In 1922, Xu Zhimo and his wife Zhang Youyi signed a divorce. It is said that this is the first Western-style civilized divorce case in Chinese history based on civil law.
Xu Zhimo's reason for the divorce is: how to match the small feet and the suit?
Of course, the suit refers to himself, and the little foot refers to Zhang Youyi. This means that the difference between old and new ideas between them is very large and is doomed to be incompatible.
Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi
But in fact, Zhang Youyi is not an old-fashioned woman.
Zhang Youyi was born in 1900 in Baoshan to a family of scholars. Her grandfather worked as a county magistrate, her father practiced medicine and came from a wealthy family, and her second brother, Zhang Junjie, was a politician, philosopher, leader of the Chinese Democratic Socialist Party, and one of the representatives of early Neo-Confucianism.
Born in such a family, Zhang Youyi is not a rural woman who has never seen the world, but she has always been a "rural bun" in Xu Zhimo's impression.
In 1913, Zhang Youyi's older brother Zhang Gongquan served as the secretary of the Zhejiang Governor's Office, he was attracted by an essay by a middle school student, learned that the author was Xu Zhanggan (Xu Zhimo's original name), the only son of Xu Shenru, a wealthy merchant in Haining, and wrote a letter to Xu Shenru to match his sister Zhang Youyi.
Although Xu Shenru is a rich man in Zhejiang, he is also overjoyed to be able to marry a scholar like the Zhang family, and naturally he agrees.
In this way, 13-year-old Zhang Youyi was associated with 17-year-old Xu Zhimo.
At that time, Zhang Youyi was studying at the Second Girls' Normal School in Jiangsu Province. Xu Zhimo, who is full of imagination about the future, does not want to get married at all, and when the family took out a photo of Zhang Youyi, he only looked at it and said: "A full of rural buns." ”
But his family told him: "People are also readers, so they can't learn worse than you." Whether you agree or not, the old man nodded his head and nailed the nail on the board. ”
Xu Zhimo had no choice but to accept this reality.
Zhang Youyi
Two years later, the parents of both parties held a grand wedding for the two. On the wedding night, Zhang Youyi followed the traditional etiquette and did not dare to speak, and Xu Zhimo was silent.
Xu Zhimo looked down on his newlywed wife, although Zhang Youyi only wrapped her feet for three days when she was three years old, she was the first heavenly footed woman in the Zhang family, although Zhang Youyi also received a new-style education. Because in Xu Zhimo's view, a woman like her is not the same as a new woman.
Years later, Zhang Youyi once said: "For my husband, my two feet can be said to be entangled, because he thinks that I am conservative in my thinking and have not read any books." ”
She soon learned of her husband's attitude toward her, but she could only accept and tolerate silently, and complete her fate of passing on the lineage and teaching her husband to the godson. But no matter how dignified and virtuous she behaved, no matter how clever and capable she was, she could not change his mind.
For Xu Zhimo, this marriage is like a task, and when the marriage is married, the task is completed.
In 1918, their first child was born. Xu Zhimo liked this son very much and gave him the nickname Ah Huan. But at the same time, he also felt that the task of passing on the family lineage had also been completed, so he went to the United States to study. Married for nearly three years, but he and his wife have only been together for about four months, and now they are even more distant.
In 1920, Xu Zhimo left the United States for Britain. Zhang Youyi's loneliness and pain no one can talk about, and his brother Zhang Junji can't see it anymore, so he writes to Xu Zhimo, hoping that he will come back to pick up his wife and son to go abroad for reunion. However, Xu Zhimo was struggling to pursue Lin Huiyin at this time, and did not want Zhang Youyi to come at all, so he found excuses to repeatedly shirk it.
Later, Xu Shenru was the master, and whether Xu Zhimo agreed or disagreed, he wrote him a letter and bought a ticket to send Zhang Youyi to England.
Xu Zhimo had no choice but to go to the dock to pick her up.
Zhang Youyi had never been out of the house, was seasick, vomited on the ship, and her body was very uncomfortable, but what greeted her was Xu Zhimo's boredom and indifference. This made her original eagerness and expectations suddenly turn into a cold.
Many years later, she recalled the scene, saying: "I reclined on the tail deck, impatiently waiting to come ashore, and then saw Xu Zhimo standing in the crowd looking east and west." At this moment, my heart was very cold... I could tell at a glance that his attitude would not be mistaken, for he was the only one among the people who had picked up the boats and showed an expression that he did not want to be there. ”