In Lu Xun's childhood, joy and sorrow were tightly intertwined. Among them, joy was just a light and tasteless glass of thin wine, but the sadness was so strong that it took him a lifetime to swallow it.
Young Lu Xun
Lu Xun was luckier than most people in that he was born into a large family of famous and prestigious families, and his grandfather Zhou Jiefu was admitted to Hanlin, first in Jiangxi as a zhi county, and later in Beijing as a cabinet secretary. As a "third generation official", Lu Xun has heard flattering words since childhood, "When I was young, because of my good family, people looked at me like a prince."
But it is precisely because my grandfather attaches too much importance to the name of merit that it has led to the cliff-like decline of the entire family.
Zhou Jiefu himself has obtained a meritorious name, and always hopes that his children and grandchildren can also embark on the same golden light avenue as himself. The eldest son, Zhou Boyi (Lu Xun's father), had mediocre qualifications, studied hard for many years only to take the xiucai, and was still a Mount Everest away from being promoted to a knight.
In this case, when Zhou Jiefu learned that the chief examiner of the Zhejiang township examination that year was Yin Ruzhang, who was a junior scholar in the same year as himself, he could not help but think crookedly.
Zhou Su-so Images
On 27 August 1893, when Yin Ruzhang was on a boat at the dock outside the Zhangmen Gate in Suzhou, Zhou Jiefu sent his servant Tao Ashun to deliver a letter containing 10,000 taels of silver to his ship.
Unfortunately, Yin Ruzhang was meeting with the deputy examiner and the prefect of Suzhou and did not read the letter in time. Tao Ashun thought that Yin Ruzhang was greedy for money and did not do anything, so he shouted loudly outside the ship: "This is a matter of ten thousand taels of silver, how can you not give a reply?" ”
Tao Ashun, the humble man, poked out a big hole in the unspoken rules of the official field, and Yin Ruzhang originally planned to accept the silver ticket, so he could only detain the letter and Tao Ashun in front of his colleagues, which was the "Zhou Jiefu bribery case" that caused a sensation in the official field of the late Qing Dynasty.
After the grandfather's accident, worried that he would implicate his children and grandchildren, his mother Lu Rui sent the two brothers Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren to take refuge in his mother's house.
Mother Ruri
Originally, Lu Xun was a young master of the city, and his mother's hometown was once regarded as a happy land by him. And the children of the countryside go to the cobweb-like river to row boats, fish, catch shrimp, and when the village performs a social drama, shake the boat to the stage in the lake to watch the Wusheng somersault...
All kinds of beauty in the past have become a dream bubble, and now the Lu Xun brothers who are in distress have become a "begging" burden in the eyes of their uncle and have suffered from the cold eyes of the world.
It can be said that Lu Xun's adolescent years ended at the age of 13.
The phrase "misfortune is not alone" has always been very clever, and just when his grandfather Zhou Jiefu was sentenced by the Guangxu Emperor to be "beheaded" and prepared to be beheaded (later changed to 8 years in prison), his father Zhou Boyi's body collapsed again.
Although Zhou Boyi was acquitted, his hard-earned xiucai meritorious name was dismissed, and his whole mood was extremely bad. Originally, he had the bad habit of smoking and drinking a lot of wine, and this broken jar was broken, and as a result, he vomited blood and was bedridden.
Portrait of Zhou Boyi
Originally, Lu Xun's family had forty or fifty acres of paddy fields, and the grain they hit every year was enough to maintain their livelihood. In order to rescue his grandfather from prison, the family has sold more than 20 acres of paddy fields. At this time, my father fell ill again, and was forced to sell the rest of the land due to high medical expenses and the family's livelihood.
As the eldest son, Lu Xun went in and out of pawnshops and pharmacies almost every day in addition to studying. The pawnshop owners are all rich businessmen from other places, and all of them, along with their men, are the masters who watch people get off the plate. A fox-skinned jacket of good color was driven down by them at a price of ragged clothes.
