Chapter 53 Difficulty

When Shen Congwen first arrived in Beijing, he only had seven yuan or sixty cents in his pocket. In the next two and a half years, he had almost no source of income, and could only rely on his cousins, friends, and fellow villagers to help him.He once borrowed kerosene on credit and money from an old kerosene seller in Hanyuan Apartment. In the 1930s, once, when he went near the beach, he accidentally saw "Shen Congwen owes XX yuan" on the credit card of the small restaurant they frequented back then.Someone asked him if the money was returned later, he smiled and replied of course not.

In the winter of 1923, Shen Congwen lived in a damp and moldy small pavilion in the Youxi Guild Hall in Hunan.When it snows heavily in winter, there is no stove in the house. I wear two jackets, wrap my legs with old cotton wool, my hands are swollen from the cold, and my nose bleeds, but I insist on writing novels. On a cold winter day in 1924, a thin man in his 30s stood at the door and asked, "Excuse me, where does Mr. Shen Congwen live?" Shen replied, "I am." The visitor said, "Oh, you are Shen Congwen. ...You are so young. I am Yu Dafu, I have read your article, and I will write it down carefully..." Yu Qingshen went to the big kitchen of the apartment to have a meal. The dishes included sliced ​​mutton fried with green onions. At the checkout, the total was about one yuan After dinner, the two returned to Shen's residence and talked for a while.When Yu Dafu left, he left his light gray woolen scarf and the change of more than three yuan from the meal to Shen, and Shen Congwen leaned over the table and began to cry.

After living in the Youxi Guild Hall for half a year, his cousin Huang Cunsheng, who was studying at Beijing Agricultural University, found a small room converted from a coal storage room for Shen Congwen in an apartment in Yinzha Hutong. With a small window, only a small writing desk and a small bed can be placed in the room. Shen called it "narrow and moldy small room".He often worries about not being able to "digest and digest" something.When he later recalled his life during this period, he said: "First, in a damp and moldy room in a small apartment, in the cold air of minus 12 degrees Celsius, I learned how to survive the winter without a stove. Then I didn't eat for three or two days. Learn the ability to endure hunger in an empty stomach. Next is to learn the reading ability to go to the library to explore by yourself from the hunger and cold, hopeless and helpless situation. Next is to start with a pen, write down day and night, and write down Send all the works to newspapers and magazines, and learn the resistance and adaptability to work failure while waiting for no results."

In 1925, Shen Congwen received his first draft fee - seventy cents. He was very happy and felt that there was finally a way out, but in fact he still couldn't support himself.When he really felt that he couldn't support it, Shen wavered.Several times, he met Feng Jun recruiting new recruits. A platoon leader was walking on the street holding a recruiting banner, followed by a few emaciated unemployed vagrants, and Shen followed suit.But when he walked to Luomashi Street and wanted to press his fingerprints, he still got cold feet. Shen Congwen couldn't afford books, so he could only go to the bookstall with the cheek to read.As soon as he hears that there are any good books, no matter how far the road is, he will immediately run to the bookstall, pretend to buy books, and chat with the book seller.After getting acquainted with people, he sat on the small stool next to him and didn't leave until he finished the book.Ling Yu, the author of Shen Congwen's biography, said: "This is all due to the life experience Shen Congwen gained in the army when he was a teenager."

At the end of the 1920s, Shen Congwen began to emerge in the literary world, but he still worried about his livelihood: the whole family had to spend nearly 100 yuan a month, his mother's lung disease gradually worsened, and his younger sister had to spend money to go to school.Shen was advertised as a "genius" by major bookstores, but he could only get paid about 100 yuan for a novel of about 100,000 words.When he was in dire straits, Shen went to ask the bookstore to advance him tens of yuan in manuscript fees, but he was always refused.He didn't know how to compete with others for profit, so he could only sit in front of the bookstore for a long time, and when night fell, he still couldn't get a dime.The only way is to sit in a small room and keep writing.His body is very weak, and he often suffers from uncontrollable headaches at both ends of the day, nosebleeds constantly, and blood is everywhere on the corners of his mouth, chin, clothes, manuscript paper, and even towels.Once, Chen Wanfu and his wife, who were studying at Fudan University, went to visit him. When they opened the door and saw what happened, Mrs. Chen was so frightened that she fainted immediately.

