I am sixty-eight years old and a worker at Yantai Plastics Factory No. 3. He is a member of the Yantai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Standing Committee of the Patriotic Catholic Association of Shandong Province.
My hometown is Anchaozhuang, southwest of Tai'an City. Because of her handicaps, my mother married my father, who had only seven points of land in the family, and after marriage, because she could not maintain her life, she fled to Yantai and gave birth to me in December 1913. After seven or eight years of mixing outside, my father fell ill and could not make ends meet, and returned to his hometown. I had an older sister who was two years older than me, and in 1924, when I was eleven years old, my mother had just given birth to my little sister, and my father was too ill to pay for medical treatment and died. The mother and the three sisters, too poor to eat, made a living begging for food. The two houses we lived in were in a dilapidated state, there was no money to repair, and the orphans and widows could not stand the bullying of their uncles, so my mother crossed her heart and led us to Jinan on March 28, 1928, to escape the wilderness. Walking to the White Horse Mountain, we encountered the Northern Expeditionary Army and the warlord Zhang Zongchang's army fighting, shells flew overhead, and there were many dead bodies lying in the mess on the road, and my mother led us to walk quickly while praying: "God bless." When they walked not far from Jinan, they encountered Japanese soldiers and attacked the Northern Expeditionary Army, which had just entered Jinan. Our faces were dirty and we were in tatters, and when we walked to the Hongjialou Catholic Church, the foreigners liked to tell them to go to the Dongguan Convent, and my mother said to me, "That's not the place we go, with my breath, we won't enter that hospital." "He led the three sisters to beg for food and beg along the street with their broken hands during the day, and stayed in the small mud hut where the two armies were fighting at night. When I encountered the swastika, I would distribute relief food, and I also went to the main point. It lasted for two years. It wasn't until the sixteen-year-old sister got married and received an eighty-yuan "bride price" that she rented a small house with coal and made a home. That year, my mother suffered from dysentery, sweating (malaria), bedridden, my little sister and I were skinny and skinny, the bride price money was slowly spent, helpless, my mother asked my sister to find an Oriental car, pulled her, took me and my sister, and defected to the Dongguan Catholic Convent. The foreign nuns sent my mother to the poor people's hospital, my little sister to the children's house, and I to the orphanage, all three of which were in one compound. At that time, there were more than 20 patients in the poor hospital, more than 130 orphans in the orphanage, and more than 30 children under the age of 5 or 6 in the children's house.
My sister's mother-in-law's family also lives in Dongguan, on the same road as the nunnery, about a mile apart, my sister sometimes makes some food to send to my mother, my little sister and I watch my mother lie in bed all day, my mother cries, and we both cry. The mother struggled for more than a month, and when she saw that she could not do it, she said to the foreign nun, "Leave these two children to you!" His uncle came to his hometown, don't give it to him." Within a few days my mother died.
When I was in my hometown, my sister was weak and sickly, my sister was small, and I did all the heavy work and tiring work at home. When I arrived at the orphanage at the age of fifteen, I was asked to do everything by making shoes, sewing clothes, and taking care of the young orphans. During this time, the nuns taught me to chant and told me about the "Ten Commandments of God" and the "Four Rules of the Church". The following year, when I officially joined the religion, I underwent "holy baptism", and after the priest finished reading the sutra, he poured "holy water" on my forehead, indicating that the "original sin" and "this sin" were washed away. After being baptized, he became a full believer and did everything according to the requirements of the Church. When I was eighteen, a nun surnamed Zhang assigned me to work in the dormitory.
At that time, there was a rule in the orphanage that when a girl reached the age of seventeen or eighteen, she was designated by the hospital to marry a man, and she could not choose to see the designated man on the eve of the marriage or on the night. When I was eighteen, the dean also found me a man I hadn't met and got engaged. One day, a nun surnamed Zhang said to me, "Look at you such a good child, be a nun!" What does it mean to get married?! "Think about it yourself, but it is also, look at the sin that my mother suffered, it is better to be a nun, after careful consideration, I decided not to get married, asked the nun surnamed Zhang to tell the dean, and retired the family affair."
The house where I work is in the same courtyard as the orphanage. One day, my little sister came to me and said she was hungry and panicked, and I gave her a nest and three heads of garlic. This matter was known to a Chinese nun surnamed Xu, who told the foreign nun dean, and on the third day the dean called me and said that I was facing my own family, and others were very angry and could no longer work in the gang room. He transferred me to another compound and helped another nun feed the chickens, the rabbits, the sheep.
