red and white roses

text taken from 张爱玲 --红玫瑰与白玫瑰 (English translation in the reader comment section below)

也 许每一个男子全都有过这样的两个女人，至少两个。娶了红玫瑰，久而久之，红的变了墙上的一抹蚊子血，白的还是床前明月光。娶了白玫瑰，白的便是衣服上的一 粒饭粘子，红的却是心口上的一颗朱砂痣。

comment 1 from the internet:

不得不佩服张爱玲短短几句就表明了男人的劣根性，亲爱的JOANNE你说的太好了，不是只有男人可以选择红玫瑰和 白玫瑰，我们是自己的，不是别人的红玫瑰和白玫瑰。可笑的是在选择别人成为红玫瑰和白玫瑰的时候自己也站在了被选择的角色中，男人女人啊，在你认定那个你 心目中的朱砂痔时说不定你已经成为对方的饭粘子了！

comment 2 from the internet:

Saw a classic movie Casablanca yesterday. Have to say, I am not a big fan. However, every time when Rick calls IIsa "kid", it deeply touches my heart. The kid, yeah, the kid..I can remember one quote from the movie "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine".

I still believe all people have two great loves. Ingrid Bergman has two in the movie. I think every one including myself has/will have two great loves --- a simple one, and a complicated one; a dreaming one, and a real one; the one you can get, and the one you can't never reach. But the question is where has mine gone? Have I found any?

One name came to my mind, Eileen Chang (Zhang ai ling，張愛玲), a famous Chinese writer. Her works frequently deal with the tensions between men and women in love. One of my favorite her works is The Red Rose and the White Rose(紅玫瑰與白玫瑰). At the beginning of the book, she wrote:

In Zheng-bao's life, there are two women. He calls one his White Rose, one his Red Rose. One is a pristine wife. One is a passionate lover. Most people tend to separate "pristine" and "passionate" into two categories.

Perhaps there are two women like these in every man's life, at least two. Marry the Red Rose, as time goes by, the redness becomes a mosquito's blood smeared on the wall, the whiteness remains the bright moonbeam that shines in front of your bed. Marry the White Rose, the whiteness is a kernel of rice carelessly stuck to your shirt, but the redness becomes a scarlet birthmark burnt on your heart.