Lin Yutang once said: "Life has a confidant, you can not hate." ”
We walk on the road, coming and going in search of and perhaps just to get a confidant.
Confidants are rare and people grow up to hate water and long east.
Zhang Ailing, who was young, believes that there are three major hatreds in life: anchovies with thorns, begonias without fragrance, and the dream of the Red Chamber.
In her life, her family was estranged, and her love was eventually disillusioned, but she met a confidant who knew and cherished each other and supported each other.
In her life full of rumors and legends, love to love, hate to hate, this fate that can not be sought, should be the greatest comfort in this life.
"I'm the only one except my mother."
Zhang Ailing's childhood is full of wandering and parting colors.
Born in Shanghai, he moved to Tianjin at the age of two, also to Beijing, and returned to Shanghai at the age of eight. She later said: "People in a troubled world have to get by and live without a real home." ”
As the most important role in the child's growth stage, the mother, it is missing in Zhang Ailing's initial memory. For the sake of ideals and freedom, Huang Yifan, a new woman, left a pair of children and left home with her sister-in-law to go abroad to stay abroad.
Huang Yifan
A few years later, her mother returned, bringing back poems and distant places to the young Zhang Ailing. The mother soon divorced her father and went abroad again. Zhang Ailing also left home and began to live in the school.
Such a childhood is inevitably lonely. When I am lonely, I always want to find a friend.
When I was twelve, one night, Zhang Ailing and a classmate were walking in the corridors of the dormitory. The moonlight was bright, the atmosphere was suitable for lyricism, and the classmate said, "I am very good with you, but I don't know how you are." ”
Zhang Ailing responded solemnly: "I am the only one except my mother, you." ”
This sentence has touched herself and the little friends around her.
Many years later, Zhang Ailing became a dark horse killed by the Shanghai literary circle, drawing her heart with a pen and cooking characters to cure hunger.
There are also moonlit nights, borrowing a pen to reminisce about childhood, the phrase "only you", she laughed at herself because of the moonlight of that year, and her innate heart to write novels.
Time is long, the whispers that were once whispered have long been scattered, and the people who exchanged whispers have forgotten the rivers and lakes, remembering that night, only the heart of Wan'er -
When children are innocent and innocent, friendships between children can be simple, pure, and unconditional. What was said at that time could not be counted in the end, because it was innocent and because life had just begun.
Childhood Zhang Ailing
Therefore, a person, a sentence, a round of the moon, was finally exchanged by the years into a heart.
Economist Lin Caiyi has this view:
Childhood friends, like childhood clothes, when they grow up, they can no longer wear them;
Similarly, friends when they were young are like the clothes of the year, and now they are worn, and the size and style are not online.
Thinking is not in a channel, holding a glass, just toasting with wine.
I am most afraid that before the reunion after a long absence, I am an old person in my memory, but after unexpectedly meeting, I have become a passerby in reality.
Regardless of love, or friendship, sometimes it is really better to see each other than to miss.
"Friends like her are finally amazing."
Zhang Fan should know that she has a girlfriend named Yan Ying.
At the age of eighteen, Zhang Ailing was admitted to the University of London with the first place in the Far East, and was transferred to the University of Hong Kong because of World War II. Yan Sakura is her college classmate.
This is a rich woman, lively and enthusiastic, with a big grin and hopeless optimism. The bomb fell, and everyone was too late to escape, so she stayed alone in the school dormitory, singing while taking a bath.
Perhaps, the overflowing happiness can fill the lonely emptiness, so the two come together.
Together, they traveled through fallen Hong Kong in search of their favorite lipstick, stood together at a roadside stall, and ate fried radish cakes. Zhang Ailing painted, colored by Yan Cherry, the blue tones deep her heart.
Zhang Ailing and Yan Ying
After graduating from school, the two returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong together. As before, shopping, watching movies, eating cake, the fee AA system.
Yan Ying and her sister opened a fashion store, and Zhang Ailing also became a partner, and the three of them performed their respective duties.
Zhang Ailing published a collection of novels "Legend", and the cover of Yan Ying's painting made her very moved. Yan Ying spoke interestingly, Zhang Ailing carefully recorded it, edited it into "Yan Ying Quotes", and included it in her own book.
In the isolated island of the chaotic world, they became good friends because of their complementary temperaments and similar interests. Separated by the river of years, standing on the other side and looking back at this friendship, the two people are not all the way.
