Ashu's words:
The last days of his life series, today it is Hu Shi's turn, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of his death.
At the beginning of 2019, I went to the Taipei Book Fair because of "What does the emperor eat", and Mr. Lin Zaijue, the publisher of Lianjing Publishing House, asked me, where do I want to go sightseeing? Mr. Lin is an elder, this statement is obviously the friendship of guests and hosts, and the younger generations such as me should politely say that there is no need to bother. But I thought about it, and honestly replied, I really want to go to the Hu Shi Memorial Hall.
Taipei Hu Shi Memorial Hall
Mr. Lin agreed. The next morning, he personally drove the car and took me with his wife to Southport. The house is not large, curved ruler-shaped bungalows, with low bushes in front of the door, and lush green vines climbing on wooden lattice shelves. In 1958, Hu Shi wrote to Li Ji:
"I would like to lease a small piece of land on the site of the Nangang courtyard, and at my own expense, build all the small houses convenient for me and my husband, and I will conclude a contract with the hospital, declaring that after ten or fifteen years, the house and the land will be taken over by the hospital."
However, because Li Ji reported this matter upwards, in the end, this fee was paid by Chang Kai.
In front of Hu Shi's tomb, it was strange that the photos I took suddenly turned black and white automatically
The collection in the showroom is very rich, I was impressed, there is the menu when Hu Shi got married, Xu Zhimo wrote a letter to Hu Shi (at that time he was in Hangzhou Yanxia Cave with his little cousin), I even saw the legendary "PTT" silver coin, which was the token used in france to call in the past, because the harmonic sound seems to be "afraid of the wife", friends gave Hu Shi, saying that this is the "fear of the inside" membership card. Hu Shi gladly accepted and enjoyed it.
PTT silver coin, hilariously known as the "Afraid of The Wife" medal
On the way back, Mr. Lin said to me, "I thought you would choose the Forbidden City or Yangmingshan Mountain, and in your young people's hearts, didn't Hu Shi already become obsolete?" ”
Is Hu Shi obsolete?
I never seem to think about this question, when I was a child, the image of Hu Shi was not very good. In the eyes of many, he is just a symbol of the new culture, seemingly no work, but he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939 and 1957. Some people criticized him as a hypocrite, but Lin Yutang recalled that when he went to study in the United States, his wife was sick, he sent a telegram to Hu Shi, Hu Shi twice sent a check of a considerable amount, Lin Yutang always thought that this was Peking University public expense, after returning to China, he specially thanked Jiang Menglin, the acting president of Peking University, Jiang Menglin was greatly surprised, this is not a subsidy from Peking University, but Hu Shi paid for it himself.
Of course, more people may talk about Hu Shizhi, just hu Shizhi, who plays cards every day in his study abroad diary.
In addition to playing cards in Hu Shi's diary, there are many words of self-vigilance and self-improvement
I don't deny that I like Hu Shi, a lively and innocent character, just like I like black tea just rushed into the boiling milk, like the quilt that has been basked in the sun for an afternoon, like the raw fried steamed bun that has just been sprinkled with sesame seeds, so gentle and gentle, so like a spring breeze.
Hu Shi said many words to the youth, but there was a sentence that came to my heart, and every time I thought about it, it seemed that I could instantly get encouragement, have courage, and no matter how big the setback, I took a breath, and it seemed to say goodbye. Before reading today's article, I would like to send this sentence to you:
"Everything from yesterday has become me today, don't think about it, don't mourn, from now on, how to harvest, how to plant."
February 24, 1962, Saturday, the twentieth day of the first lunar month.
I checked the weather in Taipei that day, and as Zhao Yuanren wrote in the lyrics, there were some clouds in the sky, and the mist was mixed with sporadic light rain.
At 8:20, Hu Songping checked Hu Shi's itinerary today:
Nine-point "Academia Sinica" academician election meeting
Eleven o'clock radio recordings
A little lunch
Five o'clock cocktail party
He frowned, this trip, for a patient who has just been discharged from the hospital for more than a month, the burden is not small.
In a gust of wind, the car door was opened, and an old man sat in, which was 71-year-old Hu Shizhi.
The car departed from the student dormitory of National Taiwan University on Fuzhou Street. After being discharged from the hospital on January 10, Hu Shi has been living here temporarily. They did not drive straight to the venue Cai Yuanpei Hall, but first went to pick up the chemist Pan Guan. The day before, Hu Shi told Hu Songping that Pan Guan's leg was broken and his mobility was inconvenient, and he wrote a note to Pan Guan, saying that he would take him to the venue the next morning.
