Fall in love with his people, and fall in love with his country.
In the midst of the boundless hallucinations, she seemed to see him again, heroic and imposing, and soon, the face became blurred again, and finally like a painting of ink and danqing, slowly blending and staining...
Is this his calling in the dark?
In her later years, Jiang Zuomei was often disturbed by such dreams, until the age of 88, when she had no worries, she personally went to look for him and accompanied him for a long time.
From the first acquaintance to the meeting under the spring, it was a reincarnation of a nail.
1
In the early morning of June 18, 1913, a crisp gunshot rang from the playground of the Baoding Army Officer School in Hebei Province.
Principal Jiang Baili fell to the ground with a bullet, and the blood immediately stained his military uniform red.
▲ Jiang Baili
On the eve of his suicide, Jiang Baili left a family letter to his mother: "Loyalty to the country, although death is not important, it is beneficial to the future of the army and the Republic of China." Two hundred coins, a few acres of thin fields, and a chat for support. "It's bloody.
As the principal of the Baoding Army Officer School at that time, Jiang Baili was full of liver and gallbladder, trying to save the world, but he had ambitions that were difficult to extend, and he ran into walls everywhere, so he wanted to swear to the world through death.
It was just that this bullet through the ribs did not hurt the heart, nor did he worry about his life, but it brought him the goddess of luck that changed his life.
Soon, a Black British-Made Carriage stopped at the entrance of the Military Academy, and a Japanese medic and a Japanese woman quickly descended from the carriage.
After Jiang Baili was saved, the doctor advised him to continue his recuperation. Yuan Shikai said that he must leave one person to take care of Jiang Baili.
▲ Yuan Shikai
In this way, a Japanese nurse named Sato Yadori stayed.
Sato was just 21 years old at the time, from an aristocratic family in Hokkaido, and after graduating from a nursing college, she was sent to work at the Japanese legation in China.
The first time Sato saw Jiang Baili, his face was miserable and his spirit was not strong, even if he was rescued, he might still choose to take his life.
At that time, Jiang Baili hid a large amount of sleeping pills under the pillow, ready to take them. The attending doctor knew that heart disease still needed a heart medicine doctor, so he said to Sato, "The headmaster should not be desperate, persuade him to broaden his horizons, your responsibility is more important than mine." ”
A person who is determined to die must have a strong knot in his heart.
So, through the heart-to-heart conversation, she learned the story behind Jiang Baili's desperate bet.
2
Jiang Baili, who was born in Haining, Zhejiang, came from a humble family. When his father died when he was 13 years old, Jiang Baili completed his education with the financial support of his uncle. During his studies, he read a lot of books and took it as his mission to change the world, whether in Hangzhou Academy or Dongcheng Academy, he often became the top of the list and became a talented man with a reputation.
After China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, the humiliation of the indemnity for the cession of land made him determined to throw himself into Japan and enter the Tokyo Non-Commissioned Officer School.
In 1905, he graduated with honors in the first place in the Infantry Section.
Later, he went to Germany for further study, and his talent and martial arts were deeply appreciated by the German military scientist General Belumah:
"Napoleon said that in a few years there will be a great military scientist in the East, and perhaps this should be on you!"
▲ Jiang Baili studied in Germany on horseback
After returning to China, Jiang Baili became the first person to systematically introduce advanced modern Western military theories to China. Realizing with a foresight that Japan might invade China, he set out to establish the first line of defense in the northeast and put forward the idea of a protracted war against Japan, which was hailed as the "god of war."
Initially, he could have gone to Yunnan to become the civil administrator of Houlu, a high-ranking official, but he finally chose to become the principal of the Baoding Army Officer School, and in his opinion, this path will help him realize his ambition to revitalize the army and strengthen the country.
▲ Baoding Army Officer School
On the day he took office, Jiang Baili was dressed in a yellow military uniform, wore a command knife at his waist, wore long riding boots on his feet, and rode a tall white horse, standing on the stone steps of the Shangwu Hall, solemn and mighty, and awe-inspiring.
At that time, Jiang Baili, who was just 29 years old, gave an order, and the team of students was shocked, and then automatically and quickly divided into two neat rows.
"Today, when Fang Zhen (Jiang Baili's famous Fang Zhen) arrived at the school, he said to the students on two points: One is the spiritual theme, and the other is the main purpose of learning... If you are incompetent, thank the world with self-sacrifice. ”
Swearing on stage, whispering offstage. The phrase "suicide to thank the world" may seem grand in the eyes of many people. Many of the vows that are bigger than heaven are ultimately nothing more than a false statement.
