Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen When Eileen Chang Met Hu Shi

One day Hu Shi went to see her in the Salvation Army women's dormitory where she lived in the cold weather. Looking at Hu Shi, who was tightly wrapped in a scarf, with his neck tucked into a half-worn black overcoat, with thick shoulders and a large head and face, Zhang Ailing was also stunned. This is her god, her idol, so close to her, so old and dear.In July 1954, Eileen Chang published a Chinese version in Hong Kong, and soon she sent a copy to Hu Shih who was in the United States at the time. The intention was not only to win Hu Shih's favor, but also to use his strength to promote it to the outside world.Therefore, Zhang Ailing also included a short note with the book. This letter was later pasted by Hu Shi in his diary on January 23, 1955, so it was preserved. The original text is as follows: Mr. Shizhi:

Forgive me for writing so presumptuously.A long time ago, I read your "Awakening Marriage" and the textual research, and I was very impressed. Later, I found these two novels and read them. I don’t know how many times I have read them over the years, and I think I have gained a lot of benefits.I hope you will read it again.If you think it is a little bit closer to the realm of "plain and close to nature", then I will be very happy.I have also written an English version of this book, which will be published by Suibueio, and it is about a few months away. I will send it to you for correction when it is printed.

Zhang Ailing's English address in North Point, Hong Kong is also attached to Zhang Ailing's October 25th.This is the first correspondence between Zhang Ailing and Hu Shi.Hu Shi went to the United States by boat from Shanghai on April 6, 1949, and spent nine years in the United States until April 8, 1958, when he returned to Taipei via Tokyo and became the president of Academia Sinica. time.According to Professor Zhou Zhiping of Princeton University, an expert on Hu Shi, in the article "Hu Shi's Dark Years": "During this period, except for occasional meetings and speeches in Taiwan, Hu Shi lived in an apartment at No. 14, East 81st Street, New York. During these nine years, the only relatively formal job with fixed income was the director of the Gestalt Oriental Library at Princeton University from July 1, 1955 to June 30, 1952. job."

Hu Shi was once the father of the Chinese Vernacular Movement, the leader of the New Culture Movement, and the holder of thirty-five honorary doctorates. During the Second World War, he also served as the Chinese ambassador to the United States and gave many speeches throughout the United States. During this period, for him, it was the most depressing, melancholy, tortured and humiliated years in his life. Professor Tang Degang, who once made an oral history for Hu Shi, recalled: It was the early 1950s, and it was also the era when Chinese intellectuals in the Greater New York area felt most suffocated.The prominent figures from the party, government, military, and academic circles who were famous at that time can be seen everywhere on the streets.But their speech and behavior are no longer what they used to be.In mainland China, at that time, the land reform and anti-revolutionaries were in full swing, and the real situation was hard to fathom.At that time, Taiwan was just a small subtropical island full of miasma and snakes and snakes in the imagination of ordinary people - an elusive "Shangri-La" in a misty village beyond the ocean!Just be a refugee and settle in New York!But living in Chang'an is easier said than done!In addition, the law of anti-Chinese was not completely eradicated at that time, and racial discrimination was still alive.Those crowned ministers, disarmed generals, and retired scholars only realized at this time that they were powerless, and that they had no means of making a living in a capitalist society.

