Several times, I even bought a cup of take-away coffee and sat alone on the stairs of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall meditating, thinking about my conversations with my great-grandfather and grandfather. What would they want to tell me? What do they think of my children and my future grandchildren? These two ancestors who were once "presidents" were. ——Jiang Youbai
Who is Jiang Youbai? Great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, grandson of Chiang Ching-kuo.
This aura of identity gave him a lot and made him lose a lot. Heaven is fair.
The celebrity documentary "My Time and Me", launched by Tencent in 2018, the tenth episode is a special episode of Jiang Youbai.
The documentary revolves around Jiang Youbai's 2017 trip to Fenghua Xikou, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, to design the new campus of Fenghua Middle School, the alma mater of his great-grandfather and grandfather.
Jiang Youbai's "handsome" and "stylish" have long been recognized. In the documentary, he was called "Taiwan's first handsome man" by passers-by, which is not exaggerated at all.
But as the host Chen Xiaonan said, he experienced a lot of things before the age of 20, and then in the process of finding himself, he was particularly cruel to himself, and he also faced a great dilemma, and he should not have time to take care of the problem of whether he was handsome or not.
What we see in the film is a very real person - although his origin is strong, he is still one of all sentient beings, and he still cannot escape the world's seven passions, six desires, greed, hatred and slow doubt.
He was self-disciplined to the point of masochism, as evidenced by his bursting muscles. Get up at 5:30 a.m. every day, buy breakfast at 6 a.m., feed the dog at 6:20 a.m., drop off your children to school at 7:15 p.m., go to the company's upstairs café at 8 a.m. to order a special or ice latte, and then use the hour before work to finish the day's work.
He was short-tempered and couldn't leave his mouth. When the cultural and creative park design plan was first blocked, he would roar loudly and then turn away; his few good friends, the famous Taiwanese architect Yao Renlu, said of him: "He is too anxious a lot of times, probably related to his experience."
He is a warm man, likes to cook, does very well, but always makes it for others to eat, he does not eat; in the film he always carries a puppy named Dumbo, who is 16 years old, has just finished surgery, he likes to have dogs, but he has stray dogs.
In the end, he understood and accepted the local development status of Fenghua, overturned his own design, and started from scratch, working with Yao Renlu to hand over the perfect design plan for the new campus of Fenghua Middle School.
He spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony with a smile: "Thank you, everyone, let my mother have the opportunity to know that I can do school." ”
When the 40-year-old Jiang Youbai returned to his ancestral home for the second time, looking at the German floors and wooden roofs of the Republic of China period, he sighed:
"It's not just the Republic of China, it's not just Chiang, it should have its own identity, it doesn't seem to have found out who it is, so I want to help them find out who they are, and part of it also wants to find themselves."
Yes, since his father left at the age of 20, Jiang Youbai seems to be reborn, and he has embarked on the road to find himself.
He pushed himself very tightly, describing himself as a "nobleman on the edge of the cliff" and had no way back. After returning to Taiwan, he deliberately found an industry that everyone despised, and wanted to make it up and prove that he was not the "fourth generation of the Jiang family", but the "Jiang generation".
He said: He is not happy, he has not seen the state of happiness, he hopes that children can find a happier life, the previous pressures, those past, to his generation will end.
When I was a child, I was really like having an Aladdin lamp, thinking that everything would come true, what I wanted... Until one day, someone took away the lamp in my hand, the elf did not appear again, and I seemed to be thrown into a desert with no boundaries at once.
When Chiang Youbai was born, his great-grandfather Chiang Kai-shek had just died more than a year ago. It was tantamount that he had never seen his great-grandfather in person, and he lived only in the history books, in the photographs, in the bystanders and in his imagination.
When he was a child, Jiang Youbai felt that he was particularly "dragged", there were bodyguards in class, forgot to bring things to let the bodyguards go back to get them, and the homework could be corrected in advance... It's stunning!
Soon, however, things changed. In 1988, his grandfather Chiang Ching-kuo died.
Jiang Xiaoyong, who had served as a special "liaison" with the kuomintang political elite during his illness, that is, Jiang Youbai's father, had plummeted in status, and the officials who had been flattering and flattering around him in the past had scattered and even slandered him.
So in Xiao Youbai's memory, one night, his father suddenly came into the room and told him, we are leaving, go to Canada. Then the family left the land where they grew up, Taiwan, unprepared.
