Xu Jiru: Today's topic is to talk elegantly, and "elegant" is also the annual buzzword selected by a station in 2022.
What exactly is elegance? Why is this unpopular word being brought up again today?
This concept is also repeatedly mentioned in the masterpieces of the two teachers, I don't know what is the elegance in your hearts of the two teachers?
Li Shu: Let me first introduce you, after I wrote the book "Once Upon a Time Grace", the most common question I was asked was elegance, and I am not a person who is particularly good at definitions.
How to define elegance, you can read Teacher Xiaoxue's "Elegance".
《Elegance》
Xiao Xue
I myself am a person who will feel.
When B stood up for this annual word, I was very deeply touched at that time, I agreed with the young people's understanding of "elegance", I felt that it was more of an inner temperament.
I also very much agree with what young people said at that time, a kind of courage and unfazed temperament in the face of change.
Especially after these three years, how do we deal with this change?
I'm not the kind of person who is particularly courageous and often encounters small things that kill me right away.
But in the process of writing this book, I will later feel how to find the same courage in so many changes, which is probably the biggest connotation of "elegance" for me.
Xiaoxue: The name of the book "Elegance" was not actually given by me, it was given by teacher Xiaoyan, which started ten years ago and has now sold 500,000 copies.
My grandmother was still there when I decided on the title, and she was a really elegant presence in my mind. I remember when she was in her seventies, and I asked my grandmother what is elegance?
She said that elegance is the pursuit of perfection and imperfect calmness.
Xiaoxue
The story of her grandmother is very similar to the story of Zhao Luorui and her husband in Mr. Li Shu's book "Once Upon a Time Elegant".
That experience is so miserable that it is difficult for us to understand now.
I was born in 1970 when my grandmother went through this, and when I looked up to her, I was already a teenager, and I wondered why she was so light, and why was she still insisting in my heart.
She was beautiful when she was at her poorest and most down.
In the 60s, she was sent by the street to clean the toilets in Beijing's hutongs, waking up at 4 o'clock every day, cleaning at 5 o'clock, and finishing at 6 o'clock, because everyone got up at this time to clean up the toilet.
My uncle told me that when my grandmother got up in the morning and went out, many uncles, uncles and aunts in the alley would come out to see what she was wearing today.
In fact, she only had two sets of clothes at home at that time, one set of three five, two four six sets, she would coil her hair very well, with the kind of small hairpin that our mother wore in the seventies and eighties, she would make her head very beautiful and very clean, everyone would see what she wore today, which became the scenery in the alley every morning.
When my uncle told me this story, I was very, very shocked.
When we talk about elegance now, many people feel that they need money and need to wear famous brands. In fact, elegance has nothing to do with famous brands.
Li Shu: I particularly agree with Teacher Xiaoxue's view.
You just talked about cleaning the toilet, and I thought of Yang Wei writing that she cleaned the toilet, at that time, for many intellectuals, cleaning the toilet was a very humiliating thing, but she wrote in her article that she wanted to clean the toilet very well.
She even taught a set of ways to clean the toilet well. In fact, for me, this is also an elegant interpretation.
Yang Wei
I started to learn to sing at a very young age, and when I sang, I knew many old ladies and gentlemen, and they taught me a few fashion experiences and table manners.
An old lady would always tell me that morning lipstick is not the same as evening lipstick, and that you are living too rough now.
She thinks that when I go out to meet people, even if I sometimes call on the phone, I must put on lipstick. Later, I figured it out that lipstick was actually a way for her to fight against life.
In fact, they are not all famous brands, and there are many that are not very valuable, but she uses this way to make her life more beautiful.
Because life is too specific and trivial, there are many unsatisfactory places, how to fight these unsatisfactory, elegance is a way.
Xu Jiru: Just now the teachers have mentioned confrontation with life, and this point is in the afterword of our book: if you don't own life, you may be possessed by life.
It's one of my favorite quotes in the book, and I read so many of the previous stories without shedding tears, but I don't know why I felt so much when I read this book at the age of 30.
The Chinese name of the book, Once Upon a Time Grace, I know that its English name is not a literal translation, but a paraphrase of "wait and hope", waiting and hope.
What is manifested by waiting and hope may also be another note on elegance.
Li Shu: "Wait and hope" is the motto of Teacher Yang Wei.
I remember the last time when the new book "Once Upon a Time Elegance" was released in this place, we told 23 stories in which Teacher Yang Wei was the only one alive, and we still hoped that she would be healthy and live a long life.
Teacher Yang Wei passed away not long ago, she said "wait and hope", I believe this sentence must have left a deep impression on her for so many years.
I want to tell more about Yang Wei's story. Her oral history also came out, and I talked to Ms. Yu, the author of her oral history, for the end of December [last year] until a long time later.
Li Shu
I think the most remarkable thing about Yang Wei is that she values her as a female individual.
At such an age, she still doesn't want to talk about who she is or who her sister is, or a wife and a mother, but about her as a female individual.
In her self-statement, she was very brave enough to tell a lot about the unhappiness of her marriage. I have done a lot of oral history before, and when I do oral history, I find that people can't help but talk about their own good places.
This is very understandable, everyone is like this, this is human nature. But when Yang Wei told her story, she did not hide her dissatisfaction at all.
