Author: Zhai Xiaojie
<h1>(i) I said: I have not seen my father for more than two years</h1>
On a late autumn evening in 1928, the streets of Yangzhou were as miserable as night, and the northeast wind of Xiao Suo swept through the dead leaves of the tall branches, revealing a domineering and cruel face.
On Dongguan Street in Yangzhou, a young man had just returned from the post office, holding in his hand a collection of essays sent by an enlightened bookstore, and the grass-green cover was impressively two large characters - "Back Shadow". He did not dare to delay for a moment, and rushed to a simple house in Renfengli and ran to the bedroom on the second floor.
It was an old man's bedroom, the walls looked dark and shiny because of the dilapidated, and there were a few places where the dampness was severe, and the gray powder was mottled down, revealing a red brick background. After the bed was laid out in the narrow room, there was almost no extra space. The old man's leg disease is already very serious, the mobility is inconvenient, most of the time on weekdays is always curled up in bed, rarely go out.
He took the book he had just retrieved from the post office from the young man's hand, staggered to the window, put on his reading glasses, leaned back in a small chair, and recited the contents of the book word by word in the faint light.
"I haven't seen my father for more than two years, and the last thing I can forget is his back. That winter, my grandmother died, and my father's messenger was handed over, and it was a day of misfortune. I traveled from Beijing to Xuzhou, planning to follow my father home from the funeral. When I went to Xuzhou to see my father, I saw things in the courtyard, and I thought of my grandmother, and I couldn't help but shed tears. ”
As soon as I read the beginning, the old man's eyes became dim and blurry. As he continued reading, his hands trembled slightly, and the tears could no longer be stopped.
This old man who can't help himself is Zhu Ziqing's father, Zhu Hongjun. The essay "Back Shadow" is written about a past event in his ordinary life with his son. The young man who handed over the book was Zhu Ziqing's third brother.
"Back Shadow" finally wrote: "He is touched and sad, and naturally cannot help himself." In the middle, it is natural to be outside; family trifles often touch his anger. He treated me differently. But in the past two years, he has finally forgotten my badness, just thinking about me, thinking about his son. ”
When I first read this, I deeply wondered why my loving and courageous father often lost his temper at home. What bad thing has the son of a delicate and kind temperament done to his father? I always feel that behind this passage, there are some stories hidden. Maybe there is something in the past that has separated the father and son.
With doubts, I looked through Zhu Ziqing's prose and his biographical materials, and gradually solved the mystery. It turned out that there had been a fierce dispute between the father and son. For at least five years, father and son, dissatisfied with each other, severed contact and communication.
If it weren't for this article, which indirectly created an opportunity for them to release their feelings, perhaps they would continue to hate each other and eventually go to the grave with hatred.
(Zhu Ziqing)
<h1>(ii) The father said: It is natural to spend the salary of the son</h1>
Zhu Ziqing's father was named Zhu Hongjun, and because he revered Su Dongpo, he took the character Xiaopo. Born in 1869, he served as an official in Donghai, Gaoyou, Yangzhou, Xuzhou and other places in Jiangsu Province, and finally became the "Director of Tobacco and Alcohol Public Sale" in Xuzhou, which is a fat difference in charge of salt, tobacco and wine.
The Zhu family is a scholarly family, Zhu Ziqing is also the eldest son in the family, on the one hand, the father is a special treasure to this eldest son, trying his best to provide him with rich material conditions, on the other hand, the father has great expectations of him, especially in academic supervision and strict supervision of him. When Zhu Ziqing was very young, the imperial examination had just been abolished, and the new school was just beginning to rise, and his father was worried that the teaching content and effect of the new school were not satisfactory, so he sent him to the home of his fellow villagers to learn poetry and ancient Chinese.
When Zhu Ziqing returned from school, his father always had to personally ask him about his composition. Often at dinner, Zhu Ziqing moved a small bench to sit next to his father, who sat on a high bench, shaking his head while drinking wine and chanting the homework in his hand. If the husband evaluates well, the father will nod his head and say yes, drink happily, and give his son a few peanuts and rice to make a snack. If the evaluation is not good, the father will reprimand the son, and when he is extremely angry, he will even burn it to the text, frightening the son to cry and not be soft. It was under the strict supervision of his father that Zhu Ziqing laid a very solid foundation in ancient poetry and traditional Chinese studies.
Zhu Ziqing has an essay "Winter", in which he wrote about eating boiled tofu with his father when he was young. "The house is old, although it is lit with 'foreign lamps', it is still dark... The 'foreign stove' is too high, and my father must often stand up, lean his face slightly, look at his eyes, reach into the chopsticks from the hot air, pick up the tofu, and put it in our soy sauce dish one by one." We sometimes do it ourselves, but the stove is too high, and it's always much better to sit back and enjoy it. "This is not a meal, just eating and playing in idle time, because it is cold in the winter evening, my father arranged for everyone to eat like this, so that it can be warmer." We all like this kind of white water tofu, as soon as it is served, we look at the pot, wait for the heat, wait for the hot tofu that falls from my father's chopsticks. ”
The winter in Yangzhou is wet and cold, but every word in the article is filled with warmth and happiness, and the father's licking feelings are self-evident. However, Zhu Hongjun was also a deeply rooted parent of feudal ethics, and the idea of the three principles and five constants and the father as the son became his code for handling family relations. He loves Zhu Ziqing, but he cannot be too intimate with his son, because he is worried about affecting the relationship between father and son. In front of the child, he behaved solemnly and solemnly, not smiling, such a family affection is implicit and imminent.