A lover of food, dating, gossip and love, always likes "me, me, me" when opening her mouth, and one who wants to find "a little red top red, or a little black top black, as her refuge in the spiritual field." ”
Different levels, different pursuits, and dilution of feelings is sooner or later.
Later, the two went to New York one after another, and the people became people who crossed the ocean; love also became the love of the passage of time.
Yan Ying said in the letter that she did not know what she had done wrong, which made Zhang Ailing no longer pay attention to her.
It is said that Zhang Ailing wrote back that she did not like others to always talk to her about decades ago, making herself like a dead person.
The two of them counted the tribulations and shared the intersection of life and death, and eventually drifted apart and became silent.
"Friends who really know each other are like a mirror that reflects the most beautiful parts of each other's nature."
This is the concept of friendship that Zhang Ailing established in the process of growing up.
Years later, Zhang Ailing mentioned her attitude towards friendship in a letter to Kwong Wenmei - she never had much expectation of her friends, and she had no illusions about Yan Ying before, but now she still has a basic understanding, "Friends like her are finally amazing." ”
Zhang Ailing's heart is the pearl of the seabed; Yan Ying's heart is the wave on the surface of the sea.
The best friendship can not only eat, drink and have fun together, look back on the past, but also go hand in hand and grow together.
You blindly linger in the past, I want to face the future more, can only go their separate ways, go their own way.
"I'm so happy to have you, otherwise who would I tell?"
"Every time we think about being in the middle of a sea of people, we're likely to miss the chance to get to know — it's too dangerous. How well arranged was the fate. ”
In the letter, Zhang Ailing expressed her feelings to Kwong Wenmei.
Zhang Ailing went to Hong Kong when she was thirty-two years old. At that time, the US Information Administration obtained the copyright of the Chinese "The Old Man and the Sea", and the person in charge Song Qi published the newspaper to solicit a candidate for translation, and Zhang Ailing signed up for the application.
The pronunciation of the English cavity and the decent and slow tone of voice made Song Qi deeply impressed. With this karma, Zhang Ailing, Song Qi, Kwong Wenmei and his wife saw each other as they were.
Song Qi Kwong Wenmei and his wife
In order to avoid outside disturbances, Zhang Ailing rented a cottage near the Song family and wrote behind closed doors. In order to dispel the loneliness of Zhang Ailing's writing, they often took time to visit her and chat in the north and south.
Sometimes Kwong Wenmei went alone, no matter how much they talked, every seven o'clock, Zhang Ailing began to urge her to go home and enjoy the joy of heaven. To this end, Zhang Ailing gave the other party a nickname: My Eight O'Clock Cinderella.
Kwong Wenmei takes a long bus to work, and Zhang Ailing is very willing to accompany her to take the bus, talk, and spend boring time on the road.
You care deeply for me, and I am considerate to you, which is the minimum care and sincerity between good friends.
In 1955, Zhang Ailing left Hong Kong for the United States. The moment she left the dock and turned around, she felt the heavens and the earth collapse and the tears flowed non-stop.
In a foreign land, the first letter was written to Kwong Wenmei:
Your friendship is at the heart of my life. I definitely don't have that delusion, thinking that I will make friends like you, no matter where I go to the end of the world, there will be no such person.
Although Song Qi and Kwong Wenmei are not as famous as Zhang Ailing, they also have charm and talent.
Song Qi is a translator and literary critic who has a lot of experience in the study of the Dream of the Red Chamber. Kwong can both create and translate, and Song Meiling once invited her to be her personal secretary.
In Zhang Ailing's eyes, Kwong Wenmei is meticulous and strong, with the characteristics of Bao Chao Daiyu, and like Gu Manzhen in "Half Life", qingli is as beautiful as water. She wrote in a letter to Kwong Wenmei: "Sometimes to you, it is almost like a burst of fragrance, intoxicating. ”
After parting, Zhang Ailing likes to talk to Kwong Wenmei in her head, whether it is writing, health, human feelings, or clothes, beauty, dreams, and nagging. This habit remains until the end of life.
Kwong Man Mei
In her letter, she said, "I'm so happy to have you, otherwise who would I tell?" ”
In addition to the opening of the school, Kwong Wenmei is extremely nurturing and has a great influence on Zhang Ailing. For example, after opening the box to find something and forgetting to put the blanket in, she had to reopen the box, originally she was going to be upset, thinking about what would happen to Wenmei when she encountered this situation, she would not be angry.
For another example, building a road outside the house, the noise disturbs the mood, thinking that Wenmei will not be like this, she will also have a peaceful mind.
