Chen Chong's mother, Zhang Anzhong
I have been living with my grandmother since I was six years old, and I have always liked and envied her dashing energy and ability to enjoy life. I remember a lot of young people coming to grandma to learn English, revise articles, or make small talk, and sometimes she lit a cigarette when she was happy. Grandma is an old man who makes young people like, and there are many old friends.
During the Cultural Revolution, my grandmother was sent to the May Seventh Cadre School, and although life was hard, her letters were all about what she had found that could not be eaten in Shanghai, and I remember that what made her particularly excited seemed to be a thing called stinky reeds. She told people at the cadre school that Chairman Mao was a "two-on-one starter" and that I was a "two-spirited starter" (MSG and saccharin), and as a result, people grabbed small braids and criticized them. Grandma didn't tell me about her fight, this is her personality, what's so funny about saying this kind of unfortunate thing? My mother told me about the fight, so that I could understand the truth that "evil comes out of my mouth." Decades later, I also learned from my mother that my life-loving grandmother had committed suicide in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. I still can't put that sadness and despair into my grandmother.
After returning from the cadre school, Grandma still stopped working and could not engage in the publishing business she loved. Being deprived of the right to work and political treatment was a terrible thing, but my grandmother decided to take me on a tour by nothing. In those days, no one traveled, only people on business trips. My mom was surprised, but I jumped up in excitement. At that time, the family's money was very tight, and my grandmother and mother were not very good at living, and a few days before the salary, they were always short of money to buy vegetables. In order not to affect the family, my grandmother took out all her savings and took me on the road. At that time, I was probably in the third or fourth grade of elementary school, and my grandmother took two weeks off for me, and I don't remember what excuses I used. In my Chinese textbook, there was an article about the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, and my grandmother took the bridge as our first attraction. Standing on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, I felt extremely proud – not because the people who built the bridge overcame many difficulties to complete this spectacular bridge, but because I was the only one in the class or even the whole school who saw it with my own eyes.
In 1977, I starred in "Youth" directed by Xie Jin, and in 1978, I made "Little Flower". After that, there were often people who came to me to get to know me. According to Grandma, they are all "high-ranking cadres". Whether I was at home or not, my grandmother wouldn't let me show up, and I always stayed in the kitchen or in the bathroom with a book. Grandma poured tea and handed over cigarettes as usual, lit a charcoal stove in winter, handed a fan in summer, and talked to people in the north and south of the sky. Although the people who came could not meet the original intention, they did not feel too disappointed when they left, and one of them returned to see his grandmother.
When I first started studying abroad, I couldn't see my grandmother for a long time. At that time, if you came home from the United States to visit relatives, you always had to bring a television set or something, the so-called "four big pieces". But Grandma doesn't want big pieces, maybe she doesn't want me to spend money, maybe she really isn't interested in big things. When I insisted on bringing something to her, she asked me to bring a piece of the most "smelly" cheese in America, and Grandma liked all the fermented "stinky" foods: stinky reed stems, stinky tofu, stinky cheese. Another time, she asked if she could bring a wig cover that was a little wavy. What surprised me the most was that once my grandmother actually asked me to buy her a bra that was buttoned in front of her, which made me laugh on the phone for a while. After filming in the United States, I had enough income to come back to see her frequently. Every time I came home, I could always see from downstairs that my grandmother was already lying on the steel window frame with her hood waiting for me.
I would tell my grandmother on the phone on the phone when I was on location all over the world, and she always had endless questions. Grandma was a person with a strong sense of curiosity and adventure, and now that I think about it, she must have longed to visit those exotic places. Passports and visas were very difficult to get back then, and if I invited my grandmother, she might not be able to do it. However, my regret is that I did not invite her.
Chen Chong's grandmother, Shi Ivan
In 1989, I went to Australia to shoot a film, and when I arrived, I called my grandmother. As before, we giggled and talked for a while. But I gradually realized that my grandmother's reaction was a little unusual, and before saying goodbye I suddenly realized that she didn't know who I was. I hung up the phone and cried a lot, and I couldn't relax for days. Two weeks later, I plucked up the courage to call her again and explain to her that I was her granddaughter, Ah Zhong's daughter, and Chen Chong. She laughed and said, I know who Ah Zhong's daughter is, a movie star. In fact, Azhong is much more beautiful than her daughter, but her daughter became a movie star. Still the talkative grandmother, but she struggled on the brink of the abyss of amnesia.
The last time I went home to see my grandmother, she had pancreatic head cancer, and I accompanied her to the hospital. Some of the examinations were painful and lacked dignity, and Grandma didn't want to do it. She kept looking at me with pleading eyes and finally told me, you make them stop. I really wanted to tell the doctors not to look it up, we're going back. But I didn't, and I gently told grandma that it would be over soon. Unfortunately, after the examination, the doctor asked my grandmother to be hospitalized immediately. When she was taken home to get her living utensils, she stayed in her room for half a day and refused to leave, saying that she would have to think about something and forget it. On the night of hospitalization, Grandma mobilized her to flee home with the patients in the ward, and the nurses had to hide her shoes.
My grandmother died two months after the operation, and she couldn't get back from the hospital to her beloved room, and I wasn't with her. Maybe she really should have let grandma stay in her house, maybe a month less, maybe not, but that's where she wanted to be. For a long time I dreamed of my grandmother every night, and sometimes the grandmother in the dream was vivid and vivid like the real thing, and it took me several seconds to wake up to realize that it was just a dream.
Every time I go back to Shanghai to meet with my old friends, people will mention my grandmother, and after I went abroad, my friends often went to chat with my grandmother, and each of them had a few stories of my grandmother to share. It was also with friends that I slowly learned something about her youth. When she was a child, she studied at the Suzhou Women's Normal School, and later went to the Jinling Women's Liberal Arts College in Nanjing to study education.
Looking back now, when Grandma took me to Nanjing, we did go to the old site of Jinling Women's University, and maybe Grandma didn't want her personal history to bring me political baggage, so she didn't mention her past. Grandma also participated in the Northern Expedition, and after the outbreak of the "12.8" incident in 1932, she joined the Fourth Ambulance Team organized by the Shanghai Medical College and ran on the anti-Japanese battlefield. After studying in britain and the United States and returning to China, my grandmother used her savings and writing fees to set up a modern medical publishing house by herself, and my grandfather used the microfilm literature brought back from abroad to write books such as "Sulfonamide Drugs", "Penicillin and Streptomycin", "Modern Pharmacology" and so on, which filled the gap in the domestic medical community, especially in the medical field of the Liberated Areas. In 1942, she also worked as an English translator on the China-Burma border with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.
In fact, what I want to know most is how my grandmother met my grandfather. Grandma was a new woman at that time, and she was not arranged by the family with her grandfather. Grandpa went abroad for further study, and Grandma left her two young daughters in the war-torn country and went with him. If it wasn't for free love, I didn't like Grandpa so much, and Grandma probably wouldn't have chosen it that way.
Chen Chong and grandma Shi Ivan