Wu Zhengzhe: My birth saved my father's life I 003

Source: Papa Sunflower (Interview with 100 Chinese fathers to convey the power of paternality)

(Wu Zhengzhe on the day of the interview, photographed in Guangzhou, 2021)

- The Story of the 003rd Chinese Father -

Read the guide

1. Fathers who have been sent to the countryside cannot live without culture

2. My birth saved my father's life

3. From deterrence to dialogue with the father on an equal footing

4, the father is very satisfied with his life

5. Faced with the last moments of life, the father chose to leave with dignity

The following is a compilation of the text narrated by Wu Zhengzhe:

"Fathers who were sent to the countryside could not live without culture"

When I was young, my dad was very strong, relatively fat, more than 180 pounds, and then he seemed very tall, because I was small at that time. But in the end, when he left, he was very thin and thin, maybe less than 100 pounds, and he could pick it up with a light hug, and he could feel that this change was very big, very helpless, and very pitiful.

In terms of personality, I think he has been consistent in his life. My grandfather used to be a professor in Tsinghua, the family is very well-off, in the 40s my father had a refrigerator when he was young, and when he was young, he was very beautiful, and he was a bully and a popular and professional student, which meant that his Colorful movement was in his twenties, and then he immediately encountered anti-rightism.

57 years of anti-rightism, also under the influence of my grandfather, he was next to the school, until 76 or 78 years, nearly 20 years, 20 years is constantly being tossed under various sports. So his whole middle age, 30 to 50 years old, is a very depressed state, life is very desperate.

What is one of the biggest manifestations? He was a teacher at this university at the time, and he was criticized very badly during the Cultural Revolution, and the result was that he was sent to the countryside, and he thought that this was a great liberation for him, so one of the very interesting moves was that he sold all his books, and he thought that he did not have to read books again in this life, and then he used books as waste paper, and sold them for about 200 yuan, which was particularly good. After arriving in the countryside, after more than a year of good feelings, I felt depressed, why, because there was no spirit, no books.

At that time, my uncle worked in the Jilin City Library, and I had a clear impression that my uncle sent parcels every month. At that time, the package was often full of food, so every time I looked at the package sent by my uncle, we thought it was delicious at first, but when we opened it, it was all books.

My father still had to read books, and finally returned to his essence as an intellectual, although the countryside did not have the tension of the original martial arts, but there was no cultural life. Although I sold all the books, I kept asking for these things in the end...

"My birth saved my father's life"

My mother told me, and my father said this to me personally: Your birth saved his life, and he was so desperate that he might commit suicide.

Because of what, every day he was called to this school, criticized, hung a sign around his neck, and then these students not only criticized the fighting, but also fought martial arts, beat him. The students he taught wore the fur-turning shoes that He wore at that time, kicked him in the head, kicked him all over the body, and the damage to him, including physical damage and psychological damage, was very large.

One of the problems that led him to the end of his life was that he had nightmares when he went to bed at night, and he would often be beaten by criticism, and then he would scream and scream very loudly. Sometimes when I came home to live with him during the Spring Festival, I was often woken up by his screams in the middle of the night, and then I went to his room, shook him up, and saw him curled up in this quilt, trembling, and the nightmare lingered.

Later, after I was born, I looked at the white and fat, because I was born with eight pounds, my mother said that it was white and good-looking, I was three generations of our family's single biography, and after he read it, he felt: "Hey, there is such a son, I have to live well for him." ”

One of the biggest changes was that at that time, he had a very heavy sign, and he had to take it to the scene of the batch every day to hang it himself, so in order to be more comfortable in the future, he made a folded board with lotus leaves on it, and he was very happy to make this brand. According to my mother, he whistled when he made the sign, and he was very happy to make such a sign, and then he went to face this matter.

"From deterrence to dialogue with him on an equal footing"

By the time I was 5 or 6 years old, he was in poor health, his blood pressure was high, and his mood was definitely unpleasant. I also have two older sisters, and the three of us feel that he is often irritable.

When I was a child, I was not beaten less, and one very casual thing, I may have suffered a violent beating. Sometimes when we weren't looking at him very well, he was bothering to annoy him, and he came up and gave us a punch and kick, and the beating was also very bad. Once I felt like I was almost beaten to death, and I was beaten very badly, not seriously, and my head was hit, as long as I copied something, a stick, a broom, a stool, as long as it was a hand, I greeted my body.

