An Old and Established Name

老字号

老舍

Manager Zhou even went a step further; if a customer bought one foot of material, he’d give him an extra one free and throw in a foreign doll for the kids. And now all the apprentices were expected to joke and make small talk with the customers. (P25-26)

He (Xin Dezhi) had to learn tricks to be employed in measuring the cloth - he was even expected to use his finger on the sly to pinch back a bit of the cloth before cutting it! (P27)

Then he issued an order: “When a customer comes in, show him the Japanese goods first. None of the other places dare to sell them, so we might as well make hay while the sun shines. If a farmer comes in, tell him straight out that it is Japanese cloth; they’ll buy it anyway. But if someone from the city comes in, then say it’s German material.” (P27)

The contrasts between “old” and “new”, “tradition” and “modernization” in both essays interest me. In “An Old and Established Name”, Manager Zhou brings a series of changes to a traditional old clothing store. Many of them aim to improve the old store’s management, while some are tricks on how to deal with customers. These “reformation” approaches do increase the store’s profits, but in some cases, the profits are gained at the cost of cheating customers. Considering the essay’s historical background, when China was going through dramatic changes under the influence of the West, I can feel the author’s hesitant and sometimes conflicting attitudes towards these changes. On one hand, he embraces the changes in the hope that they would make the country better. On the other hand, he expresses his concern about the harms of the changes. I think in “Spring Silkworms”, Mao Dun shows the same concern and a hint of uncertainty for the future. Interestingly, the development of society is like a clock pendulum. People at Lao She and Mao Dun’s time expected new things, while at the present, people show a nostalgic feeling to “old things”. I have been to many old and traditional restaurants in Beijing established when Lao She was alive, like Yuhuatai, and they are still making good profits before the pandemic for their established name.

These two essays were both written at a time when the whole country was experiencing the “new culture campaign” and people were expecting modernity to replace the old traditions, while today’s literature shows a nostalgic vibe. Why is it? How could we understand the conflict between “old” and “new” in reading literature?