In 1932, a young woman had just sent her child to her hometown of Jiangsu, and she saw in the newspaper a picture of her husband, who had just been married for two years. Moreover, the newspaper also published her husband's name as "Chen Duxiu", which is completely different from the name her husband told her, but this woman is very sure that it is her husband!
The woman rushed back to her residence in Shanghai, but found no sign of her husband. After searching for anyone in vain, the woman was convinced that the person in the newspaper was her husband!
So, after learning the address where her husband was being held, she hurried to that place...
The woman, Pan Lanzhen, was born in 1908 in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. Pan Lanzhen's parents were honest farmers, and the family lived by farming. But when Pan Lanzhen was 4 years old, there was a famine in her hometown, and the young Pan Lanzhen began to flee with her parents. The family ended up in Shanghai. In order to give the whole family a place to stay, Pan Lanzhen's parents finally saved enough money after cobbling together, and they rented a pavilion on Xihuade Road.
Pan Lanzhen's father soon found a job as a stevedor at a tobacco company, while her mother, who was looking for a job, ran into a wall and ended up picking up garbage every day to support the family.
The family later added several new members, and the family's life became more difficult. At the age of 13, Pan Lanzhen entered a spinning mill as a child laborer in order to make a living. Pan Lanzhen, who has not read books since she was a child, only knows that if she works in the spinning mill for a while, her younger siblings can eat a little more, so she is always very hard at work and is very popular with the spinning mill owner.
In this way, Pan Lanzhen worked in the spinning factory until the age of 17, when she became more and more beautiful. But what the lively and lovely Pan Lanzhen did not know was that there was a person in the factory who was planning how to "get" this beautiful girl.
This man was a foreman in the factory, and when he saw that Pan Lanzhen was very cute, he had a bad heart and wanted to take her for himself. Finally, he took advantage of Pan Lanzhen's presence in the factory to violate her.
After Pan Lanzhen was violated, she was in pain and threatened to report the foreman, but the foreman had a very good relationship with the leaders in the factory, and it was not at all that an ordinary female worker like Pan Lanzhen could denounce it. And the foreman also threatened Pan Lanzhen: if she denounced herself, then Pan Lanzhen's violation would become known to everyone, and then the people who would be accused would not know who it was.
Pan Lanzhen had no choice but to give up the whistleblowing. But since then, the foreman often took the opportunity to harass Pan Lanzhen, and finally he saw that Pan Lanzhen could not do anything about himself, so he let Pan Lanzhen live with him. In this way, 17-year-old Pan Lanzhen fell into the painful life of living with the hooligans.
Soon after, after Pan Lanzhen found out that she was pregnant, she gave birth to a child in a harsh environment, but this child died soon after due to congenital deficiencies.
The sharp pain of losing her son made Pan Lanzhen sober up: if she doesn't leave this scum now, then she may have to be at the mercy of others for a lifetime!
Therefore, Pan Lanzhen quit her job in the spinning mill with the help of her father and entered the tobacco company where her father worked. The foreman saw that Pan Lanzhen had escaped from his control and did not pester.
In 1930, Pan Lanzhen met a newly moved resident near her home, this person was Chen Duxiu. Pan Lanzhen was very warm to people, and soon after, she became acquainted with Chen Duxiu.
At that time, Pan Lanzhen was 22 years old and Chen Duxiu was 51 years old. Although Chen Duxiu is a full 29 years older than her, Pan Lanzhen and Chen Duxiu always feel at ease when they get along. Gradually, she developed an admiration for this elegant man. After Chen Duxiu heard about Pan Lanzhen's origins, he was very sympathetic to her. But after he saw that Pan Lanzhen was now able to tell frankly about the violation of that year and face life very optimistically, Chen Duxiu admired her bravery.
Because the two lived close together, they also began to visit each other later, and Pan Lanzhen's parents saw their daughter's love for the man, but did not stop them. Because in their eyes, the man was a reliable man.
After a few months of getting along, Pan Lanzhen and Chen Duxiu were together. For the safety of his wife, Chen Duxiu told Pan Lanzhen that his surname was "Li".
In order to guide his wife to progress, Chen Duxiu also took the initiative to teach his wife to recognize and read. The clever Pan Lanzhen would soon recognize a lot of words, and she also took a copy of Tang poems that Chen Duxiu had given her with her, and took it out to recite as soon as she had time. Because she wants to be a learned person like her husband.
Pan Lanzhen also found that her husband seemed to have something to hide from her, and his husband sometimes went out to do things and would not tell her the truth. But Pan Lanzhen chose to believe in her husband unconditionally and support her husband.
In 1932, Pan Lanzhen, who had been married to her husband for two years, thought that her husband was over 50 years old and that they might not have children. In order to make the family more complete, Pan Lanzhen went to adopt a daughter. Because Chen Duxiu used a pseudonym at this time, he named the child Pan Fengxian, with the surname of Pan Lanzhen.
In China at that time, there were very few children with their mother's surname, and although Pan Lanzhen did not understand why her husband let the child follow her own surname, she did not ask any more questions.