I think my dad went through three stages of getting along with me, when I was young, it was basically this physical education, because I was very weak, and he mainly hit me by means.

Then in the third year of my junior year, he may not look at me well on his birthday, so he starts to beat me again, and suddenly I get annoyed that time, and then I start to fight with him, and then he is very panicked.

How the opposite, this son began to fight with him, and my physical strength is better than his, he was almost 50 at that time, may not be able to kill me, and then he felt very scared, he wanted to fight with me more severely, but I subdued him, so that he could not move. If he can't move, he's very grumpy.

After that, the two of us had up to nearly half a year without saying a word, at home. Then I would have been in a provincial key middle school near our house, and I could go to that house. I just couldn't go, I had to go farther away from the city, and I first went to a school far away, the purpose of which was to leave this home, get rid of his control, and live in the school.

But I went to that high school, and it was good. After the exam, I can feel that my family is very happy. Then my father specifically asked my mother to convey that he wanted me to go to Beijing, because when he was in middle school, he was in Beijing, and told me that if you went to Beijing for a month, he would reward me.

Then in the middle he waited for me to go to Beijing to play for about half a month, he came to play with me, we both drank in that process, from childhood to adulthood never saw, that time with me so happy, so kind, is this state of two father and son, the grandfather is good, this is the physical stage.

For a moment, it felt different from before, because when I was a child, I was a very strict father, inaccessible, awe-inspiring, he was the law of our family, the legislator, and the enforcer. This thing is the sword of Damox on our heads, and it will punish you for all kinds of misdeeds, these things of yours at any time. It is said that there are gods above three feet, we don't use three feet, my father is three feet away, waiting to stare at you every day, he is such a very deterrent existence.

But gradually, his authority declined. It can be felt that he is starting to be able to communicate with you with equal things, especially when I was in college, and he would write me a long letter every two weeks, which lasted for about four years. All the letters he wrote to me, I still have. This letter is full of very orthodox talk about things that are doing things in a very orthodox way, that is, the truth of teaching by example, or trying to pluck a string on this.

But we actually feel that the ideas of their generation are very different from what we already have, including some views on society, they experienced the Cultural Revolution, although their values may have a lot of things at the bottom of the same as ours, but he has an extra layer of so-called wisdom after experiencing things, that is, you understand this thing in some things, but you don't necessarily have to do it.

But we were hot-blooded young people at that time, we knew that we were going to do it, but we didn't want to hurt his face, and sometimes we lied to him, and then I understood a term very clearly called "the opposite of the south", that is, it was used on me.

"My father was very satisfied with his life."

In his 80s, he will feel lonely, and he is particularly eager to understand the changes in the outside world, and then to understand the means of these changes in the outside world, and he does not know how to master it.

So what's the saddest thing? My dad was a professor of computers, but he was a computer professor in the eighties and nineties, he retired in his 60s, how fast the hardware of computers changed after the 90s, and in turn his biggest distress was that he was very scared when we took a laptop to him in the later stages. He felt that he didn't even have computers—this was his own profession when he became ignorant of how to control it, and there was a lot of software here that he couldn't use, and he felt particularly weak and powerless.

He began to transform into another model, that is, he himself ascended to dimension, he thinks that in the computer situation, because he has found some logical things in the "I Ching" and "Lao Tzu", he can use larger and simpler things to understand society, so instead after he is more than 80 years old, I think this is a very wise old man, he often looks at the problem can often cut the complexity and simply point to the essence of the problem, one or two sentences will give you points to the essence.

Later, we talked once, he said: "In terms of your qualifications, you are a medium qualification, and some of the achievements you have achieved in your career have surpassed your qualifications, and I think I am still relatively satisfied." That was the first point he talked about.

