The most virtuous wife, the most talented woman: the biography of Yang Jiang

Chapter 19 Hope and Sigh · Joy in Bitterness Is Sweet (1)
The third teacher

After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, Qian Zhongshu successively published many collections of works. "Human·Beast·Ghost" was published in Kaiming Bookstore in Shanghai.The manuscript of this book was preserved by Yang Jiang in the rush of war. Qian Zhongshu wrote this passage on the sample manuscript preserved by the two of them: It was given to Yang Jikang, which uniquely combined three incompatible parties: wife, lover, friend.

This is the highest recognition and praise for a lover. Yang Jiang and Qian Zhongshu have always maintained this most beautiful relationship, respecting each other as guests, and raising their eyebrows together.

Some people divide the couples in the literary world into three types: one is always living in the shadow of their relatives, for example, Xu Guangping and Zhang Zhaohe; Xiao Hong and Ding Ling; there is another kind that goes hand in hand and supports each other. Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang are the third kind, which can be described as "a match made in heaven".What's even more rare is that their daughter Yuan was also very good later.

Yang Jiang did not become dim because she stood in front of Qian Zhongshu's achievements. Her study of literature and translation are admirable.Two people often study a book together, express their own opinions, discuss, complement each other, and give opinions on each other's works.Beside Qian Zhongshu, Yang Jiang is a competent traveler, and has done everything that a wife should do.For the performance of each role, she puts her heart and soul into it, which is commendable.

When Ah Yuan was a child, she was weak and often fell ill, which made her parents very worried.When she was in elementary school, she fell ill after only one or two weeks of schooling, and was taken home. She repeated several times, and she never took a full semester of classes. Later, Yang Jiang decided to teach A Yuan at home, so A Yuan's whole life Primary school was taught by my mother at home.

In the winter of [-], Ah Yuan suffered the most serious illness. The joint of the index finger of his right hand was swollen, and the result of the examination was bone tuberculosis.The doctor said to Yang Jiang: "There is no cure for this disease at present." A Yuan said to her mother with tears in her eyes: "I will kill you." The little girl actually understood what the doctor meant. Yang Jiang looked at the poor Baby, I'm so sad.

Fortunately, the medical conditions are getting better day by day, and the conditions at home have also improved. Yang Jiang listened to the doctor's advice and fed Ah Yuan to take medicine on time, vitamins and various supplements, and rested in bed. Ten months later, she recovered.Only then did Yang Jiang heave a sigh of relief, A Yuan's life was taken back by her mother.

Later, the doctor said that if most children get this disease, most of them will turn to the feet and then to the head, and they will die soon.After Ah Yuan recovered, she gained a lot of weight, and Yang Jiang's heart finally fell to the ground, but then she fell ill. She had a low fever every day, and she kept losing weight, and the examination could not find out the reason.

In the past, Yang Jiang was a restless person. Even if she was reading, she would turn the pages while knitting a sweater. She said that her hands had evolved into "automated machines".After she fell ill, she lost her energy and was always listless, which made Qian Zhongshu very worried.In [-], when Qian Zhongshu received the letter of appointment from Tsinghua University, he said: "Change the air, maybe change the place, and your illness will be cured." Qian Zhongshu was right, and they went to Tsinghua University A year later, Yang Jiang recovered on his own.

Although Ah Yuan's homework is taught by her mother at home, she has completely inherited the advantages of her parents' love for reading, and she understands everything quickly. When she was 11 years old, she was reunited with her parents in her hometown in Wuxi.During the day, a group of children were making noise in the yard, and Ah Yuan was not curious, so she hid in the wing room alone and read a book.Grandpa was sleeping beside her, and she saw that his feet were exposed, so she went to tuck him in the blanket, and then stood at the table and read a book quietly.

Grandpa woke up and saw her there very well-behaved, so he talked to her, asked her what she was watching, and took a test on her, only to be surprised that the young Ah Yuan had read "Journey to the West" and "Water Margin". "Biography", but also read foreign novels.So grandpa praised Ah Yuan as "the seed of reading".Ah Yuan was very happy to hear such a compliment.

Ah Yuan finished the first grade of junior middle school in Shanghai. After coming to Beijing, she should have been in the second grade of junior high school. The family planned to let her study in the middle school attached to Tsinghua University, but her age did not meet the requirements. She was too young. The school only let her start from the first grade. start reading.Ah Yuan stopped going to school and lived with her mother on the campus of Tsinghua University. Yang Jiang had just started tutoring her. She had no problems with the second and third grades of junior high school, but there was one subject that gave Yang Jiang some headaches, which was algebra.