When Shen Congwen was teaching at Qingdao University, his monthly salary was 100 yuan, which was enough for him and Jiumei to live on.But every time they got the money, the two would go to restaurants and watch movies, and the money was quickly exhausted, often leaving them without food money for the second half of the month. Once, when Yang Zhensheng's servant was helping Shen Congwen wash his clothes, he found a crumbled pawn ticket.It turned out that Shen Congwen had pawned one of Zhang Zhaohe's commemorative rings.Yang Zhensheng knew that he was poor, so he paid him fifty yuan in advance, and said with a smile: "Everyone gives rings to young ladies when they get engaged. There is no reason why they should be rings for young ladies before they get married."

In 1946, after Wang Zengqi arrived in Shanghai, he couldn't find a suitable job for a while, and his mood was so pessimistic that he even had the urge to commit suicide.After Shen Congwen found out, he changed his usual peace and wrote a letter to scold Wang: "For a temporary difficulty, you just cry and cry like this, and even think of committing suicide. It's really useless! You have a pen in your hand, what are you afraid of!" The letter mentioned his arrival in Beijing at the beginning of the year to encourage Wang Zengqi who was in trouble. After returning to Beijing after the Anti-Japanese War, Shen Congwen once sent a manuscript to Zhou Dingyi.It was freezing cold, and he was wearing a large fox fur robe, a pair of big felt wool nests on his feet, and a fur hat on his head.Zhou opened the door and saw that he was dressed like Santa Claus (except that he didn't have a beard), and he couldn't help being taken aback.Shen smiled innocently like a child and said, "Buying this old fox fur robe is much cheaper than making a new one. It saves time and labor, haha!"

After liberation, Shen Congwen, who worked in the History Museum, was allocated three dormitories. Without a bed, Shen used five bookcases of different sizes, three kerosene barrels, more than ten letters of old books, and a bed that was one and a half feet wide and seven and a half feet long. The bed board and three two-foot-square bookcase boards were put together to form a bed. When a person slept on it and turned over, the kerosene barrel would clank.When the two sons came back at the weekend, the father and son gave in to each other like "Kong Rong let pears", one of them slept on the bed, and the other two made a floor bunk on the ground to deal with it.

In the Hubei Cadre School, Shen Congwen moved several times, and later moved to an elementary school. Shen described this place like this: "The ground grows green hair and white hair for half an inch in about half a year. In hot summer, the temperature can reach 45 degrees. When it rains, it leaks from top to bottom. Fortunately, plastic was invented earlier, so the top table and boxes were all covered with plastic, and I walked around the room with an umbrella. After scooping up 45 large basins of water at a time, the ground can also raise frogs. My friend helped me About 70 or 80 bricks were brought in to build a walkway, which can lead freely from the bedside to the table, and the other end can reach outside the door..." There is an agency for distributing coffins across the road from the elementary school. Said: "In case of sudden death, it would be convenient to get a coffin."

Shen Congwen was very frugal. He always wore a faded blue cloth gown. After liberation, he often wore blue khaki or polyester cadre uniforms and black corduroy "loafers".When he was in Kunming, Wang Zengqi went to visit him, and always went to the rice noodle shop opposite to eat a bowl of rice noodles that cost 13 cents.Sometimes add a tomato, beat an egg, no more than twenty-five cents.When I lived in Xiaoyang Yibin Hu, what I often ate was fried Sichuan cabbage and fried mushrooms.Shen Congwen loves to eat mushrooms, and said: "This is good, it is higher than potatoes."

Huang Yongyu recalled: "For decades, he (Shen Congwen) has never taken the initiative to go to a restaurant to eat a meal - when Xu Zhimo and Lu Xiaoman got married, it counted once, when Yu Dafu asked him to eat a meal, it counted once, and the other time was when he married himself .I haven't heard much recollection of it. Those days are actually half a century ago."