Thirty-six thousand days, night and night when the candle, the day is short, a hundred years if the sea. - Li Bai
A great poet like Li Bai laments the finiteness of life all the time. Li Bai was in the most prosperous period of the Tang Dynasty, coupled with the royal gold and silver wealth, Li Bai naturally wanted to live for a few more years, but is longevity really good?
There is a long-lived old man who broke the world record abroad, he once sent away his parents, wife, son and grandson, watching everyone around him leave him, his heart was extremely painful, so that in the end he was bent on death, and he did not want to live in this world that did not belong to him at all.
Longevity is not necessarily a good thing, there was also a person in our country, although he has a very big reputation, but it is because of longevity, he suffered a very great humiliation in his old age, who is he?
He is the Zhou Zuoren that everyone is very familiar with, he lived to be 83 years old, he is the famous Lu Xun, that is, the younger brother of Zhou Shuren, although he also has a talent, but in his later years he lived very miserable, relying on stinky tofu and corn paste to survive.
1. Zhou Zuoren, who is a Japanese officer
Zhou Zuoren was born in 1885, a native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang, whose fate is somewhat similar to that of Lu Xun, and when he was young, his family was very solid, so he could learn a lot of cultural knowledge. Zhou Zuoren's grandfather was an official in the late Qing Dynasty, so their family could have so much money, but in his old age, his grandfather was arrested and imprisoned for committing an incident, and he lost his main backbone, and eventually the Zhou family gradually weakened.
Zhou Zuoren attended a private school when he was young, and like Lu Xun, he was very smart, with good grades from an early age, and he was always welcomed by his teachers, and his parents also regarded him as the hope of the ZTE family.
When Zhou Zuoren was 16 years old, he entered the jiangnan admiralty school at that time, which was a school dedicated to cultivating naval talents, and Zhou Zuoren read here for 6 years. However, in the end, he did not enter the navy, Zhou Zuoren followed his brother to Japan, when studying in Japan, Zhou Zuoren met a lot of friends, it was here that he gradually discovered his love and talent for literature, he translated a lot of novels and articles.
In 1911, the year of the success of the Xinhai Revolution, Zhou Zuoren returned to China after completing his studies. For some of these people who have stayed abroad, it is very easy to enter the university. Zhou Zuoren entered Peking University as a teacher at that time, and when he was at Peking University, Zhou Zuoren often had some patriotic young people to participate in the social activities of that time.
In general, with high cultural attainment, he has stayed in the West, and he is also very enthusiastic about social activities, so such a teenager will naturally be respected by everyone. Zhou Zuoren accumulated a very high reputation in this process.
In 1937, when Japan's war of aggression against China broke out in full swing, Peking University, like many institutions at the time, began to retreat to the hinterland of China. At this time, Zhou Zuoren was left behind, and he was responsible for nursing the campus of Peking University.
Everyone knows that there will be absolutely no good fruit to eat when left, at that time, a person swept through the whole of China, so many Chinese troops, with weapons, could not resist the attack of the Japanese, let alone Zhou Zuoren, a weak scholar.
Sure enough, even in the beginning, Zhou Zuoren never thought of cooperating with the Japanese, but the current situation at that time made Zhou Zuoren have to make compromises. In fact, these intellectuals sandwiched in the middle are the most difficult, there are so many ancient buildings on the campus of Peking University, is it possible to destroy these ancient buildings in one fell swoop? No one had the patience to bear it, but the Japanese controlled Beijing at that time, and if they didn't rely on them, everything else would be in vain.
The Japanese wanted to cooperate with Zhou Zuoren, firstly because they valued Zhou Zuoren's fame, and secondly, they also valued his identity as an intellectual. Obviously, Zhou Zuoren would not agree, so there was a very mysterious shooting, and under such a very dark matter, Zhou Zuoren had to accept the position offered by the Wang puppet government and assume the position of librarian of Peking University at that time.
