The Prophecy of Life: Reading Qi Bangyuan's "Giant River"

The circle of life

When I was studying the structure of drama creation, I realized the concept of "starting point is the end point". That is, where the whole story begins, and where the final chapter will end - this is a relatively complete and comfortable dramatic structure.

Many novels and movies have such a setting. I also read a sentence called: Revisiting the old place often means farewell.

Teacher Qi Bangyuan narrated the timeline of her life in her eloquent autobiography "The Giant Stream". With a background in literature, she is restrained and restrained, and her skills are hidden in inadvertent places. The story begins in the majestic northeastern Liaohe River Basin, and the last scene is Mr. Qi returning to the mainland after a lapse of decades, watching from the coast of Dalian, "the Bohai Sea flows into the Yellow Sea, then flows into the East China Sea, and merges into the vast Pacific Ocean "... Finally, it merged into the Duokou Sea at the southernmost tip of Taiwan Island.

It's heart-wrenching and heart-wrenching to read.

Even if it is a non-fiction work, the trajectory of life described by Teacher Qi is very consistent with the perfect circle in the drama structure.

The special thing about this autobiography is that Teacher Qi did not mention the years before her "sensible", but referred to many interview materials, combined with childhood memories, and by the way restored some of her parents and even her grandfather's life.

The yellowing years are always the most sighing.

2. Her father Qi Shiying

During the Lantern Festival in 1924, Teacher Qi Bangyuan was born in Tieling, Liaoning, where the weather is cold and the ground is freezing. Due to congenital insufficiency, she has been frail and sickly since she was a baby. When she had a high fever, her relatives had asserted that she was "out of breath." She was saved by her mother's hold on the kang and refused to let go. Her father was studying in Germany at the time, and even her name was taken by the doctor who saved her life.

Her grandfather Qi Pengda was a loyal subordinate of Zhang Zuolin, a Fengtian warlord, while her father Qi Shiying, who studied in Germany, was full of democratic ideas of saving the country and the people, and participated in Guo Songling's military counsel against Zhang Zuolin. When Mr. Qi was two years old, he was forced to flee with his grandmother, mother and brother because of his father's revolutionary behavior.

When Qi Shiying participated in the revolutionary action against Zhang Zuolin, everyone thought that his father would be implicated, but Zhang Zuolin took care of Qi Peng's loyalty for many years, and did not mean "the son's debt to the father". In the words of Teacher Qi: "Zhang Zuolin was born in the wild, but he has the heroism and loyalty of that generation of rough heroes."

Zhang Zuolin is a very typical Chinese. On the one hand, when the national disaster was in front of him, he still used military force and was busy with internal struggles to separate the territory. On the other hand, he was very righteous and vowed not to compromise with the Japanese, and was eventually assassinated by an explosion.

It is a pity that his son Zhang Shaoshuai has neither the vision of the new era nor the heroic spirit of his father, so that an era has come to an end.

For Qi Shiying, Guo Songling's remonstrance at the age of 26 was the heart disease of his life. Qi Shiying lived in the army garrison with his parents when he was young, and saw the customs of the northern villages, " deeply felt the lack of knowledge of the general public, almost completely ignorant of the country and his own destiny, behind the simple virtue is often indifference and ignorance ". At the age of fifteen, he received an English education at the Tianjin Xinxue Academy and was brought up to be a well-mannered gentleman. At the age of 18, he took the official fee and went to Japan. He closed his home to study in the snowy winter, and gradually grew into a " youth who thinks deeply and procrastinates in studying ". At the age of twenty-two, he followed his cousin to study in Berlin, Germany, where he studied philosophy and economics, observed German society after the war, and often wandered around the Nika River.

Such a life experience and educational background, in China at the beginning of the last century, was naturally an unattainable "human superior".

After two years of carefree living in Germany, due to the death of her cousin's tuberculosis and the death of her uncle, Qi Shiying had to take her cousin's ashes home for the funeral, but he was not allowed to study abroad at home. Qi Shiying left Zhuangyuan and returned to Shenyang City after the funeral. She wanted to find another way to study, so she met Guo Songling at this time.

Guo Songling was a friend of her father Qi Pengda's classmates at Fengtian Wubei Academy. Seeing that Qi Shiying was inconvenient to live in a hotel, she invited him to stay at home. The two had a long talk on the snowy night, discussing all the affairs of the state and the world, and they were very committed. Qi Shiying shared what he saw and thought when he was studying abroad to Guo Songling's relatives, friends and guests, and everyone quickly reached a consensus: the northeast is fertile for thousands of miles, farming is short of people, actively building a homeland and developing education are the most important things. Fighting for turf for fellow straight warlords is just pointless casualties.

Qi Shiying is an idealistic young man who returned from Europe, while Guo Songling and Han Shuxiu, one is a decisive new army leader, and the other is a top student who graduated from Yenching University and has Qiu He in his heart. The two sides hit it off and jointly established the "Tongze Middle School" in Northeast China to set up education. They also planned to set up a university, determined to " not be dominated by those in power, and not for the purpose of training officials ."

Less than a year later, Guo Songling received another order to enter the customs to fight against the coalition forces of the five provinces convened by Sun Chuanfang and consolidate the Fengjun's territory. Guo Songling cared about people's livelihood and was unwilling to continue the civil war, so he launched a joint anti-war campaign. He called Zhang Zuolin and asked Zhang Zuolin to stop the war. He advocated recuperation and never participate in the civil war.

Before making this decision, General Guo also knew that there were many risks, and was prepared to " if we fail, everyone must die ".

In the eyes of the wild hero Zhang Zuolin, what is Guo Songling's proposition or what is next? The most important point is: he is the opposite. The ruler's sense of power and limited vision were decided from the beginning, and Zhang Zuolin would not seriously listen to Guo Songling's proposition.

Guo Jun's momentum was like a rainbow all the way, but he encountered a blizzard that had not been seen in a century, and was blocked on the west bank of the Juliu River.

On the way to his death with Guo Songling, Lin Huiyin's father, Lin Changmin, died of a stray bullet. Guo Songling couldn't bear to leave behind his wife and staff who couldn't ride a horse to break through the siege alone, so he rode a carriage with him, and was quickly overtaken by Zhang Zuolin's army, and the couple were executed on the spot.

Zhang Zuolin exposed the bodies of Guo Songling and his wife in Xiaoheyan Square for three days, and wanted Qi Shiying for "inciting mutiny".

Teacher Qi Bangyuan concluded: In the concept of Zhang's father and son, the Northeast belongs to the Zhang family, and the government-sponsored international students selected by the government belong to the Zhang family, and can only be loyal to his family.

In an era of alternating old and new ideas, the idea of kingship of a hegemon is deeply rooted in the bone marrow, far above the long-term plan for people's livelihood.

Therefore, Qi Shiying could only take her companions to the Japanese consulate to escape. Because they were afraid of being assassinated by a cold gun, the six people spent a full half a year in a difficult time when they "couldn't even go to the yard".

During this period, Qi Shiying thought about the same thing day and night: " We are all victorious along the way, why can't we cross the giant river when the lights in Shenyang are visible at night? " He fantasized about all kinds of possibilities. How to seek the protection of the embassy, how to help General Guo die, how to keep his strength and turn defeat into victory... But countless regrets have melted into the giant river that cannot be crossed, and it has also become Qi Shiying's nightmare for the rest of his life.

Later, Qi Shiying fled to Japan, then came to Tianjin, and finally joined the Kuomintang in Shanghai at the end of the following year.

Qi Shiying, who was twenty-seven years old at the time, had experienced an earth-shaking change of life and death, and was appraised by Chiang Kai-shek as "not like a Northeasterner" because of his gentle and refined bearing. Nearly 30 years later, at the end of 1954, in Taiwan's "Legislative Yuan", Qi Shiying publicly opposed the increase in electricity tariffs to increase military spending, angered Chiang Kai-shek, and was directly expelled from the party. Since then, he has been under surveillance for over ten years. Simple life.

In the aspect of character integrity, Qi Shiying is unswerving, and after all, he is a stubborn and tough "Northeasterner".

Just two years later, Zhang Zuolin was killed by the Japanese Kwantung Army in Huanggutun. Three years later, the "September 18th Incident" shocked the whole country. At that time, Qi Shiying had settled in Nanjing and devoted himself to active anti-Japanese underground work. "From 1928 to 1937, China, with Nanjing as its capital, was full of hope, and new construction was being promoted everywhere. During that period, some people in modern history called it the 'Golden Decade'." Therefore, the Japanese military It is advisable to start a war as soon as possible, because if China is not fought again, it will not be able to fight when China's national power becomes strong.

Idealists across the country try their best to build a new world, only to be defeated by greedy robbers in a race against time.

Later, due to the Xi'an Incident in 1936, Chiang Kai-shek had a grudge against the people of the Northeast. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he directly appointed Xiong Shihui from Jiangxi to take over the Northeast. Because of the lack of understanding of the layout of the Northeast, coupled with a number of downfalls, the Northeast soon showed a decline and was completely defeated by the Communist Army. In 1948, the Northeast was finally lost, and the underground anti-Japanese fighters who were trained by Qi Shiying himself were also stuck in place, unable to fly.

They thought they could return home after suffering for many years, but they didn't expect that the superior who trained them would abandon them.

Qi Shiying blamed herself for this, and was deeply disillusioned.