This is Hu Shi's consistent style of treating people, as warm and thoughtful as a spring breeze.
Behind his smile, which he always looked like, there was a sensitive and meticulous heart, treating others like this, and treating himself like this.
Hu Shi lie
These days, Hu Shi's mood seems to be good.
Wu Jianxiong, a female student who was "proud of his life," returned to Taiwan from the United States, and Hu Shizhang said, "I don't know if you are willing to live in the countryside of Nangang or in the city, and both sides have prepared accommodation for you, and asked her to hurry up to see him." One of Wu's most famous scientific achievements was the verification of the non-conservation of cosmology using experimental methods, which led to the 1957 Nobel Prize won by his colleagues Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao. Wu Jianxiong never forgot Hu Shi's influence on himself, and someone once asked her for the secret of success. "We need to have the courage to doubt the doctrines that have already been established, and then to seek verification," she said. It was Dean Hu's 'bold hypothesis, careful verification' that educated and inspired me. ”
Hu Shi once wrote to her: "I have sprinkled flowers and seeds everywhere in my life, most of which have been sprinkled on stones, and one of them has been sprinkled in the anointed land, and a Wu Jianxiong has grown, and I can also be extremely pleased." ”
Wu Jianxiong wedding photo
On the afternoon of February 22, the visit of Wu Jianxiong and his wife made Hu Shi feel very pleased, and Wu Jianxiong also asked Wu Dayu, who was much older than himself, to call himself "Uncle Shi", which made Hu Shi laugh, he needed such happiness too much. Wu Dayu was Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao's teacher, and his relationship with Hu Shi was closer, so in no one's place, he asked worriedly: "How is sir?" Hu Shi, who wore a suit for the reception event in the morning, was changing into a long shirt at the time, and he threw off his sleeve tube and said, "Don't you think I'm very good?" ”
But Wu Dayu knew, and Hu Songping also knew, that Hu Shi's situation was actually not very good.
Just a year ago, Hu Shi had a heart attack at the Nanchang Street Army Association, it was a heart disorder that caused coronary artery embolism, and a new narrow heart disease, when the pulse beat was one hundred and forty beats per minute, breathing difficulties, cold sweat like rain, was carried to the car and sent to the emergency department of NTU Hospital, shot a strong heart, and used oxygen to help breathe, which eased up. By November, there was another recurrence, and before he was discharged from the hospital, the doctor made seven requirements for him, such as doing things for no more than one and a half hours a day in the morning, meeting for no more than 15 minutes, taking a lunch break for 2 hours, and having to go to bed at 9:30 p.m.
The doctor made seven requirements for Hu Shi's health
I specially consulted my friend Dr. Fang Yuan, a vascular surgeon at Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, and he said that narrow heart disease is what we often call myocardial infarction, which was still a difficult disease at that time, "now you can put a stent to cure." There are three taboos for myocardial infarction, which are listed in the following order of importance:
1. Stay up late.
2. Get angry.
3. Drink alcohol.
But these three, Hu Shi has each.
The long grass of Hu Shi's carry-on wine bottle
Just two weeks ago, he stayed up until three o'clock in the morning because he wrote the preface to the "Re-evaluation of the Stone Record" - but he still did not write it out, and at noon the next day, he told his secretary that writing an article was difficult at the beginning, which I thought deeply, and gave him a hundred likes.
He felt that people must live as usual, just like his teacher Walter Wilcox:
"A man who lives to be a hundred years old, as healthy as my teacher Wilkes, speaks and does things as usual is rare. ...... The teacher was 90 years old, out of sight, rich, and had the Times newspaper read to him every day. Read the headline first, then what message he specified, and then read it to him in detail. He was also able to write back, sometimes to the Times, dictated and typed for him. If a person lives to the age of 100 and has to rely on others to live, it is better to commit suicide. However, by then, the will was no longer clear, and I was afraid that I would not be able to commit suicide again. ”
In society, criticism of Hu Shi seems to have become a trend, and even some strange young people can't stand the criticism of Hu Shi by Xu Fuguan and others, and specially write a letter to ask Hu Shi to make a defense himself, and Hu Shi's attitude is: do not respond.
