Chapter 26 remember father

He encountered many challenges in his life. My grandfather was a poor pastor in the countryside, but he was full of dreams. He wanted his son to go to Shanghai to go to university and study abroad.My grandfather borrowed money from others to send my father to Shanghai St. John's University to study.My parents came to the United States after they got married. When my father was studying for a master’s degree at Harvard University, because my mother was sick and went to the hospital twice for surgery, they spent all their money. For a week, my father only had money to buy a can of Old Man’s brand cereal, but not Only by not bowing his head to borrow money from his grandfather to maintain his life can he continue to study.

To my father, Harvard University was the Widener Library with its millions of books.He compared his process of seeking knowledge in the library to a monkey looking for nuts in the forest.He told us that he can run several miles a day in the library. If he can't find the knowledge he wants in one book, he will look for it in another book. He encouraged me to write with the same vigor and seriousness.When I was young, he encouraged me to keep a diary. He said, write whatever comes to mind, but don’t be like a primary school student who writes lies for my husband. A sentence he read in a student ruler made him laugh out loud.He said that no matter what to write, the most important thing is the word "true".

My father's study is called "If you don't want to fast", a friend asked him, what does that mean?Part of his answer is: I still couldn't memorize the Prime Minister's will, and I couldn't help thinking about it during the three-minute silence. I never said a single flattering word. I will not say that the moon is square today, and that the moon is round a week later, because my memory is very good. These words were said by my father in the 1930s, and he has not changed them until he is old, which may be the reason for his success in writing.What he wrote was "real", and he was not afraid to express his feelings and thoughts frankly, regardless of what others thought of him.

Father's outlook on life, simply can be said, "I think the reasonable spirit is the highest ideal of human culture, and the reasonable man is the most educated man. A reasonable revolutionary is not a new broom, Sweeps the universe spotless, but prefers to leave a little grime behind. A reasonable abstainer has a drink or two now and then. A reasonable vegetarian can always eat a steak once in a while. If one finds What good is great scientific truth without humanity? Great wisdom lies in not being too demanding on humanity.” This may be the starting point of his sense of humor. He can see the contradictions of being human and forgive a person.

Dad was able to maintain his sense of humor even under pressure.After he became the president of Nanyang University in 1954, leftists tried to get him out of power. Many newspapers in Singapore attacked him, and the tabloids were even more vicious. One tabloid even published a photo of a person, explaining that he was "Lin Yutang" brother, a gravedigger on drugs."I was very angry when I read it, and said to my father, "How can they mess around like this?" My father took the newspaper over and looked at it, and said with a smile, "It looks a bit like me." Since the age of 23, my father dreamed of inventing a Chinese typewriter that everyone could type without training.The key was to reclassify Chinese characters—without the Kangxi radicals—and invent a convenient keyboard.In 1931, when my father was thirty-six, he thought he had solved the problem.He went to the United States from Shanghai to study the design of typewriters with engineers. When he returned home, he ran out of money and only had 30 cents in his pocket.He does not have the capital to make models, but he never forgets this dream.

In 1947, because he had written several best-selling books and had savings of tens of thousands of dollars, he thought it was enough to make a model of a typewriter, so he started actively. Problems emerged one after another, each part had to be drawn by an engineer and manufactured manually, and the cost was getting higher and higher, far exceeding his estimate, but since so much money had been invested, it was impossible to give up halfway. After the model was built, I practiced typing. According to the "upper and lower shape search method" invented by my father, a character can be typed by pressing three keys. Compared with the bulky and difficult typewriters of the Commercial Press at that time, it was really convenient. many.

My father held a press conference, and major newspapers published the news that "Lin Yutang invented the Chinese typewriter" in a large space. Our house was open for three days in a row, and people from all walks of life were welcome to visit.Linguist Zhao Yuanren said, "This is a remarkable invention." Foreign Minister Wang Shijie, who was visiting New York, said, "I am very surprised at the simple typing of this typewriter. This is an extremely valuable invention." Such praise The list goes on and on. In 1948, Mergenthaler Linotype Company of the United States signed a contract with his father and paid his father 20,000 US dollars to obtain the exclusive right to develop Chinese typewriters, but due to the Chinese civil war, they did not manufacture them.It took many years to pay off the debt my father had incurred on his invention of the typewriter.He never complained, never regretted. "One must have a dream to make progress." He said.

Thirty years later, when the computer age began, the "upper and lower character search method" and the keyboard developed by my father were adopted by Taiwan Shentong Company as a computer input method, and my father's dream finally came true. But for my father, the most important thing in life is to be a human being.He said, "Confucius said that if you have enough power in your actions, you should learn from writing. It can be seen that behavior is more important than words. It doesn't matter if the writing is not good, but people can't do it badly. I think that when you look at a culture, you have to look at it. What husbands and wives, fathers and mothers become to those who grow up in it. All other achievements—art, philosophy, literature, material life—become insignificant by comparison.”

My father was full of dreams until he was old, and he felt that the world was beautiful.To me, he is the best dad ever.