Like-minded, equally talented, one person's positive optimism is subtly subtle to another.
Appreciate each other, care for each other, do something from each other's point of view, take care of each other, pain and itching.
This is Zhang Ailing's interaction with Kwong Wenmei, and it is also the friendship that the world yearns for.
"Confidant in the sea, the end of the world is like a neighbor."
In this world, it is not difficult to encounter love and sex, but it is difficult to meet and understand.
For Zhang Ailing, although Hu Lancheng can read herself, she is unwilling to protect her. Although Yan Sakura and Sang Arc knew her, they only knew part of it. Since meeting Kwong Wenmei, I know that there are still people in the world who understand every aspect of her.
Kwong Wenmei knows that in addition to being tall and cool, she is also funny and cute, and she can also see her innocence and simplicity from a small place.
Sometimes, with others to explain all kinds of things, in the end is still playing the piano to the cow, communicating with people with sharp hearts, before you open your mouth, the other party has said what you think.
Because of this understanding, and the pain of the heart, Zhang Ailing told her "Cinderella at eight o'clock":
I hope you have time to write a letter, if you do not write for a year and a half I will not be uneasy, anyway, I will always remember.
She told the other party again that there was no time to write letters, everything was imaginable. No matter how long it takes, I believe that when we reunite, everything will be the same.
The vicissitudes of the world, the insecure people will feel that nothing can be relied on, the only reliable thing is the trustworthy relationship between people.
Zhang Ailing published the book "Sequel", the prologue was ghostwritten by Song Qi, and Zhang Ailing only changed one or two words after reading it. In order to help Zhang Ailing's career, Song Qi spent time and energy to make wedding dresses for others, but it was incumbent upon her.
Kwong Wenmei wrote an article about Zhang Ailing in order to promote Zhang Ailing's play, and Zhang Ailing was very satisfied, and felt "all-over Shutai" after watching it.
Tuo Kwong Wenmei bought clothes in Hong Kong to find tailors to make clothes, after she received it, she replied to the letter expressing satisfaction to the extreme, and hoped that Wenmei did not bother too much, otherwise it was not too careless.
Zhang Ailing later married Lai Ya, and she only wanted Kwong Wenmei and Song Qi to meet him.
Zhang Ailing and Lai Ya
Bit by bit, year by year, the trust that has accumulated deeper and deeper can be seen from this.
When she met Kwong Wenmei, Zhang Ailing gained a life confidant and also understood a positive and warm concept of friendship: "Good friends can be said to be spiritual brothers and sisters. ”
Because in Zhang Ailing's heart, Kwong Wenmei is not only like herself, but simply a part of herself.
Whether it is a close friend or a confidant, trust and understanding are two-way.
Kwong Wenmei regarded maintaining a good state of mind in the midst of heavy family fatigue as a progress in her practice, and wrote this little pride to Zhang Ailing, knowing that she would not smile, because Zhang Ailing knew her the deepest.
Zhang Ailing wrote in the letter:
"I must have accumulated some virtue to have a friend like you."
Kwong also emphasized in the letter:
"You've seen us as close friends over the years because we've never failed to live up to your trust."
Talk about everything because they are like-minded, and trust deeply because they understand deeply.
There are things to help, nothing to think about each other. Affectionate friendship, do not rebel against the heart.
With these, Zhang Ailing and Kwong Meiwen have become friends with similar temperaments, relatives who miss each other from afar, and confidants who cherish each other.
Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years, everyone is getting older, sick and sick, but the feelings have not faded a little.
For more than 40 years, Zhang Ailing corresponded with Kwong Wenmei and Song Qi in a total of 600 letters, more than 400,000 words.
In her twilight years, Zhang Ailing was tormented by various illnesses, and the mysterious fleas often bit the gorgeous robe of life.
She was worried that she had a heart attack and collapsed, so she arranged the deposit slip as soon as possible, and Kwong Wenmei and Song Qi were the beneficiaries. When they arrived, they handed over the inheritance to Kwong Wenmei and Song Qi.
With each other's profound understanding, unreserved trust, and endless thoughts, Zhang Ailing and Kwong Wenmei's spiritual connection is to death.
Such a sentiment happens to be a perfect interpretation of two ancient poems, and it is also a self-metaphor for the two of them in the letter:
Author | Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, cooked characters to cure hunger and borrowed a pen to draw a heart
Image | Stills and networks of "Rolling Red Dust" (if there is infringement, please contact to delete)