Chapter 3 2. Rural Christianity

As I have said, my father was a Christian minister, but a very unusual one.His best virtue was his great love for his fellow believers.The reason why he loves people is not as a duty to God, he just loves them sincerely, because he himself was born in a poor family.I also refuse to say this sentence in this brief autobiography, because I think it is very important.Some writers who grew up in the city and called themselves general writers criticized me, saying that I don't understand the life of ordinary people, but because I often talk about the breeze on the river and the moon in the mountains in my articles, I can't help but make me laugh; Come on, it seems that the breeze and the moon are the patent products of the capitalist leisure class.But my grandmother was originally a peasant woman with strong physical strength, she tried to beat more than ten men with a bamboo pole and drove them out of the village.As for my father, he worked as a sugar bait vendor when he was a child, sold rice in prison, and sold bamboo shoots.He knew what it was like to carry a heavy burden on his shoulders, and he often told us these stories, especially the experience of being in the service of an unsympathetic employer, as a lesson for us young children to do good.For this reason, he often expressed sympathy for the poor.Even in his old age, he once almost got into a fight with a tax collector when he saw an injustice.Because an old man spent three days to cut a load of firewood in the mountains, and ran a full 20 miles, but he only needed to sell it for 200 copper coins in the market, and the tax collector wanted to extort him for 120 copper coins.My mother was also the most modest woman, although she had a high status in the village because she was the pastor's wife.But she never knew what putting on airs was.She often had very pleasant conversations with farmers and woodcutters.This is also my father's habit.He and his wife often invite them to their home for tea or lunch. We get along on the basis of extremely friendly and completely equal principles.

Being a pastor in the countryside in the interior is no different from being a shepherd of the sheep, and his work is very meaningful.My father was not only a preacher in the pulpit, but also a trouble-shooter in villagers' disputes, a lawyer in civil and criminal litigation, and a helper in villagers' family life.He was a constant matchmaker; his favorite thing to do was to marry widows and widows, if not in the village chapel, then in a church a hundred miles away.In the minds of the churchgoers, he mysteriously performs the role of a Buddhist monk.According to the bad habits of the villagers, anyone who stumbles and falls into the wild toilet must ask a monk to change his clothes and a new red rope to braid his hair, and the monk will give him a bowl of noodle soup to eat, so that he can meet every day. Bad luck turned good.One day, a child in our church fell into the toilet. Because my father was going to take the position of a monk, he had to braid red rope for him, and my mother made him a bowl of noodle soup.I don't believe that there is any difference between the Christianity that my father passed on to those peasants and the Buddhism that men and women have always believed in. I don't know what his theological position is, but there is no problem with his sincerity—just listen Listening to the voice and words of his prayer at night will be credible.But perhaps even he himself did not know that he was compelled by circumstances to preach a single religion that the peasants could understand.This Christian God, like the Buddha in any temple, can heal, bless, and most importantly, give many boys to others.He often pointed out to the church members that although many Christians were persecuted by others, they ended up with good fortune and many daughters-in-law.To the believers of the village, Christianity would be meaningless without these effects.There are also many believers who come under the shadow of the barriers of extraterritoriality and seek protection.Today I can understand the hatred that some anti-Christians have for us, but I could not understand it then.

There is a person who greatly influences and determines my destiny in my life - that is a foreign priest YoungJ. Allen.He himself did not know what effect his writings had upon my family.I knew his Chinese name was Lin Lezhi in my early years—it seems to be the same family name as ours. It was not until recent years that I knew his real name.Probably he was a priest living in Suzhou, who was the chief editor of a Christian weekly magazine, "Guangbao", and translated several books with his Chinese assistant Cai Erkang.Under the influence of Rev.W.L.Warnshuis, my father got to know the so-called "new learning" for the first time, and he was very passionate about pursuing new knowledge.Mr. Lin Lezhi's "Tong Wen Bao" has a subscription fee of one yuan per year, which is only subscribed by my father's financial resources, and Pastor Fan Liwen is the most friendly to my father, and he uses as many "new learning" books as he can get. introduce.With the help of Lin Lezhi's writings, he became very enthusiastic about the West and everything Western, and even deeply admired the glory of the late Victorian England, so he decided to let all his sons study English and receive a Western education.I think his curiosity and amazement towards all new things and the whole world should not be inferior to mine.

One day, he saw a treatise written by a woman from Shanghai in the weekly magazine.He put down the weekly magazine, sighed, and said, "Oh, how could I have such a daughter-in-law!" He forgot that he had a biological daughter who was just as smart and worked hard to get a new education.It's just that he has no choice but to ask a few boys to receive higher education because of financial constraints, and I can't blame him for that.It is the most painful regret in his life that his own daughter cannot receive a college education.This is something only a father can understand.I still remember the tears streaming down his face when he sold our last small house in Zhangzhou so that my brother could attend St. John's University.At that time, it was a rare thing for Xiamen people to send a son to Shanghai to study at a university. This shows his extremely warm heart and great vision.And as a pastor, the monthly salary is only 16 to 20 yuan (just the wages I give to the servants or cooks at home), which is even more difficult.However, after obtaining a school place and selling off the old property, I can raise the minimum tuition fee for sending my brother to university.Later, my elder brother helped me, and I turned to help my younger brother. This was the opportunity for us brothers to receive a college education.

I need not speak of the favors I have received from the Christian missionary societies.The secondary education I received at Xiamen Xunyuan Academy was free; as far as I know, the board expenses there are also exempted over the years.I owed a debt to the missionary school, and the missionary school (in Xiamen) owed me a debt, that is, I was not allowed to watch Chinese dramas.Because in my Christian childhood, it was a sin to stand under the stage or listen to the blind man sing the love story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.However, this debt cannot be regarded as great; after all, they gave me a chance to be born, and now I am trying to make up for my previous losses, catch up with my cult compatriots, and try to understand Chinese drama, music, and music like them. Various folklore.Up to now, I still have a lot of shortcomings in my knowledge about Peking opera.In my book, I have written that before I was 20 years old, I knew the story of General Joshua of the ancient Jewish state blowing down the city of Jericho, but it was not until I was 30 years old that I learned about the story of Meng Jiangnu crying her husband and tearing down the Great Wall. legend.I have known for a long time that Yahweh made the sun stand still so that Joshua could finish killing the Canaanites, but Xiang Yi shot the sun to kill nine of them, and his wife Chang'e went to the moon and became the moon god, and the Nuwa family refined stone ——Three hundred and sixty-five stones were used to fill the sky, and then the remaining three hundred and sixty-six stones became the master gem in the story, etc.These are all bits and pieces I read later in books, not from blind singing or stage performances in my childhood.In this way, who can complain that I feel resentful in my heart, full of the feeling of being deprived of my right to know Chinese mythology?However, as I said earlier, the missionaries gave me the opportunity to be born, and later I had a lot of time to make up for the loss, because the older I get, the more I seek knowledge, and I still retain the curiosity of a child.Thank God, I haven't lost the ability to appreciate "Mickey Mouse" cartoons or Chinese fairy tales.