By Helena Haitian Jiang

With its down-to-earth effect, dialect has long been deployed in Chinese fiction. Despite its verisimilitude in portraying real life, dialect undiluted may produce difficulties for non-native readers. Thus, apart from the pure mother-tongue writing pioneered by Han Bangqing in his 1892 novel Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (《海上花列传》), modern Chinese writers have developed a style of composing with modified dialects to appeal to readers of various cultural backgrounds, while embodying in such narratives the specific time and space selected (Zhuang Guicheng, 'The Significance and Limits of Dialect Writing' 方言写作的意义及其限度, 2020).

In his 2013 novel Blossoms (《繁花》), Jin Yucheng blends Shanghai dialect with minimalistic Chinese traditional storytelling when constructing the lives of Shanghainese in the 1960s and 1990s. He might have expunged the dialect's characteristic personal pronouns, but one feature he has retained is its concept of 'wordless' ("不响"), an expression used 'at least ten times a day by every Shanghainese'. As he puts it in his 2017 essay 'On Writing Blossoms' (《繁花》创作谈), 'wordless' ("不响") is the phrase a Shanghainese will reach for 'whenever something needs to be recounted'. Consistent with this concept, the narrative of Blossoms aims only to 'illuminate' what is selected, to record the lives in Shanghai in the two time periods. There is also the purpose, when the traditional, laconic form of storytelling is intentionally rediscovered and reformed, of having 'new wine into old bottles' ("旧瓶新酒") or 'old wine into new bottles' ("新瓶旧酒"), that is, of reviving the silenced narrative traditions, and calling readers' attention back to literary form and its representational effect, to something other than how the plot thrills, or how the language excites. This is where 'wordless' transcends its function as a distinctive means of narrative and becomes the carrier of theme, the witness of the time, place, and people described, and the evoker of people's reconsideration of them.

One manifestation of such an attempt is the novel's efforts to present objects and let them speak their silent language to illuminate what the author aims to describe. Most of these objects appear in the 1960s storyline, which is paradoxically the 'age of deprivation' ("物质匮乏年代"). Firstly, the mundane but treasured childhood items: for A'bao, these are the stamps he collects and covets, for Beidi the piano, for Husheng the model vessels, and for Xiaomao the digests and excerpts of miscellaneous poems. These articles are not mere indicators of the characters' hobbies and inclinations, but already reveal two of the three historical phases concerned in the narrative: the Song dynasty and the Cultural Revolution. This is seen in one specific transitional paragraph in the serried depictions of the characters' actions, in the conversation of the three friends A'bao, Husheng, and Xiaomao while they are on their way to the model store: 'Husheng said, if I only read old books and copied old poems, my father will surely be angry, and insist that I read new books and watch new films. Xiaomao said, It's natural, yours is a revolutionary family. … Husheng said, last time (Shuhua) was (gifting) landscape cards; usually, only the old gentlemen wrote postcards.' ("沪生说，我要是专看旧书，抄旧诗，我爸爸一定会生气的，非要我看新书，新电影。小毛说，革命家庭嘛。……沪生说，上次（姝华）是（送）风景卡片，一般情况，只有老先生写明信片。")

If Husheng is the child of the Cultural Revolution, then Xiaomao and Shuhua are more in favour of the past, the age of judiciousness, brotherly spirit, and aesthetics represented by the Song Dynasty – as Xiaomao comments, 'the Song Dynasty was much better than today' ("宋朝比现在好多了"). But the possibility of such juxtaposition of times and preferences is soon terminated with the disappearance of A'bao's friend Beidi after one of the Red Guards' raids. In the 'wordless' style, this violence is not narrated, but is felt in the description of its aftermath: 'where the piano had been, now there was only a blank wall, and on the floor were four drag marks. The moment granny and Beidi left, the piano moved its rigid hooves and disappeared like a horse' ("现在，钢琴的位置上，只剩一块空白墙壁，地板留下四条拖痕。阿婆与蓓蒂离开的一刻，钢琴移动僵硬的马蹄，像一匹马一样消失了").

Likewise, the change in cultural climate is implied in poetic descriptions of scenery, rather than explicitly voiced, by Shuhua: 'Every time the people of ancient times saw tall pine trees and nice woods, the lumps in their hearts would be momentarily dissolved. Yet, I still feel that the scenery and the sky are all unattractive, that it is all thick gloominess and harsh rain' ("古代人，每趟看见乔松嘉木，心脾困结，一时遣尽，但是我仍然觉得，风景天色，样样不好看，浓阴恶雨"). The substitution of the outdated objects by those representing the new age testifies to the alteration of times and situations experienced by the characters without betraying too much of the characters' stances, much less that of the author's, while preserving vividly the sense of loss and uncertainty.