Group photo of the Jiang family, Jiang Youbai (first from the right)
They settled in Montreal, where "birds don't lay eggs," and Mr. Jiang was placed at a private school to study junior high school classes such as French, English, Chinese.
When he was in Montreal, Jiang Xiaoyong seemed much calmer, and he often communicated with his sons, talking about his studies, life, and the future.
However, the quiet life soon appeared an episode.
In the autumn of 1990, the child of a friend of Jiang Xiaoyong's was transferred to the school of Jiang Youbai and his younger brother Jiang Youchang, and he scolded Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo in front of the two brothers, so the two brothers fought with the child.
After Jiang Xiaoyong knew, he anxiously asked them why they were fighting, and after knowing the reason, he told the brothers meaningfully:
"The use of force in this kind of thing is useless. Words should be said by others, but the sky will not fall, everything is history! ”
Jiang Youbai and his father are in Canada
Later, Jiang Xiaoyong took his family to San Francisco, usa, and let his children study at New York University. In this way, great-grandmother Song Meiling can often see her grandchildren.
Jiang Youbai initially wanted to study painting, because like his cousin Jiang Youmei, he was influenced by his great-grandmother since childhood and became interested in painting. But my father disagreed, feeling that it would be difficult to succeed in painting as a lifelong career;
Then, Jiang Youbai proposed that he wanted to study politics, and his father disagreed even more, telling his son with his own personal experience that it was terrible to engage in politics, and he did not want his children to repeat his mistakes: "My own children will never continue to continue in politics." ”
In the end, Jiang Youbai chose to major in information management in economics.
Jiang Youbai visits his great-grandmother Song Meiling
However, just as Jiang Youbai was preparing to sprint for graduation, that is, in 1996, the bad news of his father's terminal cancer came, and he could not continue to focus on his studies, so he took a year off school and returned to San Francisco to accompany his seriously ill father.
Jiang Xiaoyong put forward his last wish: to go back to the mainland for a trip, one is to treat the disease, the second is to return to Xikou's hometown to visit the tomb, and the third is to visit the Huangshan Mountains.
So the family arrived in Hong Kong first, and then planned to fly to the mainland.
Unexpectedly, just a few days after arriving in Hong Kong, Jiang Xiaoyong vomited blood again, and his family hurriedly invited Chen Yunliang, a famous doctor who was in Hong Kong, to examine Jiang Xiaoyong and found that his cancer cells had metastasized to the head and had two brain tumors.
Thin Jiang Xiaoyong
His family began to worry about whether Jiang Xiaoyong could still travel as planned, and they all advised him to go to "Rong Zong" for treatment.
But Jiang Xiaoyong insisted: "They are all at the door of the house, how can they go back?" So in the company of his family, Jiang Xiaoyong endured the pain of illness and first swam to Beijing and then to Xikou.
After that, Jiang Xiaoyong, who was extremely weak, was forced to cancel his trip to Huangshan and was sent back to "Rong Zong", and after a period of fighting with the disease, Jiang Xiaoyong was finally taken away by the god of death, at the age of 48.
Jiang Xiaoyong and his wife Fang Zhiyi took Youbai and The Youchang brothers with them
For one's own destiny, that is, the "Chiang symbol", it is not a matter of "acceptance", but only "receiving" and "receiving".
After the death of his father, Jiang Youbai's life returned to zero. He couldn't accept that reality, and he was caught up in a period of chaos.
From an early age, he saw that the children around him were all working in his father's company, and later took over the company naturally. But now that his father is gone, Jiang Youbai has no imagination of the future.
In an interview with Chen Xiaonan, he said that at that time, in New York, there were all the second and third generations of Taiwan that you could name, and he originally thought that he was like them, but later he found out that the difference was very far.
The family had several Porsches in their hands, lived in a mansion, and a meal (price) allowed the later Jiang Youbai to eat three or four hundred hot dogs.
This huge gap made the young Jiang Youbai feel very angry for a while, and he even thought about "doing something" to climb back to the previous position.
He felt that there was no point in staying in New York, so he decided to return to Taiwan.
In fact, before returning home, he took over his father's business in San Francisco, responsible for the sales of Taiwanese laptops in the United States, and successfully extended the company's business to Europe.
But he decided to go back anyway because he wasn't convinced, "Where I was kicked out, I'm going to get up again from there."
Of course, the stubborn young Jiang Youbai absolutely did not choose to engage in politics like his grandfather, but took the sword to the side and chose an industry that was considered by the mainstream group to be "unable to get on the table".