Qi Shiying, who had been restrained and introverted for many years, suddenly became sentimental in his later years, and he often burst into tears. In 1981, when Qi Shiying was hospitalized in General Rong, Zhang Xueliang suddenly went to see him in the ward. The two elderly people told the story of their rough life and could not help but imagine another possibility of going back in time. On that day, the only thing Zhang Xueliang and Qi Shiying had in common was to miss General Guo Songling.

However, that turbulent era has long since passed away, and the old people have turned into dust, and everything cannot be repeated.

3. Her mother Pei Yuzhen

When her father Qi Shiying died for the country and the times, the frail little girl Qi Bangyuan lived with her frail mother Pei Yuzhen in the northeastern countryside.

Pei Yuzhen only met Qi Shiying once when she was fourteen years old, so she had a good impression of this "parents' fiance" and felt that it was much better than marrying a country husband. Pei Yuzhen got married at the age of nineteen. After ten years, she " never left the visible and invisible gate of the manor ", did all the "things that a traditional daughter-in-law should do", and was busy with all kinds of needlework and housework. Without any socialization and friends.

In the past ten years, Qi Shiying has only gone back four or five times during the summer vacation. One year, when Pei Yuzhen was pregnant and wanted to eat cherries, 21-year-old Qi Shiying went to the village entrance to find a hawker who was selling them. Since there was no bag, she returned with the cherries in the front of her robe. "The bag of cherries, walking from the entrance of the village to the mansion, supported her many lonely years in nine years. "

Pei Yuzhen first gave birth to a healthy son Qi Zhenyi, two years later Qi Bangyuan who was born with insufficiency, and three years later her youngest son Qi Zhendao. At that time, medical care was backward and infant mortality was high. Qi Zhendao was infected with meningitis when he was three years old, and died fourteen days later.

The sudden death of the youngest son gave Pei Yuzhen a heavy blow, making her often cry and blame herself and be in a trance.

" In traditional society, it is very unfortunate for a young daughter-in-law to cry when she has nothing to do. After serving dinner at dusk, she hides in the grass and weeps in the afterglow of the sunset. The open space in the backyard is covered with grass that is one person high. , from the tender green when the snow melted in the spring to the vastness when the snow fell, sheltering her suppressed crying. After the snow melted, she took me to the ancestral grave a mile away, and fell on my brother's small new grave Weeping bitterly. I remember that the pine trees were planted around the ancestral tomb, shaking violently in the early spring wind, along the old tomb were full of pink flowers, and while my mother was crying, I went to pick a large one. When I brought the flower home, my grandmother said it was a peony flower. Every time I saw a peony flower when I grew up, I always heard the sad and depressed cry of my mother. Its large, somewhat transparent, seemingly fragile petals, There is a noble delicacy that is different from the wild flowers that surround it; it represents in my future life many images of life's spreading, never withering beauty and sadness, especially the suffering of the women of previous generations. "

Pei Yuzhen's father, Pei Xincheng, learned of her daughter's trance symptoms, and also heard that her son-in-law Qi Shiying was living with a group of fashionable international students in Nanjing at this time, and he felt that things couldn't go on like this. He obtained permission from his in-laws to escort Pei Yuzhen, Qi Zhenyi, Qi Bangyuan and their mother and son to Nanjing to reunite with Qi Shiying.

After hearing a lot of stories of cruel and inhumane patriarchy in the old days, when I saw the warm details of parents protecting their young, I couldn't help but be moved.

Even in a closed era and region, the escape route that a father has prepared for his fragile daughter is the love that comes from the heart.

In order to go to Nanjing, the young Qi Bangyuan made a special trip to Shenyang to make a red and blue cotton robe.

Along the way, excited children chattered. Qi Bangyuan asked her mother curiously on the rocky bald mountain: "Mom, what is this mountain called?" Pei Yuzhen replied, "It's called 'Ghost Crying Wolf Howling Mountain'."

Qi Bangyuan has always remembered her mother's expression at that time: " Now, she goes to a husband who has been away from home for many years, and takes her two young children to a completely unimaginable big city thousands of miles away; there is no family there, even She doesn't have any relatives, so the confusion and fear in her heart are like entering the world of ghost crying and wolf howling? She knows that the future is uncertain, but she never wants to go back to the small village outside the Great Wall, which has been isolated and lonely for ten years, and live a life like a widow. My lifelong love and concept of literature is actually due to my mother who has no education above middle school. She turned the natural phenomena of the vast land, the threats of tigers, wolves and leopards, and the unspeakable life into many stories of summer nights , gave me inspiration from childhood to life. Some of her country stories are tender hope and sadness, and some are full of throbbing hearts, like ghosts crying wolf howling mountain, no decoration, a strong symbol of her fear of the big southern city at that time , and worries about their own destiny. ”

My grandfather took the three of them all the way to the south. "The train drives day and night, and outside the window is an endless crop of fields... Except for the sparse windbreak forest, the horizon is full of dark brown soil. "

After leaving Shanhaiguan to Peiping, after walking for three days and two nights, in the thick white steam of the train entering the station, his father Qi Shiying stood tall and straight on the platform and waited. Pei Yuzhen hesitated, " ...Hands trembled like the leaves of an elm tree, and a shy look on her pretty face covered her joy ."

After living in Nanjing for more than ten days, my grandfather returned to his hometown in Guanwai, leaving his little daughter who "raised up in the palm of his hand" in " the sea of unaccompanied people in the south ".

Afterwards, Qi Shiying devoted herself to the underground work of anti-Japanese, and Qi Bangyuan moved from Nanjing to Peiping with her mother, then moved to the French Concession in Tianjin, and then returned to Nanjing. In order to hide their identities, their family often changed their names and surnames, and she had to change schools from time to time, so that before she went to school, she would always ask her mother, "Mom, what's my surname today?"

In such a dangerous day, Pei Yuzhen stopped crying, and her relationship with Qi Shiying gradually stabilized. She felt that she was very happy to share with her husband. Due to the fall of the Northeast, Qi Shiying advocated that the Whampoa Military Academy should recruit more young people from the Northeast, so that Northeast students accounted for a quarter of the total number of military students.

During her years in Nanjing, Pei Yuzhen did her best to entertain those northeastern children who had left their hometowns for her husband, cooked northern meals every Sunday for the students of the Huangpu Military Academy and Political School, and chatted with them about their hometown and people.

Many Whampoa students will never forget the time when they found a warm family in a foreign land.

That year, Qi Bangyuan's grandfather came to Nanjing to visit again. Seeing that his daughter was happily busy, he was finally relieved and passed away peacefully two years later.

Although she has the happiness of running a house, Pei Yuzhen often hums softly when she is busy. Qi Bangyuan can clearly hear that her mother is singing "Su Wu Shepherd": " Sitting in the cold, listening to Hu Jia, my heart hurts. " For several years Later, until Qi Bangyuan had a child, her mother still sang this song "Su Wu Shepherd" by her grandson's cradle.

Qi Bangyuan said that in the past, the mother " guarded the young children, and supported the almost hopeless waiting just like Su Wu hoped for the lamb to grow up and regenerate the lamb ."

Pei Yuzhen gave birth to three more daughters one after another while in Nanjing. Not long after she gave birth to her youngest daughter, she was forced to move due to the expansion of the Anti-Japanese War. She was bleeding profusely during the tossing and turning of the ship. Qi Bangyuan's third uncle Pei Yuqing kept shouting at the bedside before calling back Pei Yuzhen's life. However, Qi Bangyuan's second sister, Jingyuan, died of acute enteritis on the ship at almost the same time.

Pei Yuzhen, who was almost dead, took her children and fled the war with a large team. Later, she settled down in Chongqing and continued to manage the housework. After arriving in Taiwan, she repeatedly extended a helping hand to the busy Qi Bangyuan to help take care of her three grandchildren. In 1983, Pei Yuzhen passed away peacefully at his home in Neihu, Taipei. Qi Shiying, who was used to "open mouth with food and stretch out hands with clothes", realized how hard his wife's life was.

Two years later, Qi Bangyuan suffered a serious car accident and walked through the "valley of death" in the surgical ward. At that time, a thought swirled in her heart: "Thank God, my mother has passed away peacefully, and she doesn't have to shed this tear for me again."

Being a wife and a mother, her weak shoulders carry an unknown weight, and it seems that she is destined to have countless tears in her life.

4. Disease and Mary Sue

Qi Bangyuan's own story has a bit of a girlish romance from the very beginning.

In 1934, the ten-year-old Qi Bangyuan contracted pneumonia and was advised by doctors to go to the dry north to recuperate. So her father Qi Shiying used his connections to send Qi Bangyuan to a German hospital in Peiping to see a doctor, and then spent one-third of her monthly salary to send her to the Xishan Sanatorium, twenty miles away from the city, and lived in a single room for a full one. time of year.

Every Saturday, a grandmother in her sixties would take a twenty-mile sedan chair to visit her in a nursing home. Every time her grandmother was leaving, she would sit on the bed and cry, "I'll go home with you! I'll go home with you. Home!" Grandma's tears also flowed sideways in the wrinkles, which made her suddenly understand what the ancients' article called "the tears flowing".

At that time, the lung disease was severe, and people often died in the sanatorium. It was convenient for the hospital to sprinkle lime in the house where the deceased lived. Because Qi Bangyuan loves to read, she has a good relationship with a sister Zhang who has a large collection of books, and she has read a lot of new literature books from her, including Lin Shu's "La Traviata".

Until one afternoon, she saw someone sprinkle lime in Sister Zhang's room.