I cried sadly. Poor people are difficult to be people, they work for nothing, they don't give a penny; they manage to cook their own food, and the little sister reaches out and asks for a little, even if it is a violation. From then on, I made up my mind that I would never see her again with no money or nothing in my hands. I haven't seen my little sister for two years, and I miss her so much! Later, I heard that she had a lung disease and missed me very much, and when she was dying, the foreign nun of the second dean told me to tell me to go and see, and I still didn't have a penny in my hand at that time.
My sister lived in a nunnery, but I always didn't have a penny in my hand, and she had an old man in her house, so I couldn't go empty-handed, and I never went to see her.
When I was nineteen years old, the nun, surnamed Zhang, called me into a kind of congregation called the "Maria Missionary Sisters." There are three classes in the meeting: the first class is learned; the second class is not enough knowledge, and the third class is the aunt. At that time, the dean was German, and the Chinese surname was Xu. I formally asked her to join. The abbot asked me, "Why are you a nun?" I said, "I think the nun is good." The abbot said: "Just looking at the nun is not good, but also know that being a nun is to preach, to save people's souls, no matter what work you are assigned, it is for the purpose of preaching, and everyone who asks to join the church must make 'three wishes'." He asked, "Do you know what the 'Three Wishes' are?" I said, "Not all I know." She said: "The 'three wishes' are: God is poor (absolute wealth, individuals are not allowed to own any property), chastity (absolutely beautiful, never married), obedience (absolute will, absolute obedience to the orders of the elders), can you do these things? I said, "Yes." "After that, I was assigned to work in the house of the disabled old man, where there were more than thirty female disabled people and more than forty male disabled people, a total of more than seventy people, who cooked by me alone and gave a boiler burner. In order to show my piety, I have worked hard and complained since then, buried my head in hard work, and been busy every day.
When he was twenty years old, he assigned me to cook at the Weixian Nunnery. The convent is located in Fangzi and is said to have been founded by German priest Wally in 1908. There were eighteen nuns and six teachers, and I cooked for twenty-four people alone, and for two years, I saw that I was doing a good job, and I was made a great aunt. (Between ordinary catholics and formal nuns), a "small wish" was made, the cross. The cross represents the image of suffering crucified on the cross when Jesus was dying. I hung a small one about two inches on my chest; on the head of the bed hung a one-foot or so large, symbolizing that Jesus was always by his side, and he would always suffer with Jesus, do good, and do no bad things.
I was not willing to be a great aunt, and I was bent on becoming a nun. One day, the French nun who was in charge of the national nunnery came to Weixian County, and I asked her to be a formal nun, and an old Chinese nun surnamed Sun also helped me speak. In 1937, when I was twenty-two years old, I was sent to the "Yantai Junior College", which is a primary training institution for general training and a step that must be taken to become a formal nun. I heard that this junior college is the oldest of the nuns' houses in our country, and was organized in April 1886, the second year after the end of the Sino-French War, when six French nuns were sent by the French chief in Rome, Mumma litho de Lapasson. When I entered the Junior College, I proved that I would soon become a formal nun, and I was very happy, but when I arrived in Yantai, I was not asked to enter the "Junior College" immediately, but first sent me to the Marijuana Mad Hospital to take care of patients. This hospital was founded in 1906 by the French governor Ofmader Demaz, and was expanded in 1928 by the French governor Officinda, with forty-five beds, and many patients had extra beds. I heard that there was an Indian nun who was infected by treating lepers and ended up living with lepers, and the more I looked at it, the more frightened I became, and the more I thought about it, the more afraid I became. But he has sworn that he is willing to "never give his will", absolutely obey orders, and must stand the test. In this way, every day to the patient scrub, change the dressing, wait for them, only in contact with the patient, according to the requirements of Sister Wei, often use alcohol to disinfect, take their things, do not directly take by hand, with tweezers pinch, clip clip.
When I arrived at this hospital, it was the time when the Japanese devils invaded Yantai. The following year, the police station registered lepers, and patients left the hospital for fear of being burned to death by Japanese devils.
While working in the leprosy hospital, the British nuns also assigned me to work in the poor hospital. The poor people's hospital and the leprosy hospital were established at the same time and were in the same hospital. Many people who came to see the sick were all poor people, and many people were covered with sacks and dirty because they lacked clothes, and many of them smoked big cigarettes and morphine. Seriously ill numbers can also be hospitalized, hired a male worker to wait for them, when there is not enough manpower, they call the mild sick number to wait for the serious illness number, and do some chores. There is a small pharmacy, a small clinic. Medicines are mostly simple and common medicines, and there are few expensive drugs; there is no formal doctor in the outpatient clinic, and only temporary minor diseases can be seen. Later, a formal doctor came, and a Spanish nun was added as a nurse, but due to insufficient funds, the doctor was transferred elsewhere.