In 1912, when Zhu Ziqing was fourteen years old, his father betrothed him to Wu Zhongqian, the only daughter of a famous doctor in Yangzhou. Zhu Ziqing graduated from middle school at the age of eighteen, and just after entering the university, he married Wu Zhongqian, and the wedding was grand and decent. At that time, the financial situation of the Zhu family was not as good as before, and in order to organize this wedding, my father could be said to have done his best.
In the summer of 1916, Zhu Ziqing was admitted to the preparatory department of Peking University, and the next year, his father was unemployed and "idle", and the huge family suddenly lost its financial resources and could only rely on debt to survive, and life became difficult and poor. In order to let his son study at ease, his father let everyone hide from him, but Zhu Ziqing returned home during the summer vacation or realized that in order to reduce the burden on the family, he applied for Peking University in advance and entered the philosophy department.
(Zhu Hongjun and his children and grandchildren, the second from the left in the back row is Zhu Ziqing)
In 1920, Zhu Ziqing still graduated from Peking University early in order to reduce the burden on his family, and after teaching at zhejiang first normal school for a period of time, he returned to his alma mater, Yangzhou No. 8 Middle School. During his tenure as dean of academic affairs, his father took his salary for the month without saying hello to the headmaster. This incident became the fuse of the contradiction between father and son.
Zhu Hongjun felt that it was natural for a father to spend his son's money, even if the way was inappropriate, there was nothing to worry about. Of course, Zhu Ziqing also understood that as the eldest son, he had the responsibility to bear the family expenses, and then what he could not accept was whether his father did not regard him as an equal individual, or as a feudal autocratic patriarch who tried to completely control him. Zhu Ziqing, who had been infected by new ideas at Peking University, was completely angry, and during the friction and conflict between father and son, his father's concubines provoked them again, making the contradiction more and more intense. Zhu Ziqing angrily left Yangzhou for Ningbo and Wenzhou to teach, and three months later, he took his wife and children away, completely out of his parents' control. Father and son have since fallen out of harmony.
The contradiction between Zhu Ziqing and his father, on the surface, is an economic problem, but in essence it is a collision and confrontation between the new concepts of personality independence, individual freedom, and ideological emancipation, and the old tradition of the feudal family, which was the dilemma that the vast majority of Chinese intellectuals fell into at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was also the root cause of the family tragedy encountered by intellectuals.
<h1>(3) Father said: The period of about the great exodus is not far away</h1>
Zhu Ziqing wanted to take the initiative to ease the contradiction with his father, in the summer of 1922, he took his wife and children back to his hometown in Yangzhou, but his father's anger did not subside, first did not allow Zhu Ziqing's family to enter the door, and then gave in under the persuasion of his family, but he always ignored his son, Zhu Ziqing felt bored at home, and only stayed for a few days before leaving sadly. He returned home again the following summer, but his relationship with his father remained unseasonable. In the following years, Zhu Ziqing never returned. Father and son were strong with each other and turned into strangers. In his article "Destruction", he called it "hatred between flesh and blood".
In his later years, his father was outwardly indifferent to Zhu Ziqing, but in fact, he always remembered this wandering eldest son in his heart, but he could not pull down his face to face his son and admit his mistake, and could only communicate with Zhu Ziqing in the name of remembering his grandson. After Zhu Ziqing became a father, he also began to experience the difficulty of being a parent and the bitter heart of his father.
Zhu Ziqing said that he was "a completely selfish person, who was barely a husband, and even more unable to be a father." When his son Ah Jiu was only two and a half years old, because he was particularly fond of crying, he pressed him to the ground and beat him. Ah Cai was only one year old, and he was not likely to walk, so because he was pestering his mother, he actually pressed her tightly into the corner of the wall and cried and cried for three or four minutes, so he was sick for several days. He complained to himself and said: "The children's torture is really helpless, and sometimes they feel that it is better to commit suicide." ”
The father wrote to his grandson Ah Jiu, and the letter said, "I did not delay you, and you should not delay him." "Yes, although his father was harsh and domineering, he did always urge him to be self-motivated and never delayed him." Thinking of his father's good deeds, Zhu Ziqing couldn't help but cry.
Later, he reflected on himself, "Once upon a time, he was really a 'father who didn't make it'... Blindly blaming children and letting them take responsibility for us is shamefully cruel. In this kind of introspection, he gradually forgot his father's badness. He really didn't treat his own father well when it came to treating his children.
