturned heads, their fervent voices carrying far and wide on quiet afternoons.</s>
    <s id="1:84">Before long, the oleanders, planted haphazardly in makeshift planters formed from broken bricks on balconies, put forth their dazzling flowers.</s>
    <s id="1:85">Nothing marvelous had happened to Wang Qiyao, but through careful cultivation her life had also sprouted countless little sprigs that held the promise of developing into something.</s>
    <s id="1:86">People at Peace Lane knew Wang Qiyao as a young widow.</s>
    <s id="1:87">Several attempts were made to match her up with men, including a teacher who, though only thirty, was already bald.</s>
    <s id="1:88">Arrangements were made for them to meet at a theater to watch a movie about victorious peasants—the kind of thing she detested—but she forced herself to sit through it.</s>
    <s id="1:89">Whenever there was a lull in the show, she heard a faint whistling sound coming from the man as he breathed.</s>
    <s id="1:90">Seeing this was the best she could do, she declined all further matchmaking efforts on her behalf.</s>
    <s id="1:91">As she watched the smoky sky above Peace Lane, she often wondered if anything exciting would ever happen to her again.</s>
    <s id="1:92">To charges of arrogance as well as to praise for being loyal to her late husband, she turned a deaf ear.</s>
    <s id="1:93">She ignored all gossip and advice, remaining at once genial and distant.</s>
    <s id="1:94">This was normal on Peace Lane, where friendships were circumscribed, there being untold numbers of large fish swimming around in the murky waters.</s>
    <s id="1:95">Underneath all that conviviality, people were lonely, though often they did not know it themselves, merely muddling through from one day to the next.</s>
    <s id="1:96">Wang Qiyao was rather muddleheaded about some things, while she couldn't have been more clear-sighted about others; the former concerned issues of daily living, while the latter were reserved for her private thoughts.</s>
    <s id="1:97">She was occupied with people and things during the day.</s>
    <s id="1:98">At night, after she turned off the lights and the moonlight lit up the big flowers on the curtains, she could not help but slip into deep thought.</s>
    <s id="1:99">There was a great deal of thinking going on around Peace Lane, but much of it, like sediment, had sunk to the bottom of people's hearts, all the juice squeezed out of them, so that they had solidified and could no longer be stirred up.</s>
    <s id="1:100">Wang Qiyao had not reached this stage.</s>
    <s id="1:101">Her thoughts still had stems, leaves, and flowers, which glimmered in the dark night of Peace Lane.</s>
    <s id="1:102">A Frequent Guest</s>
    <s id="1:103">Among Wang Qiyao's frequent visitors was one Madame Yan, who came quite regularly.</s>
    <s id="1:104">She lived in a townhouse with a private entrance at the end of Peace Lane.</s>
    <s id="1:105">She must have been thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, as her eldest son, an architecture student at Tongji University, was already nineteen.</s>
    <s id="1:106">Her husband had owned a light bulb factory that, since 1949, was jointly operated with the state.</s>
    <s id="1:107">He was now the deputy manager—a mere figurehead, according to Madame Yan.</s>
    <s id="1:108">Madame Yan painted her eyebrows and wore lipstick even on days when she didn't leave the house.</s>
    <s id="1:109">She favored a short green Chinese jacket over a pair of Western-style pants made of cheviot wool.</s>
    <s id="1:110">When they saw her coming, people stopped talking and turned to stare, but she acted as if they did not exist.</s>
    <s id="1:111">Her children did not play with the other kids, and, since her husband was driven everywhere by a chauffeur, few people really knew what he looked like.</s>
    <s id="1:112">There was a high turnover among their servants; in any case, they were not permitted to loiter when they went out for errands, so they, too, appeared aloof.</s>
    <s id="1:113">Every Monday and Thursday Madame Yan would come for a shot of imported vitamins to help her ward off colds.</s>
    <s id="1:114">The first time she saw Wang Qiyao, she was taken aback.</s>
