Meet you in the most beautiful years

Chapter 4 I don't know why I suddenly fell in love with you (2)
Although Fenghuang County could not even manage a primary school at that time, the local armed forces developed rapidly.At that time, Shen Zongsi had become the leader of the local armed forces. He organized and led the Miao people's uprising in the year of the [-] Revolution, but it failed miserably.At that time, Shen Congwen was less than ten years old, but he witnessed the bloody massacre with his own eyes. "I was free to go out at that time, and I often went to the top of the city to watch the beheading by the river whenever I had the opportunity."

The heaviness of history always makes people unable to relax.In the world, each of us is just a speck of dust. When historical events coincide with the trajectory of life, the image projected in the heart of the speck of dust will be clearer than those carved with stone chisels. This imprint that cannot be faded echoes And affect a person's future life.Shen Congwen loves this beautiful small city deeply, but has an instinctive resistance to brutality and aggressiveness.When he was young, he witnessed those barbaric killings. When he grew up, he was tired of political battles. From then on, he only wrote about the local Taoyuan and hid his sensitive heart in the pages of the book.

In the second year after the failure of the Miao people's uprising, the revolutionary army led by Shen Zongsi finally won.It was at the time when the situation was all-powerful and he was at the top of his game, but the fate of this man took a turn for the worse: he failed in the election, failed to assassinate Yuan Shikai, fled to other places, and lost his family wealth...

Changes in the family can't stop that immature life from growing up.In the fourth year of the Republic of China, Shen Congwen transferred to the No. 14 Junior Primary School in Fenghuang County; At the instigation of his father, [-]-year-old Shen Congwen joined the technical class of the reserve army and decided to inherit the honor of his family, starting as an infantry and continuing to become a general.

But the training lasted only eight months, the instructor left due to foreign appointments, and the technical class also disintegrated.When I was discharged from the army, it was the spring of peach blossoms.The small pinks all over the mountains and plains make the water city more soft and beautiful.For the last exercise, the young man from the Shen family picked handfuls of peach blossoms all the way home.At this time, the young man picking flowers began to have delicate feelings, and his hazy heart was filled with some melancholy, like the morning fog rising from the mountains and rivers.

Many years later, he wrote such a sentence: beauty is always sad.For the youth picking flowers back then, this was a meeting far away in time and space.A person's perception of beauty has emerged since he was a teenager.

In the year when he returned home from the army holding a handful of peach blossoms, something unfortunate happened to the Shen family: his beautiful, proud, and intelligent second sister passed away early.Among the nine siblings, the second sister is stronger than any of them.When he was buried, he quietly brought a mountain peach and inserted it in front of the grave.Maybe he had a sad intuition in his heart that the second sister was a scorching peach blossom, which was not fully bloomed, but was knocked down by the torrential rain, and just drifted away on the river in such a beautiful way.After many years, he returned home from Beijing to visit his sister's grave, only to find that the mountain peach had grown into a vigorous tree more than two feet high.

Reading "Congwen's Autobiography", he briefly talked about the second sister's death and the mountain peach, and there seemed to be a trace of cool liquid flowing through the bottom of his heart, so mysterious and enchanting, and so sad and unbearable.This primitive and mysterious power has been faintly shining in his works since then, authenticity and pure beauty, nature and destiny, like a hickory tree on a silent hill, full of mournful flowers.

The father fled abroad and the second sister died early. These changes and blows made the grieving mother gradually look down on the world, and felt that instead of letting the growing son stay by her side to fool around, it would be better to let him go out and make a living, so as to increase the knowledge and experience of life. experience.Later, with the help of an officer surnamed Yang, she allowed her son Shen Yuehuan to go to Chenzhou with the army in the name of supplementary soldiers.

The day I got the news was the autumn of 1917, the Hungry Ghost Festival on July 14th, which is also the folk ghost festival.The noisy riverside was unusually quiet in the past. The [-]-year-old boy from the Shen family brought paper money, water, wine and white meat, sacrificed to the river ghost by the riverside, and then soaked quietly in the river for two hours.This may be the last time he gets close to water on the land where he was born before leaving the small town of Phoenix.This is a farewell ceremony, farewell to the small town of Phoenix where he was born, and his youth.