The young Qi Bangyuan had a vague concept of death, and only vaguely understood it, but felt lonely and fearful in her heart. During that time, she often cried and cried, causing a lot of burden to the grandmother who came to visit. A few years later, when she was in exile, Qi Bangyuan heard the news of her grandmother's death, but "it's always hard to believe that the warm body that hugs me will become cold in winter ."

This sanatorium experience has made her more sensitive and delicate, timid and afraid of the dark all her life, and she also has her own understanding of the joys and sorrows of the world. Years later, she talked to her father about that experience and said, "You are so cruel, you sent me to the hospital on that barren mountain alone."

My father just sighed, saying that he didn't understand child psychology at that time and thought that what he had done was the best. And many years later, Qi Bangyuan has also understood that she is lucky: " My parents gave birth to me, raised me, and worked hard to keep me ."

Literary researchers are keen to explore the relationship between disease and character personality. If a character is set to have a lung disease, it will be recognized as the author's preferred character. Because the symptoms of lung disease are pale and elegant, it is the most respectable of many diseases. This disease is not like a liver disease with a sallow complexion, or a gastrointestinal disease with a messy posture, and it also has a poetic element in the shaping of the character.

Therefore, in the process of reading, I did not simply look at the years passed by Teacher Qi through her eyes. In my eyes, she is also a poetic protagonist. When I saw her when she was a child, she was disliked by her brother because she was weak and slow; when I saw that she insisted on refusing to take a car and walked with the boys during the escape process, but she fell ill with a high fever in less than a day; when I saw her in the first grade When she was studying in Changsha Zhounan Girls' High School, she often fainted and was sent to the doctor, which was regarded as a trouble by the school. It always reminds me of the frail and sick protagonist I have created, and I can't help but feel pity for her.

There is also a paragraph in the following article, saying that when Qi Bangyuan was in her third year, she temporarily lived in the house of her boyfriend, classmate Yu, in Shanghai. Later, her father asked her to take a military plane to transport supplies to Peiping to reunite with her mother and sister. Her boyfriend, classmate Yu, escorted her to the plane and watched her follow the heavily armed soldiers into the tarmac, running and waving at her among the half-height reeds.

After flying for a while, Qi Bangyuan thought about the people in the reeds, but she also knew that the people next to her had been watching her.

Finally, the man next door spoke: "Miss, your seat belt is not fastened."

Qi Bangyuan only weighed more than 40 kilograms, and the seat belt was still loose to the last position. The man actually laughed and caught the attention of the entire cabin. Then the man apologized and comforted her, asked her surname and educational background, and guessed that she was Qi Shiying's daughter.

This person is from Cantonese, and the business card reads "Major Staff Officer of the Northeast Security Command".

After the plane landed at Peiping Airport, the man insisted on taking Qi Bangyuan by jeep to Dayang Yibin Hutong in Dongcheng. Mother Pei Yuzhen " looked like I was falling from the sky and came home suddenly. A beautiful officer in full uniform stood beside her and saluted her, almost fainting ."

This is a typical romance novel scene. If it is placed in a fictional work, Qi Bangyuan will definitely have something to do with this beautiful officer. However, in the noisy and chaotic reality, the romance came to an abrupt end, and the officer was never seen again in the following text.

Although it is a non-fiction work, when she condenses her life and presents some moments she has experienced, it will inevitably become a landscape in the eyes of readers. Perhaps it is also because of the shroud of diseases and disasters, mixed with all kinds of adventures of escaping from the dead. Teacher Qi's memories and narratives about the girlhood in the book are also delicate and romantic, like a delicate period novel.

Teacher Wang Dewei commented in his postscript: "The Giant Flowing River" is not only an autobiography, but also a literary work.

In that era of "the joy is short and the sorrow is too much", Mr. Qi's restrained and restrained brushstrokes are already a description of extreme romanticism.

5. Her love

The most vivid part of the book is the fate between Qi Bangyuan and Zhang Dafei.

At first the boy had an auspicious name called Zhang Naichang. His father used to be the police chief of Shenyang County. He was burned to death by the Japanese pouring paint on the square because he helped and let go of the underground anti-Japanese. After Zhang Naichang lost his father, in order to avoid the pursuit of the Japanese, he took his younger brother and sister to flee to Yingkou to join his aunt. He has since changed his name to "Zhang Dafei".

During this period, he enrolled in a church middle school, and in order to obtain inner peace, he believed in Christianity and was able to " please plead for the protection and love of a father ."

The following year, "Manchukuo" was established, and the fifteen-year-old Zhang Dafei fled to Peiping alone to join his uncle. When he was in extreme distress, he saw the announcement of the "National Zhongshan Middle School" founded by Qi Shiying to recruit exiled students from the Northeast. He was admitted to the third year of junior high school, and his board and lodging were paid for by the public, and he finally settled down.

A few years later, on New Year's Eve, Qi Bangyuan's older brother Qi Zhenyi found Zhang Dafei, who was three years older than him, in the school at the order of his father, and brought him home for dinner. On that cold night, eighteen-year-old Zhang Dafei held back his wailing and told the story of his family's destruction. While listening, the young Qi Bangyuan saw a few small trees planted by her mother swaying in the wind and snow outside the window, bent almost to the point of breaking.

Since then, every Saturday afternoon, the young Qi Bangyuan will " look forward to his melancholy and gentle smile in the midst of his brother's noisy classmates. "

In the early spring of that year, the Qi Bangyuan brothers and sisters lived with their mother in a small bungalow in Banqiao, and she often ran all over the mountains and fields with her brother. One afternoon, Qi Bangyuan followed her brother and his group to climb Niushou Mountain not far away. When they descended the mountain, they walked slowly and fell behind. They were in a dilemma holding a small rock top in the middle of the mountain. Hearing the sharp mountain wind whistling, she could not help crying in fear.

At this time, she found that Zhang Dafei was looking back at her.

" It was getting dark, and he actually turned around, climbed up the mountain, and led me down the mountain. When he reached the pass, he wrapped my body of more than 30 kilograms in a student's cotton coat and said, 'Don't cry, it's good to reach the road. ' The sympathy and caring in his eyes is something I rarely see as a 12-year-old fringe who often transfers schools. "

In early summer, they moved back to Nanjing.

Later, the war situation was shaken, and Qi Bangyuan never had the fate to return to that small house.

But in the following decades, Qi Bangyuan traveled all over the world, " every time I see those approachable hills, I always remember him looking back at me from the pass in the mountain wind ".

If all this really happened in a romance novel, then it would be a story of childhood sweethearts and childhood friends.

Not only is this not a fictional world, but it is not even a normal world.

With the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, everyone was forced to flee west. The boys in the high school of Zhongshan Middle School received military training, carrying the army's rifle, and assumed the responsibility of escorting the retreat. Brother Qi Zhenyi, cousin Pei Lianju, and nineteen-year-old Zhang Dafei, wrapped in quilts and carried Pei Yuzhen, who was weak after childbirth, onto the train, and then handed Qi Bangyuan and three younger sisters in through the car window one by one.

On the fleeing train, even the roof of the train was full of refugees. When passing through the tunnel, someone always fell, causing the people beside them to cry. When we changed boats in Wuhu, more people fell into the water and called for help under the chaos and crowding, and some people just sank. " That night of terror and terror, mixed with the cries of those who were brushed off the top of the train during the day, often came back to me throughout my life growing up into old age. The night shook and became the starting point of my compassion for the country and the nation, gradually expanding from the reading of literature to all mankind. ”

After finally sailing to Hankou, Qi Bangyuan experienced the successive shocks of the death of her sister and the death of her mother. When she was standing alone at the door of the ward, listening to her uncle calling her mother's name, Zhang Dafei suddenly ran over from the door.

He knelt in front of the hospital bed and bowed his head in prayer, then came out and told Qi Bangyuan that he had signed up for the military academy and has since changed his name to "Zhang Dafei".

He then hurried out of the hospital to report to the army. Before leaving, he handed Qi Bangyuan a brand new Bible—he always carried a gold-trimmed Bible with him, and the young Qi Bangyuan often looked at it curiously. At the moment of his parting, he gave Qi Bangyuan a brand new Bible, and added: "Bless your lovely future with bright future".

In the past, Qi Bangyuan only felt that her life was weak and suffering, and she had never heard anyone say "lovely future".

On the way to escape, Qi Bangyuan's brother received a letter from Zhang Dafei, saying that he had been admitted to the Air Force Academy. As the war spread, they passed through Hunan and Guangxi. Qi Bangyuan kept changing schools and evading air raids, and finally came to Chongqing, the wartime capital. Father Qi Shiying was busy picking up a carload of students, and he passed by his family again and again on the way.

After settling down in Shapingba, Chongqing, Qi Bangyuan finally started a relatively stable youth for a few years.

In junior high school, Qi Bangyuan was skinny, with short hair like boys, never looked in the mirror, and received Boy Scout training with her classmates on a daily basis. At this time, Zhang Dafei had already started to fly the destroyer to fight the Japanese army. Once he visited Qi's house via Chongqing, and Qi Bangyuan's mother said: "I just saw Bangyuan standing guard at the school gate, her arms and Boy Scout sticks. just as thick."

In the years of Qi Bangyuan Middle School, Zhang Dafei, who fought in the Air Force, could not contact his family, so he often sent letters to the Qi family, as if he regarded the Qi family as his home. And Qi Bangyuan, who loved to write letters, became his most stable pen pal. Their lives are like two parallel lines: the girl Qi Bangyuan enthusiastically shared the poems she had learned in the class of Teacher Meng Zhisun of Nankai Middle School, and Zhang Dafei accompanied her to discuss it. He agreed with Qin Shaoyou's spirit, but did not understand why the girl Qi Bangyuan liked Huangfu. Loose desolation.

