"I, Lin Lanying, resolutely returned to China 20 years ago, 20 years later, I will not return to the United States."
This was written in 1977 when Lin Lanying rejected a letter from a friend in the United States, who learned that she had been treated unfairly during the turmoil and invited her to settle in the United States.
However, in Lin Lanying's view, being able to continue to engage in the scientific career he loves is already the greatest happiness.
Young Lin Lanying developed single crystal materials
Innate stubbornness
In Xiawu Lane, Putian City, Fujian, there is still a Yushi Dafudi built in the first year of the Ming Longqing. In the spring of 1918, Lin Lanying was born in the last courtyard of Fudi.
The Lin family is a well-known local family, and the birth of this new life that spring disappointed the large family, just because she was an "aunt ghost" (in the local dialect, referring to girls).
At this time, six years had passed since the Republic of China government overthrew the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty, and the patriarchal ideology was deeply rooted. Boys are the prerequisites for Guangzong Yaozu, and the term "eldest daughter" is not a joy for them.
Lin Lanying's childhood was not happy. When she was young, she watched her sisters die in infancy or be sent to the countryside to be a child bride, and only she remained in the Lin family.
From the age of four, Lin Lanying began to take on household chores. Since the age of five, she has to cook for a large family, drag a broom taller than her, clean the yard, and always carry her brother on her back.
Sometimes she had to endure the difficulties of her aunt, and whenever her aunt complained to her mother, her mother had to save face and teach Lan Ying a hard lesson. Despite this, Lan Ying was still so stubborn that she refused to shed a tear and would never apologize to her aunt.
Lin Lanying's former residence
Hunger strike for reading
At the age of six, Lin Lanying had smallpox. Lan Ying, who was ill, squatted in front of her home every evening, looking at the students coming home from school, she also had an idea - reading.
The first thing Lin Lanying did after recovering from her illness was to convince her mother. "I want to go to school." When she was little, she spoke sonorously, but her mother was very angry. In the eyes of her mother, a girl's reading is simply a fool's dream, and the Lin family has never had a precedent for a girl to read.
Lin Lanying was willing to stop there, she was busy looking for her grandfather, crying and begging her grandfather for permission to go to school. Grandfather softened his heart when he saw Lan Ying, who had always been stubborn, crying bitterly on his lap.
But the mother still stuck to the rules, "Look at the girls in and outside this courtyard, whose family went to study?" The little aunt wants to pick the sky and the moon, don't even think about it. ”
The mother is ruthless, and Lan Ying is even more ruthless. When her mother did not agree, she locked herself in a firewood room, and it was useless for anyone to come. She ignored the shouts and slamming on the door, just lying quietly on the dry grass and crying, tears and snot mixed together. In this way, Xiao Lanying went on a hunger strike for two days.
Everyone in the family was impressed by Lan Ying. In the fall of 1924, six-year-old Lin Lanying finally won the hard-won opportunity to study at Tonqing Primary School, about 100 meters from home.
Little Lan Ying always has a force that supports her and does not give up until she achieves her goal. When she stood on tiptoe and approached the sun, the whole world could not block her light.
Suffering a drop-out crisis
Tonqing Primary School is the first new school in Putian that allows boys and girls to be co-schooled. The teachers of this school are basically young intellectuals who have returned from Japan.
"Most of the school sites are located in the temple, and if there is no residential school, they will go home after school. Primary school classrooms are small, with fewer than 30 students per class. Some courses have textbooks, but like history and geography, there are no textbooks, all rely on memorization. ”
Lan Ying gradually grew up here, accepting advanced ideas and learning the basics.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and three years later, she encountered another withdrawal crisis.
By the third grade of primary school, Lin Lanying's cousins had dropped out of school. Most girls choose to go home to do household chores or go out to work as women. Seeing this, her mother Zhou Shuixian also pulled Lan Ying to persuade, "A girl's family, what is the use of studying?" Look at your cousin, you can earn money with shoes. ”
In the 2020s, the status of women was still low. People think that a woman's main task in the future is to find a good husband to marry, and can live the life of a husband and a godson, which is the "winner in life" at that time.
Why can't women read? Lin Lanying was upset, and she wrote to her father, who was working in a foreign country. In the letter, Lan Ying confided her heart to her father, she wanted to continue studying, but the people around her dropped out of school, which made her very confused, she asked her father, is it really useless for women to study?
The father was very open-minded, and he wrote back many times to encourage his daughter: "In foreign countries, there are many girls who have a good career. Study well, as long as you have big ambitions, girls can do great things. ”
Xiao Lanying wrote down all her father's words, and her grades ranked in the top three throughout primary school.
The power of knowledge
After graduating from primary school, the mother did not agree to her daughter going to secondary school anyway. Because Lan Ying went to study, not only could not earn money for the family, but also spent money. Lan Ying competed with her mother in order to study.
Although thousands of waves are hard, blowing the yellow sand to gold. In the summer of 1930, Lin Lanying, with her excellent results, was recommended by the principal of Liqing Primary School and entered Liqing Middle School without examination. This eliminates the need for an "excessive" tuition fee.
