Chapter 10 new style

Lin Yutang's grandmother was a Christian, and his father, Lin Zhicheng, entered a seminary at the age of 24 and later became a Christian pastor. Lin Yutang's brothers grew up with short hair instead of braids.Lin Zhicheng and his wife often invite farmers and woodcutters to their home for tea or lunch.This view of equality left a deep impression on Lin Yutang. In the future, Lin Yutang would also make friends with the little bum and invite him to his home as a guest. There are two paintings hanging in Lin’s house, one of them is a colorful stone-printed portrait of Emperor Guangxu because his father is enthusiastic about Western learning and reform; his mother likes a portrait of a foreign girl with a smile on her face, holding a worn-out straw hat in both hands , which contains a few freshly picked eggs.

During the summer vacation, Lin Yutang’s father taught the children at home. After breakfast, he would ring the bell to teach them to read the Four Books and Five Classics, Enlightenment of the Rhythm, and Children’s Learning Qionglin.His father also encouraged them to read books translated by Lin Qinnan, such as "Sherlock Holmes", "Arabian Nights", etc. Once, the sister-in-law was washing clothes in the yard, and Xiao Lin Yutang was about to tease her, so he secretly removed the stool when she got up to get the clothes.At that time, the sister-in-law was pregnant, and the whole family was terrified. They sent her to the hospital immediately, and the mother and daughter were safe.In the future, Lin Yutang was very concerned about his sister-in-law and niece, and donated the copyright of "Cosmic Wind" to his sister-in-law. When his niece's home was robbed, he found out that he sent her money from the United States.

When he was in elementary school, before an exam, Lin Yutang sneaked into the teacher's room and peeked at the exam paper.When the teacher corrected the test papers, he found that every student got high marks. He knew that someone must have tampered with them and interrogated them one by one, but Lin Yutang was not suspected.He never imagined that Lin Yutang, who has always been smart, studious and excellent in grades, was the one who leaked the problem. When he was 8 years old, the teacher commented on Lin Yutang's composition as "like a giant python walking a path", criticizing him for expressing clumsily.

When he was a child, Lin Yutang was once shut out of the house by adults. He simply went wild, picked up a stone and threw it in through the window, shouting: "You don't let He Le in, the stone comes in for He Le!" Once again, After he had a dispute with his second sister, he lay down on the muddy floor, then got up and said to the second sister who was in charge of washing the clothes for the whole family, "Now you have to do my laundry." Around 1908, under the organization of a failed Confucian scholar, some villagers who were hostile to Christianity raised donations to build a Buddhist temple on the street of the church where the Lin family lived.One Sunday, after the church bell rang, there was a rumbling drum from the temple, and the Lin family's children responded by ringing the bell.

Lin Yutang grew up under the influence of Christianity. He recalled: "We brothers and sisters are not allowed to quarrel. In fact, we have never quarreled. The reason is: everyone should be 'friendly and kind'." Lin went to St. John's University to study Before, he always smiled when he saw people. After arriving in St. John, he resolutely got rid of this habit, and persuaded his younger brother to get rid of it too. Father Lin was very interested in Western learning, and his friend Pastor Fan Liwen often sent him many books on this subject. Lin Yutang recalled: "This is how Western learning came to my house." Father Lin always carried an oil lamp at night and smoked dry tobacco. Tell the children how good Oxford University is, and the University of Berlin is the best university in the world. The pastor, who only earns 24 yuan a month, hopes that his children can study there. Lin said that his father is having a "crazy dream" ".

When he was still in elementary school, his father encouraged Lin Yutang to speak English, as long as he knew how to speak a few words.Lin Yutang's elementary school, middle school, and university were all spent in church schools.Influenced by two female teachers, he liked English very much. He once told his father that he wanted to be an English teacher when he grew up, followed by a physics teacher. Because he was educated by the church since he was a child, Lin Yutang had no chance to get in touch with Chinese culture. Lin didn't know Chinese folklore since he was a child. Even watching Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai's operas was a sin.Lin Yutang said that before he was 20 years old, he knew the story of General Joshua blowing down the city of Jericho in the ancient Jewish state, but he did not know the story of Meng Jiangnu crying down the Great Wall in ancient China until he was in his thirties. He said that this is what the church middle school owed him a debt.

After Lin Yutang heard the story of Meng Jiangnu crying on the Great Wall, he was very angry: "I was cheated of my national heritage. This is a good thing that Puritan education did to a Chinese child. I am determined to resist and penetrate into the giant current of our national consciousness." In Lin Yutang's view, his secondary education was a waste of time.He is very interested in geography, and he taught himself a 100,000-word geography book, but he only read one and a half pages a week at school, and only 30,000 words a year.He even had a rebellious mentality towards school education: "I don't like any books that the teachers ask me to read." He read a lot of extracurricular books, and his biggest wish is that the school has a good library. When he goes to Harvard to study , finally got his wish.

After graduating from St. John's University, Lin Yutang worked as an English teacher at Tsinghua University. Only then did he deeply feel the lack of knowledge of Chinese studies.So he started to make up lessons from reading, often haunted second-hand bookstores in Liulichang, and came into contact with a large number of classics. Xu recalled that Lin Yutang was as unkind as Goethe in dealing with uninvited guests.When a banquet is held at home, he will be very happy to receive and chat with friends, but usually he doesn't like to chat with friends casually.When he was in the United States, it was always Hu Shi who visited Lin's house. He never visited Hu Shi, and the two never met to have a casual meal and chat outside.

In the 1930s, before Lin Yutang went to the United States, he retired the rented house and sold the furniture in the house.Tao Kangde bought the sofa from Lin's family, and Lin's brothers also bought a few pieces of old furniture.At that time, everyone felt that it was too impersonal for Lin to charge his brother money for a few pieces of old furniture.