When the narrative shuffles to the characters' lives in the 1990s – the third phase apart from those represented by the Song Dynasty and Cultural Revolution, the modern age – some more enduring and symbolic objects are recorded by the narrative lens, and some of the items from their childhood are re-evaluated in the protagonists' later moments of epiphany. A'bao meets two French film producers who wish to make a movie based on the lives of people living on the banks of the Suzhou River. Flowing through Shanghai, the river has been a constant presence in the friends' lives, and they have spent much time gazing upon it whilst reciting poetry. In the gentler days of the friends' childhood, when 'the sunlight spread onto the river from the west... floating on the water are straw, rotten bushels, vegetable skins... boats coming and going in the river' ("西晒阳光铺到河面上……水上漂浮稻草，烂蒲包，菜皮……河中船来船往"), Shuhua recalls the lines from a contemporary poem: 'the fine scenery in the dream is fleeting / and then disappears suddenly in the water' ("梦中的美景昙花一现/随之于流水倏忽地消失").  Then during the Cultural Revolution, the river is where 'the waves washed over the corpse's face nonstop' ("水波不间断冲刷死尸面孔"), and darker poetry is offered: 'there is no knowing if it is / the world that has left us / or if we have forgotten her' ("不知是/世界离去了我们/还是我们把她遗忘"). Now, as China opens up to the world, the river becomes the background of the foreigners' fabricated 1930s story of a French factory owner falling in love with a Shanghainese worker. The grownup A'bao points out many of the film's illogical designs, and tells the producers that the real ambience of the river is something more similar to what is described in the folk rhyme 'sending the youth to the west side of the bridge / advising my sister not to keep dogs and chickens / for the dogs would be biting when they are embracing each other / and the chickens would be crowing when they part' ("送郎送到桥堍西/劝姐不养犬与鸡/正逢相抱犬来咬/等到分手鸡要啼").

Just as the changing Suzhou River is a manifestation of the transformation of Chinese society, we also see a somersault of the protagonists' positions, from those of people appreciating the poems, to being those whose lives are captured in the foreigners' artworks as prototypes. The message might be that no one is free from the river of time and situations, and nothing desired can be procured. This is confirmed by A'bao's reflection on his childhood hobby of stamp collecting: 'The collectors, strictly speaking, are psychologically unhealthy, for when seeing that others have good ones, they would immediately become lovesick... till they get their hands onto those good ones. But after feeling happy for a while, they would go out again to forage. It is too anguished, living like this' ("收藏家，严格来讲，心理不健康，眼见别人有好货，立刻生相思病……要弄到手为止。但开心了半天，又出去寻寻觅觅，做人做到这一步，苦了"). What those objects and the collecting hobby inform us is how 'antiques haven't got feet, yet they can run around and live longer than the gods. People are dead in fact, and antiques are living things' ("古董不生脚，可以到处乱跑，寿命比神仙还长。其实人是死的，古董是活物").

Complementing this fact that objects are always scattered, and people, in their pursuit after objects, are embroiled in the same vicissitudes with them, is the realisation that an individual's trajectory through life, and his relationships with others, are just two processes of being silenced, where language and arguments make no difference to the fact that people end up powerless either against their respective fates or severed relationships. If the childhood friends are lost in the tide of time, the political situation of the frantic age, or the flow of time that in the end condemns everyone into their respective finalities, then the relationships in the modern age are described in the novel as something less tangible and more drained of the Song Dynasty fidelity than in the time of the Cultural Revolution, and have to be either maintained by financial reciprocity embodied by frequent treats, or wrested when mercenary concerns infiltrate the ideal relationships based on friendship and love. The stamp metaphor coming to light in A'bao's forties intimates such loss, indicating that attempts to seek lost things and people are futile. As Tao, Husheng's 1990s friend, reflects: 'A key is a person. When a single key is merged into other key rings, the condition would not be the same; more keys, more friction, louder sounds, and things are more complicated, irritating. In addition, the key ring plays a decisive role; the steel ring is too strong, perhaps only in a plane crash, when the ring lands from a high altitude, would it break, and the keys scattered' ("钥匙就是人。单把钥匙，并入其他钥匙圈里，状况就不一样，钥匙越多，摩擦就多，声音响得多，事情就复杂，烦。另外，钥匙圈起了决定作用，钢制圆圈，过于牢固，也许只有飞机失事，圆圈高空落地，才会破裂，钥匙四散").