After solving the tuition problem and some "negotiation", the mother and daughter finally reached an agreement. Her mother agreed to allow Lan Ying to continue her studies, but on the condition that Lan Ying take care of all household chores when she returned home.
In this way, her homework can only be done late at night. Over time, she developed a habit of sleeping very little.
Lin Lanying understood that the "winner in life" of feudal society was not only to teach her husband and children, but also to read and study.
With enthusiasm, she stepped into the gate of Putian County Liqing Middle School. When she first entered the school, the male students in the class looked down on her, and even ridiculed: "Bamboo alone can't be tied in rows, and Mao Yatou can't study for long!"
For these unfriendly voices, Lin Lanying ignored them and just buried her head in reading. Even though she has to do a lot of housework every day, she has never been late or left early, and she has completed a lot of schoolwork tasks carefully.
When life put heavy pressure on her, she took knowledge as a backer and supported a world for herself.
In that era when she was not yet fully liberated, she was the first to liberate her soul with knowledge.
Reading brings opportunities
In 1933, Lin Lanying was admitted to the best local high school in Putian, the provincial Putian Middle School. She was the only female student in her class.
At this time, the "918 Incident" had broken out, and the anti-Japanese upsurge was also rising in Putian, and students from Putian Middle School were active among them. But Lan Ying was still eager to learn, and it was at this time that she felt her endless interest in mathematics.
Her exceptional concentration and thinking skills, coupled with an unimaginable thirst for knowledge. For a time, her results reached a height that boys in her class could not match.
For a long time, such a complex environment is very unfavorable for Lan Ying's learning. In the second semester of her second year of high school, she transferred to Ham Yik Middle School.
Soon after, the school hired a foreign teacher to teach geometry. But his crappy Chinese made the students puzzled, so Lin Lanying volunteered to be an interpreter for the teacher. Since then, she has received a nickname in school - "Shigu", which is the local honorific title for unmarried female teachers.
Reading books has made Lan Ying's life more possible.
In 1936, when Lin Lanying applied for Fujian Private Union University, no one in the entire family objected. She persuaded everyone with her actions, and thus became the first female college student in Putian, known as "the first female champion in Putian".
Lin Lanying received her doctorate
Ideals ignite confidence
Lin Lanying, who was admitted to the Department of Physics of Fuzhou Union University in Fujian, is immersed in the academic world as always.
In 1938, when the Japanese army began to bomb Fuzhou, Lin Lanying watched the people in her hometown suffer from the destruction of their families and displacement, and she suddenly realized that she was determined to learn the most advanced science and technology, create the most advanced weapons, and make China truly powerful.
In 1948, she made up her mind, waved farewell to her family, and boarded a ship bound for San Francisco. The University of Pennsylvania's Dickinson College is her destination.
During her study abroad, Lin Lanying always cherished the idea that "everything should be subordinated to the urgent needs of the motherland's construction". A year later, she broke through the obstacles of the US government and returned to the embrace of the motherland with new semiconductor materials.
Her success is never achieved in one go, but in the accumulation of small bits.
Under the leadership of Lin Lanying, the mainland successfully pulled the first germanium single crystal in 1957 and the first silicon single crystal in 1958, and China also became the third country in the world to produce silicon single crystal. She is known as the "mother of China's semiconductor materials" and has achieved her original ideal.
Academician Lin Lanying (second from left) in the laboratory with colleagues in 1983
The future doesn't stop there
Lin Lanying has exuded stubbornness from her bones since she was a child, and until the year of the Cane Dynasty, this spirit of not admitting defeat has always supported her to forge ahead.
She never married, and she entrusted her happiness to the scientific career and put more energy on training the younger generation of scientific workers. She has planted countless seeds of hope for the semiconductor industry in her motherland.
Resources:
[1] Gender and Science: A Study of Women Scientists in Modern China, Xue Qiao
[2] "That Eternal Light - Remembering Mr. Lin Lanying" Wang Qiming
[3] "Lin Lanying - Growing and Flying in the Ups and Downs" Zhihu platform
[4] "The Story of Academician Lin Lanying, a Female Heroine with a Relationship with the "First"" Youheng
[5] "Professor Chen Nov of North China Electric Power University remembers his mentor Mr. Lin Lanying, She Taught Me an Attitude" Liu Rong Zhang Feiyan
Author's Note
Lin Lanying's story may not be so vigorous. But I admire the stubbornness in her bones. She has had her own ideas since she was a child, and she does things rhythmically. She is determined to read books and find her goals and direction in reading. It is also reading books that makes her deeply understand that knowledge can save the country and the people.
She dedicated her life to science, to the country. She turned stubbornness into the spirit of scientific research, she smashed confusion into professional knowledge, and she turned reading into a weapon of power.
Pu Wei is as tough as silk, and so is Lan Ying. Stubbornness is her character, which gives her tenacity and eventually becomes an attitude to life.
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Text: Wang Yue