Runaway Love

Joe Basalla

Zhang Jie's story begins with Shanshan questioning her feelings for Qiao Lin, her "suitor," and contemplating the possibility of them one day getting married and whether or not it would be a good idea. While pondering these thoughts, Shanshan tells the story of her mother, Zhong Yu, and her mother's lost love, a married man, she barely knew, but frequently romanticized about. Shanshan, though she rarely witnessed her mother's feelings for the married man, read all about them in a journal her mother kept entitled Love Must Not Be Forgotten. Each entry was filled with "searing [expressions] of a heart afflicted with grief and love (5)."

The journal along with Shanshan's mother's advice led Shanshan to the realization that her happiness would not be limited by societal constraints and that she would choose who and what she thought was best for herself. That kind of an attitude indicates the change going on in Chinese culture at the time. As the Cultural Revolution, the period in China from 1966-1976, came to an end, the rise of individualism began to gain acceptance slowly. This period is represented in Love Must Not Be Forgotten as somewhat of a "transition" phase.

I consider this to be a transition phase and not full fledged individuality or modernity because both main characters, Zhong Yu especially, though they longed for their true love, seemed to, at the same time, run away from them. They make love an unattainable ideal and place it on a pedestal far above their reach. It is my belief that they do this because they are afraid of change and the unknown, which is common in most all cultures and far from being cowardice.

Zhong Yu, though she spent countless hours and nights, romanticizing about the married man, never worked up the courage to express her feelings because she was afraid of what society would think about her becoming involved with a married man. In my opinion, this is partial proof that China at the time is not in a state of modernity; she is still constrained by traditional Chinese society. Her daughter, though she is not tied to tradition like her mother, is still a victim of love, but in a different way.

Though one could argue that Shanshan's proclamations that she probably would not get married are proof that she sees herself as an individual, able to define her own destiny and live her own life, I see these as expressions of fear. She wants eternal or true love just like her mother, but like her mother she does not know what to do with these feelings. For her it seems as though it would be easier to suppress them than go on a search for her true love. I believe her actions show a person given new opportunities, but unable to deal with them. Instead of seizing the opportunities granted to her by a changing society, she gets scared and seems to give up on the ideal of true love when it's most important. A time in which she can actually act on her feelings and be happy without feeling as though she is doing something society deems to be wrong.

Sixty-Four Broken Legs

Andrea Brown

Zhang Jie's story, "Love Must Not Be Forgotten" contains a large amount of blatant social commentary, responding to the pressures that the youth of China had been experiencing for many decades before the story was published in 1980: torn feelings about whether to submit to traditional ideas of practical marriage or to express more individualistic, Westernized opinions on a marriage based on romantic love. Because the author is a woman, the narrator is an unmarried woman, and the story focuses on the narrator's mother and her suffering that stems from her social inability to openly love a certain man, it is easily assumed that the author is advocating an advancement of women's rights in light of individual choice and freedom. Indeed she is, but the story delves beyond the sole focus on the woman's perspective of true love and marriage. "I don't consider myself a feminist. My work opposes all social injustice," Zhang Jie says of herself in a brief biography written in the magazine Beijing Scene (2000). Though the author's gender, as well as the female perspective within the story, is important to the development of this fictional work, it is for all people and both sexes that she speaks.

Zhang Jie's quote about not being a feminist is interesting, because her idea of what defines a feminist is clearly different than my idea of it. When the story begins, the narrator mentions her suitor Qiao Lin whose physique resembles that of Myron's "The Discus Thrower." Though he is an attractive man, she cannot decide whether she even likes him. She talks of the quiet and childish way he speaks, making humor out of presenting him as perhaps less intelligent than the woman of the story. This makes the woman the subject and the man the object, which is reminiscent of such narration in Ding Ling's "Miss Sophie's Diary," where the "tall young man" is admired for his attractiveness but not much more. Zhang Jie, in my opinion, is clearly taking a feminist perspective through her narration in this part of the story. The narrator wonders whether there could be something "finer and more solid than law or morality to bind [them] together" in their marriage (2). Her questioning of her love for Qiao Lin and her expression of wanting more than a practical marriage shows that Zhang Jie is advocating a woman's right to define romantic love and marriage in her own terms.

