Chapter 70 my marriage

Around the end of December in the Gregorian calendar, the first year I entered the Commercial Press, I went home for the Spring Festival, and my mother asked me solemnly, "Do you have a girlfriend?" I answered no.My mother then said: "My daughter's family is here again, and I plan to give you a happy event around the Spring Festival next year." My mother once told me why I was engaged to the Kong family when I was five years old. It turns out that the Shen family and the Kong family are family friends.My grandfather and my wife's grandfather Kong Fanlin knew each other.Several generations of the Confucian family have opened candle workshops and paper horse stores in Wuzhen (these are stores specializing in the sale of superstitious items such as incense candles, tin foil, and yellow watches). Kong Fanlin’s son, my wife’s father, was a prodigal son, which will be discussed later).My grandfather often went to Qian Longsheng Nanhuo store to buy things, and chatted with the owner across the counter.The Qian family is my fourth uncle's relatives; the fourth uncle's continuation is the sister of Qian's shopkeeper (whose name seems to be Chun Jiang), who gave birth to only one son (Kai Song), who died of illness soon after.Before our big family separated, my mother and Aunt Qian were very close. At that time, I was only four years old, and Kai Song (I should call him uncle) was five years old.Qian Longsheng Nanhuo Store is the only Nanhuo store in the town that has a full range of goods. It sells mushrooms, fungus, dried shrimps, sea cucumbers, bird's nests, shark fins, and various dried fruits, peanuts, melon seeds, etc.This store is in Dongzha, not far from my home (Guanqian Street).Kong Fanlin also often went shopping in Qian Longsheng, and it happened that when my grandfather was there, the two talked for a long time.When I was five years old, one day in early summer, my grandfather carried me out, and went to Qian Longsheng, who was chatting with Qian Chunjiang across the counter, when Kong Fanlin also brought his granddaughter.When his grandfather was talking with Kong Fanlin, Qian Chunjiang looked at the young couple, talking long and short, and suddenly said, "You two are married. They are family friends, and they are well-matched."Both grandfather and Kong Fanlin laughed, and they both agreed.Grandfather went home and told father about it, and father agreed; but when father told mother about it, mother didn't agree.My mother said: Both sides are small, and when they grow up, they will be good or bad, who can predict.But the father thought that because the girl was young and we got engaged, we could make the decision to ask the girl not to bind her feet and to study.The father also said that before he himself was engaged to the Chen family, the matchmaker used Kong Fanlin's daughter's Geng invitation to make a marriage proposal, but he asked a famous astrologer in the town to make a match and said that the girl was Kefu, so it failed.At that time, my father had already been selected as a scholar, and the other party was also sixteen or seventeen years old.Unexpectedly, when the daughter heard that she had hit Kefu, she felt that she would never be able to marry again.For this reason, my father felt like he owed a debt, so he was unwilling to reject this marriage.My mother said, what should I do if the horoscope this time is against each other?My father said, I am in charge of this matter, and if the horoscope is not right, I also want to get married.Mother doesn't argue anymore.Grandfather asked Qian Chunjiang as a matchmaker to make a marriage arrangement.The daughter's family sent Geng Tie, but my grandfather still asked the famous astrologer to arrange the horoscope, which was auspicious.Later (after I got married) I found out that the Kong family changed the horoscopes of all the daughters in each house because of the experience and lessons learned last time.At that time, the Kong family was also a big family, with as many as six households.

Now that they were engaged, the father asked the matchmaker to tell the Kong family not to bind their feet, but to teach the girl how to read.Unexpectedly, the Kong family (that is, my father-in-law and mother-in-law) was very old-fashioned and refused to listen to us. The girl who had been bound for half a year continued to bind her.Fortunately, the aunt who lived in his house and helped with the housework (that is, my mother-in-law's elder sister, who is widowed, and my mother-in-law is sick, and I rely on her to take care of the housework) saw the little girl crying after her feet were bound, so she carried my mother-in-law behind her back and gave She took off the cloth strips that bound her feet, all at night; but the next day when my mother-in-law saw that the cloth strips were all taken off, she thought it was my daughter who had untied them herself, so she tied them again.So many times, the aunt had no choice but to admit that she had untied the cloth strips, and said: The man's family has long said not to bind feet, why do we still have to bind them.The two sisters quarreled for a while, and my mother-in-law angrily said that it was okay, but she also said that it is the meaning of the patriarch's elders not to bind their feet, and the son-in-law is five or six years old. Who knows whether he will have a foot-binding wife when he grows up.But from then on, she didn't care about her daughter's footbinding.However, although he has not been entangled since then, it has been entangled for half a year. Although the instep bone is not broken, it is slightly bent, which is different from Tianzu.The above-mentioned things were all told by the bride herself after marriage, and my mother and I only knew about them.

