"I am a fan in autumn, only used to drive away blood-sucking mosquitoes. When mosquitoes bit the moon, the owner tore the fan to pieces. This is a vivid but also heavy metaphor that Zhang Youyi later played for herself. In the early years of the Republic of China, the love affair between the talented modern poet Xu Zhimo and Lin Huiyin and Lu Xiaoman became a social topic at that time and even in the following decades, but Zhang Youyi's "hiding" behind this was somewhat obscure, some people said that it may be because she has no talent, but she said this more than poetry. So, sometimes, it doesn't matter if there is poetry or not, what is important is that life is there, as long as you walk through it with your heart, it is always moving.
Zhang Youyi
It is said that Xu Zhimo saw Zhang Youyi's photo for the first time, and the corners of his mouth were skimmed down, and he said with great disgust that Zhang Youyi was a countryman and very rustic. Looking at the photos left by Zhang Youyi, we don't think so. Zhang Youyi was born in 1900 in Baoshan, Jiangsu Province, her family is very wealthy, the family lives in a very large house, feng shui is also very good, and there is a very grand name: Shixuntang. The Zhang family has been in the salt business for generations and is a huge local rich. Zhang Youyi's grandfather had been a county commander in Sichuan for decades, and later resigned and returned to his hometown. Zhang Youyi's father, named Zhang Runzhi, was a medical student, often sitting in a palanquin and being carried around to see the villagers, although in his generation, the Zhang family's family situation has declined, but it is not much worse. The reason is that the Zhang family has 12 children, 8 men and 4 women, if it is not a good family, Zhang Runzhi, who is not an official and non-businessman, cannot support so many children, and Zhang Youyi is the "second miss" in this family.
If you want to say "rustic", I am afraid that it is caused by the Zhang family's habit of preferring sons to daughters, in the heart of Zhang Youyi's mother who has a serious old-fashioned thinking, although there are 12 children in the family, she always thinks that there are only 8 children, the reason is that in her opinion, only sons can inherit the incense of the Zhang family, and the daughter is just a person from someone else's family, and sooner or later she will have to marry. In order to let Zhang Youyi marry smoothly, she wrapped Zhang Youyi's feet when Zhang Youyi was very young. It is this little foot that makes Xu Zhimo take it as a reference to Zhang Youyi, saying that his combination with Zhang Youyi is that the small foot and the suit come together.
Zhang Youyi and Xu Zhimo
However, Zhang Youyi, who has small feet, does not mean that she did not receive an advanced education - in July 1912, Cheng Dequan, the governor of Jiangsu Province, founded the "Jiangsu Provincial Second Girls' Normal School" in Suzhou, and the 12-year-old Zhang Youyi studied at the school with the help of her second brother Zhang Junjie (Jia Sen) and the fourth brother Zhang Jiaxuan. The school's first Yang Daquan attaches great importance to girls' education, and Zhang Youyi's "rustic atmosphere" in Xu Zhimo's eyes should be improved here. As for why Xu Zhimo said that Zhang Youyi was "rustic", the reason for this is probably that as a poet, he has always wanted to pursue free marriage, but his family has given him an arranged marriage, and the person who was sent in the arranged marriage is Zhang Youyi, so disgust has become an inevitable.
Zhang Youyi attended the Girls' Normal School for three years, and before she finished, she became Xu Zhimo's wife. The first person to thread the needle was Zhang Youyi's fourth brother Zhang Jiaxuan, who was the secretary of Zhu Rui, the governor of Zhejiang at the time, Zhang Jiaxuan found the talented Xu Zhimo when he inspected the school in Hangzhou, and suddenly thought of his sister Zhang Youyi, so he began to inquire about Xu Zhimo's family situation and found Xu Zhimo's father Xu Shenru. As early as 1897, Xu Shenru co-founded a money house in Haining Jiaoshi Town, Zhejiang Province, and later launched private fund-raising to build a commercial railway, and was a famous industrialist at that time. After understanding the situation of the Zhang family, Xu Shenru made a marriage contract between Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi. As a result, 15-year-old Zhang Youyi dropped out of school and married into Zhejiang as a young grandmother.
Xu Zhimo
Xu Zhimo was 3 years older than Zhang Youyi, and the marriage seemed to him to be "a matchmaker's word, ordained by his parents", so in the second year after marriage, he went north to Tianjin's Beiyang University to study law. In 1917, the law department of Beiyang University was officially merged into Peking University, and Xu Zhimo also transferred to Peking University. This was at this time, Xu Zhimo's interest in literature, began to make friends, meet celebrities, injected a lot of new factors into his thinking, began to desperately pursue the ideal life, and began to strive for the freedom of marriage and love.
Basically in sync with Xu Zhimo's acceptance of the new ideas, Zhang Youyi became pregnant in 1917 and gave birth to Xu Zhimo's eldest son Xu Jikai in 1918. It is reasonable to say that even if an arranged marriage has children, the marriage has some love crystallization, but Xu Zhimo is not like this. Zhang Youyi's niece, Zhang Bangmei, later wrote a book by Zhang Youyi and Xu Zhimo ("Little Feet and Suits: The Family Changes of Zhang Youyi and Xu Zhimo", 2011, Huangshan Book Club), which said that Xu Zhimo never looked at Zhang Youyi after marriage, and ignored Zhang Youyi except to fulfill the most basic marital obligations. "Even in fulfilling the obligation of marriage, Xu Zhimo only obeyed his parents' wishes to hold their grandchildren." Shortly after the birth of the child, Xu Zhimo left Peking University and set off from Shanghai to study in the United States on August 14 of the same year.