In October 1925, when Zhu Ziqing was teaching at Peking University, he received a family letter from his father, whom he had not seen for more than two years, from Yangzhou, which was written in a later essay: "I am in good health, but my arms are in severe pain, I hold up a pen, there are many inconveniences, and the period of about a big departure is not far away." ”
The kind of blood thicker than water affection between father and son made him sad, thinking back to eight years ago when he left Nanjing to study in Beijing, his father sent him to Pukou Railway Station, and instead of parting, he wrote the immortal masterpiece "Back Shadow" with a stroke of his pen. The article was first published in the November 22, 1925 issue of Literary Weekly, No. 20, and later included in the 1928 collection of essays on back shadows published by Enlightened Bookstore.
When the father read the article and understood his son's heart, three years had passed. In 1928, the father finally read this essay, he forgave the son, and the father-son conflict eased and disappeared. At this point in the story, I feel relieved and sorry, and it is gratifying that in the end, the two finally know each other and shake hands and make peace. Regrettably, both father and son missed too many real reunion times for the sake of false self-esteem and face. Life comes and goes in a hurry, in the face of blood and kinship, what can not be forgiven, what can not be put down?
All eternal and great love must despair once, disappear once, and die once before it can regain love and know the value of life again.
Watching the documentary "Four Springs", one of the passages is really well written: "Probably put too much thought, the luggage rumbled on the road of the rain, I saw the mountains and seas, the city fireworks, but did not dare to stare, you flashed unwilling eyes, they said, tired to go home, while saying, the world is still very big, those warm goodbyes, gently become, eat on time, rest early, and I did not look back, until the moon was draped." ”
I was not born, I was born and I am old. Couples may still grow old with their heads in vain, but the overlapping lives between parents and children are really very limited. Parents in the world always look forward to their children becoming mature, but excellent children are the country, and mediocre children are parents. As a child, do you expect to excel and take root in a city with more room for development, or do you work hard all your life and stay with your parents to fulfill your filial piety? Perhaps, no matter what choice you make, you will eventually leave regrets. The only thing you can do is to cherish the moment and be kind to every moment of time together.
<h1>(4) Father said: There is no way out of heaven</h1>
He picked out for me a chair by the car door; I laid out the purple coat he had made for me and sat down. He told me to be careful on the road, to be alert at night, and not to get cold. "At that time, all the valuables in the family were pawned one by one, even the slightly better clothes were sold, and my father was empty and in debt, borrowing usurious loans, and only then did he do a funeral for his grandmother. However, in such an embarrassing situation, his father still made a fine purple coat for Zhu Ziqingding and carefully laid it on the seat to resist the wind and frost of the northern country.
Thinking about it, my father would always do his best for him. Just like his wedding, obviously the family's economy is stretched, or for him to support the big scene; just like the father worried that he was thirsty in the car, he had to take a detour to buy oranges, and climbed the platform over there with a fat body; just like the family was worse than a disaster, he would only cry with a clumsy tongue, but his father comforted him that "there is no way out of heaven". As a father, he really has done enough.
Later, regarding the whereabouts of this purple coat, Zhu Ziqing made an explanation in the article "Buying Books".
In the year of graduation, I went to Liulichang Huayang Bookstore and saw the new edition of the Webster Dictionary, which was priced at only fourteen yuan. But fourteen dollars is not easy to find. Thinking about it, I had to harden my heart and take a purple-haired otter collar made by my father when I got married, and go to a pawnshop at the back door, saying that it would be fourteen yuan. The person on the cabinet seemed to have no difficulty and agreed. This large piece is a cloth face, earthy style, small collar and hairy - originally made up of two pairs of "horseshoe sleeves". My father made this dress, but it took a lot of effort. When I took it, I hesitated for a moment, but finally I couldn't bear the dictionary. Thinking about the future redemption is enough. I can't imagine that I can't redeem it, which is a regret that I often cite in that dictionary until now. ”
The purple coat sent by the father ended up in the pawnshop, but if you think about it, if the father, who has always paid attention to his son's studies, knows that the coat was finally replaced by a dictionary, he may still understand it!
In 1945, his father, Zhu Hongjun, died of poverty and illness at the age of 76. Some people say that parents are a wall between children and death, and in the absence of parents, children are not far from death. Zhu Ziqing suffered from a serious stomach disease in his later years, his monthly salary was only enough to buy three bags of flour, and the whole family of 12 people were worried about eating, even if there was money to treat diseases. Three years after Zhu Hongjun's death, in 1948, Zhu Ziqing died of stomach perforation in Beiping at the age of 50. Before dying, he instructed his wife: "I signed the document rejecting us aid in flour, and our family will not buy American flour rationed by the Kuomintang in the future." "I am seriously ill, but I am also proud.
【About author】Zhai Xiaojie, a native of Jingzhou, Hubei Province, is a master's student in the Department of Journalism of Wuhan University. He was responsible for the editorial work of China Radio International and has published more than one million words of prose, poetry, novels and so on.
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