I worked here for three years, and I am most impressed by the more than one month of the Japanese devils invading Yantai in 1938. On the evening of April 4, a unit came in from the western suburbs (later heard that it was the Jiaodong Second Detachment led by our party), in the middle of the night, the gunfire in the city continued, at five o'clock in the morning, as soon as the door was opened, I saw a wounded man lying at the entrance of the hospital, the bullet went in from the front ribs, pierced out from the back, and the blood flowed, I asked the British nuns to rescue him, and the dean said: "He is your Chinese, he was injured to resist foreign aggression, you can." However, the poor people's hospital was limited by the conditions, could not perform surgery, only changed his medicine, he bled too much, and could not give him water to drink. I asked the dean for a can of fruit, opened it and fed him spoon by spoon, he was still sober at the time, he said: "My hometown is Rizhao, my family has parents, in order to resist the Japanese invasion, I joined the troops, I was injured when I attacked the 'Daotai Yamen' at night, and when I retreated, my comrades-in-arms carried me to the hospital gate." He also said, "It seems that I can't do it, here is an uncle of mine, who lives in Tongshen, who is pulling a foreign car, please give me a message." At noon, I asked the male worker to secretly send a letter to his uncle according to the address he said. On this day, the two devils came twice and wanted to carry him away immediately. I said: "This is a charity hospital, he was so badly injured, he did not rescue but carried away, God will not allow it". I also said, "The same Chinese, he was wounded for the country, how can you bear it?!" The two devils blushed, and finally I promised them to wait until they were cured. He was injured in the lungs, the gauze was covered with bubbles, the treatment was ineffective, and he died at eight o'clock the next day.
The death of the wounded reminds me of the fact that in 1928, the Japanese invading army shot and killed Chinese in Jinan, exactly ten years apart, and they came to Yantai to shoot and kill Chinese, and I secretly prayed to God to punish these demons.
In 1939, when I was twenty-five years old, I entered the "Junior College" (at that time, at No. 13, Shandong Road, Yantai, now the Communication Office Guest House) and lived in a French school. But at the "Junior College" I was still assigned to work in the kitchen, which was run by an old nun, an American, in her forties. There are also six staff members. There were more than forty people in the junior college, more than forty students in the French school, and more than twenty nuns, for a total of more than one hundred. The teachers here are all nuns, the students are all women, most of them are the children of local foreign consulates and foreigners, and because of the good climate in Yantai, foreign children from all over Shanghai, Harbin and Qingdao also come to school here, there are only more than thirty people when they first opened, and as many as more than 100 people in the future. When Yantai was first liberated in 1945, most of the foreign students left the smoke and the school ended. The only people who eat are the people of the "Junior College".
In the first year of junior college, I wore white clothes and white shoes. The clothes are three layers inside and outside, the inside is a coarse cloth shirt, the second layer is a dress, a belt is tied around the waist, and at the end of the belt there are three knots next to the waist, symbolizing the "three wishes" of the promise. When dressing, it is fastened on three rings and acts as a belt. A large cloak-like mop robe was put on the outside, and a black turban was worn on the head. Because this is a nun's costume, it must be worn for all seasons. In summer, no matter how hot the weather is, it is not allowed to take off, and it is not allowed to expose the arms and legs.
In the third year (1941), he assigned me to cook at the Weihai Nunnery. There are fourteen nuns here, plus eighteen doctors and teachers. I am fully responsible for the kitchen. Because I had a straight temper, I had an argument with the second dean of the foreign nun who managed to send things, and once, the sweet potatoes were rotten a lot, and she told me to make fried sweet potato cakes, and I said that the sweet potatoes were not enough, and I could not make them, and she was angry and quarreled with me. At that time, the dean was a German nun, and she looked for the dean, and I also looked for the dean. At the beginning of the third year, I should make a big wish (the ceremony of becoming a formal nun), but for such a thing, I extended my probation period, and transferred me back to Yantai "Junior College" to continue to cook for two years. Later, he was transferred to a French hospital, or cooking. The hospital was in the convent at 4 Chongshi Street (now the address of the Municipal Hospital). This convent, together with the fact that the hospital was originally purchased by the French bishop Chang Mingde, a small outpatient clinic opened in 1890 by the French governor Mummaderen Depaz, was expanded in 1917 by the German nun Hao Peiye, and was gradually completed in 1937. Hao Peiye is both the president of the convent and the president of the hospital. Because it was built with donations from the French government, it was named "French Hospital". There is one Chinese doctor, two foreign nurses, eight Chinese nurses and eight workers. There are 65 beds in a small pharmacy, laboratory, operating room, Excquarium, midwifery room, and official room. After working here for a year, I was thirty-one years old, and it was not until 1945 that Yantai was first liberated and the "Junior College" was about to move to Qingdao, and I was sent a "great wish" to me.