Mathematics is indeed not Yang Jiang's specialty, so she asked Ah Yuan, "Mom can't keep up, so you can do it by yourself, can you?" Unexpectedly, Ah Yuan was really self-taught, and she didn't struggle to learn. Later, she took the exam in [-] and was admitted to Beiman Girls' High School. She got a perfect score in algebra. Yang Jiang was very proud of her daughter.

At other times, Ah Yuan also helped her father do some simple things. Her thoughts were very careful, and she discovered many things that adults hadn't noticed.She helped her father register the scores of the students' exams, and found that two people's course papers used unusual purple ink. A Yuan said that the two must be a pair of friends. Later, she guessed it right. Even Qian Zhongshu All surprised.

At that time, Qian Zhongshu often went out, and before going out, he asked many times, not to make the older one look after the younger one, but to let the younger one take good care of the older one.

Ah Yuan nodded vigorously. In fact, she was indeed taking care of her mother.Once it snowed heavily, and the old Li mother who worked at home was away, and no one was picking coal in the house. A Yuan knew that her mother would definitely not let herself do this, but she wanted to do something to help her mother, so she went to the snow field alone. I picked out all the covered cat feces, saving my mother one more process and making it easier to do.

When her father was not around, Ah Yuan was like a little adult when she was with her mother. She was thinking about everything, and she was still worried about her mother's safety.

Later, Yuan lived in school, and she could go home every weekend. Unlike other students, she took all the dirty clothes and sheets home. She always washed them herself.The classmates said that she didn't look like an only child, and she didn't seem to be spoiled at all.Ah Yuan was rated as a "Three Good Student". The teacher asked her to go home and talk to her mother about the "Three Good Students". Yang Jiang said to her: "Which three good students?" honor.

Ah Yuan's health was really bad, and later she showed signs of relapse, so she listened to the doctor's advice to take a year off from school, stay at home with her mother, accompany her mother to study, and accompany her mother to the library to borrow books. She is completely obsessed with reading. I inherited my parents, and I like all kinds of books, and I also learned Russian and English.

When Ah Yuan was in school, she was recommended to join the group because of her excellent academic performance and other performances.One day when she came home, she had a serious expression on her face, as if she was troubled by something, and later she said: "They keep asking me to join the regiment, and I always say, I'm not good enough, let me fight for it slowly; now they all Say I am qualified, what should I say?" She also said: "If you join the regiment, you will not get close to your family, and the family is full of "sugar-coated cannonballs"." Only then did Yang Jiang know that her daughter was afraid of joining the regiment, so she decided to give up. If you need to keep a distance from your family, you will not be intimate.

Later, A Yuan was admitted to the Russian Department of Beijing Normal University, and stayed on as a teacher after graduation. She said before that her wish was to be a "teacher's vanguard" like her father, and her family was very happy with A Yuan's decision Supported, and Ah Yuan later proved that she was a "pioneer".

The major adjustments within the colleges and universities began. Yang Jiang and Qian Zhongshu were arranged in the Institute of Literature of Peking University, and their positions were changed from professors to researchers. Their residences were also moved from Tsinghua Garden to Zhongguan Garden, and the two returned to their new homes. An elegant name: "Rong An Room", an optimistic attitude towards life has been accompanied by two people's lives.

Yang Jiang did not interrupt her translation "career", and some of the works translated in the spare time were recognized by many professionals.After liberation, she translated the 47-word French novel "Gill Blass", which was praised by Professor Zhu Guangqian of Peking University as "the best prose translation in China——Yang Jiang is the best".

Go through five levels and cut six generals
In [-], the "Pull the White Flag" movement started again. The so-called "Pull the White Flag" refers to the removal of those who insisted on seeking truth from facts and opposed exaggeration, as well as those with bourgeois academic viewpoints, during the "Great Leap Forward" at that time. All people are regarded as "bourgeois white flags", and the method of criticizing, fighting against, and even punishing them is "pulling out the white flag and planting the red flag".

Some of Yang Jiang's papers on Western literature and Qian Zhongshu's "Selected Notes on Song Poetry" are "white flags". Yang Jiang secretly made up his mind that he would never write any more articles in the future, so as not to be pulled out, and only do translation.Qian Zhongshu said that she was "resurrecting the soul with a dead body", and she just wanted to use this to "cover the old warehouse in the dark".If she is no longer exposed to literature and books from now on, I am afraid there is only one way to die.

