Chapter 20 first quarter

My soul was flying over Hong Kong, and I was stunned by the sound of the guns, and it was hard to gather my mind.It was December 8, 1941, and the Pacific War broke out.Cannonballs sounded one after another, planes followed one after another, bombs followed one after another, and the common people cried and wailed, dodged, ran, and screamed: war!There is a real war! However, the students of the University of Hong Kong were blindly and frivolously happy and cheering, because it was the eve of the big exam, a bomb was dropped, and the tail was blown off before the big exam started!Finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief, I finally don’t have to use a flashlight to study at night, and I don’t have to have the nightmare of facing the exam papers and my mind goes blank. For students, exams are more terrifying than wars.

The local girls have all gone home, and it is better to be with their families at this time; Wang Jingwei’s niece was taken away as soon as the war broke out; While complaining about "poor medical students, they are always more tired than others." While complacent and reserved as a prospective doctor; boys clamored to sign up for the army, petitioned the principal, and wanted their professor to be the leader . Faced with the huge changes in life and the turbulent test of life and death, everyone showed some exaggerated and typical unusualness. However, under the surface of the abnormality, there was still the most consistent nature of life at the root.For Eileen Chang, these wartime experiences were the most incongruous and precious among the aloes and glamor of her life.

She later wrote an article "The Record of Embers", which not without humor described the sentient beings of her classmates during the war: ——There is a female classmate in the dormitory. She is a wealthy overseas Chinese. She is very particular about dressing. She needs different outfits for different social occasions. From water dances to grand dinners, she is fully prepared, but she did not expect fight.When I first got the news of the war, the most direct anxiety was: "What should I do? I don't have the right clothes! What to wear during the war?" Being teased by her classmates, she retorted confidently: "If people don't know, they only ask, and I don't I fought a war." Later, she borrowed a large black cotton gown, probably thinking that it had a more solemn atmosphere of war.The wives of wartime officials also wore black cloaks;

——Su Leijia is a Shih Tzu from a remote town in the Malay Peninsula. She is thin, brown and dark skinned, with sleepy eyes and slightly exposed white teeth. She is very innocent like a girl educated in a monastery.She chose medicine, and there was a famous joke - the medicine department required dissection of the human body. She couldn't help asking people nervously: Does the dissected corpse wear clothes?During the bombing during the war, the house supervisor urged everyone to avoid going down the mountain. In the emergency, she did not forget to tidy up the most beautiful clothes, and tried to carry the cumbersome big suitcase down the mountain despite everyone's persuasion.She later joined the defense work and served as a temporary nurse at the Red Cross branch. Wearing a brocade cotton gown with red copper ground and green longevity characters, she squatted on the ground chopping firewood and lighting a fire. She endured hardships and took risks with the male nurses, talking and laughing, The personality is also cheerful.War is a rare education for her;

——Evelyn, who came from the mainland of China. She has experienced many battles. According to her, she has endured hardships and endured hardships, and she is used to fear.But when the military fortress near the school was bombed, she was the first one who couldn't bear it anymore and cried hysterically, "You people don't know what war is, you don't know anything." She cried, vividly He told many terrible war stories that happened in the interior, which frightened the female students into pale faces.The food stock in the dormitory was about to run out, and the nuns risked their lives every day to buy bread and came back. Evelyn became especially able to eat, and advised everyone to eat hard, because there would be no food soon up.Before that, her father entrusted a local family friend to help take care of her, and she followed that man, who is said to be a married man;

——Angeline, who also came out of a monastery school, is a girl of eighteen or nineteen years old, with a round white face, a pair of hanging eyes, very beautiful, with a slightly plump figure, and a small silver cross is often hung on her chest , When meeting people, they smile and bow, demure and courteous.Her father was a businessman, and managed to get rich. He built a square new house. Not long after the family moved in, he suddenly fell in love with a dishonest woman and abandoned the family business.Her elder brother was studying at the University of Hong Kong and tried to bring her to study at the university. He was very worried about the girl, and always asked Yanying and Zhang Ailing to take care of her during the war, saying: "Anjielin is a very innocent girl." Later he Died in an air raid, and died thinking about protecting his sister;

——Jonathan is an overseas Chinese classmate. He signed up to join the volunteer army at the beginning of the war. Like all male students, he rushed to ask to go to the front line.But the war was not as iron-blooded and romantic as he thought. He participated in the battle in Kowloon, and the most angry thing was that they sent two college students out of the trench to bring in a British soldier-"Two of our lives are not worth one of theirs. Recruiting soldiers When they promised to give us special treatment, they would let us be under the jurisdiction of our own professors, and that promise was nothing!" The young man didn't know how to feel sad, and when he threw his pen into the army, he probably thought that the war was an excursion to Kowloon organized by the YMCA;