When the "great wish" was made, a solemn ceremony was held. After the "Mass", the priest gave the "great wish" relic, a silver ring, to the abbot, who put it on the finger of his left hand and put me a thorny crown (made of a thorny flower branch made into a circle on the head), indicating eternal suffering with Jesus. At the same time, he cut off his long hair, indicating that he would never marry. It is okay to get married before making a "big wish", but it is sinful to get married again after making a "big wish". This silver ring, with no seams, is engraved with the words "Jesus, Marua, Joseph" on the outside, and the name of the jewelry store on the inside.
Rich people approved to be nuns, and to donate to the congregation, they generally had to pay three hundred yuan. Because I was an orphan, inferior, and had no money, I had to stay up. From the age of nineteen I formally asked to be a nun until I was thirty-one, a full twelve years before I was approved.
In these years and after becoming a formal nun, because she must fulfill the "three wishes", she has no right to be autonomous, and everything is at the disposal of the old nun, and she must do whatever she calls, saying that this is the meaning of "God" and is not allowed to discount it. As soon as I entered the "Junior College", I was given a number - eight five nine six, and all daily necessities such as clothes, towels, shirts, shoes, etc. had this number on it. The division of labor in the nunnery is very fine, the clothes are dirty and there are special people to wash them, and they are not allowed to wash themselves, and if they are not approved by the instructions, it is a crime to wash themselves. No matter what "sin" they have committed, they must kneel in front of the dean in public to confess, repent, and express their never to do it again. Each person was dressed in white in the summer, and in the winter he wore a sweater and sweaters, and no cotton coat; there was only a straw mattress, a mattress sheet, a sheet, and a quilt on the bed. Most of the nuns were a small room for one person, and I shared two other nuns in a larger house. Each person has a curtain in front of the bed, and in the dormitory, on weekdays, they are not allowed to talk and chat casually, and they only know each other's last names. I did not have my own name for a long time, after "baptizing" into the church called me "Liang Baria", after officially becoming a nun, I changed my name to "Bayalid", saying that this is a foreign bishop's name, he later became a saint, died of sin, and asked me to imitate him, also called this name. My current name, Liang Shuzhen, was only newly used after the liberation of Yantai.
Here every morning I get up at five o'clock, go to church at half past five, first recite the "Pontifical Scriptures", then meditate on the whole book for half an hour, and then look at the "Mass" to receive the "Eucharist". Breakfast at 6:30, lunch at 11:30, dinner at 6:00, lights out at 9:30, are all unified bells. After meals, everyone went to their own jobs. Every day after lunch and dinner, in the conference room, there is a unified half-hour break, the dean sits in it, and everyone sits around and talks. But everyone had odd jobs in their hands, talking and doing, and none of them were idle. In half an hour, the abbot rang the bell, which was to tell that he was not allowed to speak again, and began to go to evening classes, chanting prayers to God.
The meals of the convent are generally no vegetables in the morning, sometimes there is milk, sometimes a bowl of barley noodle rice; a plate of vegetables for one person at noon, a plate of fruit (one or two per plate); a plate of dishes per person for dinner, a small bowl of soup (sweet), and the rice tube is full. When the Japanese devils were there, food was difficult, and they received acorn noodles outside, and acorn noodles were also eaten in the nunneries. The "fasting period" set by the church in the convent is strictly enforced. The church stipulates that Friday is the "sixth day of the entwinner", which is the day of small fasting, on which you can eat the meat of cold-blooded animals, such as fish and shrimp; avoid eating the meat of hot-blooded animals, such as cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, etc. In addition, there is "Lent Day" and "Hollow Fast". There are four times a year "Lent", on this day only one vegetarian meal is allowed; "hollow fasting" is from the midnight before each "Eucharist" to the next morning after receiving the "Eucharist", no drinking water, eating, empty stomach after receiving the Eucharist.
The convent also stipulates that the two men must go to the designated place to talk, and there are signs at both ends of the corridor where they can talk, and they are not allowed to talk elsewhere. When talking, you are not allowed to be loud, and there are also prescribed places for entering the house and speaking with the elders, and you are not allowed to lean forward or backward; the dean is looking for you to lecture, and you must kneel there to listen. It is also stipulated that visits to relatives, friends, or relatives and friends must be accompanied by a person designated by the President, and no individuals are allowed to act alone.
