Mr. Hu Shi is a generation of teachers of the new culture, but he is also a prisoner of old morality in personal marriage, and Jiang Dongxiu, the little foot wife arranged by his mother, has spent his life with him. In their respectful lives, they were also accompanied by misfortune and pain.
Hu Shi was born in Jixi, Anhui Province, where the mountains and waters are beautiful and the people are simple, and lost his father at the age of 4, and his mother Feng Shundi Han Xinru raised him with hard work.
Miss Mingmen - Jiang Dongxiu
Hu Shi went to Shanghai to study at the age of 14. Before leaving, his mother betrothed him to a fiancée who was 11 months and 3 days older than Hu Shi, and the Jiang family was one of the top local clans, but Hu Shi had never met her.
Hu Shi came into contact with new trends of thought and women from the outside world in Shanghai, and he was dissatisfied with his mother's arranged marriage.
In 1908, the family prepared a new house, his mother urged him to go back to consummate the marriage, Hu Shi did not understand Jiang Dongxiu after all, let alone love, but he could not bear to push off the marriage contract, for fear of stabbing the hearts of his mother and Jiang Dongxiu. He had to use a compromise method to procrastinate, under the pretext that he had not completed his studies and could not afford to support his family and wait to go back to get married.
Two years later, Hu Shi was admitted to the United States as an official fee student set up with Gengzi reparations. He was afraid that his mother would force him to marry, and he did not even dare to return home, so he hurriedly took a boat from Shanghai and crossed the sea to study at Cornell University in New York, USA.
In a foreign country, Hu Shi felt fascinating when he thought of everything in his hometown.
Due to the influence of homesickness, he does not feel so annoying about his marriage with Jiang Dongxiu. When he remembers the loving and hopeful gaze of his old mother in his hometown, and remembers that Dongxiu, who is 1 year older than him, is still waiting hopefully, his sense of responsibility and moral conscience prevail.
At this time, Hu Shi's mother brought Jiang Dongxiu to live with her, and Jiang Dongxiu, as his fiancée, took care of housework, served tea and water, and waited for Hu's mother in every detail.
Hu Shi was very moved when he learned this, and he wrote a letter to Jiang Dongxiu for the first time, asking her to read and read more, and repeatedly told her to enlarge her feet.
With Hu Shi's encouragement, Dongxiu finally let go of his feet, but unfortunately it was too late, and his little feet had already been set. It can be seen that Hu Shi has spent hard work to cultivate Tongdongxiu's feelings and marriage foundation.
One day in 1913, Hu Shi received a photo sent from home, Dongxiu meekly stood beside his mother, his mother-in-law and daughter-in-law looked so peaceful and idyllic, Hu Shi had been abroad for almost 4 years, and a wonderful vision of future family life suddenly appeared in his mind. So I wrote a poem "Home Photo Inscription". The poem includes "Tuzuo Li Dongxiu, Simple Zhenwu", and also depicts the imaginary harmonious life between him and Dongxiu after marriage.
Exotic beauty - Wei Lianji
After all, Hu lived and studied in the United States. He has advanced by leaps and bounds in his studies, and he was once the president of the World Student Union, and his travels and horizons have been opened, and Jiang Dongxiu, who is thousands of miles away and has only met in photos, cannot comfort the feelings of 24-year-old Hu Shi.
He wrote in his diary: "In 10 years, I have not tried to socialize with a virtuous woman... In the society of young women, they are afraid to enter. As a result, Yu Chengyi was a member of society, and he was deeper
Worldly, the mind is quite sharp,...... There is no noble and pure thought, and no sensitive feelings. In the past 10 years, I have been partial to knowledge, and on the other hand, I have forgotten everything, thinking about myself at night, and I have become a cold-blooded person. ”
Just when Hu Shi was about to expand his contacts with young women, Wei Liansi, a naïve, generous, lively and beautiful Miss America, suddenly broke into his heart.
Wei Liansi's father was a university professor, she studied art in New York City, she was arrogant and solitary, unrestrained, and although her family was wealthy, she was not slender.
Hu Shi and her only met, they saw each other as before, they hated each other late, the two dated frequently, wrote letters constantly, or went on outings together, or visited together, talking about ideals, life, career, poetry, and of course, love.