    <s id="1:115">Her clothes, the way she ate, her every move and gesture, hinted of a splendid past.</s>
    <s id="1:116">Madame Yan decided they could be friends.</s>
    <s id="1:117">She had always felt Peace Lane was beneath her.</s>
    <s id="1:118">Her husband, a frugal person, had bought the property at a good price.</s>
    <s id="1:119">In response to her complaints, he had, in bed, promised many times to move them to a house with a garden.</s>
    <s id="1:120">Now that their assets were controlled by the government, they felt lucky simply to be allowed to keep their house.</s>
    <s id="1:121">Still, as long as she lived in Peace Lane, Madame Yan felt like a crane among chickens.</s>
    <s id="1:122">No one there was her equal and, in her eyes, even the neighbors were no better than her servants.</s>
    <s id="1:123">She was therefore delighted to see another woman similarly out of place moving into no. 39.</s>
    <s id="1:124">Without seeking Wang Qiyao's permission, she made herself a regular visitor.</s>
    <s id="1:125">Madame Yan usually showed up in the afternoon sometime after two o'clock, heralded by the fragrance of scented powder and her sandalwood fan.</s>
    <s id="1:126">Most of Wang Qiyao's patients came between three and four o'clock, so they had an hour to kill.</s>
    <s id="1:127">Sitting across from each other in the lazy summer afternoon, they would stifle their yawns and chatter on without fully realizing what they were talking about, as cicadas droned in the parasol tree at the entrance to the longtang.</s>
    <s id="1:128">Wang Qiyao would ladle out some of her chilled plum soup, which they sipped absentmindedly while exchanging gossip.</s>
    <s id="1:129">Then, having thrown off their afternoon sluggishness and cooled off, they would perk up.</s>
    <s id="1:130">Madame Yan did most of the talking while Wang Qiyao listened, but both were equally absorbed in the conversation.</s>
    <s id="1:131">Madame Yan would go on and on, passing from stories about her parents to gossip about her in-laws; actually, all she wanted was to hear herself talk.</s>
    <s id="1:132">As for Wang Qiyao, she listened with her heart and eventually made all business concerning the Yan family her own.</s>
    <s id="1:133">When, once in a while, Madame Yan inquired about Wang Qiyao's family, she always answered in the vaguest terms.</s>
    <s id="1:134">She suspected Madame Yan didn't believe most of what she said, but that was fine—she was free to speculate.</s>
    <s id="1:135">Wang Qiyao would much rather that Madame Yan guessed the truth but left things discreetly unsaid; but Madame Yan, who had to some extent figured out the situation, insisted on asking questions pointblank.</s>
    <s id="1:136">It was her way of testing Wang Qiyao's sincerity.</s>
    <s id="1:137">Wang Qiyao, for her part, wanted to be sincere, but there were some things that simply could not be spoken aloud.</s>
    <s id="1:138">So they went around in circles, one chasing and the other evading, and before they knew it, a grudge had grown up between them.</s>
    <s id="1:139">Fortunately, grudges are no impediment to friendships between women.</s>
    <s id="1:140">The friendships of women are made of grudges: the deeper the grudge, the deeper the friendship.</s>
    <s id="1:141">Sometimes they parted acrimoniously, but would resume their friendship the very next day with a deeper understanding of each other.</s>
    <s id="1:142">One day Madame Yan announced that she wanted to set Wang Qiyao up with someone, but Wang Qiyao declined with a good-humored laugh.</s>
    <s id="1:143">When Madame Yan inquired into the reason, Wang Qiyao simply recounted the scene at the movie theater with the schoolteacher.</s>
    <s id="1:144">Madame Yan laughed out loud but then continued with a straight face, "I'll promise you three things about the guy I want to introduce you to.</s>
    <s id="1:145">One, I'll make sure he's not a teacher; two, that he's still got a head of hair; and three, that he doesn't have asthma."</s>
    <s id="1:146">They both collapsed in laughter, but that was the last time Madame Yan brought up the topic of matchmaking.</s>