For example, she bluntly said that her marriage was a failure, and she bluntly said that she made the biggest mistake that she had to get married when she was pregnant out of wedlock at the General Assembly.
In fact, this matter was a hundred years old when she told it, she could not talk about it, she did not talk about what no one knew. But she was very brave enough to say that she regretted the marriage, and she thought that I would divorce if I gave birth to the child.
Yang Wei's special thing is that she has always had a girlish temperament in her, more than a hundred and a year old, and when she talks about those things or about her sister, brother and family, she still has a particularly precious girlishness.
Yang Wei
Later I figured out that the origin of this girlishness was because, despite all the identities superimposed, she always regarded herself as an independent me, just a woman, not a wife or a mother, or the sister of a great translator, or the descendant of an aristocracy.
She has never been like this, and I think this is the biggest place for all of us to learn. So I put "wait and hope" on the cover later, because the phrase itself gave me a lot of power.
Xiaoxue: Just speaking of marriage, I thought of another story, Tang Yurui, I am anxious for her, why didn't this woman let go?
Stories like Miss Tang continue to happen today.
Many intellectual women go to very good universities, and when the marriage hits the rocks and the husband no longer loves himself and loves others, the taste of knowledge in her body disappears, and slowly she becomes a grudge or even a fierce woman because she can't ask for it.
Miss Tang almost became the first batch of Chinese students studying in the United States during the Republic of China, and she is very cultural.
And when there was a problem with her marriage, she kept struggling to say that you wrote so much about me in the beginning, why are you in love with someone else now? I don't want anything, my children and I just want you not to leave me, and even tolerate that you like another person, but I am still your official wife.
When are women inelegant? In fact, it has nothing to do with what you wear, it is the state you are in when you can't ask for it.
I especially want to tell such sisters and sisters that the most painful thing in life is definitely not love, it is certainly not unwanted, why not think about it differently?
Whenever a girl encounters such a problem, at this time love is no longer love, love is opium, you have been poisoned, addicted, used to being attached to this man, accustomed to this man at home is your husband, is the father of your children.
Quit this "opium" and you can become a better version of yourself.
Li Shu: Tang Yurui should be very unrecognizable in the book, and everyone doesn't know who it is, but I insist on putting this story in.
The reason I wrote this story was when I saw a picture of Tang Yurui in Beiyang Pictorial, because I first knew Tang Yurui, it was she who was making a big fuss at the United Nations that someone had stolen my husband.
Then because Tang Yurui saw in Jiang Tinghuang's diary was very unbearable.
He wrote something similar every day in his diary, saying that he and Shen Enqin (Jiang Tingqin's later wife) went to a place to do an activity, and then there was a woman who did not speak, with a gloomy face, maybe she stood in one place, and when the opportunity she went to shake his hand.
Jiang Tinghuang and Tang Yurui
If you imagine, it's quite scary, and as a diplomat, it has greatly affected his diplomatic career.
So when I first saw that paragraph in Jiang Tingyi's diary, maybe from his point of view, I would feel that I was also troubled by him.
But when I saw Tang Yurui, who played the piano in Beiyang Pictorial, I was shocked, this was when she had just been married, in her twenties.
I suddenly felt that this was not the case, this woman was not so grasping horses in the beginning, or not so strong in the beginning.
I looked at it and was surprised that although she did not become the first batch of students to study in the United States, it was the second batch.
First of all, going to college during that period was very remarkable, and it was rare for girls to go to college, and she was still a student studying in the United States, and she went to study seriously. Among the girls in that group, Chen Hengzhe and her are classmates.
When in a good environment, if I live a smooth life, have a husband who loves me, and have a lovely child, everyone should be like Tang Yurui at the beginning.
But why did she become like this? No one thought about it, because the story was already closed, and we saw that she was not a particularly decent person.
Xu Jiru: Actually, I didn't know Teacher Li Shu when I bought the book "Once Upon a Time Elegant", but I was already a reader of her public account.
I came across one of the articles at the airport in Hangzhou called "No Winners in the Battle for Marriage."
Originally, I thought that the topic of "Once Upon a Time Grace" was too sunny (my life is quite trivial now), and as soon as I saw this sentence, I felt that every woman should read it.
After I read it, I really sighed, maybe it's not the same as the two teachers just now, I think that there is no winner in the marriage defense battle, not to say that Tang Yurui is not a winner, Shen Enqin is not a winner.
In fact, Jiang Tinghuang is not a winner, because his political career, his diplomatic career, his health and life expectancy have all been lost.
Xu Jiru
We are talking about Tang Yurui's story about choice, and people's choices are shaped or imprisoned by their own concepts.
Friends listening to our talk about Tang Yurui's side will feel why this woman can't think so much, but in her concept, she may be very concerned about the identity of a diplomat's wife.
She felt that her abilities had to be realized by being a high-ranking wife.
This story sounds ridiculous, but even in today's society, where most ideal marriages are happy and equal, there will still be people who feel that marriage can provide me with opportunities and resources and a platform, maybe we are embarrassed to spread out, but it is real.
This is also why many women do not give up being Mrs. Jiang when they meet their own Jiang Tinghuang, this is the choice.
So elegance is what kind of attitude you have to choose the trade-offs in life.