Packed like sardines (idiom)

Recently I went on a trip to Hong Kong. It was a short trip of only three days, as what we often call, 走馬看花 (zou3 ma3 kan4 hua), to look at flowers while riding on the horseback. What I got was only passing glances and superficial impressions.

Like any other big cities in the world, there’re big crowds of people on the downtown streets. Moving in the city is like moving in a stream of people. On the overpass, in the subway, on the way to the ferryboat, you’re always moving among people walking in two directions, most of which without much expressions and many of which with their earphones on. No wonder in Chinese we’ll use a lot of water-related idioms to describe what it is like with crowds of people or vehicles moving around, such as 川流不息(chuan liu2 bu4 xi2), and 水洩不通 (shui3 xie4 bu4 tong), where 川is  river whereas水, water.

Another expression for such jostling each other in a crowd would be 摩肩接踵(mo2 jian jie zhong3), literally meaning touching (摩, 接) each other’s shoulders肩and heels踵.

One morning when moving among the stream, however, a poem I read in college, some twenty years ago, flashed into my mind. It’s Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” in 1911:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The textbook I read said this poem was a mimic of Japanese haiku, which is actually very Chinese. With those faces approaching, I imagined countless petals blossoming in front of mine.

I used to think Taiwan was a crowded place but when I saw those clusters of uprising buildings in Hong Kong, I realized how “big” Taichung, the city I’m living in, is comparatively. Closely they are standing very neatly to each other like fish scales or teeth of a comb. That’s what 鱗次櫛比(lin2 ci4 jie2 bi3) means. Spiderman will be thrilled swinging among them, I think. Perfect playground for him.

While watching the old buildings on the hill, I couldn’t help recalling those characters living in the stories told by Eileen Chang. Yes, this is a city where people are packed like sardines. Perhaps that’s why 范柳原(fan4 lie3 yuan2) and 白流蘇(bai2 lie2 su) could manage to meet each other in “Love in a Falling City.” And as a tram passed by the bus I was on, I seemed to be hearing the jingling sounds that make the background of so many of her stories. I began to realize that I love Hong Kong for the sake of Eileen Chang, not for anything else.

走馬看花=走马看花

水洩不通=水泄不通

鱗次櫛比=鳞次栉比

白流蘇=白流苏