But Hu Shi was still very concerned about those who criticized him and asked Hu Songping to collect them for him to see. Hu advised him not to look at it, "it is really not worth seeing", Hu Shi said:
"Do you think I'm going to get angry when I see it?" I just won't be angry when I see it. ”
He said that if he wrote "Journey to the West", the eighty-first difficulty would write that tang monks were killed on the way to the western heavens to take revenge, and Tang monks promised to sacrifice themselves and cut off his flesh piece by piece to feed to the wronged ghosts.
And now, Hu Shi is also willing to be a Tang monk, "I have come to sacrifice myself so that they can be overborn and can repay their accounts." ”
But I don't think his heart doesn't care, and the day after he said that, Hu Songping saw a note in Hu Shi's study that read:
The big belly can tolerate things that are difficult to tolerate in the world.
How to accommodate?
Self-denial, self-denial.
Hu Shi in his later years
In the rearview mirror of the car, Hu Shi's gray hair could be seen.
This time he was discharged from the hospital, hu shi's hair was very white. He combed his hair in the mirror, and his wife Jiang Dongxiu comforted him on the side: "You are dressed up, much younger, and very beautiful." Hu Shi smiled and said, "Miss Jiang Dongxiu, I have never heard you say that I am beautiful, and I have never heard you say that I am beautiful!" ”
Jiang Dongxiu and Hu Shi
At the end of December 1961, after the forty-fourth anniversary of their marriage, someone else brought a cake framed in the shape of two hearts, and he wanted to eat it, and he was afraid that his wife would blame him for "breaking his heart", so he first asked the secretary to give the cake to his wife, and let the wife keep a piece for himself. Their marriage is old-fashioned, but Hu Shi completely gave up after a struggle, and set his personality as "the president of the Fear of Wives Association", I saw the ptt badge in the Hu Shi Memorial Hall in Nangang, for marriage, Hu Shi said a reasonable quote in his speech welcoming Jiang Dongxiu back to China -
Only if you are not free, you have gained freedom.
"I'd rather not be free, and I'll be free"
This seems to be Hu Shi's eternal way of being a person, whether in marriage or work, the first thing he does is to reflect and adjust himself.
Naturally, he took care of the big picture, and then he hoped that his friends would take care of the big picture as well.
Therefore, despite the repeated comments of doctors, during his hospitalization, he still spent a lot of energy to deal with the internal problems of the Academia Sinica.
He wrote a long letter imploring Guo Tingyi not to resign:
The letter was dictated, and Hu Shi said that he had "lost his loyalty" because he fully understood Guo Tingyi's difficulties.
When Mr. Cheng Chaofu was studying the "Fragments of Mr. Guo Zhenyu's Diary", he found that there were many infighting in the Academia Sinica at that time, and he excerpted several of them as follows:
Mr. Hu Shizhi's illness recurred, and last night was quite serious. At the meeting of the Institute on the eighth day, Li Jiyu was very critical of the affairs of the institute, and he had argued with Mr. Hu, and he did not sit with Mr. Hu at lunch. Things are after Yu went to the venue.
Attending the meeting of the Academia Sinica in the morning and observing the attitude of the responsible persons of various institutes, most of them lacked a peaceful atmosphere, spoke sarcastically to people, and looked at everything empty, especially Li Ji and Li Xianwen. The popularity of reading is narrow, self-righteous, and leaves no room for it, which is not a good phenomenon.
……
Li Ji
Li Ji, a Harvard graduate, is China's first doctor of anthropology and the father of modern Chinese archaeology, and he presided over the discovery of roasted bran in The Yin Ruins of Anyang. At the Academia Sinica, Li Ji is the acting president and vice president, and his main job is to assist Hu Shi, the president of the Academia Sinica.
Li Ji zi jizhi, Hu Shi zi shizhi, Hu Shi has many times to promote Li Ji, but the relationship between the two is not coordinated, I guess, this is related to Li Ji's character is strong and not very mellow.
In Guo Tingyi's diary, Li Ji actually did not approve Yang Shifeng's application for project funds because of his poor relationship with Zhao Yuanren's wife Yang Buwei.
Yang Shuren, the secretary of the Academia Sinica Council, who Hu Shi has always valued, also insisted on refusing to serve as director general because of his disagreement with Li Ji. For this reason, Hu Shi lamented in May 1961:
"When I presided over the first meeting of the council after I took over, I saw the annoying attitude of □□□, and I knew that the tree people could not help. The tree man is not unwilling to help me, he does not even want a car and horse fee, he has long decided not to prepare for long-term help; unless □□□ full realization, the tree man cannot be appointed. □□□ attitude is really annoying; but people are not bad, and his biggest flaw is that he never thinks for others. ”
The box is three words, and it is not difficult to see that it is Li Jizhi.