Zhang Jie is a feminist if she believes men and women should experience social equality. She does talk from a female perspective, but she does not completely ignore men's feelings toward love and marriage. Though we do not know for certain how the man whom the narrator's mother loved so dearly felt in comparison, we do get a sense that he did love her and was also suffering. He presented her a gift of Chekhov works, without hardly knowing her, which is interpreted by all (those within the story as well as the reader) as a "token of love" (6). When referring to the latest novel by Comrade Zhong Yu (or the mother of the narrator), this mysterious man says, "The hero might also have been in love, you know, only denied his love in order to preserve another person's happiness" (6). Implied by this quote, this man seems to want to believe in true romantic love as an individualist sees it (for oneself, not for the sake of family or society), but traditional ideals of marriage were once too confounding that he succumbed to what he saw as his social duty. Now, however, when he scans Zhong Yu's every literary work, "he would never have understood why life had turned out this way" (7). Both man and woman suffered equally in their desire to love each other openly.

The most striking quote within "Love Must Not Be Forgotten" is at the end, when the narrator says, "I feel like shouting, 'Stay out of our lives! Allow us to wait patiently until that right person appears, and even if it never happens, don't make us rush blindly into marriage!'" (10). Zhang Jie speaks through this narrator, but is representing an entire generation of Chinese people, men and women, who hold individualistic views on romantic love and marriage, who want to avoid lives of suffering forced upon them by tradition and the state, and who want to experience the freedom of personal choice.

Follow Your Heart

Emily Swoveland

In traditional China, women had very specific roles to fill, and regarding marriage, there was very little option. Marriage was inevitable. Zhang Jie's Love Must Not Be Forgotten, however, shows China's progression in the women's movement, calling into question the very notion of love and the reasoning behind marriage.

The narrator of Love Must Not Be Forgotten finds herself rejecting her suitor, Qiao Lin, despite the fact that he is a "very proper suitor" (1). She rejects love and marriage as traditional China defined it, in terms of marital vows being economic transactions and love being convenience and the fulfilling of "only legal and moral duties" (2). The narrator doesn't want to settle for these traditionally accepted behaviors. She wants to find "something finer and more solid than law or morality to mind [her and a man] together" (2). She embraces individualism and fulfilling self desires and self needs.

The narrator's promotion of waiting for true love, a love that satisfies more than just marital obligations, a love completing the soul, mimics the drive of women to catch up with the advancements occurring in other aspects of Chinese culture. China had been undergoing numerous changes in governments, traditions, beliefs, and the economy, but women had yet to make any advances. Zhang Jie, being a female in China, wrote about what she knew: the role of a woman. To her, a woman's obligation to marry was one of the few remaining ties to traditionalism. A modern woman, she was ready to embrace individualism and free choice.

Zhang Jie contrasts the narrator's desire for true love and her willingness to wait for love despite constant critique with the situation of her mother's "lover". Her mother's "lover," a married man, represents tradition and obligation. He marries a woman to help support her family due to the untimely death of her father. He stays with her despite his suggested love for the narrator's mother. Because Zhang Jie shows the mother's desperation over this married man, she makes it clear that marriage for convenience and love without passion are undesirable, causing suffering and personal torment in those who believe in true love.

The narrator's confidence in her decision to postpone marriage until she finds her true love shows the desire of Chinese women to move forward to embrace individuality and self choice. Had the narrator's mother found peace within her yearning, Zhang Jie would be seen as promoting obligatory and loveless marriages. However, the mother's discontent dismisses that possibility, and the daughter's attitude and pride in accepting such a lifestyle removed from marital obligation show the desire of not just one fictional character, but of the women of a modernizing China to move forward from their traditional roles and fate as wives.

