Chapter 3 1. Absolute civilians

There is a black-and-white photo in my bookcase, the photo paper is a little yellowed, and the photo shows a baby boy, just able to stand, standing in a large wooden barrel.There was a hall in the background, and the big barrel was actually the lower end of a banister of a staircase, very broad and glossy.The little boy was chubby and smiled innocently.When my daughter was three years old, she asked me who it was. When she heard that it was my father when she was a child, she looked up at me with a puzzled look on her face.In fact, the same doubt is also in my heart. The only basis for connecting this little boy with me is what my parents told me many years ago. This connection is so abstract that I have never been able to restore it to my specific growth process.

According to the parents, the photo was taken in the lobby of Xinxin Company.Xinxin Company was one of the four famous department stores in Shanghai before liberation. It was located in the most prosperous section of Nanjing Road, and now it is the Shanghai Food Company.According to my calculations, my father was twenty years old when he entered this company as a cashier. Two years later, he married my mother, and then had my sister and me. At the age of twenty-nine, Shanghai was liberated and he left This company.I can conclude that the nine years in Xinxin Company were the happiest period in my father's life.My evidence is photographs, and almost all of the photographs in my father's and mother's albums were taken during this period.At that time, my father was young and handsome. He obviously liked to play and often took pictures with his mother in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou.Judging from the photos, the father and mother are well dressed, the pair of young children are very cute, and the family is happy.Most of the photos of my sister and me are from the early childhood stage, and then there are long-term vacancies. My younger siblings have almost no childhood photos, reflecting the changes in family circumstances.When I was in middle school, I carefully organized these old photos, because the old photo album was damaged, I made a new photo album that looks good, and put them in place.It is a pity that during the Cultural Revolution, most of the photos in the album were burned by my sister because my father was wearing a long gown and my mother was wearing a cheongsam. I was afraid of being suspected of the "Four Olds".

Before entering Xinxin Company, my father had a poor childhood and adolescence.According to his account, he lost his father when he was three years old, and his family's livelihood was mainly supported by the work of his elder brother who was more than ten years older than him. His mother also did some odd jobs of weaving lace to supplement the family income.At the age of fourteen, he worked as an apprentice for five years in a rice store opened by his family surnamed Zhou, and then worked as a conductor at the Tianchan Stage for several months.When I was in elementary school and middle school, my father often talked about that period of hard times, so as to educate us about the bitterness and sweetness.Now it suddenly occurred to me that what he did was not only educating us, but also enlightening himself, because after leaving Xinxin Company, on the one hand, his income decreased, on the other hand, his children increased and grew up, and life at home became obviously difficult , it cannot be compared with the period of Xinxin Company at all, and it is necessary to go back to a lower reference standard.After liberation, my father was transferred to work in the tax bureau, and was released within a few years. He successively worked as branch secretary of several vegetable farms.He joined the party at the beginning of the liberation, and this qualification did not bring him any official luck, and he died in the post of a grassroots cadre.He has no complaints about it himself, and is so devoted to his work that I rarely see him idle at home.For 20 or 30 years, his salary has remained unchanged at seventy-four yuan. With this little money to support a family of seven, one can imagine how difficult it is.But I didn't feel bitter at the time, and I was always full with food, but when there was braised pork on the table, the eyes of the children would inevitably stare at other people's chopsticks.

My mother is two years older than my father. She worked in a pharmaceutical factory when she was young, and quit her job after giving birth to my sister.In my early impressions, she seemed to be born a mother whose sole responsibility was to raise five children.In fact, she was always busy with our food, clothing, housing and transportation before we became independent.Once, I found four photos in an old photo album, which were photos of the same beautiful and fashionable woman, signed by Zhou Manhua.I only found out after asking my mother that this big movie star who is as famous as Zhou Xuan was once a sworn sister of my mother. At that time, they all lived in the area of ​​Qianjiatang (later Shaanxi North Road) and often played together.I was very surprised by this discovery, and made me realize that my mother was not born to be a housewife who took care of her children, but she also had her love life.In my sister's revolutionary action of burning photos, of course Zhou Manhua's jade photos were not spared.

