Chapter 2 1. When I was young

From the outside, my life was unremarkable, extremely ordinary, and extremely uninteresting.I was born a boy--which is the important thing--in 1895.After graduating from elementary school, I transferred to middle school. After finishing middle school, I re-entered Shanghai St. John's University. After graduation, I went to Beijing to work as an English teacher at Tsinghua University.Afterwards I got married and went to the United States to study at Harvard University for a year (1919), and then went to Germany to study at the Universities of Innay and Leipzig.After returning to China, he only served as a professor at National Peking University for a period of three years (1923-26).Tired of being a coach, I went to Wuhan to serve in the national government, which was moved by Mrs. Chen Youren.When I was tired of being an official, and seeing through revolutionary comedies, I "graduated" again and became a writer—this was partly due to personal preference and partly due to personal needs.Since then, I have devoted myself entirely to my writing career.Nothing in the world is less interesting than this.In my writing life, I won't be expelled from school, and I won't have disputes with the police, but I just fell in love once.

Of all the sensibilities that have made me who I am today, those I experienced as a child and in my family are the greatest.My ideas about life, literature, and the common people were most deeply affected during this period.All in all, apart from a healthy body and sensitive senses, what a person needs when starting out in life is a happy childhood—a family full of love and a beautiful natural environment are enough.Growing up under these conditions, no one goes wrong.When I was a child, my residence was close to nature, with mountains, water, and farm life.Because I'm a farmer's son, and I pride myself on it.This close contact with nature makes my thoughts and hobbies very simple.This, I regard as extremely important, allows me to establish a detached point of view of being in the world, and not to become a political, literary, academic, and other kinds of liars.Throughout my life, until today, all kinds of images of the green hills I used to see and the riverside where I used to pick up stones when I was a child are still lingering in my mind.They make me laugh at the swindlers of civilized, literary, and academic life.This experience of being close to nature in my childhood is enough to be the most powerful backing for my knowledge and morals throughout my life; when compared with the hypocrisy and snobbery of human feelings in society, it is enough to make me despise it.If I have some sound concepts and simple thoughts, it is entirely due to the beautiful mountains of Banzai in southern Fujian, because I believe that I still view life with the eyes of a simple farmer.Those green hills, if nothing else, at least kept me out of politics, and that was no small feat.When I lived on the top of Lushan Mountain last summer, I saw in my fantasy two small animals down the mountain, as big as ants and bedbugs, hating each other, falling for each other, and each plotting poisonous schemes to fight for the opportunity to "serve the country". Overjoyed.If I can love truth and beauty, it is because I love those green hills.If I can smile at the helplessness, dependence, and dishonesty of the general gentry in society, it is because of those green hills.If I can snicker at the folly of high office and the clumsiness of academic discussion, it's because of those green hills.If I feel that I can believe in the beauty and simplicity of rural life with my ancestors, and if I have an instinctive response from reading Chinese poetry, and if I hate all forms of liars, and believe in simple life and noble Thoughts are always because of those green hills.

A small child needs family love, and I have plenty of it.I was a very naughty boy; perhaps it is for this reason that my parents love me very much.I know a father's love, a mother's love, a brother's love, and a sister's love.There is a small incident in my life, the impression of which is always engraved in my memory, that is, my late second sister's leaving the court.She is five years older than me, so when I was thirteen and studying in middle school, she was about eighteen years old, as beautiful as a peach, and as happy as a bird.She and I often make up stories together—in fact, we collaborate on a novel—and make up and tell my mother.This novel tells the story of a pair of lovers in a foreign country who were murdered by the enemy and hunted down by detectives in Paris, France. ——This is the information she got from reading Lin Shu's translation of Dumas's masterpiece.At that time she was about to marry a country gentleman, which was against her private wish, because she really wanted to go to college, and my father thought that he had too many sons, so his wish could not be fulfilled.The brother-in-law's home is in a village on the bank of Xixi River, just on my way to Xiamen to go to school.Every time I go from my village to Xiamen to go to school, I have to sail on the river for three days. The scenery along the way is picturesque and full of poetry.Now with steamboats, it only takes three hours.But I have never regretted the multi-day journey, because the voyage on the Xixi civilian ship once a year or half a year is still my most spiritual possession today.At that time our family went to the groom's village, and from there I went straight to school.We are a poor family. The second sister gave me 40 cents on the day of her marriage. She said to me with a teary smile, "We are poor, and my sister can't give you more. You should study hard, because you must become famous." ...I'm a daughter and can't go to college. When you come home from school, come and see me here." Unfortunately she died about ten months after her marriage.

