你是个不夜城

你是个不夜城
钟瑞玲
新加坡
2021
王利欣 特邀作品
70年代,我还是个孩子的时候,妈妈开车送我上学放学时,经常播放周璇的盒式磁带。她最喜欢的地方之一是夜上海。那一定是我人生中与上海的第一次“邂逅”。小时候听这首歌,完全不知道上海是什么样子,也不知道歌词是什么意思,我想象着一个充满活力的城市,在周旋唱歌的豪华夜总会里,人们随着音乐摇摆舞,后来我长大后才发现周璇在夜店唱这的这首歌《长相思》中的场景是真实存在的。尽管我意识到这首歌实际上是对夜总会歌手生活的无奈表达了难过之情,但这首歌本身激起了我对上海的美好想象,它在 1930 年代至 40 年代拥有华丽的装饰艺术建筑,只有纽约和巴黎等其他令人兴奋的城市才能与之匹敌,而今天的上海理所当然仍然是生机勃勃的不夜城。

The City that Never Sleeps
Kelley Cheng
Singapore
2021
William Harald Wong
Specially invited poster
In the 70s, when I was a little kid, my mum used to play the cassette tapes of Zhou Xuan when she drives me to and from school. One of her favourite was Shanghai at Night. That must be my first "encounter" in life with Shanghai. Listening to the song as a kid without any slightest notion of how Shanghai is like nor what the lyrics mean, I imagine a vibrant city, in a posh nightclub where Zhou Xuan was singing and people are swinging and dancing to the music, which later grew up to realize there was really such a scene in Everlasting longing for each other starring Zhou Xuan where she sang this song in a nightclub. Even though I realized the song is actually quite sad about the reluctant life of a nightclub singer, but still, the song itself brings to mind my beautiful imagination of Shanghai, grand as it was in the 1930s - 40s with its gorgeous Art Deco buildings, a vibrancy matched only by other exciting cities like New York and Paris, and the Shanghai today continues to be the vibrant nocturnal city it was borne to be.