Sanmao's past in Germany: the love of the city in loneliness

Author: Yayoi Koraku

Sanmao said in her work "Allure" that after graduating from the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Madrid, she applied for the philosophy department of the Free University of West Berlin.

I remember Sanmao once said that when he was a child, he often took a leave of absence, how could he enter Madrid to study, you know, if you want to enter a German university, you must at least have a domestic diploma or a professor's recommendation letter or the like.

Reading her life experience carefully, I found that although she had taken a leave of absence many times, because she had read a lot since she was a child and learned a lot from her parents, she was chartered by Zhang Qiyun, the founder of the Chinese Culture University, to be able to work as an auditor in the philosophy department of the school, and her academic results were excellent.

Since she can get permission to listen to books and her grades are good, the school will naturally give her some proofs.

After graduating from the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Madrid, the application for the Free University of West Berlin was successful.

To start your formal studies there, you need to study at the Goethe Language Academy and get a senior German diploma.

Sanmao wrote "Goethe Language Institute", according to the current parlance of "Goethe Academy", which should be mainly proof of language.

In order to pass the exams of the Goethe-Language Institute, she studied diligently, nailing herself to her desk for ten hours a day.

Because it was her father who worked in the case to support her to study in Germany, she was anxious to give an explanation, so she worked extra hard and obtained the proof of "best student" after three months.

It can be seen from here that Sanmao is very talented in language, and the essence of Sanmao is a very upward type.

Then there was the German middle class study, one of which was the most difficult, because there was no "preview" for the German exam, and once there was an exam, an article of more than 1,000 words, 44 misspelled by Sanmao, and she ran to her boyfriend with the exam paper and cried.

The boyfriend is a real German, not particularly romantic in his bones, and he also said of her:

"In the future, you will be the wife of a diplomat, and what use is German like you?" Can't even write. ”

So angry that she could only go back to the dormitory and cry herself.

At that time, her life was also very hard,

"There is not a little bit of material enjoyment, nor a little time to go to the days that a young girl should live, and I feel helpless and bitter. In those three months, most of them ate biscuits for the day, otherwise it was black bread and soup. ”

"Every night, tinkering with shoes is an inevitable job at dawn. The sole of the shoe is off, and there is a big hole. When I went to school, in order to step on the snow, I always had a plastic bag in the bread of two pairs of woolen socks, and when I went out to wait for the bus, I put another bag on the bread outside my shoes. Afraid of slippage, he tied a rubber band on the sole of the shoe. When you enter the city, at the turn of the school, when you are about to meet your classmates, bend down to take off the outer plastic bag. For the sake of good face, the bottomed shoes were always carefully tied with a brown rubber band of the same color, and when they walked, others could not see it, but the hole always seeped into the snow water. When I entered the classroom, I immediately found a place for the heating pipe and sat down to bake my feet, but even so, I still had frostbite. ”

And loneliness is her norm, and she has very little contact with other Chinese classmates.

Why, Sanmao explained, because he made a German friend.

In this era, if a girl makes a foreign friend, she may be scolded, let alone at that time. She wrote in the article that she felt inferior.

Rao is so, or can see the small humor of Sanmao's bitterness, when filling out the personal characteristics introduction on the column of the Pass to East Berlin, she filled in: teeth are not aligned.

This kind of small humor is also very rare, more common is a kind of sanmao temperament: because the money is not much, so do not go shopping and spend, but to eat a meal, see people's humble laughter, the heart is born of kindness, the money that is not willing to spend is taken out for most of the money to give to others.

The free disposition often causes a lot of unnecessary trouble, and when the trouble comes, there is often a feeling of self-abandonment, always saying "anyway, I don't want to live, I don't want to live, I don't want to live, I don't want to live."

What Sanmao saw after entering East Berlin allowed us to glimpse some of the scars of that era:

East Berlin was exhibiting photographs of the Vietnam War and went inside to take a look. On that sheet, the American army carried the head of the Viet Cong, stepped on the headless corpse, and had a sense of accomplishment like an African elephant hunting beast, and blossomed on the face of the soldier. Without looking any further, I felt like an orphan in Asia Minor. ”

East Berlin was disgusted with people from West Berlin, and West Berlin had a bad attitude towards East Berlin.

Under such circumstances, there is an officer at the border crossing between East and West Berlin who will not be disgusted by people because they came from West Berlin, who will not be dissatisfied with the people of East Berlin when they come to West Berlin.

Although Sanmao did not communicate much with the officer, the eye contact immediately understood each other.

They found a soul resonance between that east-west Berlin antagonism.

They know in their hearts that whether it is the political situation, the economic situation, etc., the possibility of them meeting in this life is very small.

Therefore, the only two times they met in a day were related to entry and exit, and they brought the taste of "knowing each other" and "living away".

So when they first met and left, Sanmao felt "powerless and sad to fall into the water."

When he met him for the second time, Sanmao had already regarded him as "someone else who died." ”

In the end, Sanmao thought he would rather die than stay another day, but the officer pushed her into the car.

When she got back, she fell seriously ill.

This short-lived love song of the fall came to an end.

Sanmao is undoubtedly amorous and sensitive, so from the emotions of strangers, she can quickly identify and recognize.

But she is also transparent, and seems to have penetrated the ending, but in the process, she is entangled.

She had parents who supported her studies in Germany and she couldn't be sorry for them.

She had a boyfriend waiting for her, and she couldn't be sorry for him.

So she can't be willful, and the officer can't be willful.

Everyone had a lot of entanglements, and so was the unnamed East German officer.

We will see that people, sometimes, are really very lonely creatures in this world.

Even if there are people who love us, at some point, they may not be able to understand what we want in our hearts, what feelings we want and what we want to cherish with our souls.

At some point, we still feel that the heavens and the earth are vast, and I am alone, lonely.

Sanmao was studying in Germany at the time, far away from home and relatives, and it was easier to develop this emotion in a foreign country.

In this situation, encountering love that ends without illness is really like a glimmer of hope and light in a life of bitterness and loneliness, but this hope and light soon darkened.

In this way, the love of the city, only a sigh of regret remains.

Note: This article was originally published on the personal public account [Yayoi ID: Tiny-book]