Hu Shi had great admiration for Wei Liansi. In his diary of January 23, 1915, he wrote: "The magnitude of a lady's vision is beyond the reach of an ordinary woman. There are many women I have seen, and they really have thought, insight, courage, and enthusiasm in one body, and they are the only ears. And the following diary is simply a prose poem: "Saturday and Sunday with Ms. Wei Liansi, along the lakeside, the wind is perfect." At the end of the road, it turned east, traveled several miles to the village of Etna, and turned back, passing through the village of the Lin family. The rain is several days, today it is sunny, the fallen leaves cover the path, the sunset is in the mountains, the cool breeze is blowing, and the autumn is deep. It is a total of three hours a day, so it is not the night of the party. "The affection between them, the happiness and joy of living together, overflow between the lines.
In the short year that they met, Hu Shi wrote more than a hundred love letters to Wei Liansi.
After Hu Shi's death, a neat bundle of English love letters was found in his safe, all written to him by Wei Liansi, and he always treasured them.
Just when they were like glue and their feelings were deepening, they were vigorously opposed by Wei Liansi's mother, who was born in an English family, on the grounds that they were interracial and pagan marriages, how to explain to relatives and friends? At the same time, Hu Shi was also bound by the old morality, did not dare to take a crucial step, and even bluntly told Wei Liansi that he was engaged.
Wei Liansi had to propose: "Cut off the relationship, restrain the horse from the cliff", and the short-lived love between the two disappeared. In the long years that followed, they only respected each other and encouraged each other, never mentioning male and female love again.
Miss Wei Liansi failed to marry Hu Shi, she deeply regretted that she never married.
After Hu Shi's death, she sent Hu Shi's love letter to her, which had been carefully preserved for half a century, to Hu's wife Jiang Dongxiu.
Hu Shi has also always missed Wei Liansi. Decades later, in the summer of 1956, when Hu Shi went to New York again, he also visited Wei Liansi's former residence.
Meet and hate the night - Chen Hengzhe
A year later, the talented Miss Chen Hengzhe fell in love with Hu Shi.
Miss Chen and Hu Shi, a native of Jiangsu, were admitted to Tsinghua University in 1914 and were one of the first 10 female students in the school. Later entered the famous Vasha Women's University in the United States, she is the first female writer of mainland new literature, pen name Sha Fei, with the novel collection "Little Rain", which is all the rage.
Hu Shi and Chen Hengzhe met late, but they shared the same interests and co-edited the "American Students Quarterly", Hu Shi advocated vernacular writing, and Chen Hengzhe immediately published a series of novels and poems written in vernacular, and supported Hu Shi's views without scruples.
From October 1916, in five months, Hu Shi wrote more than 40 letters to Chen Hengzhe, discussing learning, ideals, exchanging views, and agreeing with each other.
Chen Hengzhe is charming and versatile, and there is a world of difference from Jiang Dongxiu.
Hu Shi also loves Chen Hengzhe deeply, but he can't bear to abandon the innocent Jiang Dongxiu, and he still hesitates in the face of the passionate pursuit of the talented Miss Chen.
On a summer night before Hu Shi graduated, the moon was white and the breeze was light, the two were walking around the campus, sitting side by side on a stone bench, Miss Chen couldn't help but ask: "Shi, what are your plans to do in the future?" Can we both never be separated like tonight? ”
Hu Shi had mixed feelings and tears, but he finally said rationally: "Zhe, how can I be willing to leave you?" I get a lot of help from you in learning, my lonely experience has a lot of comfort from you, we have a similar temperament, and I also hope that we can live a happy life together, but this is just a dream, I don't have this blessing, please forgive me, I am already engaged to someone else! Miss Chen cried out loud, and the two couldn't help hugging each other, and after a while, they calmed down.
After Hu Shi returned to China the following year to get married, Chen Hengzhe married Ren Shuyong, who had been pursuing her, in the fall of 1920, and maintained a deep friendship with Hu Shi for a long time until his death.
Hu Shi ended his seven-year study abroad career in May 1917 and returned to China in July to become a professor at Peking University. Unable to withstand his mother's frequent urging, Hu Shi took leave at the end of the year to return to his hometown to complete the marriage, and the wedding was held on the 7th day of the 11th lunar month (December 30 in the Gregorian calendar) in 1917.
The wedding is new and very simple.
On the wedding night, Hu Shi also improvised a vernacular poem:
Acacia who did not meet thirteen years ago,
Ends today.
Put one sad old thing after another,
Let's go into detail from the beginning.