Take Mr. Hu Shizhi as an example. When Hu retired in New York, he was still full of energy. He could have used the resources in North America to sort out the history of China.Who knows that he is so talented that he can only work as a Chinese librarian at Princeton University for a short period of time.Because few foreign scholars could take up this position, the author did not take it up to seven years at Columbia University.To ridicule myself, this is a highly respected position in academia.In fact, it is insignificant in the administrative system of the whole university.The scholastic bureaucrats don't take this department seriously at all.Those who let things happen also feel that they are light-hearted and have nothing to say.Who is the author?Living in this position is still unavoidable to sigh while leaning against the door, how about Dr. Hu Shi?Hu Shi, who was once "covered all over the capital", can be said to be "threatened in front of the door" at this time. Therefore, Mr. Xia Zhiqing said in the preface of Tang Degang's "Hu Shi's Miscellaneous Memories": "Before Zhang Ailing went to the United States, she came from Hong Kong. I sent him a copy, and he really read it, and wrote a sincere reply letter. In the same situation, Jiang Gui sent him a copy of "Jianzhu Biography" from Taiwan, and he really read it and wrote a long one. Reply. Hu Shi’s knowledge of Ba Zhang and Jiang is of course a good story in the literary world, and it also proves that he has great insights in reading contemporary novels. But then again, for Hu Shi, these two writers are not well-known; he has time Reading their donated books means that he has no urgent business at hand. Ordinary famous scholars are busy with their writings and have more energy than energy. They have received too many donated books, even if they want to read them, they can’t spare time. What's more, contemporary Chinese novels are not the main object of Hu Shi's research. Hu Shi is very familiar with the novels of the late Qing Dynasty. In his articles, he rarely mentions the novels of the 1920s and 1930s-except for a few short stories-maybe even Mao Dun, Lao She, Ba Jin He has never touched any of the novels."

But Hu Shi read it twice after receiving it, and wrote a long reply letter with his impressions after reading it.Hu Shi said in his supplementary diary on January 23, 1955: In November last year, I received a letter from Ms. Zhang Ailing from Hong Kong with her novel.I read this novel and thought it was very good.After reading it again, I feel that the author has indeed achieved the state of "plain and close to nature".Among the Chinese novels published in recent years, this novel can be regarded as the best.On January 25, I sent her a letter praising the book.I said, "If the result of my advocacy of "Awakening Marriage" and your novel is only produced, I should be very satisfied. Hu Shi did not leave a draft of this letter. Fortunately, this letter was kept in Eileen Chang's In the article "Recalling Hu Shizhi", judging from the letters that Zhang and Hu sent back and forth, their topics revolved around "Awakening the World Marriage" and "plain but close to nature" was Lu Xun's Right evaluation. Lu Xun said: From the end of Guangxu to the beginning of Xuantong, there were especially many novels of this kind in Shanghai, and they were often stopped several times, and they were almost bribed, and they had nothing to seek. However, most of them happen to be Luo Zhi, pretending to be exaggerated words, hoping to shock the world and hear the eyes and ears, but in the end there is no such plain and natural one."

It can be seen that it is the bond connecting the two of them, and its "plain and close to nature" artistic style is also the common interest of the two of them.Since then, Zhang Ailing has spent a lot of time working on the translation of Mandarin and English, which probably originated from this.Zhang Ailing mentioned in the article "Recalling Hu Shizhi" that she read "Hu Shi Wencun" when she was young, sitting at the desk under her father's window.That was her earliest contact with Hu Shi, which was already in the late 1920s.Zhang Ailing also mentioned in the article that her mother Huang Yifan and aunt Zhang Maoyuan once played cards with Hu Shi at the same table.At that time, Zhang Ailing's parents were at odds with each other, and her mother filed for divorce on her own initiative. Her mother and aunt moved out of the house in Baolong Garden and moved to an apartment in the French Concession.At that time, Zhang Ailing and her younger brother were still living with their father in Baolong Garden, so they had no chance to meet Hu Shi.After that, Zhang Ailing's mother went abroad again, and Hu Shi returned to Peking University in November of the same year. ; and the post-war newspapers published a photo of Hu Shi returning home from his post as ambassador to the United States. I don’t remember whether he got off the plane or the ship, smiling like a cat-faced child, wearing a bow tie with a big polka dot, My aunt looked at it and laughed and said: "Hu Shizhi is so young!" Zhang Ailing's admiration for Hu Shi also came from the May Fourth Movement. She said: I have repeatedly found that when foreigners do not understand modern China, it is often because they do not know the May Fourth Movement. The effect of exercise.Because the May 4th Movement is internal, external is limited to imports.I think not only our generation and the previous generation, but also the next generation on the mainland, although many young people don’t know what they are opposing when they oppose Hu Shi. Experiences like "May Fourth" cannot be forgotten, no matter how long they are buried, they are still in the background of thought.Jung is as famous as Freud.It is unavoidable to think of Freud's study that Moses was killed by the Israelites.Afterwards, they confessed to themselves that after a long time, they still believed in him the other way around.Eileen Chang, a writer who also grew up with the milk of the May Fourth Movement, here also acknowledges the influence of Hu Shih, the leader of the May Fourth New Culture, for criticizing Hu Shih from the mainland in the mid-1950s and Taiwan’s criticism of Hu Shih and others during the "Free China" period. Confused, Zhang Ailing cleverly used Freud's relationship between Moses and Israel to imply that Hu Shi's contribution will be recognized in the future.This foresight of "understanding sympathetically" remained unchanged until mid-October 1961, during her only trip to Taiwan, where she talked with writer Wang Zhenhe: "Modern China and the shadow of Hu Shizhi are Inseparable." Her admiration for Hu Shi can be seen from this.

