Chapter 3 my childhood

I am a natural "gambler". Although the word "gambler" is not very pleasant, it does express the biggest characteristic of my character: competitive, and extremely competitive. I was born in Beijing in 1952. I am the third child among five children. I have two older sisters and two younger brothers.My parents devoted themselves to the revolutionary liberation of the Chinese people very early on, and became leading cadres of the Communist Party after the founding of New China. I am very happy to be born into such a family.Unfortunately, I suffer from congenital heart disease and cannot do strenuous exercise. I was exempted from physical education classes from elementary school to junior high school.A boy with a congenital defect like me naturally became the target of being bullied in school. In order to avoid being bullied, I had to often pay tribute to the "big king" in the class with small things, such as pencils, erasers, etc. , to express the heart of "surrender".At that time, I was terribly envious of those boys who ran fast, jumped high, and had great strength. More than once, I imagined that I would suddenly grow taller and stronger, so that I could teach those who bullied me a lesson. King".It's a pity that fantasies can't become reality. As soon as I have something delicious, I still have to obediently send it to them, even though I don't want it in my heart.

In short, these things have greatly hurt my self-esteem. In order to prove the value of my existence, I shifted my energy to win-win activities with intelligence, and became interested in all games that can compare winning and losing. Developed a very strong competitive character since childhood.Later, a friend half-jokingly said that I was a natural "gambler". Although the word "gambler" is not very pleasant, it did express the biggest characteristic of my character: competitive, and extremely competitive. Strong and aggressive. Of all my homework, my favorite is mathematics.I think mathematics is the best way to compare people's IQ. The answers to math problems are never ambiguous. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Therefore, it is a fierce competition to see who can answer a difficult problem quickly and accurately. .I remember that at that time, I often regarded solving math problems as a kind of game, which made it easy for me to solve many difficult problems when I was in math class, which attracted the envious eyes of many students, so my competitive spirit was also somewhat reduced. Got some satisfaction.

There is another reason why I like mathematics. Because of hard work, I can get 100 points in almost every math test, and the people who bully me in the class are just the worst in math.Whenever the test results are announced, I will secretly gloat when I see their dejected looks.This situation often makes me happy and makes me feel on edge. When I was a teenager, I never thought that I would become a chess player in the future. If it were not for the unprecedented "Cultural Revolution" catastrophe, I would probably become a mathematician.Of course, I have never regretted taking the road of Go. On the contrary, my interest in mathematics played a great role in improving my Go skills in the future.

I learned Go by accident, unlike today's children who are led by their parents to learn it deliberately.My parents and grandfather are both enthusiastic Go fans, and their addiction is not small. Whenever they have time, they will set up the chessboard and kill a few games.At times like this, the normally unsmiling adults seem to be different people, suddenly smiling, shaking their heads and sighing, and even quarreling, which makes me very curious. At that time, in my young mind, the dotted black and white pieces on the chessboard were full of a sense of mystery. Although I couldn't understand anything, I still refused to leave.

At that time, I especially looked forward to summer, because after dinner, the whole family would go to the yard to enjoy the cool as usual, and a chess table was absolutely indispensable at this time.When the adults are fighting it out on the chessboard, the kids watching from the sidelines split into two factions, usually the older sisters cheering on mom, and us boys rooting for dad or grandpa, sometimes taking a step or two The "brilliant trick" that made adults dumbfounded, the lively scene really made me feel a lot of fun. Strictly speaking, my parents did not teach us how to play Go, but they often watched them play Go, and over time, we would naturally learn how to play Go.Probably when I was nine years old, my younger brother Jibo and I often took out Go secretly when our parents were not at home, and played like adults.Although I just learned to "capture" at that time, the strong sense of victory and defeat in Go fascinated me at once. Compared with playing Go, I felt that all other games were boring.

Jibo is also a very competitive person. His interest in chess is not inferior to mine. Invisibly, we all regard each other as our competitors.But I never thought that Jibo, who started at the same time, would soon overtake me. At the beginning, we were evenly matched, fighting very fiercely, winning and losing were basically the same. Gradually, the situation became a little bit wrong, and when I played against my younger brother, not only was it difficult to catch his chess, but my own chess was repeatedly "poisonous".In the end, even though I tried my best, I still couldn't win.I, who have always been conceited with my high IQ, of course refused to let go of the disastrous defeat at the hands of my younger brother, so "defeating Jibo" became my only goal when I was ten years old.