Don't you say you can't help me,
I don't say yes to you either-
And keep in mind the bright moon of the middle of the thirtieth night of December.
The newly married Hu Shi and Dongxiu are still close and loving, which can be seen from the five "Newlywed Poems" written during his honeymoon, the fifth of which was written by Hu Shi to bid farewell to his wife before returning to Peking University:
More than ten years of lovesickness has just ended,
The couple who did not have a full moon parted in a hurry.
Last night's whisper,
It doesn't matter if the moon is full in the sky and the moon is lacking.
After farewell tonight,
I felt that the moon in front of this window,
Exceptionally round,
Extra kind!
But in his letter to a friend shortly after his marriage, he revealed another side of his heart: I never picked on my mother's sake. (If I do not do this, I will never marry this, but this intention can be a foothold, not enough for outsiders.) Now that I am married, I strive to accommodate and please my mother...
Jasper beauty - Cao Chengying
Hu Shi's life after marriage is very rigorous, with his status, reputation, talent, contact with many women, it is not easy to be strict with self-discipline.
In 1923, when Hu Shi was recuperating in Yanxia Cave on the South Mountain of West Lake in Hangzhou, his distant cousin Cao Chengying suddenly broke into his life and lit Hu Shi's love torch, thus interpreting an extramarital affair.
Cao Chengying is the half-sister of Hu Shi's third sister-in-law, 11 years younger than Hu Shi, and her family is also in Jixi.
When Hu Shi got married, Cao Chengying was only 15 years old, and she was also the concubine of the bride Jiang Dongxiu, and when she was 16 years old, she was married by her parents, and the husband and wife had a discord after marriage, and in 1920 she left her hometown and entered the Hangzhou Women's Normal School, and divorced her husband in the spring of 1923.
Cao Chengying, who had just been freed, was overjoyed when she learned that Hu Shi had come to Hangzhou's West Lake to recuperate. During the summer vacation, I can't wait to find Hu Shi, who I have been longing for for a long time.
At this time, Cao Chengying was just in her early 20s, beautiful and intelligent, soft and warm, and she was the best among modern women.
As soon as Cao Chengying saw Hu Shi, he was fascinated. And Hu Shi also saw from her what beauty and love are, and he couldn't help but fall in love with Cao Chengying.
They wander happily in love. Whether it is the morning of the light and the moonlit night, there are their intimate and amorous figures on the shore of West Lake. They even live together, like a couple of lovers who have forgotten everything in the world.
Cao Chengying is going back to school. She vowed not to marry Hu Shi, and Hu Shi also said that he would divorce Jiang Dongxiu and marry her.
Since then, Hu Shi has often come to Hangzhou, and every time he comes, he has warmly met with Cao Chengying, and he has also written many affectionate love poems to express his love for Cao Chengying.
Soon, Hu Shi really filed for divorce from Jiang Dongxiu.
Jiang Dongxiu was furious, made a big fuss, grabbed a kitchen knife from the kitchen, and threatened Hu Shi that if she wanted to divorce, she would kill her two children first.
Hu Shi retreated, he was afraid that things would get out of control and be bad for his reputation. But in private, he still interacts with Cao Chengying.
Cao Chengying was obsessed with Hu Shi. In a letter to Hu Shi in 1925, she still said passionately: "I love you, love you deeply..."
Cao Chengying's love could not be lost, and it could not blossom, and her heart was very bitter, and she wanted to commit suicide twice, and planned to go to Mount Emei to become a nun.
After liberation, she taught at Shenyang Agricultural College, returned to her hometown in Jixi during the Cultural Revolution, and left the world she loved and hated in 1973.
After Hu Shi experienced an extramarital affair with Cao Chengying, he seemed to have resigned himself to his fate, and in the years to come, his marriage and family life with Jiang Dongxiu were basically calm and harmonious.
Hu Shi said in his later years: "The phrase of long-term respect can also be used as a maxim for couples to get along." The so-called respect is respect. ...... Only by being able to respect each other's personality can we have permanent happiness. This sentence is also the summary of Hu Shi and Jiang Dongxiu's 40-year marriage.
After many years of living together, after all, there will be feelings of being in the same boat, Hu Shi and Jiang Dongxiu have spent more than 40 years with respect and honor, it is the era of alternation between the old and the new, which has created Hu Shi, a new cultural teacher and an old moral model.