Knowing that the other party bullied himself, Lu Xun could only choose silence, "Who has fallen into a difficult situation from a well-off family, I thought that in this way, I can probably see the true face of the world."
The money from the collateral was all spent in the drug store. None of the so-called "famous doctors" are reliable. They are very good at prescribing some novelty medicinal primers, such as pickled vegetables buried in the ground for many years and turned into clear water, radish vegetables on the roof tiles that have been frosted and snowed for three years, and it is difficult to find them all, even if you put them together, there is no effect.
Once the doctor opened his mind again, and he had to use Chen Cangmi for more than 3 years. When Lu Xun was worried, the teacher Shou Jingwu personally carried 2 liters of rice to him.
Mr. Shoujing Wu is one of the protagonists of Lu Xun's article "From The Hundred Grass Garden to the Sanwei Book House". I was simple and erudite but not severe, Lu Xun often took advantage of his inattention to escape to the garden to play, and the old man would only shout loudly: "Where have people gone?" ”
Another time, the old gentleman suddenly shouted: "A bird in the house, a bird in the house!" Everyone was astonished, and looked around and did not find a bird, thinking that Mr. Mister was enchanted. After careful inspection, it was found that a mosquito had been clamped to the outside of the glass of Mr. Myopia's glasses, and the teachers and students laughed.
In the relaxed atmosphere of the Sanwei Bookhouse, Lu Xun can temporarily escape the miserable wind and rain of the outside world, and get a moment of respite inside.
But the reality can not escape, the father Zhou Boyi's illness spent countless silver is not good, first vomiting blood, and then the instep of the foot is swollen, gradually swollen to the chest and abdomen, died in 1897.
At that time, Lu Xun was only 15 years old, his grandfather was in prison for many years, his father died again, and orphans and widows could only rely on him to support the façade outside, and they were forced to grow up overnight.
Seeing that Lu Xun's family had lost its dependence, the relatives immediately took advantage of the fire and looted, and in the name of redistributing the house, they distributed the poor and small house to his family.
After the elders signed the contract one after another, Lu Xun was half forced and half coaxed to sign his name on the paper. But Lu Xun put his hands in his sleeves and said calmly to the white-bearded elders, "I can't!" ”
An elder named Zhou Yutian pointed at Lu Xun's nose and scolded, but Lu Xun still insisted on refusing to sign, and his reasons were also very good, and he also had to ask his grandfather to make decisions.
At a young age, Lu Xun already had an insight into the coldness of the world, and did not return his mouth in the face of the insults of his elders, and replaced resistance with silence.
In fact, the blood in his bones is always steaming, and he also has a great sense of justice. There is a private school not far from the Sanwei Bookstore, Mr. Wang, I love corporal punishment of students, often beat the palm of the hand, but also imitate the ancient people to make a "urine stick", students want to go to the toilet must be allowed to do.
After hearing about this incident, Lu Xun was indignant, and after lunch, he rushed into Mr. Wang's study with several friends with a strong sense of justice, broke all the urinal sticks, and threw the pen and ink on the yantai to show "punishment."
Lu Xun, who has such a personality, later recalled this Zhou Yutian who scolded him fiercely (he was also Lu Xun's enlightenment teacher), but his brushstrokes were gentle and plain. Sharpness is only the appearance, and inside he always lives a generous teenager.
Unfortunately, kind, generous people are easily targeted. Because the family is huge, many ill-intentioned relatives always want to step on the crumbling roof of Lu Xun's house.
One day, one of the uncles and grandmothers of the Ben family enthusiastically chatted with him about the dilemma at home, and Lu Xun sighed: "There are many things I want to buy, see, and eat, but I don't have money." ”
The uncle and grandmother pretended to be surprised: "Mother's money, you can use it, is it not yours?" ”
"Mother has no money."
Talking about this, the uncle and grandmother secretly instigated Lu Xun to steal his mother's jewelry and sell it, and also asked him to pay attention to rummaging around the corners of the house, and he could always find something like a bead.