Two years later, Xu Zhimo was tired of life in the United States and came to the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom for further study, at this time, Zhang Youyi also came to his side from afar in China. For this meeting, Zhang Youyi described it like this: She stood on the deck and saw Xu Zhimo standing in the crowd of people looking east and west, and her heart suddenly became much cooler. Because "I could tell at a glance that he was the only one in the pile of people who picked up the boats and showed an expression that he didn't want to be there."
Why is that? The reason is very simple, at this time, Xu Zhimo became acquainted with Lin Changmin and his daughter Lin Huiyin, and Lin Huiyin became the person who made him fall in love. Xu Zhimo himself admits that his encounter with Lin Huiyin inspired his new poetry, and he had nothing to do with poetry before. That is, after knowing Lin Huiyin, he began to worship Shelley and Byron in Britain, "changed the way" into the ranks of poets, and wrote many poems for Lin Huiyin such as "Listening to the Piano on the Moon and Night", "Youth Miscellaneous Songs", "The Breeze Blows Off the Dream of the Spring Dynasty" and other poems that express love and life ideals.
Lin Huiyin
Obviously, Zhang Youyi's arrival became boring, but Xu Zhimo, who pursued Lin Huiyin, made her pregnant again. Xu Zhimo's cruelty to Zhang Youyi was also vividly expressed at this time. Two months after Zhang Youyi was pregnant, Xu Zhimo knew that she was pregnant, but proposed a divorce, Zhang Youyi did not agree, Xu Zhimo left her alone in Shaston, and went to Kangqiao to accept various ideological trends and genres, while taking into account the pursuit of Lin Huiyin. In 1921, Zhang Youyi's delivery period was approaching, Xu Zhimo also refused to return, in desperation, Zhang Youyi had to write a letter to the second brother Zhang Junji for help, first to Paris and then to the seventh brother who went to Germany to study to Berlin to give birth.
Xu Zhimo knew where Zhang Youyi had gone and what she was doing, but he just ignored it. On February 24, 1922, Zhang Youyi gave birth to her second son, Peter, and Xu Zhimo came to Berlin, but not for Zhang Youyi and her children, but for the divorce procedures with Zhang Youyi. Zhang Youyi is extremely desperate, it is said that her divorce from Xu Zhimo is the first Western-style civilized divorce case in Chinese history according to the Civil Law, the two signed and went their separate ways, but for Zhang Youyi, there were too many tears, not the signing of the divorce itself, but Xu Zhimo signed and followed her to the hospital to see Peter. Zhang Youyi said that Xu Zhimo put his face on the window glass of the hospital at that time and saw that Little Peter was "fascinated", but "never asked me how to raise Little Peter, how Little Peter wants to live."
Two-year-old Peter. He had only seen his father once.
The child's father left because of the divorce, even though the child could make him fascinated, but he still left. In the back of the relief when he left, Zhang Youyi worked hard to enter the Pestalozzi College to study early childhood education, but in 1925, his beloved son Peter, who was only 3 years old, died unexpectedly. In a foreign land, without children, Zhang Youyi lost all her spiritual pillars, and in 1926, she was taken back to Shanghai by her eighth brother Zhang Yujiu. That is, in this year, Xu Zhimo, who has been pursuing the freedom of marriage, married Lu Xiaoman. As for Lin Huiyin, although he had correspondence with him, he and Liang Sicheng went to the University of Pennsylvania in 1924, and when they met again in 1928, Lin Huiyin was already married to Liang Sicheng.
Lu Xiaoman Xu Zhimo
After returning to China, Zhang Youyi first took her son to Beijing to study, and two years later, because of the death of his mother, he brought his son back to Shanghai. At this time, her brother Zhang Jiaxuan was already the vice president of the Bank of China, presiding over the affairs of banks in Shanghai, Xu Zhimo's father Xu Shenru felt that it was not easy for her to take the child alone, although she had divorced Xu Zhimo, but also took her grandson, he gave her a residence in Shanghai, so that her life in Shanghai can be described as worry-free.
During this period, xu Zhimo, who was married to Lu Xiaoman, did not have a very easy life, on the one hand, Lu Xiaoman was a divorced woman, Xu Shenru believed that his son's divorce was already a big rebellion, and it was even more humiliating to marry a married woman, and it was difficult to accept Lu Xiaoman; on the other hand, Lu Xiaoman spent money like earth, the average annual salary of professors at that time was about five oceans, Xu Zhimo lectured in several schools because of his part-time work, and he also wrote poetry to earn contributions after class, and he could earn hundreds of oceans a year, but even so, he still could not meet Lu Xiaoman's expenses. Xu Shenru, who has not accepted Lu Xiaoman, in order to cut off his son and Lu Xiaoman, even cut off Xu Zhimo's financial road to take money from his family, so that Xu Zhimo had to travel to Shanghai and Beijing to desperately make money to support his family.