Those were the tears I shed in my childhood.Those moments of bliss and sorrow, or just a moment of joy in admiring the beauty of a beautiful day, are forever engraved in my memory.I thought my mind was inclined toward philosophy, that is, since I was a child.Before I was ten years old, I had debated everything about God and eternal life.When I pray, I often imagine that God will be as close to the hair on the top of my head as he is in the sky, because God is said to be everywhere.Of course, feeling that God was up there gave me an indescribable emotion.I would test God very early on, because I didn't have much money in my pocket. I only had one copper dollar a week to buy one sesame cake, and I had four copper coins left to buy four pieces of candy.But I was born as an Epicurean believer (hedonist), and eating delicious food can give me supreme happiness. ——But the so-called best-tasting thing at that time was just a bowl of plain noodles sold in restaurants, and I was so eager for a dime.I walked along the seaside of Gulangyu Island and prayed silently to God, praying for what I asked for, so that I picked up a dime on the way.When I pray, I close my eyes and then open them.Over and over again, I was disappointed.When I was very young, I also asked myself why I prayed to God before eating.My conclusion: I should thank God for not directly giving me food, because I clearly know that my current bowl of rice is not from God, but from the sweat of the farmer's brow; but I I would use the people's peace and prosperity to thank the emperor for his kindness (it was still in the Qing Dynasty) as an example, so my religious problem was solved.According to the result of my rational thinking: the emperor never gave me that bowl of rice directly, but because he ruled the whole country, the world was peaceful, so the people were well-off and the people were well-off.From this point of view, I should thank God for my food.

When I was a child, I often had a feeling of lingering nostalgia for the passing time, and as a result, I often missed some special and sweet times consciously and intentionally.To this day, those sweet times are still vivid in my mind, vaguely as before.I remember, one night, I was on a Xixi boat from Banzai (Baoding) to Zhangzhou.On both sides of the strait, there are endless mountain views, grain fields, and almost village farmhouses.Our boat was moored under the bamboo forest on the bank. The boat approached the bamboo tree, and the bamboo leaves fluttered on the boat canopy.I was lying on the boat, covered with a blanket, and the bamboo leaves were swaying, only five or six feet above my head.After a day's hard work, the boatman sat at the stern of the boat to rest at ease in the cool night, with a pipe in his mouth, breathing freely.At that time, the night was dark, the distant scenery was dark, faintly discernible, just like a beautiful and wonderful picture.Paper lanterns are hung high on the boat on the other side, and the lights on the water can be seen from the background, and the noise of people can also be heard one by one.From time to time, someone played the flute, and the sound of the flute was carried by the wind along with the microwave on the water. It was like complaints and complaints, and it was extremely sad, but it was very strange, but it made people feel peaceful and peaceful.My boatman is relishing the story of Empress Dowager Cixi's childhood, what a joy to be in this situation!How beautiful it is!At that time, I would like to take pictures with a quick camera lens and keep them in my memory forever. I said to myself: "I am in this natural picture, I am only twelve or thirteen years old, facing such a beautiful scenery, such a good night; Isn’t it full of beauty to recall this time from time to time?”

There is another impression that I will never forget, that is the last night in Xiamen Xunyuan Academy (a middle school run by the church).The graduation ceremony was held that morning, when American Consul Julean Arnold gave a speech.That was my last day at the academy.I sat on the bedroom window overlooking the sports field.The next morning, the school was closed and we all had to disperse and go home.I meditated quietly, knowing that it was the end of my four years in the academy; I sat there meditating for half an hour, deliberately leaving this impression in my mind as a memory for the future.

My father was a pastor and a second generation Christian.I cannot describe my childhood in detail, but it was a very happy one.That was a little out of the ordinary, because we were not allowed to quarrel among brethren.Later, I will try my best to take off the smile that often hangs on my face, so as to get rid of its foolishness.There is a well in our house, and there is a vegetable garden behind the house. Every morning at eight o'clock, the father will ring the bell to call the children here, and each of them will assign ancient poems to recite, and the father will be the teacher himself.Unlike rich kids, we each had a home job.Both my sisters cook and do the laundry, and the brothers sweep and clear the house.Every afternoon, when the sisters brought in the washed clothes from the open space behind the house and put them in boxes, we went out to draw water from the well, poured it into a small ditch and flowed it into the small field of the vegetable garden to irrigate the vegetables.Otherwise, we children would go to the grain fields or the river bank, watch the sunset from a distance, and tell each other stories about ghosts and ghosts.There are hills rising and falling on all sides, so the place is called "East Lake", and the hills are all shores.I often imagine how a person can get out of this deep valley surrounded by mountains.There is a crack in the middle of the northern mountain top. Legend has it that a fairy once stepped on this mountain, but his big toe was inserted into the crack in the rock by mistake. Therefore, the northern mountain is often in my imagination.