But Jiang Baili's firm belief in serving the country has never wavered. As a highly educated soldier, how could he not know that military discipline was in ruins, the army was useless, and it was bound to be slaughtered by the great powers. As the principal of the first regularized and largest military academy in the history of our country, he must take the lead in setting an example.
Only three months after taking office, he successively conducted various reviews of field, classroom, internal affairs, and personnel management, and carried out a series of drastic reforms.
After the rectification, the Baoding Military Academy has a new look.
Someone summed it up: "A history of the Republic of China belongs to Baoding and subordinates huangpu." ”
In order to produce more outstanding military talents, the school needs a large budget to increase equipment and hire officers. He asked the ministry for money, but the Beiyang government initially established the school not to cultivate military talents, but to position it as a façade decoration.
▲ Jiang Baili in Italy in September 1936
Therefore, the ministry pushed three blocks and four blocks. In the face of all kinds of prevarication, Jiang Baili argued on the basis of reason: "To run a first-class military academy, we should do whatever it takes to achieve great gains in the future." I can't just be perfunctory and make an ornament in name only. ”
However, this telegram was still stoned in the sea, and there was no news.
Later, he personally went to the ministry to ask for money, but he returned to Baoding with a stomach full of resentment.
▲ Jiang Baili (front row, second from left) and Liang Qichao (third from left in the front row) went to Paris, France, to attend the peace talks
He gathered all the students and instructors into the playground: "I have taught you when I arrived at this school that what I want you to do must be done, and what you want me to do, I will also do." If you can't do it, I'm going to punish you; if I can't do it, I'm going to punish myself..."
As soon as the words stopped, he fired a shot at himself in the chest.
▲ Cai Yi, Zhang Xiaozhun, Jiang Baili
The general, who had been known as the "Three Masters of China" with Cai Yi and Zhang Xiaozhun, shocked the government and the opposition with his determination to die.
3
After being rescued, Jiang Baili was still wandering in despair, so Sato decided to properly unravel this aspirant who had no way to serve the country.
She gently comforted him: "When encountering difficulties, using suicide to escape is the easiest and easiest way, but life does not belong to oneself, but to the country." It is not easy for the state to spend so much money to cultivate talents. Since you want to serve the country, you can only serve the country by living, and only then can you have the opportunity to serve the country. ”
Sato's reasonable words made Jiang Baili ashamed and embarrassed: When the eldest husband died as he deserved, how could he be angry when the national shame had not yet snowed and the lives were ruined? Death is not a pity, but will it really lead to the elimination of maladministration by the dim-witted authorities?
Under Sato's patient advice and careful care, Jiang Baili slowly untied his heart knot, and gradually developed a different affection for this foreign woman.
Three weeks later, however, Sato was ordered to return to Beijing.
Without Sato by his side, Jiang Baili's life seemed to become empty. Unconsciously, the thought of Sato grew in his heart.
After Jiang Baili recovered from his injuries, he was unwilling to continue his position as principal of the Baoding Military Academy, so he submitted his resignation to the War Department and went to Beijing to recuperate.
After arriving in Beijing, Jiang Baili was pleasantly surprised to find that it was Sato Yadori who was still nursing him. His sword eyebrows, which had been furrowed for many days, finally unfurled again.
A few days later, the doctor who had been treated in Baoding for a hundred miles quietly told Sato: "The principal entrusts the president, the president entrusts the minister, and the minister entrusts me with one thing to discuss, that is, your lifelong event." ”
▲ Jiang Baili and Jiang Zuomei took a group photo
Jiang Baili is not a reckless puppet, but he has fallen in love with Sato, and he hopes that the woman he likes will marry him.
After three weeks together, Sato was deeply impressed by this brave and courageous Chinese soldier. But she didn't expect the two to develop further. A Japanese woman marrying as far away as China has never been in her life plan.
Soon, she sent a letter back to Japan, asking her family to report her mother's illness so that she could take a leave of absence to return to China. Soon, the forged telegram made her return to China a logical one.
Sato's departure did not cut off Jiang Baili's love thread. His countless letters turned into attentive blue birds, flying over the sea and sending greetings to Sato.
This affectionate love letter completely broke down Sato's psychological barrier.
But the parents did not want their daughters to leave their homeland: "Japan is not without good youth, why marry a Chinese with dark wounds." ”
▲ Jiang Zuomei
The mountains are long, and love is difficult to put down. Sato can only use a lot of work to dilute the inner loss.