The second point he said: "You are over 50 years old, and your life is about to start to decline." Then you don't have to be so blindly confident in yourself, you must start to have a bottom line awareness, pay attention to risk prevention and control, and do it properly, don't fall some big heels in middle age. Then this time is not like when you were young, you can still get up when you fall off your big heels. ”

I said: "Old man, you have also lived to 88 this year, then the average life expectancy in China is more than 70 years old for men and less than 80 for women. ”

He said: "I am very satisfied, I feel that I have lived to this age, I am very satisfied." ”

Then I said, "What do you think you have to say about your life now?" ”

He said: "From me and this unit, my efforts and the returns that the unit gave me, we both cleared up. I have been retiring for almost 30 years, and in 30 years I have not done anything more to contribute to society, but society has always been very good to me, and there is a pension, and the treatment is not bad, so I feel that I am now more than I have paid. ”

"Faced with the last moments of his life, my father chose to leave with dignity"

Another point is that he feels that I have to walk with dignity in the face of my last life. He said first, no matter what disease I have, I don't go to over-treatment. Don't go to the people to hurt the money, don't open the knife, don't intervene, just make me comfortable and finish, he said there is no need.

He said I am a communist, I have 70 years of party experience, especially materialistic. I don't want to do any ceremony, no one to notify, just tell the closest friend simply, and it is best to tell them in a few months, this matter is equal, so as not to cause trouble to people, people are not appropriate, do not indicate that it is not appropriate, in fact, there is no point.

Then it is to walk quietly, without any ceremony, the memorial service does not need to be held, and the heart is finished. Then the ashes do not want to stay, it is best to scatter in the river, wherever you want.

I said why don't you send it to your hometown, my grandfather and they all have cemeteries. He said that you put that you still think about whether you want to go back when you get to Qingming, you can't go back, and you still feel guilty in your heart. If you scatter this into the river, I will return the material to the material, which is very good.

Then he said that there are three kinds of human lifespan. The first is called physical lifespan, for example, I may live to 90, 89 I will die, what year I was born, what year I died, this is physical life.

There is also a fact that I am still alive in the hearts of your dearest relatives- you, your mother, your sister, these people, maybe your son, as a grandson, he still remembers having such a grandfather, at this time, I am still alive in your hearts. When you are gone, the great-grandchildren behind you, the sons of my grandsons, may not have any impression of me, they will not know what I am, nor will they have anything left behind, and this time it will be a kind of death.

The third kind of death is that no one remembers or knows the words and pictures of this person in this world, and no one knows, and completely disappears historically. Why can meritorious people be immortal? It was his flesh that died, his speech, his deeds, his virtues that continued for a long time. The greater the person's energy, the more he is still alive in this world.

He said that as he spoke for this lifetime, I am very satisfied that I can live in your generation and continue to think about it. But my grandfather looked at him and died earlier than him, but because my grandfather had made some achievements in academics, his writings, in all aspects, were still continuing, and there were still people studying him, but his life span was longer than mine.

I walked with him, and in the end he was basically in a state of coma because it was Parkinson's, and finally he failed. On Tuesday, I was eating out, and then the middle hospital called and said, your dad is not in a good condition, just to see that the blood oxygen and blood pressure are decreasing, and then I went over, gave him some breathing means, the doctor said that the media did not intervene, could not get on the ventilator, did not do ECG pacing. I said my dad had a wish not to do it, and then I would do conservative treatment to make him comfortable.

Then Tuesday, it was me and my sister, my sister was during the day and I was at night, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and friday when I went to work at night, he was gasping for breath, there was a heartbeat, there was blood pressure, but the person was deep sleep, I looked normal, I was on the night shift, and at five o'clock, suddenly this heartbeat was gone, and then the blood oxygen dropped, and at five o'clock I felt wrong, and then the doctor said that this was basically the last time.

I held his hand and it was still hot, and then I was talking to him next to him, and then I called my eldest sister, who was out of town, and asked my eldest sister to say two words to him on the phone, and I said that my father might be leaving, and I said goodbye to him on the phone. At this time, he must still have a sense of hearing, because at this time, the old man had tears flowing out of the corners of his eyes. Then he talked to his grandson, and my son called him again, and he didn't speak, but just felt tears.

At seven o'clock in the morning, when my second sister came, her heartbeat did not have anything, and then gradually changed, and she left.

In his life, I think he has lived a relatively hard life, and I can only say that this person lives a relatively hard life. He said that workers, peasants, and businessmen had only never done business. He worked as a student, a worker, a welder, then sent to the countryside to cultivate land, and later to the army as a soldier, and his life was relatively turbulent.

But he felt that he was still relatively tough to live.

——the end——

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