Today, we continue to read Grandpa, We See You in Heaven.
Yesterday, we read the story between Jiang Wenli's grandparents and the eldest sister, just as Jiang Wenli wondered, I don't know if all the second eldest of the family is easy to be ignored, so the second sister who looks the most beautiful has less sense of existence.
What kind of story is there between Jiang Wenli and the second sister? Let's start reading today!
Second sister
Grandpa had to drink chicken soup every day, but the morning when my mother went to night shift, she couldn't come back so early, and I was young, what to do?
The second sister took the initiative to ask to buy chicken soup for her grandfather, and on the night that her mother went to work the night shift, she moved to her grandfather's house.
In fact, we all know that she is willing to toss and turn like this, just so that she can drink a mouthful of grandpa's chicken soup in the morning.
Whenever she came, Grandpa would buy a few small steamed buns and come back to reward her, she was satisfied, and any hardships and grievances were not a word.
Once, for some reason, the second sister and her mother had an argument, and she wrote a letter of guarantee in one breath and posted it behind the door of her grandmother's house:
"People must have ambition, and if they don't go, they won't go."
But within a few days, the temptation of chicken soup and small dumplings made her return to her grandfather's house.
The second sister is quiet, likes to read, is the best among our three sisters, and finally graduated from Peking University.
Stills from the movie "We See You in Heaven"
She loves to read, and she is very similar to her father.
After his father returned from Xinjiang, he rented a small house near my grandmother's house, and he drew his own drawings and asked someone to help him with a set of Czech-style furniture, which attracted many young people who were ready to get married to observe.
Dad also used the abandoned wooden planks in the factory to nail a bookshelf that stood tall in the sky, which was full of books, which was too attractive for the second sister!
Every time she had the opportunity to go to the hut, she read a book with hunger, and when she was done, she climbed up on the bench to get it.
After all, the bookshelf was nailed with wooden slats, not very strong, and once, the second sister and the book fell down with the bookshelf.
The second sister was frightened, but unexpectedly, instead of blaming her, her father gave her the key to the cottage so that she could read at any time.
Since the second sister has this privilege, she has raised her eyebrows and breathed a lot in front of us.
I was also curious about what my father's Czech-style furniture and bookshelves looked like, and in order to see it, I could only please the second sister and let her take me to visit.
This day was finally looked forward to by me.
I saw that legendary bookshelf, good fellow, standing tall, all over the wall.
The books on the shelves are varied, both Chinese and foreign. I wondered, where did Dad get so many books?
The second sister said that she only liked to read foreign novels, especially romance novels, and I had no intention of studying books with her, so I went straight to the back room to visit the Czech furniture.
The dark brown double bed, placed in the middle of a wall, next to two bedside tables of the same color and style, is clean and modern.
In an era when a wooden plank was a bed, I had never seen such beautiful furniture.
Mom and Dad
Of My Grandfather's four children, only one survived my mother.
Because of the existence of his mother, grandpa did not follow him as he thought after his uncle died, and his mother, who was holding his grandfather in the palm of his hand, grew up.
Housework is done by grandpa, from buying vegetables, washing vegetables, cooking, to cleaning, in addition to washing clothes is the mother's job, grandpa almost undertakes all the housework.
Both Dad and Mom, who were admitted to the railway system in the early 1950s, were the first railway workers in New China.
With a yearning for a new life, they participated in the Railway Workers' Games together.
Dad pole vaulted high and Mom sprinted, they didn't know each other at the time, but the figures of the two people remained on the same sports meeting group photo.
They also participated in the railway literary and artistic performance together, the mother danced the "tea picking and butterfly hunting" dance, and the father participated in the chorus - the Soviet song "Song of the Communist Youth League Members".
On the group photo after the performance, two more people were left.
This is called fate.
In the midst of many courtship letters, my mother saw a letter with only seven words:
I want to make friends with you
Mom replied with three words:
I agree.
I like a passage: "In the midst of thousands of people, meet the people you meet; in the wilderness of time, in the wilderness of time, there is no step earlier, no step later, just caught up, then there is no other word to say, only a soft question: Oh, it turns out that you are also here." ”
Zhang Ailing's vast words are exactly in line with the marriage of her parents and fathers.
It is also the commitment of these ten words that allows them to carry the hardships and pains of long-term separation between the two places in the future, so that they have experienced more than twenty years of "movement", but they have always kept their faith.
In the first year after they confirmed their friendship, that is, in 1956, Dad went to Xinjiang with the dream of building Xinjiang, of course, the need for work.
What is the concept of going from Anhui to Xinjiang? It is to sit on the train for three days and four nights in a row, two young people who have not even pulled their hands, rely on communication, rely on thoughts, and never think about those real problems.
For example, can it be transferred back in the future? What should I do if I can't get it back? How many brothers and sisters are there in Dad's family? The burden on the family is not heavy...