As for reading and literacy, my mother-in-law (also surnamed Shen) is literate (not as serious as my mother who has been studying for many years), but because of her literacy, she is familiar with the idiom "a woman without talent is virtue", she refuses to teach, and is often sick , I am not in the mood to teach.At that time, there was no girls' primary school in the town.Until my father was sick in bed, there was a private Dunben girls' school above the town, which was run by the wealthy gentry Xu Guannan.After the father found out, he asked a matchmaker to tell the Kong family that the girl was eight or nine years old, and it was time for her to go to school, so she could enter the Dunben Girls’ School. He also told the girl’s family that cosmetics can be casual in the future, but at this time she must spend some money Let girls go to school.The woman's family still ignored it.After my father died, my mother also entrusted a matchmaker to talk about it, so naturally it was even less taken seriously.

This time, my mother told the story of the past again, and then said: "In the past, I expected that after you left school, you would be a primary school teacher at most a middle school teacher, and an illiterate wife would be good enough; now you enter the Commercial Press The translation office has been valued for only half a year, and it will probably be smooth sailing in the future, and there are many things to do, so an illiterate wife is not suitable. So I want to ask you, if you must not, I have to ask a matchmaker to withdraw the marriage, but The other party may not allow it, and there may be a lawsuit, so I will be embarrassed."

At that time, I was engrossed in my "career", and my wife's literacy problem didn't matter. Moreover, after I got married, the Kong family could no longer control her. My mother could teach her to read and write, and she could also go to school.I told my mother what I thought, and my mother decided to hold my wedding in the next Spring Festival. At this time we had already moved out of the old house on Guanqian Street (in my last year of preparatory studies at Peking University) and rented the fourth uncle’s remaining house, which was in Beixiang.The neighbor has Wang Huiwu's house.At this time, the fourth uncle continued for the third time. He was the old maid of the Huang family, a big businessman in the new town. His son (Uncle Kai) was in the Bank of China in Nanchang and was not married.Few people, many houses, very quiet.My mother rented the rest of my fourth uncle's house for my wedding.Because the three-bay room and two-entry house that the fourth uncle was allocated at the beginning was not a living room, but the fourth uncle modified it a little, and it turned out to be a living room.And the fourth uncle is living at home at this time, so he can take care of the wedding.

The marriage was carried out after the Spring Festival in 1918 as planned.On the eve of the wedding, the guests who made the new house were all three female guests.The family is my cousin (that is, Chen Yunyu's wife) and her five or six-year-old daughter Zhiying.The family is the wife of the second aunt's nephew Tan Gusheng.The other family is the cousin of the Huang family in Xinshi Town, who is the daughter-in-law of my second aunt.The second aunt married in her thirties. The husband's family is the Huang family in Xinshi Town. They opened a paper shop. They are of the same family as the fourth uncle's current Mrs. Huang.Among the three female guests, the sister-in-law of the Chen family was the most beautiful. At that time, the three female guests who were building a new house talked and laughed with the bride, who was not restrained.The cousin of the Huang family asked Zhiying who was the most beautiful in this room, and Zhiying pointed to the bride and said she was the most beautiful.The bride laughed and said, "Zhiying is smart. When she saw me in red and green, she said I was beautiful. In fact, her mother was the most beautiful." Everyone laughed.At this time, my mother went into the new house and was very happy to see the bride's freedom.My mother came downstairs and said to me: Parents of Confucianism are old-fashioned, but this bride is very flexible. If you teach her to read and write, she will probably be happy to be taught.

