Love in a Fallen City

In Love in a Fallen City, the mirror is used as a symbol of self-reflection. It indicates how characters see themselves or highlights aspects of their circumstances. As the translator Karen Kingsbury notes in her introduction, the mirror “recall[s] and restor[es] an ancient, anterior sense of selfhood in the midst of modernist, wartime rupture and dislocation” (xvii). For instance, in “Aloeswood Incense,” Weilong catches sight of herself smiling in a mirror after spending a pleasant afternoon with George Qiao. When she sees herself smiling and realizes what she has done, “she quickly wipe[s] off the smile” (46). In “Love in a Fallen City,” Liusu watches herself dancing to the huqin, which is thereby transformed: “the huqin no longer sound[s] like a huqin, but like strings and flutes playing a solemn court dance” (121). Engaging in modern forms of dancing is how she secures the attention of the wealthy Fan Liuyuan, but when reflected in the mirror, her dance is shown to actually be a classical, “solemn” form of courtship and an example of how Liusu demonstrates both Tradition and Modernity in a Changing Society.

In “Red Rose, White Rose,” the mirror is used in a different way. When a mirror shows Zhenbao a reflection of the sex worker he has had sex with in Paris, he sees that she has “a cold, severe, masculine face, the face of an ancient warrior (259).” This sight shakes him and drives him to “create a world that was ‘right,’ and it carry it with him wherever he went” (259). In this instance, the mirror sparks self-reflection through the sight of another person.