Therefore, in November 1955, not long after she arrived in New York, Zhang Ailing and Yan Ying went to see Hu Shi who was also in New York.Zhang Ailing described the scene at that time in "Recalling Hu Shizhi"-a row of white cement cube houses on that street, with stairs in the door openings, completely Hong Kong-style apartment houses, basking in the sun that afternoon, I was a little dazed , as if still in Hong Kong.When I went upstairs, the interior furnishings also looked very familiar.Mr. Shizhi is wearing a long robe.His wife has an Anhui accent, which sounds more familiar to me.On her round and handsome face, she could see her appearance back then, standing on the ground with her hands clasped, her attitude was a bit jerky.I thought that she might always be Mr. Suzuki's student in some way, and I immediately thought of what I had read about them being a rare example of happiness in old-fashioned marriages.And Hu Shi wrote in his diary on November 10: "Called on Miss Eileen Chang, Zhang Ailing, auther of . I knew she was the granddaughter of Fengrun Zhang Youqiao. Zhang Youqiao (Pei Lun) lived in the seventh year of Guangxu (1881) Write a book to introduce my late father (Hu Chuan, courtesy name Tiehua) to see Wu Minzhai (Dacheng). This is the beginning of my late father's later career. When Youqiao was relegated, the diary recorded that my late father sent letters and two hundred taels of silver Youqiao seemed very moved, so the diary special book "Jianyu Diary" has a lithograph. Youqiao's posthumous collection actually included this letter introducing an old scholar. I saw it before. It can be seen that he was also at that time. It is not easy to write this letter."

It can be seen that after Zhang Ailing left, Hu Shi carefully checked the information and found out that Zhang Ailing's grandfather had helped his father Hu Tiehua, and Hu Tiehua also knew the favor when Zhang Ailing's grandfather was relegated to Zhangjiakou in 1884. He sent a letter to the newspaper and helped him.With this layer of relationship, Hu Shi, who was originally willing to support and support the backward. From the collection of letters between Hu Shi and Yang Liansheng, we found that in the 1950s, in order to assist the historian Lao Gan to visit and study in the United States, Hu Shi wrote back and forth with Yang Liansheng many times, and tried his best to raise funds for him. He was even more concerned about Zhang Ailing. .

Later, Zhang Ailing went to see Hu Shi alone again, and had a long conversation with him in Hu Shi's study.There is an entire wall in the study room full of bookshelves, which are as high as the ceiling. They seem to be custom-made, but there are not many books on them. They are all stacks of folders, most of which are messy and reveal a piece of paper. For the material of "Shui Jing Zhu", Zhang Ailing said that she felt palpitations when she saw it.The topic started with reading. Hu Shi asked her if it was convenient to read in New York, and said, "If you want to read, you can go to the Columbia Library. There are many books there." The habit of reading in large libraries.This kind of answer is actually a polite rejection of Hu Shi’s suggestion. In Hu Shi’s opinion, a large library has a rich collection of books that can be searched up and down, and it is a treasure house for learning; while Zhang Ailing’s idea is that a small library collects popular publications, which may be closer to She created the subject matter of ordinary people's life.