Zhang Dafei often sends photos, from cotton military uniforms to flight suits, every step is his growth. Later, he was selected to join Chennault's Flying Tigers team and went to the United States for training. He returned from Colorado in 1942 and made a special trip to visit Qi's family in Shapingba. At this time, he was already a lieutenant.

Pilots often go to drink when they are on vacation, but Zhang Dafei insists on not going to have fun in time. He just reads the Bible at home or writes a letter to Qi Bangyuan to gain inner peace.

He mentioned in a letter that he had a head-on encounter with the enemy plane and clearly saw the frightened face in the cockpit of the other party. All he knew was that he would die if he didn't shoot first, but he couldn't forget the face in the flames of the crash anyway.

For Qi Bangyuan, Zhang Dafei is an unparalleled hero who meets the aspirations of all girls.

During the vacation of Qi Bangyuan High School, Zhang Dafei came to her for a meal and a walk. "The sun is dazzling and the river is clear ." She chatted about the extracurricular books she read, and he chatted about what he saw while flying. , but did not touch on love in a word.

In April 1943, before Qi Bangyuan graduated from high school, a junior high school girl suddenly came to tell her that someone was waiting for her on the playground.

After she went out, she saw Zhang Dafei walking over from Merlin, and suddenly stopped halfway there and said, "Bangyuan, how come you have grown so big in one year, so beautiful."

" He said that the troop was transferred to Chongqing to change planes, and they had to rush back to Baishiyi Airport before 7:30. He just wanted to come and see me. The jeep driven by his teammates was waiting for him at the school gate. I followed him to the school gate. , halfway through, the shower fell, he dragged me and ran to the door of Fansun Building, stood under an eaves, pulled me into his big raincoat covering his uniform, and put his arms around me near his chest. Belt, I heard his heart beating like a drum. It was only a moment before he let go and told me to go back to the dormitory, saying: 'I have to go.' In the rain, I saw him half-run to the door, get into the car, and gallop away. "

" In this life, I have never seen him again. "

Reading this passage, I couldn't help but think of the lyrics: "Even if you have a big chest and you can't beat the weather, you can be recognized by your gray temples."

The warmth of snuggling so close is fleeting, but the protagonist in it does not know that it is a goodbye.

Farewells don't come all at once.

Qi Bangyuan filled out three choices during the joint entrance examination: the first choice was the Department of Philosophy of Southwest Associated University, the second choice was the Department of Philosophy of Wuhan University, and the third choice was the Department of Foreign Languages of Southwest Associated University.

She chose the Department of Philosophy because she wanted to challenge her father who had gone to Germany to study philosophy. In order to travel independently, she deliberately did not fill in the Central University in front of her home. Her first and third choices were in Yunnan, which is very close to Zhang Dafei, but because of her low math scores, she went to Wuhan University, her second choice. A letter from the Department of Foreign Languages of the Southwest Associated University encouraged her to study, but she preferred philosophy majors and did not accept this olive branch. One year later, under the advice of Mr. Zhu Guangqian, she still transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages of Wuhan University, and later Taking English education and multilingual cultural exchange as a lifelong career. Many things seem to be doomed, and even deviations seem to be doomed.

Qi Bangyuan had not yet moved into the university dormitory, and the light blue air letter had already been sent to the dormitory. Twenty-five-year-old Zhang Dafei wrote a letter to Qi Bangyuan in the hot and humid preparation room in Yunnan's borderland, facing the runway of the Flying Tigers that was rushing to repair. Cry and believe in a bright future.

When it was difficult for him, he also wrote in a letter: "I can't fly to the mountain city where the three rivers meet at the foot of the Great Buddha to see you, but how much I love you and miss you so much!"

After this, Zhang Dafei was injured in a war and had a closer understanding of death. After that, he no longer talked about his feelings lightly, but often showed the mature attitude of his elder brother. However, Qi Bangyuan, who had finished her freshman year in a hurry, had an idea that she wanted to apply for a transfer to the Department of Foreign Languages of the Southwest Associated University, so she could get closer to Zhang Dafei.

Zhang Dafei hurriedly wrote a letter, firmly disapproving of Qi Bangyuan's transfer to Kunming, saying that he was really unable to take care of it: "The less you know about my real life, the better, and the more vague the real situation of my 'honor' is, the better."

Qi Bangyuan didn't understand it at the first reading, and it was not until a long time later that she realized that Zhang Dafei made up his mind at this time to completely return to the position of protector and brother. Coupled with the persuasion of her tutor Zhu Guangqian and her parents, Qi Bangyuan, who "feels more than reason" and is not suitable for studying philosophy, transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages in her sophomore year, but still stayed at Wuhan University.

Before the summer vacation of her sophomore year, she received the news that Zhang Dafei died for the country.

Twenty-six-year-old Zhang Dafei, when he had a premonition that he was about to die, sent the last letter to Qi Bangyuan's brother Qi Zhenyi: "...Thank you for the friendship you have given me over the years. Thank you for your mother's kindness to me over the years. Caring, so that I can have a home that I can miss when I am completely wandering. Please forgive me for my feelings for Bangwon.

"...I seem to see her growing from a skinny girl to a young girl. I saw her coming from the playground in Nankai that day, and I blurted out my heart in surprise. How could I finally say that I love her? All these years , I kept telling myself that it can only be a brother-sister relationship, otherwise, I will harm her when I die, and I will harm her when I live. How different paths we have taken over the years, I will only fly into the sky to fight, and concentrate on the sky and the ground. She lives and dies every day between poetry and books, and she is walking towards the bright road of my blessing. With my mortal body, how can I say 'I love you' to her?  …”

The last sentence of the letter said: "Please politely persuade Bangyuan to forget me. I only hope that she will be happy all her life before and after her death."

Qi Bangyuan received a whole package of letters returned by Zhang Dafei that she had sent in the past. Among them was a letter that was stained with sweat and faded. At first glance, it was obvious that Zhang Dafei often carried it with her - it was written by Qi Bangyuan when she was a senior in high school. A letter from a pure literary youth, talking about Li Bai and the moon in the sky, how difficult it is to learn geometry, and complaining that he doesn't dare to read extracurricular books now.

Qi Bangyuan guessed that for Zhang Dafei, this letter might be as useful as his teammates going to drink and dance, and it would also help him forget the grim reality.

In just four months before the victory of the war, Roosevelt died, Chennault was dismissed, and Zhang Dafei was killed.

When Japan finally surrendered and the long-awaited victory finally arrived, the streets were full of carnival sounds, but Qi Bangyuan ran home and wept in the dark. She didn't dare to mention Zhang Dafei's name again, and she didn't dare to read the letters between the two.

Later, after going through migration and twists and turns, all those letters were lost and annihilated, and she never had the opportunity to "get strong and take a good look".

She was only officially baptized as a Christian this year, to commemorate him in her heart in another way.

In her junior year, Qi Bangyuan began to date a male classmate from Shanghai with the surname Yu, but during a short vacation back to Nanjing, she inadvertently approached the chapel "to commemorate the anniversary of Zhang Dafei's martyrdom", which immediately pierced her heart like a sword. She didn't dare to sign her own name when she entered the venue, but her brother Qi Zhenyi's name was signed. Somewhere, she only felt that this encounter was doomed.

After this shock, coupled with the fact that Yu worked and lived in Shanghai after that, and his thinking gradually drifted away, Qi Bangyuan returned all letters from Yu soon after entering the senior year, and decided to say goodbye to him.

Years later, in 1999, Qi Bangyuan stood in front of the Nanjing Zijinshan Aviation Martyrs Monument, and found a few lines on the monument numbered M: "Zhang Dafei, Captain, from Yingkou, Liaoning. Born in 1918, a Died in 1945."

The sun in May shone on Qi Bangyuan, who was seventy-five years old. In her heart, a voice said in a trance: Then, this is all true.

The pillow and quilt that was stained with tears by her crying, the correspondence scattered in the chaos, the heartbeat in the raincoat at the age of eighteen, the look back in the mountain wind at the age of twelve, this poignant and romantic is like an illusion Fate, until the white-haired old woman stood in front of the icy tombstone, all the memories felt real again.

There are many moments in life that only dare to take a closer look at the tears.

6. Truth and Empathy

Although Zhang Dafei's story is lingering and sad, there is one detail that stopped my moving in time.

Zhang Dafei's suicide note is interspersed with such a paragraph, saying that when he realized that he was "precarious and uncertain" and did not want to drag Qi Bangyuan down, he decided to return to his brother's position: "...I am going to drink and dance on vacation now, I have lived to be twenty-six years old, and I have never tasted these tastes of life before. I have kept my body and mind clean since I joined the army, and I want to be a military chaplain after the war. When I was stationed in Guilin in the autumn, I met a middle school teacher who was the same year as me in the chapel. She Come to Yunnan to find me, marry me on Christmas Day, give half of the pension to my brother after my death, and ask him to return to his hometown to support his mother after the victory..."

My brewing tears dried up on the spot.

In this letter from Zhang Dafei—at least in this letter from Zhang Dafei, which was recited by Qi Bangyuan, the middle school teacher who "married at the residence at Christmas" only appeared for a brief moment. It sounds like this marriage is even like "drinking and dancing", it is just a punch-in experience project, and the feelings of the other party are completely irrelevant.