The next day, when my mother questioned the bride, she found out that she only knew the Chinese characters for Kong and the numbers from one to ten; and she knew that I had studied in Beijing, so she asked whether Beijing was farther from Wuzhen or Shanghai from Wuzhen.Mother really didn't expect that the Kong family was so closed, and they didn't even know about Beijing.But after all, it was the bride, and it was inconvenient for her mother to talk to her, she only told her that she had been asked to study many times in the past, but it turned out that her parents ignored her. Sanchao Huimen (on the third day after the wedding, the husband and the bride are accompanied by the bride because of her natal family, which is called Huimen in my hometown. Usually, the in-law’s family only entertains the son-in-law with refreshments, and then they both return to the husband’s home together). As usual, I formally meet with the father-in-law’s family Close relatives, but only the father-in-law has met, and the two brothers-in-law have never met.My bride and I went upstairs to see my mother-in-law, and just after we sat down for a few words, we suddenly saw a seven or eight-year-old boy running up the stairs, followed by a thirteen or fourteen-year-old chasing him. Beside the mother-in-law, he only said the word "brother", and the boy had already arrived, and was beside the mother-in-law, grabbed the boy and started beating him.The mother-in-law said weakly, "Why are you fighting again?" But the boy was still beating the boy.The mother-in-law sighed, helpless.But the bride couldn't bear it anymore, and shouted: "Ah Liu, you are bullying my brother again, and you don't even look at the guests—this is your brother-in-law!" The boy glanced at me and went downstairs.Only then did I know that these two were my brothers-in-law, the older one was called Ling Jun, the younger one was called Ling Jie, and the nickname was Ah Fu.I thought: Ling Jun is not afraid of his mother, but his sister. It seems that this sister can discipline him.I also thought that there must be some private conversation between the mother and daughter, so I'd better go downstairs to have tea.I said goodbye to my mother-in-law and went downstairs, but I didn't see my father-in-law or Ling Jun. Only my aunt accompanied me for tea.I heard someone laughing at the upstairs window.The aunt called to the upstairs window, "Ah Er, come to see brother-in-law too." When she came down, she was a girl of seventeen or eighteen years old; I thought to myself, who is this?I never heard that the bride has another girl.But my aunt said to me: "This is my daughter." The girl was generous and called me "brother-in-law" and sat down to have tea.After a while, the girl went upstairs.I thought: Going back to the door is just a matter of etiquette, so why sit still, I said goodbye to my aunt.The aunt shouted upstairs: "Miss San, the new official is going back." After a while, the bride came down and went home together.But the mother noticed that the bride's eyeballs were a little red, as if she had cried, so she asked her, who was she arguing with?The bride refused to speak.Mother asked again and again.The bride said.It turned out that she had quarreled with her mother.After saying that I went downstairs, she cried.The mother-in-law asked: Is the son-in-law treating you badly?She shook her head.Ask again: Is it the mother-in-law who treats you badly?He also said that my mother is a well-known capable person who treats the younger generation very strictly and reprimands her at every turn.She said: My mother-in-law treats me like her own daughter.The mother-in-law asked her why she was crying.She said that she hated her parents, "The Shen family asked me to study many times. Why didn't you let me study? Both son-in-law and mother-in-law have read a lot of books. I look like a countryman in the Shen family. You have delayed my life." It's been a lifetime." As she spoke, the bride shed tears again.The mother laughed and said, "Such a little thing is worth crying about. Do you know that Su Laoquan is twenty-seven? This Su Laoquan was already famous before the age of twenty-seven, but after he was twenty-seven, he seriously studied knowledge. It became a school, and it really became a school of its own. What's more, as long as you can read, write letters, read books, and read newspapers, it is not easy? As long as you work hard, you are not afraid that you will fail to learn when you are old. Although I have not read many books, the teaching You don't have to work hard." The bride smiled again through tears.The mother asked again: "Do you have a nickname? I can't always call you the bride." The bride shook her head and said: "My parents call her Ah San."My mother said to me: You can name her.I replied: "It is said that all the people surnamed Kong in the world come from the lineage of Confucius. There are regulations on their genealogy. For example, under the traditional characters is the word Xiang, and under the word Xiang is the word Ling; my father-in-law is named Xiangsheng, and my two brothers-in-law are named Lingjun." , Lingjie, the bride should choose Lingjie or Lingwan, either."

After hearing this, the mother thought for a while and said, "Didn't the bride just say that I treated her like a daughter? I am losing a daughter, so I will take her as my daughter. You can name her according to the Shen family's method." I said: "According to the Shen family, in my generation, all the characters of virtue, the word below must be next to the water, so let's call it Dejun. However, according to the ranking of the Confucius family, the word below the word Ling is the character of virtue. Today, Yan Shenggong The name is Decheng. If the bride is named Dejun, she will be a generation younger than her brothers." Mother said: "We don't care about their Confucianism, let's call her Dejun."