Lu Xiaoman
Zhang Youyi, who has no worries about food and clothing, did not let herself enjoy itself, she first taught German at Soochow University, and then became the vice president of Shanghai Women's Commercial Bank with the support of Zhang Jiaxuan, and then later, Zhang Yujiu, the only one of her brothers who became a poet like Xu Zhimo, partnered with Xu Zhimo to open a clothing company, and she became the general manager there, so that her business ability was fully utilized, and she also found her own position in society. Although she is still a traditional woman with small feet, she has the temperament of a modern woman.
In 1931, Xu Zhimo's mother, Qian Muying, became critically ill, and Xu Zhimo was recalled to Jiaoshi. Xu Zhimo originally wanted his wife Lu Xiaoman to come with him, but he was strongly opposed by Xu Shenru, and Xu Zhimo argued for Lu Xiaoman's reasoning and confronted his father, resulting in the father and son turning against each other. On November 19 of that year, Xu Zhimo died suddenly on the plane to attend Lin Huiyin's lecture in Beiping and died. Because the Xu family did not like Lu Xiaoman, Xu Zhimo's memorial service, Lu Xiaoman also failed to attend. Lin Huiyin, who had been fanatically pursued by Xu Zhimo, never gave Xu Zhimo a loving response. After Xu Zhimo's death, she wrote two sad eulogies.
Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng
The free love that Xu Zhimo pursues, because his departure is empty, but he leaves a lot of specific things to Zhang Youyi, who divorced him. In 1944, Xu Shenru died of illness in Shanghai. Two years later, Zhang Youyi and her son Xu Jikai buried him next to the tomb of Xu Zhimo in The Western Mountains of Jiaoshi. A woman who wants to cry here is a husband who has long since ceased to belong to her. Subsequently, Zhang Youyi went to Hong Kong. In 1953, at the age of 53, she planned to marry her neighbor, The Chinese medicine doctor Su Jizhi, who had been single for many years and was unsupervised, and suddenly thought that she should "ask" her son Xu Jikai in the United States for a very special reason: "Because I am a widow, I should listen to my son." ”
Son Xu Jikai's reply to Zhang Youyi was sincere and sincere: "Mother and widow live in the festival, for more than thirty years, give birth to me to caress me, bow me to raise me... The life of the mother, the little joy, the mother's duty has been exhausted, the mother's heart should be comforted, who comforts the mother's family? Who accompanies the mother? If the mother is a man, the son asks the father to do things. "The gist of it is: my mother raised me hard and sacrificed her own happiness for my happiness. Now that the son has grown up, the mother should be assured to pursue her own happiness. No matter who my mother married, I would consider him my biological father. Zhang Youyi saw her son's letter tearfully, which may be the comfort of the love that her son gave her and Xu Zhimo.
Xu Jikai, Xu Shenru, Zhang Youyi
The Tao Te Ching says that the wind does not end, and the rain does not last forever... Heaven and earth can't last long, but what about people? Meaning: the wind does not blow in the morning, and the rainstorm does not fall all day. It is the heavens and the earth that make the storm like this, and the fury of the heavens and the earth cannot last, of course, it is the same for people. At this moment, Zhang Youyi finally waited. The Tao Te Ching also says that those who are engaged in the Tao are the same as the Tao; those who are virtuous are the same as those who are virtuous; and those who lose are the same as those who lose. Meaning: Therefore, those who engage in the Tao are the same as the Tao, those who engage in virtue are the same as those who are virtuous, and those who engage in loss are the same as those who lose. For Xu Zhimo, in the "loss", you can "wave your sleeve and not take away a cloud", but those who come with them will leave footprints no matter what, whether they are walking in the spring or the autumn breeze, they will know it at a glance in the footprints.
Zhang Youyi and son Xu Jikai
In 1972, Dr. Su died of illness, and Zhang Youyi went to the United States to reunite with her son. In her twilight years, she was asked: "Do you love Xu Zhimo?" She replied, "You know, I can't answer that question." I was confused by this question, because everyone always told me that I had done so much for Xu Zhimo, and I must have loved him. However, I can't say anything about love, I've never said 'I love you' to anyone in my life. If taking care of Xu Zhimo and his family is called love, then I probably love him. Of the few people he'd met in his life, maybe I loved him the most. ”
In love, people tend to give too much glamorous to the side that will be literary, because people are eager for love to be like poetry, and it is always affectionately beautiful. There is no doubt that this is overlooked, and sometimes true love is not poetry, or even a storm of tears. In 1988, Zhang Youyi died of illness in New York. After that, Xu Jikai, who has been reluctant to show his face and rarely appears in public, was interviewed by a reporter, saying that if his father lived to be eighty or ninety years old, he believed that there would be women who would love him, because many women envied his literary style. However, he felt that wencai was a very illusory thing, whether it was for the owner or the admirer. Finally, he affirmed that his father was a bitter man, a man with a very hard life.
The pictures in this article come from the internet, thanks to the original author!