This stubborn Chinese soldier wrote more frequently: "I was born because of you, and now you want to kill me!" I'm going to Japan right away, and I'm going to die in your house. ”
Jiang Baili was obsessed with this point, and Sato was also very bitter. After all the trouble, she showed his parents one by one the letters he had sent.
After a long silence, the mother said with tears: "When a person falls to the ground, he brings the fate of a lifetime." You have saved him once, and you should save him again. If you forsake him to marry someone else, you will be in your arms for the rest of your life, and this spiritual pain will be against you. ”
Eventually, Satoya agreed to Jiang Baili's marriage proposal, and before leaving Japan, she told her family:
"I am now a Chinese woman who married Chiang because of her admiration for the general and her love for China."
4
In 1914, a steamship from Japan docked at The Mouth of Tanggu in Tianjin. In the crowd of eagerness, Jiang Baili finally waited for Sato.
That year, Jiang Baili was 32 years old, Sato Yadō was 24 years old, and the two were married at the German Hotel in Tianjin.
After the wedding, when she returned to Japan to visit her relatives, Jiang Baili wanted to buy a diamond ring for her at a large price, but she refused.
She was not the kind of woman who coveted vanity, and as long as his love was there, she felt that she was richer than a prince.
▲ Jiang Baili family portrait
Jiang Baili loved plum blossoms, and after marriage, Jiang Baili gave Sato his surname and named mei. Since then, Sato Yaden has had a Chinese name - Jiang Zuomei.
Later, he purchased several acres of land in the western foothills of Dongshan Mountain in His hometown of Jiaoshi, Zhejiang, and planted 200 plum plants, called "Plum Garden", planning to return to his hometown in the future and take plum garden as a place of retreat. But later these plum blossoms were destroyed in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
On April 12, 1927, Jiang Baili's student Tang Shengzhi raised an army in Wuhan and went on an eastern crusade against Jiang, and Jiang Baili was implicated in this, arrested and imprisoned, and detained in Nanjing.
At that time, Zuomei was recuperating in the hospital, learned that her husband was arrested in Nanjing, and was immediately discharged home, taking a soft belt, while running around for help, while collecting fragments of the prison life of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign celebrities, encouraging Jiang Husband to live better.
Three months later, Nanjing's attitude toward Jiang Baili eased somewhat, and she could even visit her family every day, and she boarded her eldest daughter and second daughter who were studying at the school, and moved her Shanghai home to Nanjing with her four and five daughters who were still young.
Jiang Zuomei went to visit the prison every day, and with Jiang Zuomei's companionship and comfort, Jiang Baili's prison life would not be too torturous and bitter.
He played tai chi for half an hour every day, accompanied his two daughters to kick shuttlecocks, explained ancient poems to their daughters, and practiced writing on the case. Later, the "Spirit Flying Sutra" with long strokes of ink and ink was the result of training at that time.
Later, under the joint pressure of people from all walks of life, Chiang Kai-shek allowed Chiang Baili to be released from prison. After his release from prison, Jiang Baili was still running around state affairs and performing the duties of a soldier.
In 1937, Jiang Baili published the famous military work "On National Defense", and the title page inscription was: "Ten thousand words, just to tell everyone a word, China has a way!" ”
▲ Jiang Baili's book "On National Defense"
This military treatise became the strategic guiding basis of the Chinese army in World War II.
After the sino-Japanese war, Jiang Zuomei faced the difficult problem of making a painful choice between the two countries:
Other places and homelands, love and affection, inseparable, everything is related to her happiness.
But she ultimately chose to side with love and justice.
As a Japanese, Jiang Zuomei did not excuse her country: "The war between China and Japan was the fault of the Japanese warlords' aggression", so she cut off all ties with Japan and never set foot on Japanese soil again.
During the war, she took her five children and followed her husband north and south to support his anti-Japanese actions.
When the family's savings were sold out, she sold her gold and silver jewelry in exchange for cloth and medical gauze, rushed to make military uniforms and bandages day and night, and then entrusted people to the front line to save lives and help the injured.
In September 1938, Jiang Baili became the president of the Army University. At this time, Lu Da, running a school in Taoyuan, Hunan, was planning to move to Zunyi, Guizhou.
Just two months later, Jiang Baili died of a heart attack on November 4 at the age of 57 due to day and night anxiety.
