Read "Love in a Fallen City" by Eileen Chang online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
SHANGHAI'S clocks were set an hour ahead so the city could "save daylight," but the Bai family said: "We go by the old clock." Ten o'clock to them was eleven to everyone else. Their singing was behind the beat; they couldn't keep up with the hugin of life.
When the hugin wails on a night of ten thousand lamps, the bow slides back and forth, drawing forth a tale too desolate for words-oh! why go into it? The tale of the hugin should be performed by a radiant entertainer, two long streaks of rouge pointing to her exquisite nose as she sings, as she smiles, covering her mouth with her sleeve. but here it was just Fourth Master Bai sunk in darkness, sitting alone on a ramshackle balcony and playing the huqin.