In 1960, Hu Shi and Li Ji were in front of the office building of the Institute of History and Language of the "Academia Sinica".
But Hu Shi was still polite to Li Ji, and as long as he read the letters, he knew that it was his usual kindness, and it could be seen that he was eager to "fit" Li Ji as much as possible:
Hu Shi's letter to Li Ji on January 30, 1961, was still very kind in his words.
But he may not have imagined that at the cocktail party that began at five o'clock on February 24, Li Ji would once again embarrass him, and perhaps even Li Ji did not think that this embarrassment would be the last.
After lunch with the academicians, it was already half past two when I returned to the house. Hu Shi took a pulse for himself and found that it was more than eighty jumps, and everything was normal.
He took a nice nap, got up at half past four, and thought he was the organizer and wanted to get to the venue early. Hu Songping persuaded that there were too many journalists at the venue, and they would ask questions around him and let him go later.
At five o'clock, Hu Shi "happily" walked to the vertical microphone to give a speech, and the reporters present took a picture of him.
The last photo of Hu Shi
Hu Shi's speech was positive and uplifting, mainly affirming the work of the Academia Sinica, he smiled and said, "Today, because my wife did not come, I said a few more words," and then asked Li Ji to speak.
However, when Li Ji opened his mouth, he said, "I feel that the biggest problem is that scientific ideas cannot take root in China... All scientific equipment is bought from foreign countries, and students must eventually go abroad, what scientific works do we have Chinese? Not as good as Japan. I really don't dare to be optimistic, science can't take root here, I always feel that it is an imported product. I asked this question, and there is no answer, but the question that I have been interested in thinking about for 40 years is now provided for everyone to think about. ”
Li Ji not only sang the opposite tune, but also specifically mentioned a 25-minute speech by Hu Shi at the opening ceremony of the "Asia-Pacific Science Education Association" in November 1961, the main purpose of which was to criticize the oriental people's concept of arrogance with spiritual civilization.
The atmosphere was a bit awkward. Hu Shi asked Wu Jianxiong to speak, and Wu Jianxiong said that he had presumed Wu Dayu as a representative. Wu Dayu helped Hu Shi find some scenes, "I don't think Mr. Li Ji needs to be too pessimistic. International students go abroad and let them slowly mature, and it is good for one in ten people to come back." After Wu Dayu finished speaking, Hu Shi asked another academician, Liu Dazhong, to speak, but Liu politely did not say anything, but only thanked the "Academia Sinica" for the books and periodicals sent to him.
Wu Dayu
Then it was Hu Shi's turn, and this time, his emotions were obviously a little excited:
"I said twenty-five minutes last year, which caused "encirclement and suppression", don't care about it, it is a small body, a small body. I have been scolded for 40 years, never angry, and welcome it, because this represents free speech and freedom of thought in free China. At this point, the tone of his voice was a little excited, and then he continued: "Everyone who has returned from overseas, free China does have freedom of speech and thought. You can visit the Legislative Yuan, the Control Yuan, and the Provincial Council. The Legislative Yuan built a new venue, where the members expressed their opinions and criticized the government, fully demonstrating freedom of speech in free China. In that dilapidated house, a group of old gentlemen and ladies gathered to discuss criticism, very freely. There are also provincial councils, as well as more than 200 kinds of magazines in Taiwan, which you can also read. From these magazines we express our freedom of speech. ”
Speaking of this, he suddenly stopped the topic, perhaps feeling that he had pulled it far away, perhaps feeling that it did not conform to the usual atmosphere of the cocktail party, perhaps he had already felt some discomfort, and he hurriedly continued——
"Okay, okay, we'll talk about it today, let's have some wine and a snack, thank you."
It was half past six.
He stood like that, with a proper smile, shaking hands with the guest who had come to bid him farewell, and intended to turn around, as if to speak to someone, when suddenly he was pale, shook, fell backwards on his back, and the back of his head touched the edge of the table first, and finally fell to the ground.
The doctors who arrived quickly injected Hu Shi with three cardiac injections and performed artificial respiration. On October 25, 1961, he said in a letter to a friend: "Age is not forgiving, I have been sick twice this year, and only then have I realized a little; now it is no better than before, and I cannot be a good man." Having said that, I often remember the last lines of Tennyson's poem ,—— Ulysses: Although it has been used a lot, there are still many miles left / Although we are not the hands of the world before / What we have today is what / What we have today is a brave atrium that is evenly dancing, / A little weakened by the times and fate / But the will is still strong, to work hard, to pursue, to find - never to retreat, not to yield. ”
At 7:25, a taxi arrived at the attending doctor of NTU Hospital, listened to Hu Shi's chest, and immediately announced that Hu Shi's "brave atrium" had stopped beating forever ten minutes ago.
