A hundred years ago, in old Beijing, there were hundreds of Traditional Chinese medicine shops in the streets and alleys, but there were these ten that could rank in the top ten: Tongrentang, Tongjitang, Mingdetang, Heniantang, Tiqiantang, Yuningtang, Qianzhitang, Yanshoutang, Baoquantang, and Tongchuntang. Among these ten, several Crane Halls have the longest history, and the most famous one is Tongren Hall. The Liu family of Xihe Niantang (later divided into east and west) was once one of the "Eight Rich Households in the Capital", and the Tongrentang Lejia was also ranked among the "Eight Great Houses of the Beijing Division". To this day, the names of Crane Nian Tang and Tong Ren Tang still exist, both of which are centuries-old and century-old brands. I don't know much about Tsurunian Hall, but I am most familiar with Tongren Hall.
Tongjitang
My grandfather's name was Le Zhongfan, and he was the second eldest of the four major rooms of the Tongrentang Le clan. The grandfather is called Le Mengfan, the third grandfather is called Le Shufan, and the fourth grandfather, everyone has guessed it, called Le Jifan. Tongrentang became the first medicine shop in Beijing, and it spread all over the country, which can be said to start from the four major rooms. The next generation of the four big houses, that is, my father's generation, the family population is quite large. My father's name was Le Yongxi, and the family ranked fifteen (women do not count), and at that time people called fifteen lords. In my generation, there are more family members, there are twenty-seven brothers, and I am twenty-three. Of course, women cannot be counted in the big rankings. It can be seen how many descendants of the four major houses of the Lejia family. In addition to the descendants of the four major houses, they also have their own medicine shops. The old room has Le Ren Tang and Hong Ren Tang; the old second room has Yong Ren Tang, Pei Ren Tang and Huai Ren Tang; the old third room has Hong Ji Tang, Le Shun Ji and Ji Ren Tang; and the old fourth room has Daren Hall. At that time, my father, The Fifteenth Elder, and my uncle, the Seventeenth Elder, jointly opened the ElderLy Hall, but later because the brothers had different ideas, they separated. Our family opened Yongren Hall on Wangfujing Street, and my seventeenth uncle opened Huairen Hall in Xidan West Fourth Arch Building.
Little brother of The Wai Ren Tang Family
The children of the four large rooms generally go to foreign schools. At that time, boys went to Yuying Middle School and girls went to Beiman Girls' High School. Attending university is generally Yenching University. These schools were founded by the American Church. Since I have been in this kind of school since I was a child, foreign languages are particularly good, and I have been playing with foreign children since elementary school. But if you ask why a foreign language says this, you don't know, you should say it here, just like speaking Chinese. Therefore, many people in the family later chose to study abroad. First, the family has the ability to support children to study abroad; the second is that they have known foreigners since childhood, have a good relationship, and know foreign languages, and it is very simple to study abroad. Of course, our second room is much less than the big room and the four rooms, and we are still relatively traditional, whether in daily life or in the understanding of Chinese medicine. I always insist that Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine have advantages over Western medicine and Western medicine. The four rooms gradually produce different concepts, which is also an inevitable result. The family still has different opinions, not to mention the dozens of people in the four major houses of a large family.
Beman Middle School
My brother and I have a different personality. I have a relatively timid personality, and when I was a child, I thought about settling down and going to school well. No matter what was going on outside, I had no curiosity. Of course, I am also young and afraid of things. And my eldest brother Leyuan was particularly bold, and he was also particularly good at playing, and even famous for playing, which was called "Four Young people in Beijing" at that time. One is that there is no shortage of money at home and there is financial support; second, in terms of personality, he likes to play and will play. A person who is rich and can play, it is difficult not to be famous. Of course, in those days, you had to be bold, because it was already messy outside. It was also because my eldest brother was bold and my family had money that I later embarked on the road of revolution. A large amount of money and medicines were provided for the revolution. There's an old movie called Vaults about how to help the revolution, based on my eldest brother. I am much younger than my eldest brother Leyuanke, and my courage is much smaller, and I know how to study, and I know to stay safely at school and at home.
