One of the reasons it’s such a pity that we only have this abbreviated translation of City of the Queen is that the novel inevitably invites comparison with The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (長恨歌) by Wang Anyi (王安憶) [reviewed in Taipei Times on Aug. 31, 2008]. That book also looked at the history of one modern Chinese city, Shanghai, via the life of one of its female inhabitants and her lovers. I’ve only read this shortened version of City of the Queen, but I have to say that The Song of Everlasting Sorrow appears to
be undoubtedly the finer book. But then its aims, though superficially similar, are actually different. Wang’s novel is like Proust — atmospheric, sophisticated, implicitly claiming the status of literature. Shih’s, by contrast, is like Zola — realistic, shocking, well-researched and aspiring to a kind of higher journalism. There’s no question of influence in either direction as Wang’s book was published in Chinese in 1995, at roughly the same time as Shih’s trilogy.
The problem with this shortened English edition is that the narrative falls off badly towards the end, becoming a series of largely inconsequential moments. Goldblatt and Lin note that originally Shih’s third volume was narrated in the first person, but that this was changed, presumably to give the one-volume reduction a degree of uniformity. But was this really necessary?
The translators, possibly aware that they may be open to criticism, also pointedly state that Shih approved “both the editing and the translation.” Even so, doubts remain. Was the balance between historical detail and fictional narrative the same, for instance, in the three-volume original as it is here, where history appears to overweigh the story line at several points?
City of the Queen now deserves a full-length translation, especially in the light of the translators’ assertion that to their knowledge this novel is the only one in existence that surveys the last 100 years of Hong Kong’s history from a Hong Kong resident’s perspective.
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