Mr. Li Zaigeng visited Germany for the second time in 1992, on the Rhine River
At about 10:00 a.m. on December 6 last year, I received a call from my father, who said, "Your third uncle is gone, you have to call your cousin's house and mourn." I was a little incredulous and blurted out, "How do you know?" "Because the 87-year-old third uncle lives in zhengzhou city's cousin's house, and the father is in his hometown of Xianyou in Fujian, how do you know about the death of the third uncle?" He said it was my brother who told him. I quickly called my cousin, only to learn that the third uncle had died of respiratory failure caused by severe pneumonia the afternoon before...
My grandparents had eleven children, four daughters and seven boys, and the third uncle, born in 1935, ranked fifth among siblings and third among brothers. After he was admitted to college in 1954, he has been studying and working in the north until 1982, when he returned home for the first time to visit his family, after 28 years, he was really a young man who left home. Therefore, he has always been a mysterious existence in my eyes.
Since I can remember, grandma has often been in front of me to say when the third uncle will be able to come home, and there are both thoughts and disgust in her words, and I can hear that grandma is more fond of the three uncles. According to his grandmother, the third uncle was very naughty when he was a child, but he could read, was a bully, and jumped many grades in primary and secondary schools, and was able to successfully enter the university before the advent of the political movement in the 1950s, while his younger brothers were not so lucky, because of identity problems, they could not enter the university door. Sanbo not only studied well, but also fell in love early, fell in love in high school, the object was his female classmates, but it did not affect their studies, both admitted to college, a Tianjin University, a Xiamen University, and married as a lifelong partner. Grandma is very proud of this, and there is no need to worry about their marriage like other sons...
Young Li Zaigeng
Grandma repeated it from time to time, and the image of the third uncle was deeply engraved in my little brain: he was a clever, good at learning, and did not need parents to worry about the child. But what profession and what kind of work the third uncle studied, my grandmother could not tell, so I was very curious about the third uncle since I was a child: what did he look like, how did he live in the field for many years, and did he not want to go home?
In the summer of 1982, I had just graduated from elementary school, and my grandmother's eager third uncle finally returned to his hometown to visit his family. This is a big event for our family, and Grandma is very excited, and has notified other children scattered around the province in advance to come back to the family to reunite. I don't have much of an impression of that grand scene now, but I remember that the third uncle came back with his camera and took a lot of pictures, many of which were from our children. We were in the countryside and hadn't taken many pictures, so we were amazed. It was not easy for the third uncle to come back, and it was not my turn to talk to him. I remember one time up close, he asked me where I could go to the toilet in the village. He was medium in height, elegant in appearance, polite and polite, and he could not see that he had ever looked mischievous. I think Uncle Six looks alike to him, and their temperament is better than that of the other brothers. I don't know why I have such a view, but it has not changed so far, but my mother and others said that the third uncle and the sixth uncle do not look like each other, which may be caused by stereotypes.
This was the first time I had met the Three Uncles. Because of the old accommodation and poor sanitary conditions, the third uncle only came back once, and that time I was going to college and did not see him. However, during my studies and work, I met him three times, probably one of the people in our juniors who had more contact with him.
In my junior year in 1991, the department organized a social investigation of our grade, and there were two lines in Beijing, Luoyang and Xi'an, because the three uncles were in Luoyang, and I chose the latter. After arriving in Luoyang, I went to my uncle's house while I was free to move, and he and his cousin and his wife both went to work, and my aunt and little grandson were at home. My uncle's little grandson was about three or four years old, I accompanied him to read picture books, when I wanted to leave, he was a little reluctant, told me that he would miss me, let me be very moved, thinking that the children in the city are different, and the young age has politeness and is very warm.
In the summer of 1996, the third uncle went to Wuhan Iron and Steel Factory on a business trip, when I had just worked at Central China Normal University for a year, he specially went to my dormitory to see me, saw that my family was surrounded by disciples, very simple, and there was no electrical appliances, so he gave me some money, let me buy a radio to listen to, increase entertainment activities; and pointed to the brown bed in the school where I slept, saying that this bed was uneven, and long-term sleep would affect the spine, so hurry to change one. From these small things, it can be seen that the third uncle is not a nerd who can only engage in research, he is very careful and very good at life.
The fourth time I met Sanbo was the summer vacation of the second year, I took the undergraduate students of the History Department of Central China Normal University on a social investigation, and there were two routes, one was Lushan and Hong'an, and the other was Luoyang and Xi'an. I chose the latter and took the time to go to my uncle's house. Because of the daytime affairs, I passed in the evening, and he and his aunt had already eaten dinner, and invited me to eat at a small restaurant near my house.