Tongrentang Old Medicine Shop
When I was young, the other brothers were busy and had fun. And I used to play by myself in the door of our big house. Our courtyard is big, and I don't know how big it is. Because, I've never been to the side, there are a lot of places I haven't been to. The courtyard is divided into the west courtyard and the east courtyard, and the west and north buildings of the west courtyard are connected. The east courtyard is a very large house, and the steps and houses are particularly well built. Although there is no specific grade of red wall yellow glazed tiles of the Forbidden City, the area of the house and the decoration inside are really a bit of the taste of the Forbidden City. Because, at that time, it was already the Republic of China, especially we were merchants, rich, and the house was decorated magnificently.
The former site of Beijing Lejia Assorted Garden
In the past, didn't the first and fifteenth day of the first month pay attention to worshiping heaven and worshiping ancestors and worshiping gods and Buddhas? During the Qing Dynasty, local governors like county commanders, zhizhou, prefects, daotai, inspectors, governors, etc., all went to the Temple of Literature to worship the sage of Kong on the first day of each month, and at the fifteenth day, they had to go to the Wu Temple to worship Guan Laoye (Guan Yu). In this way, the people's homes also formed a custom, that is, on the first and fifteenth day of the first month of the month, they should also worship the heavens and the earth, and so on. At the beginning, our brothers all learned to worship heaven and earth in the first and fifteenth days of junior high school, but later, my brother and brother were either busy or had fun, and they did not stick to it, and only I always insisted on worshiping heaven and earth in the first and fifteenth days of junior high school. This may also be one reason why my fate will be very different from theirs in the future. At that time, there was an old Taoist monk who often came to my house, and I can still remember his name, Wang Guanyun. He saw me worshipping heaven and earth and was interested in me. After all, a child can seriously worship heaven and earth in the first and fifteenth day of the first year of the first year, which can really make adults curious, especially outsiders. This old Taoist priest took the initiative to calculate the fortune teller for me. He said, your life is in Pegasus, in the Migration Palace, and you must go in the future. Later, this old Taoist priest returned to his hometown in Sichuan. Of course, no one took his words to heart.
Old Taoist
Just when I was in high school, I became more and more afraid of the situation outside. I was timid and never wandered the streets with those middle school students. Although I read carefully, I was still very afraid. In particular, the mother in my family often said something frightening about social changes. Because, like our family, there are nurses from birth, and even before they are born, they hire nurses. We don't breastfeed anymore, and we have watched our mothers since we were young, watching and taking care of us. We spend more time with my mother than our own biological parents, so we are quite dependent on my mother. In particular, the brothers in the family of the former Qing Dynasty's princes' mansions were both dependent on and trusted in their mothers. These brothers spent the rest of the day with their mothers, except for making necessary requests to their biological parents. Therefore, many of them have deeper feelings for their mothers than for their own biological parents. Any emperor of the Qing Dynasty was very fond of his own mother or his mother or even his family, but the most prominent was the Kangxi family against the Cao Xueqin family. Therefore, at that time, I especially believed in the words of my mother, and my mother often said something about the bad situation outside. The more I listened, the more frightened I became. In the end, I chose to run away.
The nurse looks at the child
In the past, one of my cousins worked as a low-ranking petty officer in the old army, but he didn't have much money. At that time, when I was fleeing from the War of Resistance, I met him in Datong. At that time, he often took me around, and later I also took the initiative to help him, and in this way, we had some feelings for each other. In the fourth or eighth year, my cousin told me that the situation outside was not optimistic. Plus my wet nurse also told me this kind of thing, so I was afraid and uneasy at the time. One day, this cousin came to me again and asked me privately if I could leave, whether I would go to Hong Kong. I actually wanted to go, but I was suffering from not being entangled. And just then, the opportunity came. One of my mother's nieces was ill and was admitted to a German hospital at the time. I went to see her, but she gave me a gold plate and asked me to exchange it for money for her. However, before I could exchange the gold plate for money, she died. After that, I didn't give the gold plate to my mother. So, I followed the cousin surnamed Li and ran out with this gold plate in exchange for money. Of course, when I ran away from home, I also carried Yongrentang's secret recipe of Chinese medicine with me.