The bride is named Dejun, and her mother has always called her Dejun.After that, I taught Dejun how to read. After I returned to Shanghai, my mother taught her. The sun and the moon are rushing, and half a month has passed before I know it, and I am going back to Shanghai.At that time, it was customary that if the house is not vacant for one month after the wedding, it is bad luck, but neither my mother nor I believed in this.Before I left, I went to Kong’s house to bid farewell, but I still didn’t see my father-in-law, only my mother-in-law, who was lying on the bed, and said: “Ah San got married, she worked hard, so she got sick again, and said disapprovingly, it should be a full moon before leaving, You guys are so new.It was my aunt who entertained me with refreshments downstairs. She heard that I named Miss San and wanted me to name her daughter Ah Er.I named her Huang Fen.I went home and told Dejun that my father-in-law hadn't been seen again, and my mother-in-law was ill.Dejun said that her mother was ill for ten months of the year, and the housework was entirely up to her aunt; she also said that her father was a businessman, and when he met me, he felt that he had nothing to say, so it was better not to see him.At this time, my father-in-law had opened a small paper horse shop for many years, and it was said that he was still making money. However, his father-in-law made some wine and meat friends, spent too much, and had already owed debts.This time he married a daughter, he set up a meeting, a total of ten people (including himself), one hundred yuan each. The ninth year is over.In this way, his debt piled up higher and higher.My mother said that there is no need to borrow money to marry a daughter. She herself spent 1,000 yuan to marry me, and she had already saved it.De Jun said that her father was very concerned about face, and liked to have a lot of ostentation. How to pay off the debt in the future, he would only borrow new debts to pay off the old ones at that time.

Less than two months after I returned to Shanghai, my mother wrote to say that Dejun went to Shimenwan (the name of the town, referred to as Shimen or Shiwan, twenty miles away from Wuzhen, which belonged to Chongde County at that time, and went to elementary school by boat). It turned out that the thing was like this: my mother taught Dejun how to read and write, but she still used tracing red.At this time, there were only mother and Dejun in the family, and a maid was hired. There were very few housework, and only things such as old and new relatives in the town, weddings and weddings, and gift giving on festivals were things that my mother had to worry about.Mother taught Dejun how to read and write for two hours a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.Dejun should concentrate on studying, but for some reason, she is restless.My mother also noticed it, and asked her why, she said, for some reason, she couldn't concentrate, facing the book, always looking at the book, but thinking about other things in her heart.But even so, I know five or six hundred characters, can write silently, and can explain.One day, the second aunt came, and knowing the situation, she said that a person, besides growing up and able to read and write, would inevitably feel restless.If you enter a school, have classmates, and everyone learns, it will be different.She also said that a relative of her natal family surnamed Feng ran a primary school, and she went to try to see if she might be willing to accept such a big student.My second aunt, surnamed Tan, has a business card and can read, but she is far behind my mother. She is from Shimenwan.The primary school is opened by the young lady of Feng's family. She is in her thirties and still unmarried. The name of the primary school is Zhenhua Girls' School, and the school is located in Feng's house (note: this young lady is Feng Zikai's eldest sister).My second aunt went to Shimen Bay specially for this purpose, and sure enough, she got what she said.So, my mother sent a maid to take Dejun to Shimen Bay by boat to be in the second grade.Since then, Dejun has been in Zhenhua Girls' School. Her classmates are all younger than her, most of them are only eleven or twelve years old, so she can't get along with them, but she has made friends with a few teachers.Among the classmates, there are only two older girls aged 16 or 17 who are close friends with her, namely Zhang Wu (Qin Qiu) and Tan Qinxian (Qin Xian).Zhang Qinqiu later married Zemin, and Tan Qinxian was a member of the girls' team of the Central Military Political School in Wuchang in 1927.This is something for later, so I won't say more now.