Mr. Li Zaigeng at the age of eighty
I met with the third uncle four times, the time is very short, even the most recent one has been more than 20 years, so I forgot to talk about something, but it is certainly just a common thing. Because he is gentle as jade and looks like a humble gentleman, although I am not familiar with him, I do not fear him. In my eyes, he was just a kind and kind uncle, not a great scientist, and every time I met him, I had no restraints. At that time, I was still very young, I had no great ambitions, and I knew that the third uncle was very accomplished, but I never asked him for advice on the way to govern, and he was not a good teacher, and he pointed fingers at me, let alone talked about his career achievements in front of me. However, he would reveal to his brother that I had heard from my uncle and father that he could speak many foreign languages, that he had been elected to the Henan Provincial People's Congress, that he had gone abroad to give lectures, and that he had rated professors. Another thing he made his brothers proud of was that he and my great-grandfather Li Xia were included in the Modern Who's Who's Who in Xianyou Chronicles at the same time. This Xianyou local chronicle, entitled "Xianyou Ancient and Modern", was published by the Fujian People's Publishing House in 1986, and my father specially found a copy for me to see, which reads the three uncles:
Li Zaigeng, male, senior engineer of Luoyang Refractory Research Institute of the Ministry of Metallurgy... After graduating from the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University in the autumn of 1956, he was assigned to Beijing by the state and worked in the Iron and Steel Research Institute of the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry. In 1966, it moved to Henan with the Refractory Research Office of the Iron and Steel Research Institute. Li Zaigeng has been engaged in the research of refractory materials for thirty years, and has made many scientific research achievements, including "the development of magnesium chromium coatings for steel poles in the middle of continuous crossing ingots", "the development of steel fiber reinforced refractory casting materials", "the research of calcium silicate cement", "the development of integral spray guns for jet metallurgy", etc., and have won the Invention Award issued by the State Science and Technology Commission, the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, and the Major Scientific and Technological Achievement Award issued by Henan Province. ...... In addition, he has published more than 20 papers in magazines such as "Iron and Steel" and "Refractory Materials", and has published many translations and comprehensive articles in magazines such as "Foreign Refractories" and "Foreign Light Metals".
I think this should have been provided by the third uncle, and may have written it himself, with extraordinary performance and outstanding contributions. But when we talked on our knees, he never boasted to me, nor did I take the initiative to compliment, we did not talk about our respective professions, it was a daily conversation between ordinary uncles and nephews. The third uncle is happy and quiet, and I do not want to disturb him more, and the interaction with him is "the friendship of a gentleman is as light as water" and is not close. In addition to the above few meetings, there have probably been a few correspondence and telephone contact, but they are all trivia. On one occasion, he was very happy to hear that I was staying in Shanghai to work, saying that several of his nephews worked in Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Xiamen and other places, and that many big cities had relatives, and he went to these places without worrying about no one receiving him. He also said that he was an adjunct professor at East China University of Science and Technology and had the opportunity to go to Shanghai and contact me at that time.
When I was a graduate student at East China Normal University, my cousin-in-law went to Shanghai Overseas Chinese University to participate in the study abroad training of the National Scholarship Council, and after intense study, he asked me to go out to play once, saw that I was dressed shabby, and specially bought me a jacket. The dress fits well and I've worn it for years. My cousin-in-law also said to me, "Your third uncle is very rich, you can ask him." I don't know if his words were jokes or seriousness, but I never touched the thought. In our hometown, there are public offices called "eating work", that is, rich people. The third and second uncles are very filial and will send money to Grandma every month after work, and Grandma is the only old man in our village who has at least two remittance slips per month. She also thinks that the third uncle has money, and sometimes complains to me that the third uncle and other sons do not take the money to come back to build a house. Others in the village built new houses, and Grandma's sons basically "ate and worked", but they failed to build new houses, and she felt very faceless.
In the era when Sanbo worked, the wine aroma was not afraid of deep alleys, not popular appearance rate and brush presence, I did not see the publicity and self-promotion about Sanbo, nor did I ever understand, my cognition of him has always stayed at the level of "Immortal Journey Ancient and Modern" in the 1980s. After the death of the third uncle, according to his cousin, it caused a shock in his industry, and he received hundreds of pairs of ties from home and abroad in one day. On the day of the memorial service on December 7, although the new crown epidemic was distributed in many places in China, 70 or 80 people took precautions and insisted on coming to see him off, and his units, colleagues and friends praised him well... In her memorial service, my cousin said: "My father in my heart is a person who has the taste of clothing, a cup of coffee every day, likes to listen to music and taste food, and subscribes to the "Reference News" all his life. "This is also the other side of the daily life of the three uncles that I do not know, which verifies my first impression of him, he is a very traditional intellectual, diligent and down-to-earth, both inside and outside, and the unity of knowledge and action."
Author: Li Zhiming
Editor: Wu Dongkun
Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.