In the following days, he spent a period of military career in the context of warlord melee.At that time, Chenzhou established the military government of the Yasukuni Allied Forces, with a total of three units. He was incorporated into the first guerrilla unit of the second army.Since then, he wandered all the way in the thirteen counties in the Yuanshui River Basin, participated in the suppression of bandits in Qingxiang, worked as a clerk, read a lot of books, and saw murderous people.In the Yuanling area, there is a style of simplicity and wildness. The people there live bloody self, love or hate are crazy to the bone, and they don't hesitate to sacrifice their lives for love and hatred.

The experience of these days, like a gorgeous mural in a dark room, gloomy and enchanting, with a sharp feeling on the skin, has been preserved in Shen Congwen's memory for a long time, making him unforgettable.

In Yushuwan, Dongxiang, the young daughter of a local chamber of commerce president died of illness. On the night after the burial, a young man selling tofu dug up the grave, carried the girl’s body to a cave and slept there for three days. And sent back to the grave.After being discovered, he was escorted to the Yamen, and before the Fa-rectification on the spot, the young man only had a calm smile on his face.

A little while before his execution, he was still clear-headed, not confused, neither eating, drinking, nor cursing, and only silently noticed his injured ankle.I asked him: "Who hurt her foot?" He shook his head, as if remembering something ridiculous, smiled for a while, and said softly: "It rained that day, and I sent her back, and I almost My son rolled into the coffin." I asked him again, "Why did you do this?" He still smiled and gave me a look, as if when I was a child, I would not understand what an air of love is, no Pay attention to me, but after a while, he said softly to himself: "It's very beautiful, very beautiful." ("Congwen Autobiography")
These experiences had a tragic and strange color, and slowly piled up in the heart of the young man of the Shen family, causing him a strong impact physically and mentally.He gradually understood that love is sometimes so unreasonable and irrational, carrying the breath of disillusionment and death.This somewhat affected him. Years later, when he fell in love with the black phoenix but was rejected, he felt disillusioned.

Such days did not last long. About two years later, the Second Army of the Yasukuni Allied Forces marched into eastern Sichuan in the name of "aiding Sichuan" and exchanged fire with a local army called Shenbing, almost annihilating the entire army.Fortunately, at that time, Shen Congwen, who was still young, and dozens of old and weak soldiers were ordered to stay in Chenzhou and survived.

Good fortune makes people, and good fortune also makes people.Parasitic in the world, it seems that there is always a pair of invisible hands, turning you back and forth on the intricate branches of fate, urging you to move forward step by step.Countless karma and opportunity, or unintentional or providential choices, finally piece together a complete life, compose a tortuous story, and make mortals who are completely different on the earth.

Because of his childhood, he experienced the loneliness of leaving home earlier than others; but also because of his childhood, when death swept across, he was able to escape like a fish slipping through the net.The itinerary of life seems to have already been set, every step is a trick and a secret door, and he will go to another life story after stepping over it, it seems that everything is ready, just waiting for him to start acting.

After the army fell, it no longer made sense to stay behind.After receiving a severance pay, he went home to live temporarily for several months, and then went to Yuanzhou to join his fifth uncle Huang Juchuan, who was the director of the police station, and became a clerk in the police station.In Yuanzhou, he also has an uncle named Xiong Jiesan, who is a well-known and powerful figure in the area. Xiong Xiling, the boss of the Xiong family, once served as the prime minister of the Republic of China government.

Because of the relationship between these two relatives, his life in Yuanzhou can be called comfortable and comfortable.After the police station accepted the slaughter tax, he got along very well with some shop owners and worked very well.In his spare time, Huang Juchuan and Xiong Jie would write poems together, and he would copy them neatly for them, or quietly read a large collection of books upstairs in their house.His mother also sold the real estate of her hometown and brought her sisters to live with him.The days flow slowly like Yuanshui, and all the little happiness in life seems to have been fully displayed.

However, when a fair-faced girl named Ma Zehui came into his sight, all this was completely shattered. In "Congwen Autobiography", he called this first love, which can only be regarded as unrequited love, "female disaster". And ran away with guilt, wandered around blindly and aimlessly, and lived a life of wandering on the water for dozens of days.

Everything is determined by cause and effect.He rejected the marriage proposals of relatives and local gentry, but fell in love with a white-faced girl by accident, because the girl's younger brother once told him that the girl loved his poems the most.At that time, the war was raging, eight hundred bandits besieged the small town, stray bullets swarmed the sky, and killing noises rang out, but he ignored it. He just wrote poems for the girl day and night, dreaming only of the girl's fair face.