The "junior college" that lives and works like this, although it begins to enter a lot, has few successes. Of the five men who were dressed in white with me, only two eventually became nuns; with me the four foreigners who entered the "Junior Academy": two Russians, one Englishman and one Portuguese, and only one succeeded. Those who did not become nuns went back to Qingdao to become ordinary catholics.
The sources of funding for the Convent are the same as those of the Catholic Church, and there are five sources, in addition to being transferred by the General Council of Rome and donated by the faithful:
Profits from factory production. The church has three embroidery factories: No. 18 Chongshi Street, founded in 1910, with more than 20 female workers in the first year, more than 100 people, ending in 1944; No. 33 Zhangjiayao Street, founded in 1934, with more than 60 female workers, ending in 1942; No. 23, HaiyangHe Xiya, created in 1910, with a maximum of more than 100 female workers, ending in 1943. These factories were very profitable at the time. There is also a printing house, at No. 25 Coast Street, which was created by The French Priest Lee in 1908, and the maximum number of workers is more than 40, printing propaganda materials for the church and making money for foreign business. After 1939, some workers participated in the anti-Japanese rescue activities, were discovered by the Japanese gendarmerie, and in 1942, the person in charge Chen Donghe was killed, and the printing plant was forced to close.
Income from land production. The church has a total of 171 acres of land in Yantai, of which 38 acres are vegetable gardens and vineyards, 103 acres are sand nest land, and 30 acres are wasteland.
The school charges tuition fees for students. There are five schools in Yantai that charge tuition fees: Chongde Girls' Middle School (No. 2 Aide Street) was founded in 1930 and closed in 1948, with a maximum of more than 500 students; Chongzheng Boys' Middle School (No. 137, Da Ma Road) was founded in 1913 and closed in 1948, with a maximum of more than 200 students; Chongzheng Primary School (No. 28 Dongsheng Street) was founded in 1914 and closed in 1948, with a maximum of more than 1,000 students; Chongde Girls' Primary School (No. 18 Chongshi Street) was founded in 1918 and closed in 1948. The maximum number of students was more than 250; the French primary school (also known as the Francis School for Foreign Children) was established in 1890 and ended in 1945, with a maximum of more than 100 students. In these schools, tuition fees are high. For example, in Chongzheng Middle School, the tuition fee of students was eight yuan per semester, and in 1946, it was changed to 60 catties of brown rice per semester, which was more than the monthly salary of teachers at that time.
Another example is the French hospital for medical treatment, selling medicines, treating patients, receiving patients for hospitalization, and renting out church houses. According to statistics after the second liberation of Yantai, 56.14 percent of the church buildings were rented; 29.35 percent of the bungalows were rented.
Before and after I became a nun, most of the time was cooking, grain and vegetables were bought back, what kind of food to cook was told, I only did it, I did not manage the finances, and I rarely had contact with the outside world. In 1952, when the foreigners left, I was thirty-eight years old, and in these twenty-four years, I had nothing but the clothes I wore and the numbered clothes I used for sleeping and eating, and I really achieved "god poverty" and "absolute wealth." When the foreigners left, they left us who had worked hard for more than twenty years, one million yuan each. For the first time in twenty-four years, I got money. At that time, the currency system had not yet been reformed, and the top of ten thousand yuan was now one dollar, and I did not recognize which was a hundred yuan, which was a thousand yuan, which was ten thousand yuan.
After the foreigners left, the people's government made arrangements for Chinese nuns and aunts who were willing and able to engage in social occupations. Five of them, old and disabled, did not want to go to the nursing home, so I had to stay and take care of them, planting four acres of land in the nunnery to maintain everyone's livelihood, and everyone regarded me as a dean. Around 1955, due to the need for urban construction, these four acres of land were requisitioned, and the old and disabled were given relief by the Civil Affairs Bureau. In February 1962, at my request, the government assigned me a job. Our province is frugal, and if the salary cannot be spent, it will be deposited in the bank, and now it has saved more than two thousand yuan. I haven't seen a movie in twenty-four years at the Convent, and now, sometimes I watch it twice a day, and people call me a nickname called "movie fan." After liberation, my sister and I also met many times, and her eight children, some in the army, some in the commune, some in the hospital, some in the production team, all had a good life.
Now, I, the old nun, have also become the master of the country, participating in the research and management of major state affairs and religious affairs. At the beginning, when foreigners left, I was worried that I would not be able to live a good life, and the facts have proved that the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China have been freed from the enslavement and shackles of foreign imperialism, and their lives are getting better and better.
![In the 27 years of "Love Full of Pearl River", "Liang Shuzhen" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and Zuo Ling has turned around gracefully in the past[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)