Chapter 124 ill-fated

After the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident", Chen Yinke's 85-year-old father, Chen Sanli, was seriously ill. When someone said that China was not an opponent of the Japanese, and would abandon Pingjin and perish throughout the country, Sanli opened his eyes wide on the sickbed, and said angrily: " How can the Chinese be as good as a dog, and will eventually be slaughtered?" After speaking, he stopped taking medicine and food, and wanted to die to show his ambition.After the fall of Pingjin, the old man said in grief and indignation: "Why is the sky so evil to China!" He passed away in September.Faced with the peril of the country and the grief of his father's death, Chen Yinke was in a hurry, resulting in a retinal detachment in his right eye. The doctor ordered him to be admitted to the hospital for surgery without delay.Chen Yinke was planning to leave Beijing and go south, so he hesitated.Chen Yinke's daughter Liuqiu recalled: "I remember that night after my grandfather's deceased relatives and friends left, my father was still reclining on the rattan recliner in the corridor for a long time, with a serious expression, without saying a word." She also said: "Considering the surgical treatment at that time, Although there is hope for the recovery of vision in the right eye, it will take a long time. More importantly, my father would never teach in the enemy-occupied areas. He temporarily gave up the treatment of eye diseases and left Peiping.However, as everyone knows, the treatment was delayed, leading to blindness in the end.

In November 1937, Chen Yinke's family embarked on a flight to Changsha.At that time, the Japanese set up checkpoints everywhere, and the investigation was extremely strict.Gao Chongxi, an old professor from Tsinghua University, escaped from Beiping. When he got off the train at Tianjin Railway Station, the Japanese and puppet soldiers found out his identity.Chen Yinke pretended to be a businessman, and asked the children to memorize the addresses and names of people along the route and destination, so as not to get lost.There were so many people at the train station that the doors were blocked, so Chen Yinke's family could only be dragged into the carriage through the window.From Beiping to Changsha, more than 5,000 miles, Chen Yinke's family walked for 18 days.

When Chen Yinke and his family first arrived in Hong Kong, his wife Tang Yuan had a heart attack due to overwork from the journey, and his third daughter Meiyan suffered from whooping cough, high fever, and persistent coughing. I took a house to stay temporarily.According to Liuqiu’s recollection, on the New Year’s Eve that year, at the dining table under the dim light, Tang Yuan quietly told his daughter: “Mama Wang (the nanny of the Chen family) has been traveling with us for half a year. Eat a few pieces of meat."It means to let the daughters who are not yet sensible try to let Mama Wang eat more.Mother Wang heard it from the side, and she was moved to tears.

Before Chen Yinke went to the Southwest Associated University, he put some manuscripts, rubbings, photos, ancient oriental books, and many volumes of "Mongolian Origin and Flow Notes", "Five Dynasties History Notes" and some other documents in a box. The suitcase was handed over to the railway department for consignment-this is the precious wealth that he has condensed through decades of hard work and regards his life.When the goods were consigned to Mengzi, there were only bricks in the suitcase.Facing this scene, Chen Yinke passed out.Later, according to my colleague's analysis, during the consignment, the contents of the box were stolen by someone, and then they were easily loaded into the box and refilled.After half a year of homelessness, facing this blow, Chen Yinke couldn't afford to fall ill.However, misfortunes never come singly. The books mailed by Beiping before arrived in Changsha one after another after Chen Yinke's family left and were temporarily collected by a relative. In November 1938, the national army set fire to the city in order to implement the strategy of strengthening the walls and clearing the country. Chen Yinke's books were also reduced to ashes in the fire.

When he first arrived at the United Nations General Assembly, Chen Yinke wrote a letter to Lao Gan and Chen Yu, saying in the letter: "All the masterpieces have been received, and please read them carefully before returning them.... The General Assembly paid for the freight of the book box, and did not want to take the books out. The box has not yet been opened, so there is no book to read at the United Nations University. This matter can only be resolved after Mr. Meng Zhen comes to Yunnan. The research institute has no books, so it is impossible to work. My brother has also drafted two short essays recently, but there is no book to read Check, it can be called "fabrication". Fortunately, there are works today, but they can't be published. It can be said that the country will be destroyed for a period of time and history will last forever. The overall situation is so sad and indignant. Recover in a hurry." Many years later, Jiang Tianshu, a disciple of Chen Yinke, was in the When this letter was recorded in "Mr. Chen Yinke's Chronicles", it was noted: "Borrowing to see Mr. Chen's feelings at that time. Anyone who reads the above-recorded letter will also know the depth of Mr.'s indignation that day?"