Gold plates
We ran to Tianjin and met a word tester. At this time, I suddenly remembered that the Taoist monk named Wang Guanyun had given me a fortune teller. At that time, he said that my life was in Tianma, in the Migration Palace, and I would leave sooner or later. Sure enough, now, I'm running away from home. So, when I meet a word tester, when I think about it, I can't help but want to take a test. The word tester asked me to write a word, and I wrote a "go" word without thinking, that is, a walk, a bu. After looking at the character, he said to me, you must go, but you can't walk in the ninth and nineteenth grades, because the characters are from ten, and you can only walk in the tenth, twentieth, and 30th days of the first month. I can only smile, because it was the ninth day of the first year, I was going to take a boat to leave, and he actually said that I couldn't go, which made people can't believe it. I had bought a ticket and had already boarded the ship, but just before the boat was set off, a few uniformed men came up and searched the cabin, and finally they took a person with them.
Word measurement
The ship I was on was delayed for a day, and it was not until the tenth day of the first month that it officially set off. Unexpectedly, I really let the measurement of the word be accurate, the first nine can not go, the first ten can go. And I arrived in Hong Kong exactly twenty. There I met one of my brother's brother-in-law again, and he was in the civil aviation team. He found someone from the Air Force Brigade and let me fly to Taipei in a plane. Because, acquaintance relationship, I did not spend a penny on the plane, that time was a special period, the plane ticket is quite expensive, as if it is a gold bar a ticket, and there are still people with status to buy. My cousin didn't come with me, because in Hong Kong we were separated, and he actually went back to his hometown in Hubei. I arrived here alone. At this time, I once again remembered the scene of worshiping heaven and earth when I was a child, remembered the old Taoist monk named Wang Guanyun, and remembered the one who measured words.
The protagonist comes to Tongrentang
When I came to Taipei, I met my fifth sister-in-law here. The fifth sister-in-law is the wife of Le Du Zhou, Le Du Zhou and my generation, is a big room, I am ranked twenty-three, he is the fifth oldest. So, I called him Brother Five. My fifth brother, Le Du Zhou, was very capable, and he opened TongrenTang in Nanjing and Shanghai, but he violated the ancestral system. Beijing Tongrentang has regulations that you can open your own number outside, but you can't call it Tongrentang. The pharmacies he opened in Nanjing and Shanghai were called Tongrentang, so he violated the rules of the Lejia family, and many people attacked him. But the Tongrentang he runs in Nanjing and Shanghai is particularly profitable. Lejiazu also stipulates that Tongrentang is shared by the four major houses, that is, the income of the pharmacy needs to be divided equally among the four major houses. Since the five brothers, Le Du Zhou, run medicine shops in Shanghai and Nanjing under the name of Tongrentang, his income needs to be divided equally among the four major houses, rather than his own. In the end, he also distributed the dividends of Nanjing Tongrentang to the four major houses. My fifth sister-in-law, the wife of Le Du Zhou, came to Taipei from Shanghai. The main purpose of her coming here was to set up another TongrenTang here. Of course, it is also because she is a native of Fuzhou and knows this place very well, and her relatives have also come here. Later, as soon as the situation changed, naturally there was no going back. I came here to find this fifth sister-in-law, because she opened a Tongren Hall here, so according to the ancestral system, I also have my share. That's it, I'm here to help her run it. The secret recipes of our two pharmacies were combined to concoct the most formal Tongren Tang Lejia Chinese medicine. Later, when she got older, I slowly took over Tongrentang.
Group photo of the three brothers
I believe that both a person and a family have karma and both follow a circular causal theory. It's just that the individual's causal cycle is faster, while the family's is slower. In fact, the decline and fall of the Tongren Tangle family is precisely the law of alternating and transforming cause and effect in history, and the starting and losing family is exactly the impermanent manifestation of what a Buddhist family talks about. Seeing through this mirror, one will let go, one will be at ease, and one will be able to understand the true meaning of the unjust relatives that Buddhism speaks of.