Finally, the dream finally woke up.In the name of borrowing money, the girl's younger brother defrauded him of 1000 yuan, which was the living expenses his mother saved from selling the ancestral house.Only when the money could not be recovered did he realize that the so-called first love was actually a experience of being cheated.

He couldn't forgive his stupidity and frustration, let alone face his poor and poor mother, and the relatives and friends who had hoped to recruit him as a son-in-law, so he chose to escape.By chance, he returned to the army. For several years, he wandered to Changde, Baojing, and Sichuan, and finally returned to Xiangxi. Relying on his good handwriting, he became a secretary beside "Xiangxi King" Chen Quzhen.

This new life is a turning point.Chen Quzhen is a political reformer, well-managed the army, erudite and talented, supports the May Fourth Literary Revolution, and once published a collection of poems.Shen Congwen followed him and had the opportunity to browse various ancient books and learn a lot of historical knowledge.During the truce between the warlords, Chen Quzhen personally drafted a plan for "self-government of counties in western Hunan", and soon set up teacher training workshops, girls' schools, forest farms and factories. Under the influence of Zhao Kuiwu's new cultural thoughts, a printing worker, he became enthusiastic about new literature.

He began to read a lot, fascinated by books and literature.While reading, I learned to think.

I often lie on a meadow and read a book. When I get tired of reading, I turn my eyes away from the book and watch the white clouds move in the sky and the vegetables and leaves flowing slowly in the river. ("Congwen Autobiography")
I jotted down the names of many new people, as if they were all very familiar to me.I adore them, more than anyone else.I always wonder why they know so many things.I have written so much and written so well as soon as I started. ("Congwen Autobiography")
At this time, he was no longer the naughty boy who only wanted to play truant and lie, he became handsome and steady day by day.At this moment, he is like a sponge. The more energy he stores, the more low-key and calm he becomes, and the more he understands that he must go to a wider space and become a bigger sponge.

Although under Chen Quzhen's innovation, the factory is continuously producing products, and the school is also full of vitality. He likes this thriving state, especially envious of those young students, but looking back at his own life, the irresistible anxiety and loss are like surroundings. The high mountain barrier built surrounded him and squeezed towards him.He wants to break through and find his own way out and dream.

Those young students sent from all over the world, under the guidance of ordinary young teachers, are in a new situation with everything and everything. I am really envious of their activities.When I have nothing to do, I always go to see them in class and watch them play.Some of the students used to play with me in elementary school, and invited me to their dormitory to see how they lived, which made me feel a little uncomfortable. ("Congwen Autobiography")
Almost at the same time, he experienced two life and death experiences.First, a fever tormented him for forty days, with high fever and headache, and nosebleeds from bowl after bowl. At the right time, a classmate who was as strong as a tiger died because of a small negligence while swimming in the river. People picked up his swollen and deformed corpse from the water - in Shen Congwen's eyes, this scene was like a sharp steel needle, which finally pricked his nerves.

What is the meaning of life?Compared with a fragile body, what is more valuable in life?
He lay on the bed sullenly and thought about it for four whole days.Finally he came to a conclusion:
For better or worse, I will die one day, seeing a few more fresh suns, passing a few more fresh bridges, exerting my last breath in some dangers, and dying here than dying of illness or accidental stray bullets Killing him seems to be more interesting.

So he became relentless and made up his mind to go to Beijing to study.When he mentioned this decision to Chen Quzhen, the Phoenix-born soldier gave him strong support and warm encouragement.Then, with a salary of several tens of dollars, a letter from Chen Quzhen and courage, he left the small town of Fenghuang where he was born and raised him, and the land of his hometown where the Yuanshui River flows.

Nineteen days later, a young man full of travel and dust, stood at Beijing Qianmen Railway Station.

He wrote stroke by stroke in the passenger book of Xiezuo Inn: Shen Congwen, 20 years old, student, native of Fenghuang County, Hunan Province.

He finally came to Beijing.He tortuously walked for so long, and finally, walked into the gate of his dream.

At this time, it was the summer of 1922 in Beijing.

At this moment, he didn't know that the name he wrote would become a legend.

The third lady of the Zhang family in Hefei
At this moment, I seem to be sitting in the wilderness of time, I close my eyes, and there is a sudden sound of wind in my ears.How ruthless time is, like a mighty long wind, flying away without stopping, how many rouge faces have been wrinkled, how many clutches have been blown, and how many sorrows and joys.

Walking through the willow forest every day, you can see the bell tower of the small town when you look up, and the minutes and seconds flow away in a hurry.I always have to stay for a while.One minute ago, it was still this life, but this second, it was an old dream.