Less than a month after the conversation, rumors spread throughout the clan that Lu Xun had stolen the family's beads and sold them.
Second from the right, Mother Luri
Knowing where the source of the rumor came from, Lu Xun was speechless. He is his mother's most beloved eldest son, and he will be forgiven even if he really did something wrong. But he did not want to face his mother, who was gentle and appeased, and even less did he want to face the hypocritical faces of his relatives.
So let's go, Lu Xun took the 8 silver dollars that his mother had pieced together and embarked on the road of studying in a foreign land. The mother looked at Lu Xun's distant back, and her eyes were red with tears.
The reason why the mother cried bitterly was not only because the eldest son went out to study, but also because she was mourning the family's desperateness.
Former residence of Baicao Garden
The Zhou family has always shown people the image of the "reading family", reading and examining the examination is the right way, and if it is not good, it can also learn the way to make a fortune in business, and the so-called learning of foreign affairs to go to the new-style school is regarded as "heresy", and people believe that this kind of person has sold his soul to the devil. Seeing that her son was walking an "end road", the mother could not help but cry out in sorrow.
When Lu Xun went to the rooms to say goodbye, he was surprised and despised, and even some people pushed him hard to show disdain.
In 1898, at the age of 17, Lu Xun entered the Jiangnan Water Teacher's School and changed his life to Zhou Zhangshou, who was known to posterity as Zhou Shuren, which was also forced to be helpless. He had an uncle named Zhou Jiaosheng, who happened to be the overseer of guan lunke, and this uncle thought that it was a disgrace to have a descendant in the family to become a soldier, so he ordered Lu Xun to change his name separately to avoid the name in the family tree.
After that, Lu Xun traveled far and wide and lived in Japan for 7 years, and his hometown was gradually distant for him. Therefore, after returning to China in 1912, Lu Xun rarely returned to his hometown, and in 1919, he sold his ancestral house in Shaoxing and moved his family to Beijing.
Before leaving completely, Lu Xun burned a lot of things. The emperor gave two commandments to the old lady of the Zhou family and Zhou Jiefu and his wife, as well as the Wanmin umbrella that Zhou Jiefu brought back from his post in Jiangxi, which was once treasured by Lu Xun's mother like a treasure, and was also thrown into the fire.
These items represent Lu Xun's complete separation from the feudal imperial society. But he immediately burned his grandfather's temple examination scroll and two large stacks of diaries without mercy, which was worth pondering.
Grandfather Zhou Jiefu, although he has been an official outside the country for a long time, he has no financial help to the family. His official position as "Cabinet Secretary" was bought at a cost of money, not to mention a few thousand taels of silver.
Moreover, he married two wives before and after, and took two aunts and wives, and recorded some quarrels between aunts and wives in his diary. Lu Xun thought that it was useless to keep his grandfather's diary and insisted on burning it all.
The front row is third right Lu Xun
Zhou Jiefu did not bring much help to the family, but the disasters caused by him were real. It was hard to get out of prison and return to his hometown, but his temper was even more stubborn and obedient, pointing out that Sang Scolded Huai was basic, and he hated it so much that he bit his finger and cursed people.
The old man loved the concubine Aunt Pan the most and his younger son Bo Sheng. Bo Sheng took the penultimate exam, and he would praise him for knowing the hard work, so he did not take the penultimate exam. However, if Lu Xun did not pass the first place, he would be viciously reprimanded by him.
Moreover, Zhou Jiefu's harm to Lu Xun was not only emotional, because of his bribery, the younger generations not only could not lift their heads in the family, but also blocked the road to the imperial examination. Forced to be helpless, Lu Xun could only embark on a "different path" that was different from the children of the clan, and his grandfather's mental stimulation of him was the most harmful.
Therefore, as an adult, Lu Xun bid farewell to his hometown in a decisive way to burn away past memories, and embarked on a new journey without turning his head.