I thought that Zhang Dafei was reluctant to fall in love and drag others down because he realized that his life and death were uncertain. Could it be that the pearl of the benefactor's family can't be dragged down, and the female middle school teacher who happened to know can be dragged down at will?

Half of his pension is given to his brother, and the other half should be given to his wife, right?

Qi Bangyuan did not say a word in the whole book. How did the female teacher fare? Does Qi Bangyuan, who is immersed in grief, care about her fate? Had she ever been jealous of that female teacher? Have sympathy? Have you ever had the compassion of Aiwujiwu?

Could it be that everyone has tacitly agreed that there is only one heroine in this play? So other roles can be played with a few strokes. Let them bear the grief of losing their loved ones, let them bear the loneliness of the world alone, is it not worth affecting the protagonist's joys and sorrows?

After the publication of "Ju Liuhe", there was a lot of discussion about the relationship between Qi Bangyuan and Zhang Dafei, and even malicious readers scolded Qi Bangyuan for "Mary Su's love brain". But in fact, the experience of Zhang Dafei's wife is also legendary like a romance novel.

According to the information, Zhang Dafei's wife's name is Zhu Hongying, and the two of them even left a daughter named Zhang Chuansheng - which roughly means "born in Sichuan". In the second year after Zhang Dafei died for his country, his younger brother Zhang Daxiang found his sister-in-law Zhu Hongying and married her as his wife.

According to time, the emotional development of Zhang Dafei and Zhu Hongying should be when he was still communicating with Qi Bangyuan.

Because the Air Force was very popular at the time, there were many people who got married at first sight. Some readers have deduced after consulting the information that Zhu Hongying should have always been in love with Zhang Dafei: that time Zhang Dafei was injured in the war. After he recovered, he stopped talking about love to Qi Bangyuan, and gradually returned to the position of brother. It should be because during his injury , Ms. Zhu Hongying once went to visit and take care of it in person.

For warriors who are physically and mentally fragile, this kind of meticulous care of getting along day and night is extremely convincing, and it has a different taste than pure heartbeat and yearning.

On the one hand, there is a female teacher who bravely went to the battlefield to show her love, and on the other hand, she is a weak literary young woman who needs to ask her parents for permission for everything, and yearns for the care and protection of an unparalleled hero... Zhang Dafei's final choice of marriage and love is not all because of love. , but it is by no means a self-defeating "punch-in experience", but a heavier feeling after comprehensive consideration.

The time when Zhang Dafei and Zhu Hongying actually got married was at the end of 1943, when Qi Bangyuan was still a freshman, the same year he couldn't help but hug Qi Bangyuan, a senior in high school, into his raincoat to listen to his heartbeat. During this period, he kept concealing the news of the marriage and kept communicating with Qi Bangyuan, so in the summer of the following year, when Qi Bangyuan wanted to transfer to Kunming to be closer to him, he would send a letter to try to dissuade him.

It was not until nine months after the marriage that he stopped communicating with Qi Bangyuan.

The girl Qi Bangyuan was affected by the news of Zhang Dafei's marriage and death at the same time, so she couldn't handle this complicated feeling, so she only talked about her grief for Zhang Dafei's death, but ignored her attitude towards his marriage. carry.

According to Zhang Dafei's relics and suicide note, Qi Bangyuan clearly knew her position in the other party's heart. In Zhang Dafei's subconscious, there is undoubtedly a meaning of "letting go, hope you have a better life". He chose to marry someone else, not because he didn't have Qi Bangyuan in his heart, but because he was too emotional to pick it up - this he admitted frankly in his suicide note.

Such a deeply forbidding "love" with looking up and caring, and such a little immoral "being loved" made Qi Bangyuan feel complicated, but she accepted it calmly as she was used to being a daughter. Because of this, she dared to indulge her turbulent thoughts, and even mentioned Zhang Dafei's name to her future suitors repeatedly.

Qi Bangyuan mentioned later that the reason why she knew where Zhang Dafei's monument was was because Zhang Dafei's younger brother once sent her a booklet of the monument. In this way, she knew about Zhu Hongying's subsequent whereabouts. I avoided talking about it in my memoirs because I had nowhere to put my posture, and it was also a decency that I worked hard to maintain.

The book also mentioned that at Qi Bangyuan University, the "reading clubs" among the students were in full swing, and the ideological division between the left and the right became increasingly serious. Some classmates who had been to the left-leaning reading club began to have inexplicable malice against her, accusing her of being a "remainder of the powerful" and scolding her face to face. She couldn't understand why politics would bring about such a big change in people, why it could incite such unwarranted hatred, and more and more decided to stay away from politics for life.

Political slogans are terrifying to change people's thinking, but I'm also thinking that perhaps Qi Bangyuan, who has a good status, didn't realize that her sometimes unintentional actions that she took for granted may have really stabbed someone who is very different from her background. the same people.

She naturally has no ill will towards people, but many concepts she is accustomed to, some thorns in life that she cannot feel, and some tears and truths from distant places that she subconsciously ignores, may also be the reason why she is suddenly criticized.

She is indeed a delicate, sensitive and intelligent young literary artist, but her empathy only reaches her comfort zone.

7. Her room

Qi Bangyuan lived in the girls' dormitory for nearly ten years.

She has lived in a large house with many people since she was a child. The longest time she lived alone was in the dark and cold Xishan Sanatorium when she was about ten years old.

Since then, she has been studying and living with a large group of girls. When she first moved into the university dormitory, she found that her bed was close to the only window in the house. She was a little fortunate at first, but she soon discovered that for safety, the window was sealed with wooden slats, so she couldn't even see the daylight outside.

At that time, due to the poor conditions during the war and the hasty relocation of the school to Leshan, the thin wooden bed was always trembling, and there were no railings beside it. Even if she was as thin as Qi Bangyuan, she was worried that she would fall off the top bunk in the middle of the night.

At the end of the summer vacation of the freshman year, Qi Bangyuan returned to Leshan a week earlier to go through the transfer formalities. She just wanted to go to the dormitory room earlier, hoping to get a desk by the window.

Shortly after moving to the new dormitory, some roommates were influenced by the left-leaning thinking of the book club, and began to feel strange about Qi Bangyuan. Even Zhao Xiaolan, the girl in the lower bunk who was inseparable from her, gradually ignored her. At this time, Li Xiuying from the History Department told Qi Bangyuan that her roommate was taken back by her fiancé and married. Li Xiuying knew that Qi Bangyuan had always envied a house with few people, so she invited her to the same room.

Qi Bangyuan hurriedly went through the application procedures: "... The little wooden bed, the small wooden table, and the skylight with a square foot and a half square above my head, it is a gorgeous palace to me! "

Because Li Xiuying has a regular boyfriend and often goes out on dates, Qi Bangyuan can spend three hours alone every night to clear her mind. In the dead of night, listening to the rushing sound of the river and the birdsong on the other side through the small skylight, she only felt that this was a luxury happiness. Later, under the guidance of the old waterman, she found a quiet corner on the bank of the river, where she could hide and read alone, which was like a treasure.

Before graduating from college, Qi Bangyuan wanted to continue her studies and applied for admission to Holyoke College in the United States. However, her father Qi Shiying did not agree with her going abroad, thinking that she should consider marriage first, otherwise, under the current situation, she will be isolated from her family all her life and become a lonely "old girl".

In 1947, after graduating from university, Qi Bangyuan failed to find a job in Peiping and Shanghai, and went to Taiwan University as a teaching assistant, living in the house of Uncle Ma Tingying, a close friend of her parents. At that time, Taiwan was deeply influenced by the Japanese occupation period. Qingtian Street, where the Ma family was located, was a narrow alley, all of which were low-rise Japanese-style houses that could be pushed open directly. on someone else's bed.

In the few months when she first arrived in Taipei, Qi Bangyuan only felt lonely and unfamiliar, and the thought of "returning to her parents" was always in her heart.

One day after the New Year, she ran into Yang Junxian, an alumnus of Wuhan University, while sheltering from the rain at the station. She was soon taken to the Wuhan University Alumni Association in Taiwan, and finally established her own social circle locally.

At the alumni meeting, Luo Yuchang, a senior from the Department of Electrical Engineering, said that when he saw her that day, he made up his mind to marry her and go home.

Under the care of the elders, Qi Bangyuan applied for a single dormitory that should have been allocated to a professor at National Taiwan University. She didn't have much luggage, except for a small suitcase and a simple quilt, she only had a small dressing box bought under the arcade when she first arrived. At that time, the Japanese who often waited for deportation knelt down and set up a street stall on the streets of Taipei. Selling belongings that you can't take with you.

Qi Bangyuan has complicated feelings for such a landscape, and she does not sympathize with them, but she also knows that they should not be the object of hatred.

When they moved, Luo Yuchang graciously brought bedding and necessary daily necessities to Qi Bangyuan, and also boiled the first pot of boiling water for her in the public kitchen and poured it into a thermos.

Luo Yuchang, who was 28 years old at the time, came from a poor family background and was born in science and engineering, which did not conform to Qi Bangyuan's previous love fantasies. He is neither the unparalleled hero Zhang Dafei looks forward to, nor the fashionable and handsome young man like Shanghai Yu. Luo Yuchang solemnly wrote in his confession letter to her: People should have a plan and a step-by-step way to realize their ideals, first determine the focus of life, focus on efficiency, save energy, and reduce meaningless conversations...