He initially planned to enter the film and television industry, but the development was not as smooth as expected. However, during this period, he unexpectedly gained love and family, and fell in love and married Lin Jiaoyi, the actor's daughter Lin Xiaoyi, the director of Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital.
After that, Lin Xiaoyi gave birth to the fifth generation of the Jiang family, a son and a daughter, which made Jiang Youbai very happy, and repeatedly said proudly: "I have two women in my life, one is my wife, and the other is my daughter." (However, recently, Jiang Youbai cheated on the news, and the spoiled wife set up a complete collapse).)
The ancients said it well, first start a family, and then establish a business.
2003 was a harvest year for Jiang Youbai - his daughter Dexi was born, and his own design company "Orange Fruit" was established. Mainly engaged in industrial design, brand packaging, space design and other businesses. He also invited his younger brother Jiang Youchang, who was studying design, to help him.
Jiang Youbai invited his younger brother Jiang Youchang to help him
But because he had no experience at first and was too easy to trust others, Jiang Youbai's design company faced two big dilemmas, that is, he said in the documentary, once at the age of thirty, and again at the age of thirty-two.
Talking about the thrilling past, Jiang Youbai still has palpitations:
"It was January 13, and on January 11, two of my senior executives came into the office and told me we were going to quit because the company didn't have any money."
"The next day I gave everyone 8,000 red envelopes, and after the end of the year, the staff was half gone. It was a miserable year. ”
Since then, Jiang Youbai, who has never asked for anyone, began to ask for people continuously, and he confessed:
None of my subsequent resources were obtained from my family or from my elders, and I grew up slowly one by one. But my last name is different, so it may be a little easier than the average person, but it does not mean that the average person can't do it.
Later, Jiang Youbai's company became the "most profitable design company" on the market.
In an interview with Yang Lan in 2011, seven years after the establishment of the company, Orange Fruit has many well-known international brand customers such as Sony, Motorola, Gant, Microsoft, lenovo and so on.
And Jiang Youbai also became the third most entrepreneurial benchmark in the minds of Taiwanese office workers, the first two being Wang Yongqing, the founder of Formosa Plastics Group, and Gou, chairman of Hon Hai Group.
Jiang Youbai and his "Orange Fruit - Chang Orange"
What are some well-known examples of orange fruit design? as:
The exchange rate beat Hello Kitty's "Good God Doll" and the "Phoenix Totem" on the F1 race, but the most famous is the "City Storm Bike" cooperated with Giant. The orange-fruit-designed bike sold well in Japan, generating $3 billion in revenue for Giant.
In addition, Orange Fruit opened its first branch in Shanghai in 2008, and successively launched designs such as Shanghai Double Sister, Zhejiang Qidi, and Lenovo Kuku Bear, all of which were directly adjudicated by Jiang Youbai.
On November 11, 2019, Gao Xiaosong's Xiaoshu Library, the second in the country, opened in Nanjing, was also designed by Jiang Youbai himself.
Among them, the most eye-catching is the element of the "Ming City Wall", in addition, Jiang Youbai also added the artistic conception of "one city, two horse road, three urns city, and four city gates" to the design, so that every time the reader goes, it is like opening the city gate of a certain field of knowledge, shuttling back and forth, with poetry and books.
The opening ceremony of Nanjing Xiaoshu Library
Features of the museum: "Ming City Wall" elements
At the same time, Jiang Youbai, who has passed the age of confusion, has also regained his "second self" in recent years, choosing to face the society with the label of "artist" and holding personal exhibitions in various places.
His ink paintings are very different from traditional Chinese paintings: water paint replaces splashing ink, a scraper replaces a brush, and a clear animal form is integrated into the rhythmic ink mood, and the east and west are combined, with distinct personal characteristics.
This is what he calls "masochistic" methods to challenge his abilities and passions.
Jiang Youbai's animal figure paintings
Chen Xiaonan asked Jiang Youbai in an interview: Will there be a feeling of forty confusion?
He replied: I don't know, I don't know what I really want to do, what I can become, but in the process of trying, I found that it seems to be less important, "confused" is very rare, I have seen it, I feel very bored, because you don't have too much desire. Of course, life will become simpler, but it will be relatively "flat".
Chen Xiaonan asked again: What is your greatest pleasure now?
Work out. Jiang Youbai laughed.
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