On the afternoon of February 27, 1945, in the 34th year of the Republic of China, in Zhang Ailing's apartment, 25-year-old her and 32-year-old Su Qing, as the two most popular female writers in the Shanghai literary scene at that time, were interviewed by reporters, with the theme of "on women, family, and marriage issues."
At this time, Zhang Ailing has set off a huge wave in the Shanghai literary circle with "The Book of Golden Locks", "Love in the City", "Red Roses and White Roses", and emotionally, she just signed a marriage book with Hu Lancheng half a year ago that "I wish to make the years quiet and the world stable", which is the most enjoyable and good time in life.
At this time, Su Qing was already a scarred woman who had been beaten in the family and workplace.
Looking at their interviews, between the words, Zhang Ailing still had some relaxation, and Su Qing was as sharp as a knife of several meters, slashing hard, which could hurt people and hurt themselves.
01
Without a natural female man, who is not a soft and cute girl at the beginning of fate? Just like the dead fish eyes in Jia Baoyu's mouth, they were once bright jewels.
Su Qing, formerly known as Feng Yunzhuang and Feng Heyi, was born in 1914 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, to a wealthy scholarly mendi.
Su Qing's grandfather Feng Bingran was a man of the late Qing Dynasty, her father Feng Songqing took the Gengzi indemnity to study banking at Columbia University in the United States after she was born, her mother Bao Zhuqing studied at the Women's Normal School, and Su Qing was raised by her grandmother.
When she was young, Su Qing's world was cheerful and bright, just like her temperament.
In 1921, seven-year-old Su Qing followed her parents to Shanghai. The bustling metropolis has become a monster that engulfs Su Qing's happiness.
The father kept having affairs, and the mother always tolerated it.
Four years later, the bank run by his father collapsed and he died of illness shortly after. In the past, flowers were brocade, and suddenly the grass withered.
In the old days, for many families, daughters were a tool to save the fate of the family, and Su Qing was the same. At the age of 16, she became engaged to Li Qinhou, a well-off junior high school classmate.
In 1933, at the age of 19, Su Qing was admitted to the Department of Foreign Languages of Nanjing Central University, the only one of the six counties under the jurisdiction of wenzhou, and Li Qin was admitted to the law department of Soochow University the following year.
"The unspeakable goose egg face, handsome eyes and eyebrows, there is a kind of boy's handsomeness", Su Qing is like a fish in college, known as "Ningbo Queen".
Afraid that Su Qing's heart would grow bigger and wilder, she was uneasy about being the daughter-in-law of the Li family, and in early 1934, before she graduated, the Li family Zhang Luo wanted to give them a wedding.
Su Qing did not fiercely oppose, which laid a hidden danger for her later misfortune.
Su Qing soon became pregnant and had to drop out of school to go home and wait for delivery.
The dream of a diplomat, the once dazzling self, has become a mirror flower and a moon.
But in order to sit firmly in the position of "good wife and good mother", there is also a necessary condition for giving birth to a son. With the birth of her four daughters, Su Qing completely became a "sinner" of her in-laws' family.
In "Giving Birth to Men and Parenting", she once wrote:
"One daughter and two daughters are still barely enough, three girls and four daughters are enough to annoy, if the number is above 'four', it is a pain for the mother!"
At the same time, her relationship with her husband gradually deteriorated.
After graduating, Li Qinhou opened a law firm in the concession and started running well at first. However, with the outbreak of the Pacific War and the entry of the Japanese army into the concession, Li Qinhou's law firm was also closed, and the two men were financially embarrassed.
Money cannot replace love, but it can lubricate away many contradictions in life.
Because they had no money, they kept arguing, and because of the quarrel, they lost more and more patience for marriage, and each went to find a place for their souls.
Li Qinhou drank heavily and looked for women, and Su Qing, what could she do?
Once she asked her husband for family money, but he gave her a slap: "You are also an intellectual, you can earn money yourself." "You should give me a good face even if you pay me money, and if I give this money to the dancers, they don't know how to flatter me!"
Remembering a joke nowadays, the promise of "I raise you" when sweet times ends up being a charity of "I raise you".
Her life seemed to have lost its value. Su Qing kept asking herself, who am I? What can I do? She didn't know.
When she finally gave birth to a boy, life's problems were not solved, and she was still confused.
At the age of 30, Su Qing decided to divorce Li Qinhou.
Even if it is heart-wrenching to deny ten years, it is better than continuing to be wrong.