Mother is quiet by nature, always doing housework diligently and silently, not like nagging like ordinary housewives at all.The father gave her the salary every month, and the family's livelihood arrangements fell on her shoulders.She is very good at making arrangements, for example, every Mid-Autumn Festival, our family cannot afford moon cakes, but she will definitely make a batch of moon cakes, which are also very crispy and delicious.At a young age, I enjoy the care of my mother carefree, how can I feel the pressure in her heart.When I was in elementary school, I came home from school one day and found a strange atmosphere in my house.The father was not at home, the mother was lying on the bed, a wooden basin was filled with blood on the floor, and the neighbors gathered inside and outside the house to discuss something.My three-year-old brother quietly told me: My mother gave birth to a dead child, which was a girl.The five-year-old brother added: "The hands haven't grown yet, so my father took them away with a big shovel and threw them to the place where children are released to death."I heard a neighbor consoling my mother, and my mother replied: "It's better to be dead, and it's not allowed to kill her if she's alive." shadow of poverty.Once upon a time, in this small room, my mother washed clothes in the same tub, her young face was bathed in the sun, and she smiled brightly at me. Such a sweet scene seemed so far away that I couldn’t trace it.Besides my youngest sister, I had a younger brother who also died in infancy.According to my mother, he was one year younger than me and died a few days after giving birth.Throughout my childhood, I missed this younger brother who I had no memory of countless times, because he was the closest to my age, and I imagined that if he survived, he would be my bosom friend, so I mourned for losing him. Very sad.

Although life is relatively difficult, the relationship between father and mother is still very harmonious, and I have never seen them quarrel.They worry about daily expenses, but never complain about fate.Living within their means and saving money, they take this lifestyle as a matter of course.Perhaps most families lived in this way at that time, so it did not seem unbearable.The family background in my childhood made me used to living a frugal life. In my later life, material difficulties never became a problem for me. I never felt frugality was a kind of pain.Since luxury is completely unfamiliar to me, I don't think luxury is a kind of happiness.Even now, although I have often had the opportunity to glimpse other people's luxurious lives, I still naturally feel that it is something that has nothing to do with me, and I am not fascinated by it.Another legacy my father and mother gave me was honesty.They are all dutiful people, and they don't know such things as playing tricks at all, and they never play against each other in the neighborhood.This disposition was passed on to all the children, and all five of us, brothers and sisters, were clumsy at fighting and appeared useless to varying degrees.After my wife and friends got in touch with my family members, they couldn't help being moved by their honesty.In comparison, I am the least useless, but I and those who really know me know that it was actually my so-called success that covered up and compensated for my uselessness.

My family is so ordinary that it couldn't be more ordinary.If you want to check cultural inheritance, there is no source to follow.Regardless of the patrilineal or matrilineal line, none of the relatives in the previous generation can be found who has attended middle school.My father is considered the most educated among them, but he only went to elementary school, and he only mastered Chinese and ink by self-study, while my mother learned to read through literacy.There are only a few books in my father's cabinet, basically learning materials for cadres. In addition, there are several Soviet anti-special novels and a Sherlock Holmes case, which shows that my father also read for a little entertainment.Before registering for the college entrance examination, a university in Shanghai provided counseling for candidates. A teacher heard that I wanted to apply for a liberal arts department and asked me if I was influenced by my family.

I have friends of modest origin who can trace in their genealogies some illustrious ancestor, but I have not even the slightest honor to do so.To ridicule them, and to laugh at myself, I laid out to them a theory that geniuses of the second order are inherited in families, and geniuses of the first order directly from nature.Of course, this is just a joke, because I'm not a genius.However, as far as the theory itself is concerned, there is some truth to it.There are some famous families with talented people in history, but there are also many geniuses with no family history to be found.Even in good families, what can be inherited is only high IQ, not genius.The birth of a genius is a natural event and cultural event that transcends the family. In terms of natural events, it is better to say that genius is the inheritance of the essence of many generations of human beings, the reincarnation of unrelated souls in a wide range, and the spiritual beauty of Zhong Tiandi. The product is an occasional masterpiece of nature.