Qi Bangyuan is accustomed to being a sensitive and curious literary and artistic youth, and she is new to this extremely rational and well-organized attitude towards life, and even admires this kind of rationality and strength. Friends around her felt that Luo Yuchang was safe and reliable, and advised her to have less fantasies and settle down as soon as possible. So Qi Bangyuan wrote to her father Qi Shiying, hoping that he would come to Taiwan to help and see how Luo Yuchang was.

In the letter to her father, Qi Bangyuan listed Luo Yuchang's age, education, work, and family conditions in detail... I couldn't help but help my forehead.

In the previous article, the literary girl who looked at the moon and read poems and was full of romantic fantasies was finally swallowed up by the years.

So, after less than a year of acquaintance, Qi Bangyuan and Luo Yuchang returned to Shanghai for their wedding, and then decided to build a home of their own in Taipei.

Qi Bangyuan and Luo Yuchang moved into their first home after borrowing at a friend's house for a month. The neighbors have six children, and the two are separated by a sugarcane board. Taiwan Sugar Corporation produces cane sugar, and the foreign exchange earned is also one of Taiwan's largest sources of economy. The by-product of sugar extraction is turned into sugar cane boards, which solve the housing partition problem of countless new arrivals.

The newly married Luo Yuchang often repairs the radio after dinner, while Qi Bangyuan reads and writes a diary. Soon after, as the situation on the mainland deteriorated, Qi Bangyuan's mother and sister moved to Taiwan. In 1948, the newlyweds entered a continuous "ship picking career", often going to the pier together to wait for the Taiping ship to dock.

Their house is only 300 meters away from Taipei Railway Station, and it has become a communication station. The cramped house is always full of waiting guests. This year, my father Qi Shiying also came to Taiwan. After living in her shabby house for a while, he finally settled on a Japanese-style house with his brother Qi Zhenyi, and moved in for two generations.

In such a busy and bad life, Qi Bangyuan's body became weaker and weaker, but she became pregnant soon after and had to improve her living environment.

At that time, National Taiwan University assigned Qi Bangyuan, a "senior teaching assistant", a small Japanese-style house, a small tatami room with full windows, opening to a yard with flowers and trees. Qi Bangyuan happily told her husband, but she did not expect her husband Luo Yuchang to solemnly say: He cannot be his wife's dependents immediately after getting married, and this will also affect his own application for a house in the Railway Bureau in the future.

For Luo Yuchang's attitude, his father Qi Shiying completely agreed.

When Qi Bangyuan was newly married, Qi Shiying solemnly gave her many times: "I can't let my husband delay official business, and I can't hurt his dignity."

In 1950, when Qi Bangyuan was six months pregnant, Luo Yuchang applied to be transferred to Taichung, where the living environment was more spacious, when he saw that there was a vacancy for the position of Section Chief of the Taichung Electric Section of the Railway Bureau. Luo Yuchang believes that if Taiwan can settle down and develop, then the hub of the railway will be in the central part rather than in Taipei.

In order to move with her husband, Qi Bangyuan submitted her resignation letter to National Taiwan University, surprising her colleagues.

In September of that year, the frail Qi Bangyuan gave birth to her first son in Taichung. She struggled to give birth and fell into a coma on the second night. Her mother, Pei Yuzhen, cried and cried in front of her hospital bed, just like her uncle back then, snatching her life back from the god of death. After giving birth, she could not walk for about 20 days.

When the baby was three months old, her mother had to rush back to Taipei to help care for her sister-in-law, who was about to give birth.

A few days after the mother left, Luo Yuchang often did not come home on time after get off work. Qi Bangyuan, who was weak in energy and blood, sat at the gate with her child and waited until Luo Yuchang appeared under the first street lamp in the darkness. cry together.

Rao is so, Qi Bangyuan gave birth to three sons within four years, during which time she has been relying on her mother to travel and lend a helping hand.

- I'm going to be pissed off.

In 1953, Qi Bangyuan met her former classmate Shen Zengwen in Nankai Middle School again in Taichung. The other party was admitted to the US State Department's "Post-War Cultural Personnel Exchange Program" scholarship and needed to go abroad for half a year of English teaching training, so he introduced Qi Bangyuan to Taichung No.

Going to Taichung No. 1 Middle School to be a teacher, in Qi Bangyuan's words, " being able to steal these hours from the vegetable market, coal stove, feeding bottles, diapers " made her feel heartfelt happiness.

After the summer vacation, Shen Zengwen returned to China, Qi Bangyuan's substitute class expired, and the principal of Taichung No. 1 Middle School sincerely invited her to stay and continue teaching.

Qi Bangyuan carefully assessed her own difficulties: she first needed her husband's consent, and then her parents' support—in those years, her mother, Pei Yuzhen, traveled between Taipei and Taichung to support her during childcare, illness, and her husband's business trips. of distress. Her family was worried that she was too weak to balance her family and work, but she was so young that she finally decided to take over the job and was determined to apply for an exchange program in the United States.

In the tense rhythm of tutoring high school students for the joint entrance examination, Qi Bangyuan met Xu Huifang, a female teacher ten years older than her.

At that time, information resources were scarce. In order to compile their own teaching materials for further education, Qi Bangyuan and Xu Huifang went to various places to collect English materials. When the child fell asleep at night, Xu Huifang walked from Lide Street to Qi Bangyuan's house and wrote it on Qi Bangyuan's desk. Qi Bangyuan then used the steel plate to carve wax paper, and the next day went to the Academic Affairs Office to print out the lecture notes or test questions. Their joint creation was very effective, and was later pirated by the "best-selling guide for further education" outside.

Qi Bangyuan said: In the seventeen years she lived in Taichung, apart from her family life, what she remembered most was the small desk at the end of the corridor. The scene of the two of them writing a steel plate next to the small table lamp with the lampshade lowered is " romantic and bitter ".

" Most of the time, we were just two housewives. We could face mental challenges in a corner of the corridor after the family fell asleep. " It wasn't until later in 1972, when Qi Bangyuan was living in Taipei's Lishui Street dormitory, that she finally had a house. A small, real study. In the previous years, Qi Bangyuan, as a young mother and teacher, did not have her own workshop. She worked hard at a small table late at night and had to ask her husband for forgiveness.

Her husband Luo Yuchang is very busy with the railway business, working seven days a week and traveling frequently. He even asked Qi Bangyuan to help him contact the United States and find relevant reference books, and thought that Qi Bangyuan would definitely help him, so he threw a lot of English content to her to help translate into Chinese.

Qi Bangyuan has no complaints at all.

In return for his generosity, Luo Yuchang is also willing to "forgive" Qi Bangyuan, allowing her to work overtime in the corner of her home late at night after taking care of her children.

Yes, men take it for granted.

In the early summer of 1956, Qi Bangyuan was admitted to an exchange program in the United States, flew to Washington, D.C., and then trained for two and a half months at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In the winter, she chose to go to the colder state of Wyoming for teaching practice, one is to be close to her younger sister who is studying in the neighboring state of Utah, and the other is to experience the coldness of her hometown in the three eastern provinces.

One day, on a whim, she walked in the low temperature of minus 40 degrees Celsius to experience the "beauty of the ice and snow", and was chased by a police car and escorted back indoors to "avoid stupid death."

At this time, Qi Bangyuan was already the mother of three children, and she still had bizarre romantic thoughts occasionally, and she could still vaguely see the shadow of that literary girl.

In fact, she was only in her early thirties this year.

After the six-month visit, on the plane back to Taiwan, Qi Bangyuan had a good conversation with an old American gentleman next door, who later learned that he was President Anderson of American University in Washington. Anderson had a very good impression of Qi Bangyuan, and repeatedly praised the Taiwan Ministry of Education, which led the Ministry of Education to contact Qi Bangyuan and invited her to work in the International Culture and Education Office.

Qi Bangyuan went back to discuss with her father and husband, and sure enough, neither of them agreed.

Later, the Minister of Education wrote again, saying that as long as she is willing to join the job, she can help to transfer her husband's job back to Taipei. But Luo Yuchang " was the one who was willing to accept such an arrangement ", so Qi Bangyuan wrote back again to decline.

In 1967, Luo Yuchang suddenly received an order to go to the General Administration to participate in the research preparations for railway electrification, so their family moved to Taiwan. It was also at the same time that the American foundation sent a letter offering Taiwanese humanities scholarships, and one of the requirements was "under the age of forty-five". Qi Bangyuan, who was 44 years old at the time, was trapped in her family for ten years and missed many opportunities for international exchange and study.

This summer they moved back to Taipei, and with her mother's nearby care, Qi Bangyuan finally began to prepare for studying in the United States. In the 30-square-meter, air-conditioned, steamer-like apartment in Taipei, her three sons were restless and didn’t understand her ideal of crossing the ocean. She did not understand her decision at the time.

This kind of rightful oppression of women appears repeatedly throughout the book, which makes me feel aggrieved and indignant for her.

Forty-four-year-old Qi Bangyuan arrived in the United States. Due to the formalities of the foundation, her visit to the school has not been completed. With the contacts she had accumulated before, she came to "St. Mary of the Woods", a women's liberal arts college founded by the American Catholic religious order, and was invited to teach a Chinese literature class. Meanwhile, she plans to study at nearby Indiana University.

The distance between "St. Mary" where she teaches and Indiana University where she plans to study is 70 miles away. There is no direct bus. She can only rely on other people's cars to get there. Zhou Du picked her up twice.