The Restrictions Put on True Love

Natasha Moyes

In the late 1970s, after fiction dealing with themes of romantic love had been banned from 1966 to 1976, stories dealing with this very theme of "true love" became widespread in China. Reminiscent of the attitudes of young people during the earlier May Fourth Movement, young people in China during this period were especially fond of these stories that questioned the tradition and norms of Chinese society, specifically those having to do with the practice of marriage. Zhang Jie's controversial story entitled "Love Must Not Be Forgotten" boldly discusses, as shown by her diary entrances, one woman's innermost feelings for a man who she greatly loved, but does not marry. Although many people criticized Zhang Jie's story, claiming that China's current attitudes towards marriage did not need changing and that "idyllic love is an illusion and that its pursuit can cause suffering," many others argued that marriages that lack love were an extremely prevalent problem in China. One critic, Dai Qing, agreeing with the latter claim, stated, "Why should we tolerate this condition? What is true morality- a marriage based on love or one that maintains socially required appearances?"

One of the main characters within "A Kiss," the narrator's mother, eloped with a man against her family's edict. Zhang Jie's entire story is dedicated to dealing with the implications of this decision. Before deciding to marry, while contemplating her future life, the narrator's mother claims, "We could lead our lives the way they do in most households, having children and staying with each other, strictly through loyalty as defined by law…treating marriage as a means of perpetuating the family, or as a business transaction…Since so many people have made a go of it that way, who am I to break to tradition?" As the reader reads this statement, he/she immediately wishes that the author would have chosen the more adventurous path and had the courage to rebel against tradition. The marriage that the narrator's mother enters into and speaks of seems to be a dreary one void of passion and love for the other person. As shown by the way that she speaks to her daughter about this marriage, it seems to be a commitment that the narrator's mother regrets and wishes she had never entered into. It is not for her daughter's father that the narrator's mother feels love for, but for another man from her past, a government official or a cadre. However, even after she is divorced, the narrator's mother is unable to marry her lover since he is married. In one of her entries in her journal, that her daughter finds after her mother has died, the narrator's mother writes, "We have pledged together to forget each other. But I've cheated on that pledge. I haven't forgotten you, and I somehow feel you haven't forgotten me, either. We've merely deceived each other, while trying to hide our torment. It's not that I've wanted to deceive you. I've tried so hard to forget, I really have." These are the kinds of emotions that should make up a marriage, those of deep love and passion, not an absence of true emotions that simply comply with ancient tradition. The closing statement, "Stay out of our lives! Allow us to wait patiently until that right person appears, and even if it never happens, don't make us rush blindly into marriage! Living alone is not such a terrible thing. Perhaps it's just a sign that life in our society is evolving, advancing…" perfectly sums up the narrator's mother's views of the way that marriage should be. However, the narrator's mother regrettably took a path in marriage that she did not truly want, but could not change or fix.

No matter what their opinions were on the matter of marriage in China, people praised Zhang Jie for daring to raise this issue in her writing and for presenting it in an in-depth, honest, and provocative way. Zhang Jie demonstrates, through the relationship of the narrator's mother and her lover, that true love that ignites one's soul must not go to waste. She encourages the young people of China to marry for a love that they deeply feel, not to please someone else or to comply with what tradition mandates as socially acceptable.

Sacrificing Oneself to Preserve Another or Unnecessary Unhappiness?

Izabella Redzisz

Zhang Jie's short story Love Must Not Be Forgotten, a brief retelling of a mother's lost love, speaks to the issue of marriage, and exactly how one should go about finding the right person for them, and whether finding that person is even possible at all. It is obvious that, when discussing her partner of two years, Shanshan is not as in love or as happy as she could be, but may be settling, simply due to a fear, which I think nearly every person has, of not being able to find what we're looking for. Though her mother's story of finding her true love but not being able to have him is quite different from Shanshan's, the situation of each woman brings about the question of exactly how selfish we are "allowed" to be, when it comes to love and our own happiness?