She wasn't smart enough, but she was brave enough.
02 Career
Parents can't give you eternal shade, marriage can't either, only rely on yourself, in order to try to live, this is what life taught Su Qing.
Confined to the family and unable to move, Su Qing's only freedom was to write.
In 1935, Su Qing wrote his debut work "Giving Birth and Parenting", expressing his loneliness and feelings of love for his daughter:
My girl,
I love her
As long as there is her by my side,
I can endure anything,
Nothing can be done
It is the whole world that gives me a blank stare,
I was able to smile at her alone too!
She submitted the manuscript to the Analects she usually likes to read, a publication sponsored by Lin Yutang. Unexpectedly, the first vote was won, and I also got five yuan in writing fees.
This suddenly opened a window for her, and it turned out that she was not useless.
Then she submitted another article of "My Girlfriends" to the Analects, which was also published.
She lamented in the text: "Women are not friends enough. No matter how good the two women are, if one of them marries, the 'friendship' goes to the grave. ”
She found her way.
"During the day, I lead two children to write articles at night, and the cost of writing varies from 20 to 30 yuan per thousand words, and I often sit alone under the electric lamp and write until midnight. The summer night was sweltering, I was sweating, and I was gently fanning the children while writing articles, otherwise they would wake up from sleep and interrupt my thoughts, and it would be almost five when I was done. ”
She toiled day and night, got tuberculosis, but still did not dare to stop.
In 1943, her most important novel, "Ten Years of Marriage", was serialized in "Wind and Rain Talk", which became the most sensational novel in Shanghai at that time.
A single volume was published in 1944 and reprinted nine times in four months, twelve times the following year, and eighteen times in 1948.
And her collection of essays, The HuanJin Collection, was reprinted ten times.
People put her together with Zhang Ailing and called them "the most prestigious female writers in Shanghai's literary scene."
Su Qing's articles are trivial and simple, exuding a strong pyrotechnic atmosphere, bold in words, and she pours out the sensitivity and wisdom that life has given her into the text, which is clear, kind and thought-provoking to read. According to the current words, it is a golden sentence continuously.
Later, when Zhang Ailing wrote the preface to Su Qing, she wrote: If the female author must be specially divided into a column for comment, then I really cannot be proud of comparing me with Bing Xin and Bai Wei, only compared with Su Qing.
These became the last confidence of Su Qing to dare to say goodbye to a bad marriage.
Unlike the literati who write for the sake of the wind and snow and the ideal mood, Su Qing is to make money, and she makes no secret of it.
The literati Zhou Shuyi, after reading her mention of being exploited by publishers in "Talking about Discounts", immediately wrote a "Discussion with Su Qing on Business Techniques", saying that she was a "greedy little lady". Su Qing responded with words like needles: You don't want the writing fee in the atmosphere? Or give away all the money for your books? It's none of my business, it's just that my business is not your turn!
There is no shame in making money on your own.
She used to sit in the car carrying the white newspaper and personally escort the car, and she also personally went to the newsstand to collect money. Once, before the New Year, she had no money, so she rushed to take a rickshaw in the snow, carrying a cart of books and peddling everywhere. The book fell again, and the cover of "Ten Years of Marriage" rolled down in the snow.
In 1943, Su Qing founded the monthly magazine "Tiandi" and the Tiandi Publishing House, and was also the editor, author and distributor.
In order to compile the magazine, she painstakingly urged the manuscript.
Yang Shuhui wrote: "Because Ms. Feng Heyi repeatedly persuaded, urged every day, and specified the topic, it was inconvenient to refuse, so she had to write it simply. ”
Liang Wenruo wrote: "Yesterday (February 17), I met Ms. Feng again at the Gumudansha, and she asked me for a manuscript again, and she was so anxious that she had to turn in the papers before twenty days. Liang Wenruo had to hurry up and grab a few mouthfuls of rice and then throw away the chopsticks and start writing.
When Zhang Ailing was already popular, Su Qing wrote to her again, very bluntly saying that she hoped that Zhang Ailing would give her a manuscript to her magazine for the sake of "nagging the same sex", and later the draft was successful, and in October 1943, her magazine published Zhang Ailing's novel "Blockade".
Su Qing understood that she did not have qinggao's capital, and she had to grasp everything she could grasp in her hands.
03
Su Qing's ideal life is not complicated.
A manly husband, not a small white face, they live in their own house, often entertain, and friends are talked about. Occasionally, when I get sick, friends come to comfort me, bringing food and flowers.