In the spring of 1939, Chen Yinke was awarded the title of researcher by the Royal Society, and received a letter of appointment as a professor of Sinology at Oxford University, inviting him to give lectures on Sinology in Oxford.This is the first time that Oxford University has hired a Chinese scholar as a full-time professor since its founding more than 300 years ago.Chen Yinke had twice declined his thanks, but considering that eye diseases could be treated in England, he agreed.At that time, Chen Yinke was going to Hong Kong to go to England. Sinologists from all over Europe heard that Chen Yinke was about to go to England, and they all gathered in the city of Augsburg, waiting for Chen Yinke.After receiving the news, Chen Hengzhe said: "Except for a very few sinologists in Europe and the United States, there are very few who can understand Mr. Yin Ke's lectures. However, Yin Gong accepted the Oxford Special The honorary appointment of the lecture can at least enable Europe and the United States to understand how deep Sinology is, and it will also greatly benefit the world's academic circles." However, not long after Chen Yinke arrived in Hong Kong, the war of World War II burned to Europe, and the Mediterranean Sea was not navigable.Chen Yinke had no choice but to prepare to return to Kunming. This time, Chen Yinke once again delayed the treatment of eye diseases, which eventually led to blindness.At that time, he said helplessly in a letter to Fu Sinian: "God's will, human affairs, family worries, and national crises are all like this. It's really depressing and irresponsible. I don't know why brother taught me?" But what Chen Yinke didn't expect was the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident. , so that he was trapped in Hong Kong and almost died in a foreign land.

Chen Yinke has been in poor health. He said in a letter to Fu Sinian on August 30, 1942: "By nature, I have to sleep and eat well (my brother suffers from indigestion, and it is difficult to be able to digest). Wealthy and happy, we can’t write poetry. Occasionally in our life, we can sleep well and have enough food, so we can occasionally write. But there is never a day when we are both rich and happy, so we can’t write poetry well. The ancients said that poetry is poor and then work, this spirit It is better than the theory of material things, and those who have ambitions but have not caught it."

After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Yinke finally had to go to England for medical treatment, but the two operations had no obvious effect.At that time, Chen Yinke was still holding on to the last hope, and sent the doctor's medical certificate from England to Hu Shi, who was in the United States at the time, to ask for help.Hu Tuo sent the medical certificate to the Columbia Institute of Ophthalmology for consultation, and the other party told him that there was no good solution, and he could not operate. Hu Shi felt "very sad", so he had to ask someone to bring a thousand dollars to Chen as a show of care. On April 16, 1946, Hu Shi wrote in his diary: "Yinke has a strong heritage, is very careful in reading, and has excellent workmanship. He is a major town in the history circle of our country. Now both eyes are abolished. It is a great loss for the academic circle. .”

In 1957, when the Anti-Rightist Campaign began, Chen Yinke had no choice but to "smuggle in", and Zhang Shizhao took his research results abroad for publication. On June 10, 1962, the 73-year-old blind Chen Yinke accidentally slipped and fell into the tub while taking a bath, and broke the femoral neck of his right leg. , unconscious for three days.The doctor considered that he was too old, and his physique would be unbearable for surgery. With the consent of his family and the approval of Chen Yinke, who woke up, he adopted conservative physical therapy, but the effect was not good, and the amputated limb never recovered.

Chen Yinke, who was blind and lame, lost his ability to move. He lay on the bed all day, or was carried to a wooden chair to sit quietly. In the spring of 1963, Zeng Zhaoyu, the director of Nanjing Museum, went to Guangzhou on a business trip and visited Chen Yinke on the campus of CUHK.Faced with the visit of the old man, Chen Yinke wrote a poem in his sorrow that day: "The sea of ​​clouds is full of snow and snow, and it is sad to meet you again." There are sentences such as "Confidence that there are only a few days in this life, and I don't know what year it will be. Luofu's dream is broken by Dongpo's old age, and there are plum blossoms for the Shangyuan" and other sentences, foreseeing that he is about to die, and he will die soon. At the same time, he expresses his sadness and inner feelings for the current situation. the sadness.

After completing "Liu Rushi's Biography", Chen Yinke exhausted all his remaining energy and began to write "A Dream of Hanliutang", which narrates his family traditions of the three generations and his own past, as a final farewell to this world.However, with the outbreak of the "Cultural Revolution", this wish turned out to be a song of broken dreams. In the last 20 years of Chen Yinke's life, Sun Yat-sen University did not take the initiative to arrange for young students to study with him. His assistant Huang Xuan was hired by him privately, but was eventually expelled.He sighed and said, "Even if there are poem manuscripts collected in famous mountains, so what if it's rare to pass them on?" After Chen Yinke's death, no one dared to write elegiac couplets and inscriptions for him who died in loneliness.Only Zhao Yuan, who was overseas, received the sad news and wrote a mourning article in English.