    <s id="1:147">They came to a tacit understanding that the subject would not be broached and they would simply let nature take its course.</s>
    <s id="1:148">Both being still young and bright, their sensitivity had not yet been ground down by time, and they quickly understood how each other felt.</s>
    <s id="1:149">Although there was a ten-year difference between them, Madame Yan acted a bit young for her age and Wang Qiyao was more mature, so they were well-suited.</s>
    <s id="1:150">People like them, who become friends at mid-life, tend to keep part of themselves hidden away.</s>
    <s id="1:151">Even Madame Yan, who usually wore her heart on her sleeve, retained certain secrets that she herself might not have understood.</s>
    <s id="1:152">It was not necessary for them to know everything there was to know about each other—a little sympathy went a long way.</s>
    <s id="1:153">And even though Madame Yan was not satisfied, she could bear it and still treat Wang Qiyao as a true friend.</s>
    <s id="1:154">What Madame Yan had was time on her hands.</s>
    <s id="1:155">Her husband left early every morning and did not get home until late at night.</s>
    <s id="1:156">Two of her children were grown, while the third was cared for by a nanny.</s>
    <s id="1:157">She socialized with the wives of other industrialists and businessmen, but this hardly took up all her time.</s>
    <s id="1:158">Dropping by to see Wang Qiyao became part of her daily routine; she sometimes even stayed for dinner, insisting that they simply eat what was already on hand rather than doing anything fancy.</s>
    <s id="1:159">Consequently, they often had leftover rice, heated up again with just a dish of mud snails to go with it.</s>
    <s id="1:160">Wang Qiyao's near-ascetic lifestyle reminded Madame Yan of her own simple, quiet life before marriage, which seemed so long ago.</s>
    <s id="1:161">If a patient came while they were talking, Madame Yan would help by bringing over a chair, getting the medicine out, and collecting the money.</s>
    <s id="1:162">More than once the patient thought the well-dressed woman was Wang Qiyao's younger sister, which caused her to blush with pleasure, as if she were a child being patted on the head by an adult.</s>
    <s id="1:163">Afterward she would in a self-deprecating tone urge Wang Qiyao to get some new clothes and have her hair permed.</s>
    <s id="1:164">She spoke eloquently about how a woman must treasure her youth and beauty, which would disappear before she knew it.</s>
    <s id="1:165">This never failed to touch Wang Qiyao, who, at twenty-five, was indeed watching her youth slip by.</s>
    <s id="1:166">Madame Yan's outfits were always new and fashionable, but that was all she could do to hold on to the tail end of her youth.</s>
    <s id="1:167">At times her appearance startled and touched Wang Qiyao.</s>
    <s id="1:168">There was an innocence about her heavy makeup and also a certain world-weariness, blended together to create a desolate kind of beauty.</s>
    <s id="1:169">Eventually, unable to withstand Madame Yan's blandishments, Wang Qiyao went out and got herself a perm.</s>
    <s id="1:170">The smell of shampoo, lotion, and burning hair was intimately familiar to Wang Qiyao, as was the image of a woman sitting under the hair dryer, one hand holding a magazine, the other extended to be pampered by a manicurist.</s>
    <s id="1:171">The routines of washing, cutting, rolling, perming, drying, and setting had long been imprinted on her mind.</s>
    <s id="1:172">She felt like she had been there just the day before, surrounded by faces she knew.</s>
    <s id="1:173">When the process was completed, the old Wang Qiyao emerged in the mirror—the intervening three years seemed to have been snipped off along with her split ends.</s>
    <s id="1:174">Looking into the mirror, she noted Madame Yan's face, on which was a mixture of astonishment and envy.</s>
    <s id="1:175">As the stylist gave her hair a last-minute adjustment with a hand blower, the expression on Wang Qiyao's face, turning slightly to avoid the hot air with just a soupçon of the spoiled child, belonged to yesteryear.</s>
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