Although as a famous military theorist in modern China, a generation of military scholars, he did not die on the battlefield, but the glory behind him was extraordinary. A few years later, he was buried by the Nationalist government with a ceremony of national mourning.
This hard-boned soldier once said: "No matter what world we fight, it doesn't matter if we lose everything, we must not compromise with the Japanese, and the final victory will be ours." You don't believe it, you can open your eyes! ”
Unfortunately, Jiang Baili could not see with his own eyes the appearance of a scene he firmly believed in. Eight years later, after the victory of the War of Resistance, when he was buried in the West Lake, the crowd found that Jiang Baili's bones were not rotten.
▲ Zhu Kezhen
His friend Zhu Kezhen caressed the coffin and cried: "A hundred miles, a hundred miles, something to be done?" I tell you now that our country has triumphed! ”
5
After Jiang Baili died, the big tree in Jiang Zuomei's life also seemed to fall, and she fell ill several times after being overly sad.
What made her particularly sad was that when Jiang Baili died, someone actually framed her husband for poisoning her because she was a Japanese woman.
She was persuaded to return to Japan to seek asylum.
But in wartime China, although there was a lot of artillery fire everywhere, but it was her husband's home state, she left, leaving him alone in the isolated grave to the devastated homeland.
▲ The picture shows Jiang Baili (middle), Jiang Ying (second from right), Jiang He (standing) and friends in 1936 at their apartment in Germany and Jiang Baili taking a photo with Jiang Ying before returning to China.
In the end, Jiang Zuomei still chose to stay in China.
At the beginning of her serious illness, she continued to fight with her five children, not only actively donating money for the war, but also going to the front line to provide medical services for Chinese wounded soldiers.
▲ Jiang He, Jiang Zuomei, Jiang Baili, and Jiang Ying at the Berlin Zoo
She inherited her husband's unfinished legacy and raised their children.
The five daughters, taught by their mothers, have all learned and become people with the same integrity as their parents.
The most famous is the third daughter Jiang Ying.
▲ Jiang Ying
Jiang Ying is China's most outstanding female vocal educator and world-renowned soprano singer, who taught at the Central Conservatory of Music for many years after the founding of the People's Republic of China; Jiang Ying's husband is Qian Xuesen, a famous meritorious scientist in China.
Qian Xuesen has made outstanding contributions to China's aerospace industry: "It is precisely because of Qian Xuesen that China successfully launched its first artificial satellite in 1970. The rockets he was in charge of research made China a country like the Soviet Union and the United States that could launch nuclear warheads anywhere in the world. ”
At that time, Qian Xuesen was able to continue his studies in aeronautical engineering, and it was Jiang Baili who persuaded Qian Baili, who strongly opposed his son's choice, that Qian Xuesen's scientific research dream could be realized.
In 1955, when Qian Xuesen broke through layers of obstacles and returned to China with Jiang Ying to participate in the construction of new China, Jiang Zuomei was finally reunited with his daughter and son-in-law.
▲ Jiang Ying and Qian Xuesen wedding photos
Although Jiang Zuomei is Japanese, she never teaches her daughters to learn Japanese, and the family usually communicates in an authentic Beijing dialect, and she has always educated her children with Chinese cultural traditions, gaining universal respect from Chinese.
▲ TV series "Oriental"
In 1978, Jiang Zuomei died unexpectedly.
Far from his hometown, suffering from war and chaos, and repeatedly suffering from the loss of relatives, he raised five orphan girls alone with a weak body. The terrifying waves of the times and the rapids and rains of life finally disappeared after she had completed her 88 years of life journey.
She looked forward to the victory of the War of Resistance instead of him, saw the founding of the People's Republic of China, and in the years that followed, experienced the vicissitudes of white clouds and dogs.
After 40 years of "farewell", she finally reunited with Jiang Baili in heaven.
He stepped on the snow in search of Mei, and she answered the call.
In accordance with her last words, the name engraved on her tombstone was "Jiang Zuomei".
▲ Jiang Baili and his wife are buried together
In 1984, Jiang Ying escorted his mother's ashes to Hangzhou and buried them with his father in the Nanshan Tomb under the Phoenix Mountain.
Opposite the cemetery, there is a cherry blossom tree. She looks thousands of miles away from her homeland, and she can always sleep on the side of her loved ones.
Once, for her, "Hate is not like Jiang Louyue, north and south, east and west, north and south, east and west, only with each other." "Now, within a hundred miles, the plums are colorful, and nothing can separate them forever...
Columnist of World Chinese Weekly: Qingqing
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