The beginning of the "anti-rightist movement" put many friends around them in trouble. Yang Jiang and his wife handled things carefully and lived cautiously.In [-], disaster still befell them. Both of them were labeled as "hatred". The article was called a "tumor" of capitalism and became an unstoppable "big white flag".

Yang Jiang's previous "Fielding's Theory and Practice in Fiction" was accused of "not only failing to help readers correctly understand the works of Fielding, a realist writer, but distorting and belittling the significance of Fielding's works... In this way Papers published will have harmful effects on our study work."

This is not a small crime, and Qian Zhongshu was not spared. The two were silent at the criticism meeting, expressing their experiences silently. Fortunately, they are usually low-key and easy-going, and they criticize them to a relatively low degree. Said it was relatively light.

In October of that year, the Institute of Literature decided to send personnel to the countryside in batches for reform. Yang Jiang was assigned to the first batch, and Qian Zhongshu was also assigned a month later. At that time, A Yuan was already working in a steel factory.

A Yuan followed a master in the steel factory, and because she could draw, she was asked to draw.But the pictures she drew before are completely different from the ones she draws now, so Ah Yuan went to the bookstore to buy books to study. The master admired Ah Yuan very much, because Ah Yuan can draw very accurate pictures, and can make models according to the pictures she drew. .Finally, when A Yuan left, the master gave A Yuan a bowl-sized portrait of Chairman Mao, and A Yuan did not suffer much.

Yang Jiang could not have gone. At that time, there were regulations that lesbians over the age of 45 were exempted from going to the countryside.She is not in good health, and the conditions for going to the countryside are difficult. She is still worried about the old and the young in the family, but it is not good not to influence her. People will make use of the problem, so Yang Jiang decided to "go to the countryside".

The place to go to the countryside is in the suburbs near Beijing, not too far away. More than 20 "sick and sympathetic" people went together. When they first arrived in the mountains, the old man who came with him pointed to a girl who was working in the distance and said, "Look, she Does it look like the Mona Lisa?"
Everyone agrees with his statement. It is a pity that the people in the mountains don't know who Mona Lisa is, but they think from the expressions of these people that it should be a beautiful girl.This is an intellectual joke.

The collective life began. In this strange place, although there were people who came with her as companions, Yang Jiang had made some psychological preparations before, but after coming here, she realized that the next difficulties were one after another.

Yang Jiang later wrote some texts, recording the "passing five barriers" that occurred during this period:

The first level is "labor level". Although Yang Jiang doesn't live in a particularly well-to-do family, she has never done farm work, and she is no longer young and doesn't have much strength, so I can only choose her. Something she could do, like smash corn.

The second pass is "Residence Pass". Yang Jiang was curious about what life in an earthen hut was like before, but now she really saw it.On the first day I came here, I lived in a cold kang in an empty room, and then I changed to a bamboo couch in the sewing room. Experiences she never expected.

The third level is "eating level". Usually, Yang Jiang has a small appetite and can't eat much.Come here for morning and evening porridge, interspersed with cornmeal steamed bread, the second is not good, the point is that you can’t eat enough, and it’s hard to digest.Yang Jiang always eats delicious food in his dreams, but after waking up, he finds out that it was a dream of Huang Liang.

The fourth level is "Convenience Level". This level is the most difficult. The toilets in rural areas are very simple, just put a board on the tank!Once Yang Jiang ate mung bean noodles and had a stomachache in the middle of the night. She bravely ran out, but the door was locked. She was anxious and scared. She thought of the cat at home in a flash, so she found a place and dug a hole. , Fill it up after you have a good time, sprinkle some fallen leaves on it, and go back to the bed in despair.

The fifth pass is the "sanitation pass". Yang Jiang, who has been clean for half her life, realized the preciousness of water resources during that time.

Although difficulties followed one after another, Yang Jiang had her own unique comfort, which was Qian Zhongshu's letter.His letters are written every day, using regular lower case letters to record his thoughts and deeds. This is Qian Zhongshu's habit all the time, without interruption.

Everyone laughs that Yang Jiang has a lot of letters, but in fact everyone is envious in their hearts. The news of their relatives is the biggest concern in their hearts.Yang Jiang's letters were never thrown away, they were neatly folded and put away, and when she thought about it, she took them out and read them again, and the pockets of her clothes gradually bulged, and she carried them close to her body.Although there was nothing wrong with the contents of the letter, she still had lingering fears after witnessing the process of labeling her before, and she was not at ease to put it elsewhere.

(End of this chapter)