It is precisely because of this that Zhou Zuoren's career has since had a stain, and his stigma of cooperating with the Japanese as a traitor will never be washed away. How will Zhou Zuoren spend the second half of his life?
In the second half of his life, Zhou Zuoren was first arrested for adultery, and then released from prison, and although he had a large income, the cost of medical treatment was higher, so his life was in trouble.
Second, the second half of Zhou Zuoren's life
In fact, to put it seriously, Zhou Zuoren only held a position in the Wang puppet government, and the librarian would not bring any substantial harm to the people, but it was enough to make the people who had suffered from the Japanese invasion feel disgusted with him.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Zhou Zuoren was formally arrested in Beijing by the Nationalist government at the time for "traitorous crimes", and it is funny to say that there was even one of his crimes of traitorous crimes, that is, marrying Japanese people. At that time, these people who were convicted of adultery were imprisoned and tried by the Nationalist government at that time.
Zhou Zuoren's luck was good, he had Hu Shi and others intercede for him, plus he really did not do anything harmful to nature, so in the end he was not sentenced to death, but sentenced to 10 years in prison. After the victory in the Liberation War, Zhou Zuoren at that time was released from prison on bail.
Zhou Zuoren, who returned to Beijing, began to not ask about the world, and was only obsessed with translation and writing, because his writing was very good and his knowledge was very high, his translated works were unanimously recognized by his peers, and he could use the fee to maintain his livelihood, which is also a blessing in misfortune.
Zhou Zuoren's income in his later years was actually quite good, he was a special translator of the Beijing People's Literature Publishing House at that time, as long as he delivered the manuscript on time, he could get a manuscript fee every month, and at that time he could advance 200 yuan per month, which was a considerable income. Moreover, the publishing house at that time also considered that Zhou Zuoren's life was indeed very difficult, and also opened a side for the special network, and he could advance 400 yuan of manuscript fees.
In addition to this fee, he also had some other income, such as the fee he received for writing for some newspapers and magazines at that time. When he lived in Babaowan, Beijing, Zhou Zuoren began to write some articles for some tabloids, which did not have much meaning, just essays of some literati, but they were enough to give him a certain source of income.
He wrote more than two years of small articles for these newspapers, adding up to more than 1,000 small articles. To say, on average, I actually have to write about one or two articles a day, which is also very tiring.
In addition to writing small articles for magazines and working as translators for publishing houses, Zhou Zuoren himself will also translate some articles, and the income from these translations has all entered Zhou Zuoren's pockets. From time to time, his relatives and friends would also sponsor him with some money and materials. And he also had some extra income, such as he sold his diary to the Lu Xun Museum at that time, and he got 1800 yuan, which is not a small income.
If so, it seems that his income seems to be very high, so why did he get into trouble in his later years?
The main reason is that Zhou Zuoren himself has some diseases, needs to spend money to see a doctor and take medicine, and he also has to take care of his eldest daughter's life, in addition, Zhou Zuoren himself spends money is also very generous, so that Zhou Zuoren basically has no savings.
The most important thing is that in the turbulent movement of the last century, Zhou Zuoren was criticized by the Red Guards at that time, and in such an era, he was forced to stop writing, and there was no source of income. At that time, the Red Guards gave him a standard of living of 10 yuan per month, and he could only eat coarse grains.
In this way, Zhou Zuoren relied on stinky tofu every day, plus a little corn batter to survive, the Red Guards at that time threatened him, can not casually commit suicide, so Zhou Zuoren wrote to the then Premier Zhou hoping to allow him to euthanize, but before Premier Zhou did not give him approval, Zhou Zuoren died suddenly at the age of 83.
brief summary
Zhou Zuoren's life was tragic, however, it was not him who was wrong, it could only be that era that was wrong, and it was such a turbulent era that created his tragic fate. In that period of time, many people died of suicide, and Zhou Zuoren was just an ordinary one among those people, hoping that such a history would never fall on the head of the Chinese nation again.
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