During that period, I played Go to the point of being intoxicated, and even dreaming was full of black and white pieces.The first thing I do when I come home from school every day is to challenge Jibo. Of course, the aggressive younger brother will respond to the challenge, because he is very happy to kill me as an older brother. One day, we started early in the morning and continued to play one game after another until the evening. I don’t know whether it was due to exhaustion or the rush to fight after repeated defeats. Suddenly, my eyes went dark and I went into shock.This frightened the parents.My parents did not support us playing Go, but they themselves were keen on it, knowing that Go is an activity that cultivates temperament and is beneficial to thinking, so they did not object.But let my son specialize in it, I never even thought about it.

It was around 1965. Since I was already well-known in the Beijing chess circle at that time, the Beijing Chess Club deliberately cultivated me.The person in charge of the chess club once went home to ask my parents for advice, but as soon as he explained his intentions, he was flatly rejected by my parents.The truth of this, so far I have not figured out. When my younger brother and I learned to play Go without a teacher, my parents were both surprised and amused, and occasionally condescended to fight a game with us.Later, we found out that we were always having sex, didn't even want to sleep, and didn't eat well, so we started to restrain us.However, since we are still competitive in our studies, this restriction is only symbolic. When I fainted from playing chess, the situation will be different.My mother immediately set many rules for us, two of which were "no chess every day, and the lights must be turned off at nine o'clock in the evening" really suffocated me.Sometimes when we feel itchy, we turn off the light and pretend to sleep. When mother returns to her room, we will quietly get up, turn on the lamp and play a few games to enjoy the fun.Of course, if mother finds out, a reprimand is always inevitable.

When I was ten years old, my younger brother and I had far surpassed our parents in Go. In order to let us learn more, my grandfather took us to the chess room of the Working People's Cultural Palace to play.At that time, there was a Go training class for teenagers in the Cultural Palace, where Mr. Zhang Futian was the instructor.On the day we went, the training class was in action, so my grandfather explained to Mr. Zhang that he wanted to find two young chess players to play casually with us, so as to know what level we were.Because at that time, except for the "family chess players" such as father, mother and grandfather, my brother and I had never played chess with outsiders.The young chess players in the training class are different from us. They have all undergone formal training, which is the so-called "specialized background".

Mr. Zhang readily agreed, and randomly ordered two young chess players to play with us.Although Jibo and I played chess with outsiders for the first time, we were not timid, and when we were excited, we used our "family skills".At first they looked down on our "wild ways" and didn't know how to deal with them after a few tricks. They probably received formal training that followed the rules, and they had never encountered such unruly people as us. As a result, both were defeated.So the young chess players in the training class took turns to fight, and we fought vigorously. After a series of scuffles, the "regular army" was actually wiped out by our "guerrilla".