So she decided to teach seriously for a semester, then quit her teaching job and concentrate on living at Indiana University.

After entering Indiana University, she studied very hard because: "I know best that every day is stolen from my wife and mother!"

She took six main courses regardless of her life. After finishing the exam at the end of the semester, she fell asleep and woke up at midnight to see Haoyue in the sky, and she felt full of "guilt of leaving the family", and she was worried about the nearly seventy years of age. Parents, tearfully wrote a letter to the family. The next day she mailed the letter and sat on the grass on the hillside of the campus crying for a long time.

Under the hard study, she got the highest grade point of 4.0, and soon continued to study heavy courses without stopping, because she was reluctant to waste a day.

The year was 1968, not long after the Cultural Revolution in China had just begun, Qi Bangyuan had never met a mainland student overseas, and nine out of ten Chinese people she knew were from Taiwan. Her only social circle was a few Chinese students and their families, who took turns driving and inviting her to go sightseeing and play, allowing her to see the vastness of the American Midwest.

This fulfilling and happy reading career came to an abrupt end during the winter vacation in 1968.

Because the exchange program required her to maintain a teaching job, she couldn't stay a full-time student and had to return to St Mary's to teach. When her visa was about to expire, she was only six credits away from getting her master's degree, so she hesitated to apply for a six-month extension. At this time, her father wrote to her, saying that her husband Luo Yuchang had worked hard and asked her to go back immediately. take care of family.

So she left the spring flowers and winter snow of the flowering city of Indiana University, and she never got that close degree in her life.

After returning to Taiwan, Qi Bangyuan fulfilled the agreement of the "exchange plan" and taught at Chung Hsing University in Taichung for three years.

At this time, her whole family settled in Taipei, and she had to take the Guanghua train to Taichung every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m., and then take the Ziqiang train back to Taipei on Friday night. When she was away from home for two days, she relied on a maid to assist with housework. Her parents are in their seventies, and all three of their sons have entered puberty. Every Tuesday morning, she gets up at five o'clock to prepare breakfast for her family, and then goes to catch the train against the waning moon.

Qi Bangyuan single-handedly contributed to the establishment of the Department of Foreign Languages of Zhongxing University, and was busy between family and school affairs. After the three-year contract expired, she finally resigned to Zhongxing University. For the past few years, she only felt that she was "exhausted physically and mentally but did not dare to speak tired", and felt that she had dragged down her mother too much, and she was very tormented. In the past few years, the only time she could calm down and think about reading was the three hours on the train between Taipei and Taichung.

Teacher Qi summed it up like this: "I am grateful for the three hours of solitude that belongs to me all my life!"

Virginia Woolf said, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write a novel." Of course, this need is not limited to writing novels. Woolf believes that getting a room that truly belongs to oneself is the first step in realizing the value of women. Only in their own independent space can women have the opportunity to think deeply, without having to rely on their fathers and husbands.

Sincerely said.

I didn't understand the weight of this point of view before - until I watched Teacher Qi Bangyuan's life of compromise and forbearance, I realized how difficult it is for a woman to "have her own room".

The social division of labor has given her layer after layer of shackles. Even though she came from a superior background, she was so fortunate to have received higher education in that era, and she had a steady stream of opportunities to expand her horizons and realize value, but just because she was a woman, The whole society is always conspiring to cut off her wings.

Her father, Qi Shiying, was a high-level intellectual with advanced thinking and concerned about people's livelihood and human rights, but such a person would habitually despise and trample on women's values. For example, he would directly change her name to "Junyi" because he disliked his wife's name "Yuzhen". For example, when his daughter graduated from college, he did not allow her to study in the United States on the grounds that she was "fear of delaying her marriage". For example, he repeatedly advised his daughter to follow her husband, and later recalled her on the grounds of "taking care of the family", forcing her to terminate her studies.

Qi Shiying wants to build an ideal society in which everyone has dignity and human rights, but it is still a society where men can step on women with peace of mind.

Men are indeed a natural community of interests, and they are used to eating and eating, and they don't care at all.

At the same time, I also think that for Qi Bangyuan herself, her own character is also an indispensable factor for so many mistakes and compromises in this life.

For example, when she first arrived in Indiana, she was only 70 miles away from where she taught and where she studied, and she only needed a car to solve the problem. Given her family's conditions, buying a car and renting a car is a no-brainer, but she never seems to consider "learning to drive" as a feasible solution, and it is difficult to do both because she can't meet the time to rent a car, so that she has a visa The credits have not been completed by the due date.

I was even thinking: If it were Zhang Dafei's wife, Ms. Zhu Hongying, with her executive ability, maybe she would learn to drive in the first month she came to the United States, and many difficulties would be solved easily, and there would be no "sitting on the lawn helpless crying" "Such a picture.

The whole society conspires to cut off women's wings, not only objectively forcing her to give up the opportunity to develop a career, but also subjectively leading them to give up the possibility of their own growth.

You must have strong subjective initiative to change your situation.

In fact, I have a lot of similarities with Teacher Qi Bangyuan. I have always said that I am a stereotyped woman: the subjects I have been good at since I was a child are Chinese, English, and history. I have always hated mathematics, physics and chemistry. Physical education and practical ability are weak. . Even if I bought a car in the United States, I considered myself a road killer and never dared to drive on the road, so that the air in the car tires leaked.

I've been working my way through my fears a little lately, and I've been driving out the door every week. At the same time, I also wondered: Is this due to the talents of different genders, or is the whole society subtly brainwashing women, setting invisible standards from childhood?

Teacher Qi Bangyuan sorted out her whole life experience in her later years. Seeing that she had missed so many opportunities because of her father and husband's orders, I am afraid she was not without regret.

Teacher Wang Dewei said in the postscript: For Mr. Qi Shiying, it was his lifetime regret that he participated in Guo Songling's military remonstrance and could not cross the giant river. In his gigantic river, there are epic waves. For Qi Bangyuan , the huge river that she can't cross is the code of the good wife and mother, and the family responsibility day after day. It is trivial and long.

Teacher Qi Bangyuan, like her father, knew that she had the ability to cross the other side of the river, but the other side was just beyond reach.

Living in such an era, without the guidance of ideological enlightenment, it is extremely difficult for a woman to overthrow this conventional oppression and control her destiny and the rhythm of life in her own hands.

Fortunately, people in our time have a very different mindset.

Having a "room of your own", learning to be responsible for every decision in your life, not relying on the protection of others, and not compromising on the pressure of others - this is the great river that every woman needs to cross.

8. Overseas orphans

Teacher Qi Bangyuan is undoubtedly the top lucky person.

I originally started a subtitle called "Thinking of a Lonely Minister's Evil Son", which was derived from Bai Xianyong. But I thought about it for a while. The group of people in exile in Taiwan can be called "orphans", but not all of them are evil sons. At least the docile teacher Qi Bangyuan must not be.

Qi Bangyuan has never really awakened to the consciousness of rebellion. Her father, Qi Shiying, who has always protected her, guided her, and at the same time squeezed her growth space, is her lifelong spiritual idol.

She studied in Nankai in middle school and was taught by a famous Chinese teacher like Meng Zhisun. After entering Wuhan University, Zhu Guangqian personally guided her to change departments and served as her mentor. The enlightenment she received in language, literature and aesthetics all stood on the shoulders of giants. This not only laid the foundation for her lifelong career, but also became the source of her spiritual strength in the midst of countless setbacks and sufferings.

Her mentors Zhu Guangqian and Wu Mi were humiliated during the Cultural Revolution, and her old classmates each endured major tests, but she managed to establish a family safely, traveled all over the world, and participated in the compilation of textbooks and translation of literary works. self-worth.

Compared with her peers, she has obtained enough luck and favor in her life, and there is nothing to rebel against.

The pain she feels because of the times is more like a kind of confusion. This is an era's donation shared by that generation.

When she first arrived in Taiwan, she was a full "out of the province" and was not used to the tatami mats that were influenced by the Japanese occupation era. She even wanted to go to a colder place when she went abroad to study, to feel the atmosphere similar to the northeast of her hometown. After a few decades, she helped her husband to build Taiwan's automated railway system from scratch. She participated in a number of cultural and educational activities, communicated and met with important figures from various countries and regions, and even met with him on the stone steps of the Sushu Building. Master Qian Mu established a close friendship for 18 years.

Over the decades, she has completely become a "Taiwanese".

When the mainland was deserted, she worked hard to promote "Taiwanese literature" to the world, but it was often difficult to locate herself when she introduced herself - is she from the Republic of China? from the Northeast? from Taiwan? How should foreigners understand this complex relationship?

For all Taiwanese, when it comes to identity, there is a feeling of "running in the fog". The initial nostalgia and loss are slowly diluted by time, and it becomes a long-term feeling of exile.

Since the 1980s, Qi Bangyuan has gradually met writers from mainland China in international cultural exchange activities, and among them there are many creators she admires very much. She greeted Zhang Xianliang, the writer she admired warmly at first, but it attracted surprised expressions from several mainland writers. It was only later that I gradually realized that writers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait had different attitudes towards many works on the theme of the Cultural Revolution .