The prelude to Zhang Jie's piece discusses the youth of China during the late 1970s, in which it is stated that, "Most young people, of course, wanted both idealism and materialism, true love as well as "sixty four legs", an idea and truth which, in my opinion, is still universal. In societies all over the world, of the past as well as those which are current, people become from a very early age, in a way, obsessed with the proposition of finding love. According to the critic Xiao Lin, "idyllic love is an illusion, and its pursuit can cause suffering", a statement which I find to be very true. From an early age, people, particularly women, essentially base their entire lives and their measurement of happiness around whether or not they have found love, the usual consensus being that one's life does not feel entirely complete without it. In nearly all societies, the most common way for people to express their love for each other is through marriage. But, in a place such as China, marriage was, at the time, no more an expression of love than a social appearance. When speaking of the doubts she is having about her partner, Shanshan says "Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered thinking about all this. We could lead our lives the way they do in most households, having children and staying with each other, strictly through loyalty as defined by law," a statement which, due to its truth, is daunting, if not fear-inducing. Even today, when most marriages occur with freedom of choice, so many couples stay together not because they love each other, but because they believe it is the right thing to do. How can we truly weigh what is more important in a situation like that? Are we morally obligated to do what's "right", or should our primary loyalty be to ourselves and our own happiness?

Shanshan's mother states further on in the story that "when people are young, they don't necessarily know what they want or need in life. They can even get married just because everyone's pushing them to. It's only when you're older a bit more mature that you really understand what you need. But by that time, you'll have done things you'll regret so much your heart will ache. You'd pay any price for the chance to start over," an incredibly poignant assertion. It is obvious that one of this woman's greatest regrets in life is not pursuing her true love, though that act was in the name of preserving someone else's happiness. How can one gauge who is more deserving of going through such pain? Was it better for her, in the long run, to live with such a completely consuming pain in order to preserve the man she loves, (and that of his wife) or should she have done anything in her power to be with him, for the sake of her own happiness? I suppose that this woman has, for her love, provided the ultimate sacrifice-herself, which can be seen as both noble and, frankly, somewhat stupid. Though her situation is obviously far more complicated than I am giving credit for, it seems as though so many people go through life settling for something, rather than trying to attain what they truly want. Another question that arises out of this discussion, however, is whether or not we even really need love to be happy. It is universally assumed that to one person, there is another half, without which we cannot be complete, ultimately driving us into a life of loneliness, emptiness and despair. However, is the real problem that we, as humans, are turning to and relying on this idea of and potential for love to fill some kind of void, that we should be working on filling ourselves?

Is there such a thing as eternal love? Some, like Shanshan, believe so; her mother is the perfect example. Love Must Not be Forgotten, not only is the title to Zhang Jie's story, but it is also the name to a treasured piece of work written by Shanshan's mother, Zhong Yu. It was a story of her unspoken love for someone she never even spent nearly 24 hours with or given an innocent hand shake to. Though the man she deeply longed for was married, his feelings for her were mutual; you could feel it between them. They have always loved each other, but couldn't act on these feelings, they had to admire one another from afar and wait till their time to be together came.

Zhong Yu married young and had a daughter with a man she never loved and who never loved her. They eventually separated which left Shanshan to question love and marriage. "If you can't decide what you want in a man, I think staying single is better than marrying foolishly" were the words of wisdom from Shanshan's mother. Zhong Yu never married again which made Shanshan pity her mother being alone all the time. Though Zhong Yu was single, she still believed in love but Shanshan didn't understand – until she read her mothers' story.

Shanshan was nearing the dangerous age where she may become "unmarriageable." But she had a suitor named Qiao Lin who was a very attractive man that every woman wanted. What else could she ask for? Well, maybe for him to talk. All he could say was "good" or "bad": Shanshan wanted more out of love. After her mother's death, her mother wished to have all her stories burned, but Shanshan couldn't part with her story of her mother's true love. Shanshan in a way envied what her mother found, even though she was never with him; she was blessed because she felt true love, and Shanshan wanted that – not someone who just looked good on the outside. Zhong Yu knew one day they would be together finally and nothing would break them apart. Even as Zhong Yu lay dying, she wrote her last words longing to go to heaven to be with him.

In the end, we do not know what happens with Shanshan and Qiao Lin – all that we are left with are Shanshans thoughts. She feels that living alone is a sign that life in their society is evolving; no one should be rushed into a marriage just because of culture or tradition. Though people will think differently of you, and maybe exclude you thinking there is something wrong with you, it will be worth it – waiting for true love in any form. Shanshan was proud of who her mother was and respected how moral she remained regarding her feelings for a married man. She stayed loyal to her feelings, mourned when he passed away, and wished everyday to be with him without hurting anyone's feelings.