Behind him, there seems to be a sea of ​​time, and the waves every minute and every second are singing about the past that has passed away.

Some things, some charms, can only be perfectly sculpted and interpreted in a certain gap in history.

A few years ago, in late autumn, I stayed overnight in an old house in the former Qing Dynasty.It was a quiet night, and the moonlight from a courtyard leaked from the old house.Sitting on an old-fashioned rosewood armchair, looking up at the starry sky in all directions on the patio, and seeing the place of infatuation, I felt as if I was sitting at the bottom of the well of time in a trance. In an instant, the vastness and loneliness of time and space were everywhere.

At that moment, there is no me.In such an old house, I am obviously redundant.

It is only suitable for going back in time - the paper lanterns, the ladies in cheongsams, the babbling Kunqu opera, and the moonlight in a large courtyard at that time.At that time, without us.

We can't afford those times.It is too subtle and elegant, too connotative and charming. It is a dignified cheongsam, and only a lady from a famous family can match it.

The aristocratic ladies of the Zhang family in Hefei, and the last ladies of the Republic of China, all of them were peerless, and such beauties will never be found in future generations.There was a director of the new era who wanted to make "The Four Sisters of Hefei", but he knew that he couldn't make it.He couldn't find such an actor who could interpret the elegance and memory of that era.

Then, we can only forgive the lack of words, and let the long shadow of the old days reappear here.

Let’s turn the page from here—on the eve of the Revolution of [-], a third lady was born in the Zhangjiafu residence in Longmen Lane, Hefei.

In 1910, late summer and early autumn.At that time, Shen Congwen, who was far away in the small town of Fenghuang, was already eight years old. He was thinking of ways to skip school, play wildly with wild children, or kneel and be whipped in front of the school's Confucius tablet... He didn't know, who would The woman who made him extremely sweet and heartbroken came to this world.

On September 9, Lu Ying, the young and beautiful young wife of the Zhang family in Hefei, propped up her weak postpartum body, only glanced at the little person who had just fallen from the grass, and cried out in disappointment.Another girl, this is already the third.The mother-in-law was very upset, she just wanted to have a grandson.

The father, Zhang Wuling, was very happy. He named his third daughter Zhaohe.Although he was born in a family of Zhongming Dingshi, he is a reserved and refined person. He is knowledgeable, enlightened and democratic, and he is very particular about naming his children.Zhang Wuling had ten children in all.The eldest daughter Yuanhe (named Boyuan), the second daughter Yunhe (named Zhongyun), the third daughter Zhaohe (named Shuzhao), and the fourth daughter who was born later was named Chonghe (named Jichong); six boys, respectively Named Zonghe, Yinhe, Dinghe, Yuhe, Huanhe, Ninghe.Girls' names not only do not have the slightest charm of flowers and grasses, but also have two slender "legs". Zhang Wuling hopes that their daughters will become successful in school, go to society like men, and gain a foothold in the world; Obviously, when the sons grow up, they want to carry forward the ancestral business and inherit the family name.Needless to say, this is his wish.

The Zhang family in Hefei is a famous family.Zhang Wuling's grandfather was Zhang Shusheng, a well-known general of the Huai Army in the late Qing Dynasty. He was the second most important person in the Huai Army after Li Hongzhang.The biggest bright spot he left for later generations is the name of "Confucian general". He loves Kunqu opera and attaches great importance to culture. He once presided over the reconstruction of the [-] virtuous temples in Canglang Pavilion in Suzhou, and wrote the inscription on Baodai Bridge himself.

Zhang Shusheng has nine sons in total, and the eldest son Zhang Yun once served as the Daotai of Chuandong, Sichuan.Coincidentally, Zhang Yun, like Shen Congwen's grandfather, Shen Hongfu, was famous but childless. What's more, like Shen Hongfu, he adopted his nephew as his son to inherit the family business. Born Zhang Wuling.

Relying on the huge foundation created by Zhang Shusheng, the Zhang family became a prominent family in Hefei.The tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land owned by the Zhang family, only in the name of grandson Zhang Wuling, has [-] rents every year.What is rare is that the young master of the Zhang family is not a bit of a dandy, and those bad habits of smoking opium, visiting brothels and playing cards are not related to him; what he likes are newspapers, magazines, poetry, calligraphy and painting, and the Kunqu opera hobby inherited from his ancestors .

(End of this chapter)