On Thanksgiving, Hu Shi was worried that Eileen Chang would be alone, so he called Eileen Eileen and asked her to eat at a Chinese restaurant, but Eileen Eileen suffered from the cold and vomited because of shopping with Yanying, so he had to decline Hu Shi's invitation. What moved Eileen Chang the most was that one day Hu Shi went to see her in the women's dormitory of the Salvation Army where she lived in the cold weather.Zhang Ailing invited him to sit in a public living room, which was dark and as big as a school auditorium.Zhang Ailing smiled helplessly and apologized to Hu Shi.But Hu Shi was very self-restraining, and praised this place.Later, when Hu Shi was about to leave, she sent Hu Shi outside the gate, and the two stood on the steps talking, the cold wind was blowing from a distance, Hu Shi stared at the empty gray river surface at the corner of the street, there was fog on the river, and he was stunned.Looking at Hu Shi, who was tightly wrapped in a scarf, with his neck tucked into a half-worn black overcoat, with thick shoulders and a large head and face, Zhang Ailing was also stunned.This is her god, her idol, so close to her, so old and dear.Zhang Ailing said: I also looked up to the river and smiled, but it seemed that there was a sad wind blowing out from the depths of the times thousands of miles away, so that I couldn't open my eyes.That was the last time I saw Mr. Shizhi.Later, Zhang Ailing moved to New England in the northeast of the United States, and broke news with Hu Shi.In 1958, Eileen Chang applied to live at the Huntington Hartford Foundation in Southern California for half a year. It was an art workshop run by descendants of A&P supermarkets. Eileen Chang asked Hu Shi to be her guarantor, and Hu Shi agreed. and sent back to her the book Zhang Ailing gave him three or four years ago.Zhang Ailing said that the book had been punctuated by Hu Shi throughout, and then inscribed on the title page.Eileen Chang's mood at the time was "I was so shocked when I saw it, I was so grateful that I couldn't speak, and I couldn't even write."So she wrote a text message to say thank you.On April 8 of the same year, Hu Shi returned to Taipei via Tokyo. On February 24, 1962, Hu Shi died suddenly of a heart attack at the welcome reception of the new academicians of the Academia Sinica, at the age of 72.Eileen Chang said: ... When I saw the bad news, I was at a loss.Is it because they are already historical figures?I just thought at the time that I was really blessed to die suddenly after giving a speech at a banquet, which is what used to be called an undisturbed death.It is also appropriate to take him as a human being.Eileen Chang was always indifferent to death, so her mourning for Hu Shi was also different from ordinary people.What is unexpected is that thirty-three years later, she quietly bid farewell to the world in a way different from ordinary people, leaving a "desolate" gesture.In Zhang Ailing's letter to Hu Shi, she mentioned that because she had read his "Marriage Awakening the World" and his textual research, she found these two novels to read, "I have read them many times over the years, and I think I have gained a lot of benefits. He also said: "Awakening Marriage" and one written thickly and the other lightly written, but they are also the best realistic works. I often complain about them, and I always feel that they are world famous works. Although they are not without flaws, It’s not a flaw like it’s not finished or it’s not started. Although the nature of the flaws is different, it’s not a complete work anyway. I’ve always had a wish to translate "Marriage to Awaken the World" into English in the future. The tone of the dialogue is very Difficult to translate, but not absolutely impossible to translate." We know that in the middle of the 1920s, Han Bangqing’s (Ziyun’s) research sparked a small upsurge. At that time, a series of valuable and in-depth articles in terms of historical materials and criticism appeared, such as Sun Jiazhen’s "Notes on Tui Xing Lu" The "Biography of Shanghai Flowers", Dian Gong's "Lazy Nest Essays", the section "Narrow and Evil Novels of Qing Dynasty" in Lu Xun, Liu Bannong's "Reading Shanghai Flowers" and Hu Shi's "Shanghai Flowers". Two articles are included in a book published by Yadong Edition. Hu Shi praised it as "the first masterpiece of Wu language literature" in the article, and later Zhang Ailing even said it was "the first masterpiece of dialect literature".Although Hu Shi did not comment positively on the author's writing skills, he still affirmed the author's self-consciousness and bold attempt. He said: "The characters in this book have their own stories, which have nothing to do with each other. They cannot be shared together. The author had to take great pains to connect and fold many stories together, so that these stories could be published at the same time. The story of the mastermind is the history of Zhao Puzhai brothers and