Don't think about anything, just recognize the ten words of death.
During the period when Dad wrote love poems to Mom, Mom also got that family disease - tuberculosis!
Probably most people will be scared away at this time, but Dad did not turn away, on the contrary, he had a sense of responsibility, feeling that this is not only a love, but also a partner who needs to spend his life together.
Perhaps touched by their father, the mother, who was determined not to marry because of lung disease, decided to implement the cross promise on the marriage certificate when they were twenty-seven years old.
Because of her grandfather, my mother did not go to Xinjiang with my father, and my mother was afraid that my grandfather could not stand the hard life in the frontier, and she could not bear to leave her father in her hometown, and the only way was to live separately from her father.
Dad worked in Xinjiang for fifteen years, and when I was six years old, he finally transferred back from Xinjiang.
For fifteen years, Dad turned his thoughts about his family and wife into strength every year, and enjoyed the best time of his life in just fifteen days of family leave.
In the family, which has always been only for the elderly, women and children, suddenly a man came and asked me to call him Daddy, and he always looked down on me, saying that I was used to my grandfather's habits, which was not right, that was not right.
Since then, my originally free life has been a lot more restrictive.
Spring festival
Every morning on the first day of the Chinese New Year, I was still dreaming, and I was woken up by people who came to visit the New Year.
"Uncle Tang, I've come to pay you a good look!"
"Grandpa Tang, Happy New Year!"
Grandpa will also respond in a loud voice:
"Greetings to you too!" Come, smoke a cigarette, eat sugar..."
It was the coldest time of the year, and I lay in the bed, waiting for my grandfather to bring me clothes.
But Grandpa was talking to someone outside, and I was in a hurry to get up and go to the neighbor's house to pay respects to the New Year, so I shouted loudly:
"Grandpa, I want to get up!"
After a while, Grandpa came in with the hot cotton jacket and cotton pants, and I also rushed in like a charge, jumping out of the quilt as fast as possible, and then into the warm baked cotton jacket cotton pants.
It was the happiest day of the year.
Today's children can't understand what the New Year means to us in the 1970s, when material scarcity is scarce.
You might see the only new piece of clothing of the year at the head of the bed on this morning.
I was the youngest in the house, and there were two sisters on top of me, always picking up their old clothes, so I didn't even have this luxury.
You're bound to eat the best and most sumptuous food and sweets of the year for a few days, or even a week or two thereafter.
Grandpa was also dressed, ready to stop, picked up his civilization staff, picked up the two packs of chicken cakes that had been prepared long ago, took me, and went to his relatives, my grandparents, to pay homage to the New Year.
Grandparents have already prepared a reunion dinner at noon.
Grandma would start curing meat and eggs a month in advance, air drying the fish, and making "ten dishes".
Under the economic conditions at that time, Grandma, who had always been frugal and frugal, was like a trick, conjuring up countless delicious things for us that we usually did not even dare to think about.
At that time, the whole family was busy eating together, spending all their savings for the year on eating.
At that time, there was no supermarket and no refrigerator, so the fish and meat could not be put for a long time, and they had to be salted.
Moreover, there is no processed food, and everything you eat must be made by yourself, but the fun is also in the process of making it.
Grandma once asked me to help her make her kung fu dish, "Ten Dishes".
It is said that it is "ten kinds of dishes", in fact, there are more than 20 kinds of raw materials, first cook peanuts, soybeans, red beans and other legumes, and then cut ten varieties of lotus, dried tofu, fungus, spinach, sherry and other varieties of shredded or diced, with onions and ginger, one by one, stir-fried out of the unique flavor.
From the beginning of the New Year, in the next two weeks, the family no longer cooked, for this mouth that could not be solved, busy with a year of eating Chinese, to give themselves a holiday.
Therefore, before the New Year, do more and prepare all the food.
At this annual family gathering, Grandpa would usually drink some tea with Grandpa and have a warm greeting, while Grandma would gallop with her little feet and stir-fry dishes inside and out.
Of course, eating is the most exciting time.
The three of us sisters, lined up in a row, knelt down and prostrated ourselves facing the three old people, and collectively paid homage to my grandfather and grandparents, wishing them a long life and a hundred years.
The three toothless old men all grinned, and then grandparents gave us two dollars for each child, and grandpa gave us five dollars each.
It is conceivable that in the New Year, we can receive seven yuan, and in that era, we were really rich.
epilogue
Today, we read the experience of Jiang Wenli's second sister when she was a child, and the story of her parents loving each other.
In the fragments of her memory, there are always some things that are deeply rooted in her mind, such as the first day of the Chinese New Year every year, which is her happiest time.
In that difficult and simple era, what other stories should Jiang Wenli remember? Let's look forward to reading tomorrow!