——Schools were closed during the war, and students from other places were stuck there with nothing to do. They just bought, cooked, and flirted all day long, with a mild and sentimental atmosphere.There was a young man from Annan who was a somewhat famous painter among his classmates.He complained that after the war his lines were less powerful because his arms were worn out from cooking.In fact, he can only cook fried eggplant.Later, every time everyone saw him cooking, they felt sorry for his shoulder... Among the numerous portraits, Yan Ying is the calmest and most daring. When Mammy announced that the exam was suspended due to the war, she was the first to rush out to watch the air raid, and then returned to bury her head in eating. After eating, she went back to her room to catch up on sleep— —I slept very late the night before because of the review, and now that I don’t have to take the exam, the first important thing is naturally to eat and sleep together.Her indifference in singing while splashing water in the stray bullets seems to be a mockery of the panic of the crowd.Amid the bombardment that filled the sky, the singing voice was simply bright and deafening.Some students complained: "I originally planned to travel around the world, especially to see the Sahara Desert, but now there is a war." Yan Ying smiled and comforted: "It doesn't matter, I will go after their war. The Sahara Desert will probably not be blown up." Yes. I'm optimistic." Eileen Chang couldn't help smiling at that wit and nonsense.

Zhang Ailing herself was studying under gunfire.She had excellent grades in the previous two years, but she didn't want to mess up this year.She didn't prepare enough for this exam, and she was annoyed, not wanting the war to give her another chance. "If you memorize all the notes, you can still catch up after a day or two of hard work." She said to herself silently, "Second chances can't be messed up again." However, there were no more exams, and even the school records were burned.The University of Hong Kong stopped working, and students from foreign lands were forced to leave the dormitory. Zhang Ailing followed a large number of students to the Air Defense Headquarters in Happy Valley to sign up, because "as an air defense officer, you can receive rations and help you find a place to live."Passing by the cemetery on the road, the couplet on the sign at the door looked particularly glaring at this time: "This day my body will return to my homeland, and his imperial body will be the same." It's like gloating!

I went to the Civil Defense Headquarters to write down my name, department, and class, and came back with a copper hat and badge. When I encountered an air raid on the road and ran away, she followed suit. Do something. They hid in other people's door openings, and the planes hovered over the roof like a dentist's electric drill, which made people's eardrums burst and their teeth ache, and their whole body tensed up. With a "bang", the whole world went dark, she closed her eyes tightly, and did not dare to open them after resting around, for fear that she would find that she was already blind, or that her limbs did not exist.

When she walked out of the doorway, she felt as if she was alive again, the ghost released from the Happy Valley Cemetery by the bombing just now. The working place is stationed in Feng Pingshan Library, and the task is to record every bombing, air raid alarm, and the time when the alarm is disarmed.She didn't understand why, she was just glad that she was assigned to such a place, it was like a cat guarding the fish shop. Wandering among the book shelves that exude a familiar cold fragrance, she found a copy of "Marriage Awakening the World".I can't remember what I should do at all.The anti-aircraft guns were installed on the roof, which became the target of the bombing, and the bombs fell with a bang, getting closer and closer.At this time, she was used to it, and she just thought dumbly: at least wait until I finish reading it. After finishing "Awakening Marriage", I carefully smacked through what I had been thinking about reading again but never had the time to read it. While reading it, I was still worried about whether I would have the chance to finish it.The printing is extremely small, and the light is not enough, but when a bomb falls, what do you need your eyes for? After every bombing commotion, her boss always asked her, "Did you write down the time?" And she always replied with a guilty smile: "Oh, I forgot." It's like the teacher who answered the reminder to hand in homework in middle school. He also had no choice but to take her helplessly.Even the alarm clock that kept time had stopped—she had forgotten to wind it. The board and lodging issue in the promise has not been fulfilled. The nanny introduced her to the church to stay overnight, which is equivalent to being taken in, but she is not provided with three meals.But at least she's alive. One day, she was washing socks under the pitifully thin faucet, when a classmate came to her and told her, "Do you know? Professor France is dead." It took a while for her to cry, and the childish face of Professor France appeared in front of her eyes—the kind professor who sponsored her a scholarship of 800 yuan out of her own pocket.This is an open-minded person, thoroughly Chinese, well-written Chinese characters, and has unique insights into history.Childlike flesh red face, porcelain blue eyes, protruding round chin, thinning hair, a piece of faded blue Ning silk as a tie around his neck, loves to drink, and smokes like a chimney in class.Like other Britons, he was drafted into the army.That day, he returned to the barracks after dusk, probably thinking about something, and the sentry fired without hearing the shout of the sentry.Dying at the gunpoint of one's own people is not even "die for the country"... She finally knew what death was, and all relationships were zeroed out, nothingness. She wept, and the mourning had not yet passed when the bombing began again, this time hitting a corner of the church building where she lived.She bounced with the chair, and her heart jumped in her throat with fright—fortunately, there was no danger.