sisters, from Zhao Puzhai's fall to Zhao Erbao's dream. The story of Luo Zifu and Huang Cuifeng is inserted Stories, the stories of Wang Liansheng and Zhang Huizhen, Shen Xiaohong, the stories of Tao Yufu and Li Shufang, Li Huanfang, the stories of Zhu Shuren and Zhou Shuangyu, and countless other small stories. The author does not want to finish one story first and then tell the second one like scholars , so he switched to the method of 'interspersed, concealed and dodged', 'a wave is not flat, and another wave rises'; And Zhang Ailing even pointed out: "In fact, it is the most typical old novel developed to the extreme. The author's most conceited structure is common to Western novels. It is characterized by extreme economy. It reads like a script, with only dialogue and a small amount of action. Darkly. Writing and sketching are all understatement without leaving any traces, weaving into the texture of ordinary people's life, rough and dusty, and many things 'we didn't realize it at the time'. Therefore, although the subject matter is a Shanghai prostitute 80 years ago, there is no The sense of beauty and strangeness is the most vivid in everyday life among the books I have read." It can be said that Zhang Ailing's translation and annotation of the pair was achieved because of Hu Shi's advice.In addition to translating all the dialogues in Wu dialect in the book into Mandarin, Eileen Chang also translated them into English. Although only the first two chapters survive today, they are published in Renditions published by the Translation Research Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the rest are lost. .You can see the depth of its force.In addition, she also removed the "rotten" parts of the original book and repaired them again to become a compact 60 chapters. The original book is 64 chapters.This has imitated the "cut in half" of the talented Jin Shengtan in the past to seventy chapters.As for Han Bangqing's most conceited method of "interspersed and concealed", Zhang Ailing specially noted it after appreciating and comprehending it, just like Jin Shengtan's criticism, Zhang Zhupo's criticism, and Zhi Yanzhai's criticism.Zhang Ailing's unique and subtle choices continue the tradition of commenting on novels in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, consciously or unconsciously. In the 1970s, Eileen Chang's desire to write had dropped sharply, and she returned to classical novels and novels.When she and Hu Shi met, they had a common topic about late Qing novels, but they were different after careful study, because Zhang Ailing always regarded her translation as another form of re-creation; and it was also different from Hu Shi's "Cao Xue" According to textual research, she used her creative experience to discuss the formation and rewriting of texts, forming her unique cognition of the text.The two of them have a "spark of intersection" in thought, but they are self-contained after all!Zhang Ailing started reading at the age of eight, and then read it every three or four years without interruption.She has become so familiar with "different books don't need to pay attention to them, the words that are slightly unfamiliar will pop out."When she was young, she was incapable of distinguishing the authenticity of the sequel. After reading a textual research in "Hu Shi Wencun", she found out that there was an "old authentic version". For the couple, "It was shocking to see it, and the clouds hang down from the sea, and I will never forget it." So she "sleep in the red building once every ten years", not just ten years, it should be thirty years! We know that the study of Hongxue started from the so-called "Suoyin school", and in 1921 Hu Shi's textual research school opened the era of new Hongxue.Although Zhang Ailing respected Hu Shi like a god, she opposed Hu Shi's "self-legendary".Based on her own experience in creating novels, she believes that although there are places where "details are applied to facts", it is basically a fictional literary work, so it is necessary to return to the literary level to study its different versions and rewriting, so as to see that Cao Xueqin How to deal with the plot structure, characterization, etc., it should be an exploration of literature and text, not history and the textual research of the Cao family. Eileen Chang's motives for changing and rewriting plots, the order of time, and the timing of her comments have all been detailed and meticulously researched, and these texts have infiltrated Eileen Chang's experience in writing novels for many years, so some imaginative play is bold and unrestrained. It conforms to Hu Shi's principle of "bold assumption, careful verification". So we saw Zhang Ailing leading a group of red fans, following her to follow Cao Xueqin's "reviews" and "additions and deletions" in Mourning Hongxuan for 20 years, it was so joyful, so excited and joyful!Let Zhang Ailing finish another "creation" related to her passion!