It's just that Su Qing found that what she wanted was getting farther and farther away from her.
There are many men in the world who are willing to frolic with her, because she is bold, enthusiastic, and seems to be happier than men, so men always feel that they do not owe her anything, and do not need to take any responsibility.
But once they find out she's serious, they'll run as fast as they can. After the hilarity, after the sweet words dissipated, she sadly realized:
There is not a man in the world who belongs to me. They often come, talk and drink coffee, and sometimes invite me to watch plays, and the results are inevitably different. They have wives, they have children, they have little warm homes.
In order not to be lonely, she had to pretend that she didn't care, in order to keep a little warmth. And for that little warmth, she did her best.
Su Qing and Hu Lancheng are fellow countrymen, and the two met under the introduction of Mr. Wu Yi, the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Human World". The two have been on a close relationship ever since.
Su Qing in Hu Lancheng's eyes: "In the cold light of the table lamp without a cover, the side is half dark, and her beauty has been a new kind of maturity and completion, which is so deep and lively, like the red beads of the bamboo next to the candle." ”
Not countless times of staring, where is there such a suitable feeling?
In early December 1943, when Hu Lancheng was imprisoned, Su Qing ran around for him and took Zhang Ailing, whom he had just met, to the home of Zhou Fohai, the president of the Executive Yuan of the Wang puppet regime, to intercede for him.
When Hu Lancheng was released from prison in February 1944, he immediately went to Shanghai to meet Su Qing, but he also had a purpose to ask her about Zhang Ailing's address.
Half a year later, Hu Lancheng and Zhang Ailing secretly registered for marriage, and Su Qing was completely unaware of this. When she reacted, the friendship with Zhang Ailing naturally came to an end.
Su Qing also has an ambiguous object is Chen Gongbo.
In the winter of 1942, Su Qing published an essay "On Divorce" in the magazine "Ancient and Modern", which successfully attracted the attention of Chen Gongbo, the mayor of pseudo-Shanghai at that time.
After Su Qing's divorce, Chen Gongbo sent her a check for 100,000 yuan, and in the summer of 1943, Chen Gongbo invited her to be a commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Government.
Later, Su Qing founded Tiandi magazine with the help of Chen Gongbo.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Because of his close relationship with Chen Gongbo, Su Qing was under pressure from public opinion. In November 1945, Sima Wen's "History of the Crimes of Cultural Traitors" listed 16 cultural traitors, and Su Qing was impressively listed.
When Chen Gongbo was shot, she remembered him and only lamented that life was like a dream.
Subsequently, Su Qing also got along with a man named Zhou Huaren, who had served as deputy director of the Organization Department of the Wang Puppet Kuomintang and head of the propaganda team of the Secretariat of the Wang Puppet Central Political Conference.
After being hidden by his golden house, Su Qing lived a rare life of "bread and love", "I think he is a good partner, a good husband".
However, with the fall of Chen Gongbo, Zhou Huaren also escaped without a word. The apartment he left for Su Qing was pushed out by her and exchanged for $2,000.
The last person close to Su Qing was a native of Zhucheng, Shandong, named Jiang Gui, whose real name was Wang Yijian, who later changed his name to Wang Lindu, a Kuomintang colonel and officer who fled to Taiwan during liberation. Later, he also wrote an article under a pseudonym, blowing up his love affair with Su Qing.
There is a passage in it, which reads ambiguously and poignantly.
One day he went to see her, but it was later than the agreed time, and she was still waiting.
He asked, "How do you know I'm coming?" ”
"It's simple, because I wait every day."
Can she be a busy, waiting woman, or is the taste of waiting and astringent and sweet too moving?
epilogue
Su Qing once said that only she protects people, no one protects her.
It seems a little sad, but in fact, self-protection and self-achievement are the safest.
Too often, women confine themselves to roles waiting to be protected, which leads to tragedy, doesn't it?
reference:
"The Colorful World of Female Writer Su Qing"
"The Life of the Famous Female Writer Su Qing: Brilliant and Brilliant in Youth, Poor and Sloppy in Old Age"
"Self-reliance - the pursuit of intellectual women in their lives - reading Su Qing's "Ten Years of Marriage" has a feeling (transfer)"
"She is the four talented women of the Republic of China called the bad guy nemesis, four men who touched her, three sentences to death and one escape"
"From a piece of an essay to see a love affair between Su Qing and Jiang Gui"