It is said that a long time later, when Wang Zhiwei recalled that when preparing for the cocktail party, Hu Shi once said to him: "The humanities group asked Vice President Li Ji to speak on behalf of the representative. If Mr. Li resigned, there was no need to ask him again. It is better that he does not speak, so as not to say something inconsistent. ”
Hu Shi's New Year card to Wang Zhiwei
After Hu Shi's death, it rained in Taipei.
At Taipei Bliss Funeral Home, thousands of citizens and students flocked to mourn, more than 30,000 people.
Everyone wants to take one last look at this "my friend Hu Shizhi".
He has funded countless young people, helped countless friends, and finally, it was discovered that his inheritance was $135.
Jiang Dongxiu was in front of Hu Shi's body
At the memorial service in memory of Hu Shi, Li Ji sent only three elegy:
Why not die tomorrow?
Try to do your job,
It's like you'll never die.
These three sentences sound impersonal, but perhaps they are not mean, just like Li Ji's words at the cocktail party, which are inappropriate, but they are not necessarily unreasonable.
Interestingly, Li Ji's eulogy contains exactly what Hu Shi once said to a friend:
"I don't see illness as a disease. When a person is about to die, it is better to let him die, that is, I do not treat it as a disease, so I can recover quickly. The first time I had a heart attack, I told the doctor that I had done too much, and that I had done everything well in the second half of the century, that is, I had exhausted all my energy in the second half of the century. ...... If I can still overdraft, I still have to overdraft. ——" The First Draft of mr. Hu Shizhi's Chronology, Vol. 10
After saying this, Hu Shi laughed.
After reading Li Ji's elegy, Hu Shi under the Nine Springs, I am afraid that he will still laugh.
Zhang Ailing, who is overseas, saw the bad news:
"I was just thinking that it was a blessing to die suddenly after speaking at a banquet, that is, to die without illness. As a man, he is also deserved. It wasn't until last year that I wanted to translate "Flowers on the Sea", and in the early years, not only could I ask Mr. Shizhi to help introduce it, but I thought he would be happy, and I really felt that Mr. Shizhi was gone. Often when I think about it, there is a heat behind my eyes, and I can't see the tears. ”
The death of a heart attack, although sudden, is, as Zhang Ailing said, "really blessed." Before Hu Shi's death, many people had calculated his fate. Hu Songping once saw a celebrity fortune telling book outside (somewhat similar to today's celebrity astrolabe) and took it back to Show Hu Shi -
Hu Shi said that he also had his own life in the Book of People
In this conversation, the "Renjian" mentioned by Hu Shi is Lin Gengbai's numerology work. Lin was a famous numerologist during the Republic of China period, he once calculated the collapse of Yuan Shikai's regime, and also predicted xu Zhimo's death, and the fate he gave to Hu Shi was like this, I can't understand a word:
However, Hu Shi may have forgotten that a few decades ago, on January 21, 1924, Jiang Menglin's birthday, Hu Shi and other friends ate at the Baohua Building in Beijing, and there was Lu Yi'an in the seat, who was good at looking at faces. For everyone to see, Hu Shi felt that he was not accurate in calculating himself, and many of them were reasoning. He kept it in his diary.
Fortune telling in Hu Shi's diary
I noticed that there was a passage in the diary like this:
He said of my future: there will be great changes in life at the age of thirty-four; thirty-four or five years of age will have to travel far; there will be many storms, and the life expectancy will be about seventy years old.
"There have been great changes in life at the age of thirty-four", probably referring to the fact that he finally ended his relationship with Cao Chengying.
"Thirty-four or five years old must travel far", he went to England at the age of 35.
February 24, 1962, was the last day of his life, when he was seventy years and two months old.
1. Hu Songping, Mr. Hu Shizhi's First Draft, Lianjing 1984
2. Hu Songping, Mr. Hu Shizhi's late speeches, Nova Publishing House, 2006
3. Dai Jun, Yiguan of the Republic of China: Wind and Rain Research Institute, Beijing United Publishing House, 2012
4. Father Cheng Chao, seek truth and | Hu Shi's cause of death, Southern Weekend, 2019-11-14
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