Contrary to the stability of objects, human connections are tenuous. Xiaomao, in their youth, suddenly busts up with Husheng and A'bao, breaching the Song spirit of staunchness that his Kungfu master had also advocated. Husheng becomes the one who is solicitous to this spirit he once denounced as 'outmoded', regretting that 'it might have been better if we were sworn brothers' ("如果是结拜兄弟，也许就好一些"). As A'bao sighs: 'people would change; when the situations change, everything would change' ("人是要变的，情况变了，一切会变"). The prevision of everyone's ultimate 'wordless' status is clear: they end up in discrete ways for reasons incomprehensible to others, and others can speak nothing to either save the relationships or explain the losses. This process of growing up into the modern age of mercenary concerns might be a microcosmic, mild, less perceptible re-enactment of what has happened in the Cultural Revolution, the session of separations and downfalls, when the situation deteriorates to a degree that even 'the dragonfly eats its tail, now one can only take care of himself, care for his own business; the situation is chaotic... ("蜻蜓吃尾巴，现在只能自顾自，管好自家，市面乱……"). It seems impossible now to adhere to Song Dynasty values, where 'it is solely on the word "staunchness" that one's conduct is based; one should help his brothers' ("做人单凭一个'义'字，要帮兄弟"). When the protagonists have grown up into the modern age of numerous but fleeting liaisons, they have to comprehend how living is pretty much like being in a constant state of revolution,  where all relationships boil down to 'fighting people; interpersonal relationships rely mainly on mutual smelling to see each other's temperament' ("斗人，人跟人之间，主要靠相互闻味道相互看脾气"), while life culminates in 'independently born, independently die. People can't be mutually understood, the good and evil affairs on earth no longer worth a laugh, life is a desolate journey' ("独立出生，独立去死。人和人无法相通，人间的佳恶情态，已经不值一笑，人生是一次荒凉的旅行"). In either case, communication seems pointless for the novel itself included, narrative seems quite a belated act; what happens, however tactful the sense of 'present' is contrived, is a process of recounting and re-creation. On the other hand, the silence left is not void, for when explanations are skimmed, real life emerges.

Being, after all, a modern story focusing on constructing people's worldly lives, the novel thus employs the dialect phrase and the narrative style connoting the 'wordless' state to portray how people end up disconnected, their lives interrelating futilely, then cleft apart because of the social environment or different purposes. However, by the narrative 'wordlessness', Blossoms gives the lives of each character almost equal weight, when there is not a central character whose voice monopolises the narrative; and a kind of desperate discretion is given back to his characters not only from the author but from the fate and time that are seemingly manipulating them. A'bao's material and emotional struggles move him to declare that 'the Bodhisattva does not care at all, [she is just] looking at the lotus flowers in the garden of heaven. Each strand of the lotus roots... is fully hung with people who are desperately climbing upward, ...having no regard with each other at all... falling back down into the dark mud' ("菩萨根本是不管的，[只是]看看天堂花园的荷花。一根一根荷花根须，……全部吊满了人，拼命往上爬，……毫不相让……重新跌到黑暗泥泞里"); yet this is countered by a different interpretation by Xiaomao on his deathbed: 'God is wordless, like everything's up to me' ("上帝不响，像一切全由我定").

Though the resolutions of the various characters' storylines seem to be trudging back to the irreconcilable losses, and the autonomy given back to the protagonists fruitless, there is yet this one appeasement that every life has been lived and witnessed. As the French expound to Husheng, 'films are like shrubs… dense. Short, connected, separated, all will do' ("电影比如灌木……密密麻麻，短小的，连在一起，分开的，都可以"). Blossoms, by its reserved narrative showing the many lamentations in individual life and the many intersecting lives, is at least justifying Xiaomao's dying statement that 'people of lower reaches must be hollow. I don't believe in this. I'm not hollow' ("下流人必是虚空，我这句话不相信，我不虚空"). Neither positive nor negative, when Husheng and A'bao promenade from their childhood to modern Shanghai, the two friends weird in others' eyes for their celibacy, their identities ripped away from the revolutionary and the revolutionised families, Blossoms is successful in objectively illuminating the lives of a generation.

Among the rare authorial traces is one comment on the store where objects confiscated in the Cultural Revolution are gathered: 'Searching for one's own or his family and friends' belongings, when seeing, it is certainly impossible to ransom, but you can keep a close eye on them... Treasure hunting is the eternal theme of the world.' ("寻觅自家或亲朋的家当，看到了，当然不可能赎回，但可以紧盯不放……寻宝，是世界永恒的主题。") What Blossoms tries to do, with its reserved narrative, might be to plough at the intricate intersections and scattered events in ordinary lives, and present to us their subsoils, leaving with us the many possible meanings in literature and life.

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