Mr. Zhang was quite surprised. He was even more surprised when he learned that we had only learned chess for less than a year and had no good teacher to guide us.In this way, Mr. Zhang Futian became my first first teacher. Mr. Zhang was a famous chess player at that time, and he went to Japan to participate in the competition as a member of the Chinese Go delegation.He is quite unique in the teaching of Go, not only me, but the current masters in Beijing, Cheng Xiaoliu, Tan Yanwu, Wu Yulin, etc., have also received his teachings to some extent. In fact, my level at that time was hardly even called "small skills", but after defeating the young chess players in the training class, I was full of air and high-spirited.If you use "Yelang arrogant" to describe me at that time, it could not be more appropriate.I remember that the first tutoring game that Mr. Zhang and I played was for me to have seventeen pieces. I was not convinced in my heart, and I desperately wanted to kill him, but he seemed to be angry with me on purpose. In a hurry, it was a complete defeat in the end.Now I have learned how powerful a master is, so I quickly restrained my bravery. During the training class activities, Mr. Zhang usually explains to everyone, and doesn't often play tutoring chess, but he played a lot of games with me.I found out later that Mr. Zhang did this on purpose.He once told people about one of my incidents. During free activities, all the children in the training class ran outside to play. Only I like to stay in the training room and play chess.One time, Mr. Zhang suddenly found that I had secretly opened his bag, and he couldn't help being surprised. In the end, I just took out a chess book, read it intently, and then quietly put it back.This incident caught Mr. Zhang's attention, and he saw that I often did this later, and he couldn't help but appreciate it.He believes that a ten-year-old child knows how to work hard and refuses to be playful, and he will surely become a talent in the future, so he is particularly fond of me. Although Mr. Zhang has not taught me for a long time, under his training, my chess skills have improved rapidly. It can be said that Mr. Zhang Futian was the first person who led me into the gate of Go and made me see the ever-changing world of Go. I will always be grateful to him. In addition, Uncle Liu Ren, who was the second secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee at the time, often asked me to play chess.My mother was the secretary of the party committee of the No. 1 Machine Tool Factory, the director of the No. 1 Machine Tool Bureau, and a member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. Maybe it was because of this relationship that he knew that I could play chess.But he was very strange, he never got off by himself, but asked me and his secretary Song Rufen to get off, and he watched from the side.At that time, my house was next to Song Rufen's house. Their house was at the entrance of the alley, and our house was inside. When Liu Ren came, just make a phone call, and I would go there. Every Spring Festival, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee holds a party in the Great Hall of the People, and Liu Ren asked someone to invite me to play chess as a performance.One year during the National Day, he called me to Beihai Park, where he was in charge of directing the Tiananmen celebrations, and the headquarters was located here.I don't know why he was not very happy that day, and he complained a little. The secretary came and told him that the parade over there had started. Liu Ren liked me very much. He once gave me a set of Go given to him by the Japanese. Later, he lost this set of Go when he ransacked his home.The relationship between Liu Ren and myself had unintended consequences for our family in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, which I will discuss later. In order to play chess, I really made my parents worry a lot. Now that I think about it, I feel that it is very difficult to repay my parents for their kindness.The most memorable one was in 1965, when the Japanese Go delegation came to China to compete. Uncle Liu Ren sent me an invitation card, but I was dumbfounded when I saw the date. The time of the two games was not on Sunday.Whether to go to the game or go to school, I hesitated.The temptation to watch Japanese chess players was too great for me. I really couldn't give up this rare opportunity, so I called the school to say that I was sick and couldn't go to school, and then secretly went straight to the National Culture Palace. Playing truant, this was a really daring behavior at the time, and it was absolutely unacceptable for a student, but in order to watch Go, I still violated the "rule of heaven".The first day passed without incident. The next day I went to watch the replay, but I was still not found. On the third day, I went to the second game with luck.Unexpectedly, the teacher saw that I hadn't come to class for three consecutive days, so he called home to inquire about my condition. It happened that my mother answered the phone, which revealed the truth.My mother immediately thought of the invitation card, and chased after him to the National Cultural Palace without saying a word. At that time, I was concentrating on watching the game of chess between Wei Yuan and Chen Zude. Luo Jianwen came over and told me, "Your mother is here." As soon as I heard it, I realized that something was wrong, because our family was very strict with us, especially my mother. If you make such a big mistake, you will definitely be beaten.My first reaction was to hide quickly, but there was no place to hide in that hall, so I hid in the men's room in a panic. In fact, if you can hide from the first day of junior high school, you can also hide from the fifteenth day of the junior high school. At that time, it was the child's psychology, and he could hide for a while. My mother searched the arena but couldn't find me, so she angrily asked Li Zhengluo, the leader of the national Go team, to hand me over.Li Zhengluo didn't know my situation at all, and he wouldn't pay attention to a child, so he said no, my mother didn't believe it, and even had a big fight with him.After my mother left, someone came to tell me, and I just came out of the toilet.After returning home, my mother beat me up with a feather duster until my butt was swollen.I have never skipped school since then. At that time, my parents not only asked me to write a check to the teacher, but also announced sternly that I was forbidden to touch the chess pieces in the future.After I heard it, it was more uncomfortable than hitting me.Fortunately, this "prohibition" was not really implemented. Just like all parents, what they said in anger was forgotten afterward.