That summer vacation, when Dejun came home, I went back too, knowing that she was studying at Zhenhua Girls' School, she really concentrated, made great progress, could read simple classical Chinese (at that time, Zhenhua Girls' School still taught classical Chinese), and could write Barely expressive text messages.My mother said that she was smart, and she studied for three consecutive years. At that time, she could study on her own and pursue further studies.However, things often turned out to be unexpected. Dejun had been studying in Zhenhua Girls' School for a year and a half, and her mother was ill, so she had to serve Tang Yao.Mother couldn't refuse, so she had to do it.Three months later, my mother wrote to me, saying that my mother-in-law had died and I should go to the funeral.For this reason, I went to Wuzhen again.After the funeral was over, Dejun refused to go back to Zhenhua Girls' School, saying that it had been abandoned for four months, and he couldn't keep up with the classes, so he didn't go.Her good friend at Zhenhua Girls' School, female teacher Chu Mingxiu (Chu Fucheng's niece, Chu Fucheng was a member of Congress in the first year of the Republic of China, from Jiaxing), also wrote to persuade her to go again, but to no avail.Chu Mingxiu is about the same age as Dejun, and she is not married, but she likes to read new books and periodicals published in Shanghai, and knows my writing activities at that time, so Tongdejun is very good.Seeing that Dejun refused to go, Chu Mingxiu went to Wuzhen to persuade him.The mother entertained her to live in her room.Chu Mingxiu stayed for five or six days. During these few days, she often had secret talks with Dejun.Later she was about to leave and told her mother that she would not return to Zhenhua to teach.It was inconvenient for her mother to ask her why she didn't go to Zhenhua to teach.After she left, she asked Dejun, and found out that Chu Mingxiu was dissatisfied with the principal's style of work, and that was why Dejun didn't want to go back; it was just an excuse for not being able to catch up with class.Later we moved to Shanghai, and Chu Mingxiu came to our house again. She was married at that time, and the couple were both teaching at Xiushui Middle School (run by the church) in Jiaxing.This is a later story, let me mention it here. Now let's talk about Dejun's home, this time he is at ease in self-study, and has made a self-study plan, asking his mother to teach an essay in classical Chinese in the morning, and asking her to write an essay in the afternoon, and ask her mother to correct it.My mother and I thought it was good, not necessarily going to school, and my mother was always a bit lonely at home alone, so it was better to have Dejun with me. At this time, spring will begin, and I will return to Shanghai.This time, I lived in Wuzhen for nearly three weeks. Unexpectedly, there was another surprise.Not long after I returned to Shanghai, my mother wrote to say that Dejun was going to study again, this time under the influence of Wang Huiwu.Wang Huiwu was originally a neighbor. She was my cousin, but she was younger than me.I don't know when she went to study in the Hujun Girls' School in Huzhou. According to a letter from my mother, it seems that she has been there for half a year.Wang Huiwu persuaded Dejun to study in the Hujun Girls' School, saying that the school is very good.Therefore, Dejun also wanted to go. My mother doesn’t know what kind of school Hujun Girls’ School is, but I have studied in Huzhou and know that it is a church-run school, mainly learning English. It is a sister school with Shanghai’s Chinese and Western Girls’ School. After graduation, the school can recommend Studying in the United States is of course at your own expense. The school chapter says that the grades are particularly good, and the school can afford the cost of studying in the United States. This is just a facade to attract people.Probably Wang Huiwu also entered the Hujun Girls' School because of this superficial remark.Moreover, the students who study in the Hu County Girls' School are all the daughters of rich families. The tuition fees are expensive, and the board and lodging fees are also expensive.We feel that it is difficult to bear the burden, and the Wang family is even more so.I wrote a detailed letter, telling my mother about the situation, and asking her to prevent Dejun from going to the Lake County Girls' School. My mother wrote back and said that although people in Dejun are smart, they are young, energetic and stubborn.The mother said that it was inconvenient for her to use her mother-in-law's airs to suppress her, so she might as well let her try it out and let her quit.In this way, I don't stop anymore. When it was time for the schools to go on summer vacation again, I got a letter from my mother saying that Dejun would be back without waiting for the summer vacation.I guess this is a retreat in spite of difficulties.I will also go home and have a look.When we got home, my mother and I didn't ask her why she returned early, how was she doing at school?But she complained to herself: After entering school, she only read English, and she didn't even know the alphabet, how could she go to class?There is an affiliated elementary school, which teaches letters from the beginning, but the school said that she is too old to enter the attached elementary school, and she is forced to be in the first grade of the regular department.The classmates have all studied English for four or five years, and they are very foreign, and they all speak English with each other. Dejun has become a full-fledged countryman at this time; the classmates ignore her, and she can only talk to Wang Huiwu , but different classes.Dejun himself said that he was cheated and would never go again, wasting half a year and sixty or seventy yuan in tuition, board, and accommodation expenses.But I think Dejun still has a little "gain", because she learned some new terms from Wang Huiwu. My mother told me in private that it seems that Dejun always feels lonely when he is alone at home, so he might as well move to Shanghai as soon as possible. I thought so too, but when I returned to Shanghai, I ran into the Compilation and Compilation Institute of the Commercial Press who asked me to edit and reform the "Novel Monthly".I was very busy at the time and had no time to look for a house. It was not until my mother urged me again and again that Fu Sheng, the "manager" of the dormitory, found the house in Hongxingfang across the street.It was the spring of 1921.