Soon after raising her daughter, Pan Lanzhen returned to her hometown in Jiangsu with her daughter to visit her family. But just a few days after she returned to her hometown, she saw the news of her husband's arrest in the newspaper, and her husband's name was still "Chen Duxiu".
Pan Lanzhen finally went to Nanjing and found the Tiger Bridge Prison where Chen Duxiu was being held.
Pan Lanzhen finally saw Chen Duxiu after dotting around. Chen Duxiu was sitting alone in prison, and he saw that his wife had come to find him, and his face was full of disbelief. He thought that his wife was still young, and he had concealed his true identity from her, and the arrest was so loud that if she could withstand this series of blows, she would probably leave her.
Unexpectedly, Pan Lanzhen worked hard to find it. Chen Duxiu was very touched after seeing his wife, but the first thing he said was to let her go. Chen Duxiu asked Pan Lanzhen to return to Shanghai, and he did not want his wife to stay here and be implicated by himself. But Pan Lanzhen said that she was not afraid of being implicated, and she would wait by Chen Duxiu's side.
At that time, Chen Duxiu had a student, the vice minister of education of the National Government in Nanjing, named Duan Xipeng. Duan Xipeng saw that Chen Duxiu and Pan Lanzhen were deeply in love and deeply moved, so he proposed to let his master's mother Pan Lanzhen live in his home, so that Pan Lanzhen would not be taken care of alone.
Chen Duxiu also asked Pan Lanzhen to live in Duan Xipeng's house temporarily, but Pan Lanzhen said:
"The Duan family is a high official, and it is inconvenient to live there."
Later, Pan Lanzhen rented a small cabin next to the prison with only money, and she also found many odd jobs in the neighborhood to maintain her daily life.
Because Song Meiling was very kind to Chen Duxiu when she came to visit him in prison, the guards of the prison did not report that Pan Lanzhen often came to visit Chen Duxiu, and Pan Lanzhen accompanied Chen Duxiu through 5 years of prison life.
In these 5 years, Chen Duxiu did not stop thinking, and he also wrote books in prison. Pan Lanzhen helped him buy paper and pencils to come in, and brought him a lot of books. When Chen Duxiu was writing, Pan Lanzhen accompanied him outside the Iron Gate. When she saw that Chen Duxiu had written too late, she persuaded him to rest, but Chen Duxiu, who had always been stubborn, listened to his wife's words. It can be seen that he cherishes his wife.
After Chen Duxiu was released from prison, they took a boat to Wuhan together. When passing through Chen Duxiu's hometown of Anqing, Chen Duxiu's expression became sad, and he and his original wife's three sons and two daughters, two of whom were mutilated by the Kuomintang, and the eldest daughter fell ill and died in the memory of her two younger brothers. His wife also died in pain.
When Chen Duxiu missed his deceased relatives, Pan Lanzhen silently accompanied him. Seeing that his current wife does not abandon himself, Chen Duxiu is full of emotions, and he also cherishes his feelings with Pan Lanzhen even more.
However, the news of Chen Duxiu's arrival in Wuhan soon spread, and many ill-intentioned people came to visit, and Chen Duxiu, who was overwhelmed, left Wuhan for Chongqing, and finally arrived in Jiangjin County, Sichuan.
Soon after, Chen Duxiu's hometown of Anqing fell, and his relatives came to Jiangjin County to defect to him. Although the family is bustling, the economic situation in the family is not very good, and there are constant contradictions between generations. Pan Lanzhen took on the role of the woman in charge, and she resolved the contradictions again and again, so that everyone could live in peace.
When there was no food at home, Pan Lanzhen also secretly used her ring to exchange for food. Chen Duxiu saw Pan Lanzhen's dedication to this family in his eyes, so he often taught the children to listen to Pan Lanzhen's words. Everyone in the Chen family was also aware of Pan Lanzhen's hardships, and they all respected Pan Lanzhen.
Later, Chen Duxiu's son and daughter-in-law left Jiangjin County and went to other places. Chen Duxiu also moved his family to the secluded Heshan Ping.
On May 27, 1942, Chen Duxiu died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 63. Before dying, Chen Duxiu said to his wife:
"Lan Zhen's wife, after I go, you must live on your own, and if you have the right person, you can remarry as soon as possible and live the second half of your life."
After speaking, he took his wife Pan Lanzhen's hand until he died.
Following Chen Duxiu's will, Pan Lanzhen later found a job on a farm, doing manual work farming. A few years later, she returned to Shanghai, where she met Chen Duxiu, and cooked in the canteen for a living.
After that, Pan Lanzhen was also forced to marry a Kuomintang officer for a living, but soon after the new marriage, her husband died. The hardships of life, coupled with the successive deaths of relatives, Pan Lanzhen's spirit was devastated, and she unfortunately suffered from uterine cancer.
On October 31, 1949, Pan Lanzhen died in hospital at the age of 42.
This woman who has been obsessed with Chen Duxiu all her life should also go to heaven to find Chen Duxiu after her death, and see the prosperity of the world with him.