Gradually, writers from the mainland will also go to Taiwan to participate in activities. " Although we know some friends we can talk to each other, 'they' and 'we' both know in their hearts that the road is different. As Foster said at the end of "Journey to India": Forget all the trauma, 'Not yet not here, either'. "

In 1985, Qi Bangyuan taught Taiwanese literature at the Free University of West Berlin. Bai Xianyong, Chen Ruoxi, Zhong Ling, Li Oufan and Zheng Shusen were invited to Berlin to attend the "Horizon World Literature Conference". Qi Bangyuan warmly welcomed them. But they soon discovered that the names of the mainland writers who came to the conference were printed on the large billboards in the conference hall, while the five Taiwanese writers had no names. Everyone was indignant about this, but the situation was better than others. At this time, the whole world was full of curiosity about these writers who came from China after the "Cultural Revolution". After the 1990s, European studies on Taiwanese literature gradually lost their enthusiasm, and attention was occupied by mainland China.

In November 1987, family visits between Taiwan and the mainland were opened, but Qi Bangyuan had to wait six years before returning. At that time, "the fiery literature of visiting relatives has gradually cooled down from the crying passion of reunion, and even the narrative of disillusionment has begun to appear. Across the Taiwan Strait, the drifters think day and night about the mountains and rivers of their homeland and their young relatives and friends. Even parents should Still in middle age, after forty years, what I see when I go back is mostly the bones of a beautiful dream. ”

Qi Bangyuan not only felt that she had no relatives to visit, but also had a feeling of being "close to the homeland".

Qi Bangyuan didn't rush to Shanghai until she learned that her best friend Lu Qiaozhen in her school days was in the terminal stage of lung cancer. At this time, she learned that her boyfriend, classmate Yu, had died of a heart attack a year ago, and many of her old friends had also passed away.

When she arrived at the hospital, Lu Qiaozhen was helped to sit up and said, "I've been waiting until I know you're coming."

Lu Qiaozhen took out a piece of paper from under the pillow and solemnly recited Du Fu's "Eight Guards for the Guards": "If you don't meet each other in life, you are as active as participating in business. This evening will be the same as the evening. , the hair on the temples has faded. Visiting the old half is a ghost, exclaiming the heat in the intestines..."

In this situation, this poem is really not suitable.

Lu Qiaozhen expressed her sincere admiration for Qi Bangyuan's life in Taiwan these years. Qi Bangyuan burst into tears, knowing that this reunion was farewell.

Qi Bangyuan had no mood to stay in Shanghai. After she came out of the hospital, she drove through the most prosperous street in the car, remembering the scene where she came here half a century ago, and she never laughed or laughed. She is very grateful for her life choices: if she had stayed in Shanghai, she would have been fought to death for her birth during the Cultural Revolution. " Even if she survived, she would have to spend her whole life denying her true self ." Like a lost teacher.

This time, when she returned to her hometown, she also went back to her hometown in the Northeast. When the train passed by the Jiliu River Iron Bridge, it was already dark, and she could not see the whole picture of the Jiliu River that flowed in his father's heart for a lifetime.

In the soft sleeper compartment, she had a good conversation with several engineers from Russia, who were very friendly to her and offered to escort her to protect her. She thought of the slogan of "anti-communist and anti-Russia" for more than 30 years - the vague concept of hatred in her mind, which is very symbolic in connection with the specific and kind people in front of her.

In late spring March, Qi Bangyuan came to Beijing to attend a class reunion. The person responsible for liaison and reception was Xing Wenwei, the school flower of their Nankai Middle School. Once, the cold and reserved Xing Wenwei was the focus of the entire boys' dormitory "looking at Shoutong Building", but now he is old, but still different. Before the gathering, Qi Bangyuan affirmed: "This trip is for a joyous gathering, one does not talk about the elixir of illness and fitness, and the other does not talk about Taiwan's return to the motherland."

Obviously they are old friends who have shared the most precious youth, but there are so many untouchable minefields in their dealings.

During the gathering, everyone sang a class song composed by Qi Bangyuan, who was 18 years old.

" These elites among the elites of the past, because of political opposition and marriage, lost many years of normal life and became a lost generation, engulfed in the simple and straightforward sighs of 'Spring Breeze Far', without memory, and unable to Forget. "

Two years later, Qi Bangyuan received the news of "Xing Wenwei's death" from alumni in Taiwan, only to know that Xing Wenwei was already ill at the party. She didn't know it at the time, so she didn't have a word of condolences to Xing Wenwei. At this time, the news of Xing Wenwei's death was announced in simplified Chinese characters, and Qi Bangyuan didn't even know the name.

Qi Bangyuan still remembered that at noon on the day of the party, everyone walked from Xing Wenwei's house to the restaurant on the street outside the alley to eat. In April, catkins were flying, and Qi Bangyuan suddenly remembered Su Dongpo's "Water Dragon Song" that Teacher Meng Zhisun taught.

Spring is three parts, two parts dust, and one part running water.

From a closer look, it's not Yang Hua, it's Li Ren's tears.

Every parting of a person can be the farewell of a lifetime. Even if they meet again in the future, they are separated by vast years, and after all, they will never be able to return to the other side of youth. Those who went to Taiwan in those days were lucky to avoid a lot of damage, but they could never get rid of the feeling of "abandoned" exile.

And this exile and loss may continue for generations to come.

Or perhaps, the next generation has already been in exile in the silent years, "exile" and lost "lost".

9. Rivers and rivers flow through the ages

By the end of this book, there was one thing that suddenly brought tears to my eyes.

It was in 1993 when Qi Bangyuan returned to Tieling, Liaoning, and came to the old village site of Xiaoxi Mountain, asking "Where is Guikulanghao Mountain?" As a result, no one had ever heard of this mountain name. It was not until this time that Qi Bangyuan knew that when she was young, she heard her mother say "Ghost Crying Wolf Howling Mountain", which turned out to be her mother's mood at that time.

At that time, her life had come to the twilight years, and her parents also returned to Jiuquan. She wandered back to the origin for so long before she discovered such a subtle truth.

Because her father Qi Shiying worked for the Kuomintang government, their family's ancestral home has been destroyed, and their ancestral graves have been plowed into fields. The mountains where she ran in her childhood and the peony flowers she picked have long since disappeared. This time she returned to her hometown for thousands of miles, only to see the fertile fields stretch out to the silent sky. She finally confirmed that the hometown of her father and grandfather has long since lost her foothold.

Pan Yingmao, a friend of her Nankai Middle School, later settled in Canada, and when she was 70 years old, she took the initiative to send a postcard to restore contact with her. When Qi Bangyuan went to work in New York, she thought about visiting Pan Yingmao in Canada, but it was Thanksgiving in the United States and the highway was busy, so she thought of going again next year. How could she know that the next year she learned the news of Pan Yingmao's death due to illness.

In the end, she could only write an unsendable letter to the late Pan Yingmao.

In her letter, she recalled that in the summer of graduating from high school that year, a group of five of them walked to the station holding hands when a jeep suddenly came and washed them away. At that time, Pan Yingmao said in his usual quiet voice: "I'm afraid we won't be able to meet again in the future. My mother's French superstition said that if the holding hand is washed away by someone, it is a sign of dispersion."

The parting scene occasionally resurfaced in Qi Bangyuan's mind. She never thought that the omens of the year were so accurate, and everyone was scattered so thoroughly.

Perhaps only when the end is near, can the clues of every nuance of life be fully connected.

This is called the prophecy of life.

Accompanying teacher Qi Bangyuan to witness her life course, jumping out of a specific era and looking back at the past, you can also find that many similar things are happening repeatedly. For example, when a country or a political party commits inhumane acts, the international community will certainly support and condemn it: for example, Guo Songling won praise from all parties when he remonstrated against the war soldiers; for example, during the Nanjing Massacre, scientists Einstein, British Philosopher Russell, French writer Romain Rolland and American philosopher Dewey jointly issued a declaration calling on people of all countries to automatically organize a boycott of Japanese goods - which is no different from the international community's solidarity with Ukraine this year.

There are always some people in every era who are trying to do the right thing, and that's what makes people feel "hopeful for the world."

Although, in every era, there are people who are blinded by sand and dust. They constitute the cruelty of an era, and in the end, the cruelty also falls on them.

The book "Giant River" was published in 2009. Scholars inside and outside the book are lamenting that the cultural environment is getting better and the relationship between the two sides of the strait is getting closer and closer. Everyone has the courage to look directly at the "wrong of yesterday" and jointly pray for tomorrow's meeting. better. However, today, more than ten years later, the situation has become tense again, the so-called shouting and killing is rampant, and many topics have become taboos again - history is like a tortuous cycle.

If you are optimistic, zoom out what you have seen and heard to a far enough distance, and put the ups and downs of history into the long river of time, it seems that everything is not so bad, and no matter how much absurdity is, it will eventually be healed by time. .

If you think pessimistically: what kind of era each person will encounter in his limited life, it is not a choice. Even if the absurdity will eventually be smoothed out by the years and everything will return to thriving again, so what? Those who live in the cracks of the times have already exhausted their entire youth in this absurdity.

So should we be optimistic or pessimistic?

As I was reading this book, I was relieved to see that there are so many real people who have kept their physical and spiritual worlds intact during such difficult times. I suddenly realized that no matter how bad the times are, there are always people who can survive, not need to join forces, but also can be alone, and their bodies and dignity will not be destroyed.

In the endless years, we all know this truth: Ercao's body and name are destroyed, and the rivers and rivers will not be abandoned.

In our own limited lives, I wish we could all be alone. The giant river of life is either silent or turbulent. Only when you are in it can you know that you always need to sail all the time and try your best to avoid the wind, waves and reefs, in order to have the opportunity to seize the fruits of life.

May you and I both reach the other side of your heart.