Chapter 6 3.Boyhood

Liang Qichao traveled to Europe in late 1918 to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.From his base in Paris, he spent several months visiting England and roaming the Continent.He returned to China for what would be the last ten years of his life, as he would devote his major energy to re-examining all aspects of Chinese culture.He was also a little worried about his children's studies at Tsinghua, fearing that the emphasis on English and natural science would cause them to ignore Chinese cultural knowledge, while he himself had already achieved a lot when they were their age. The loose night school of an informal homeschooling program has been carried on by fathers for years, and now is the time to intensify it. The summers of 1920, 1921 and 1922 were devoted to this.Liang Qichao actually opened a Chinese studies school in his home in Tianjin for a select group of students, including Sicheng and Siyong, their cousins, and his young protégés.He gave lectures from nine to twelve o'clock in the morning, and they were interrupted from time to time by students' questions.From three to five in the afternoon, the students engraved Liang Qichao's lectures on wax paper and reviewed the day's homework.His lecture notes were later published.

Not only was his father's thoughts brought into his daily life, but his famously ebullient style of expression was also imitated, the effect on the sons was profound.Liang Sicheng later pointed out that his father's academic methods had a particularly great influence on him and Siyong.The fact that both brothers have made outstanding contributions to Chinese studies—Si Cheng in the history of Chinese architecture and Si Yong in Chinese archaeology—is a testament to the wisdom and strength of their father's teachings, and to the extraordinary abilities of their sons. When Liang Qichao lived in England, he was deeply impressed by Wells' Outline of World History.The book was popular in Britain and the United States at that time, and was translated into many languages.A Chinese translation was urgently needed, and he wanted to do it himself, but, as he said in a letter to his eldest sister: "My English is not very good, so my sons volunteered. With the cooperation of the young historian Xu Zongshu, The brothers undertook the job in the summer of 1921 and worked until February of the following year."

There are several layers to my father's plan.First of all, he certainly hoped that his sons would be exposed to world history as the West generally advocated at that time.Also the assignment is a good test of their newly acquired English skills.Finally, it is also a great exercise for developing their Chinese writing skills.In the same letter, he said to his eldest sister: "Because I want to teach my two sons to learn Chinese, I have to spend a few half-days this summer, and now I am revising their translations for two hours a day. So the translation in the name of The above is for the 'children', which I actually did. Sometimes I can only finish a thousand words in half a day, and if I did it myself, I could write four thousand words in so much time." March 1922, manuscript completed up. It was published in two volumes by the Commercial Press in 1927.

At that time, the eldest sister's family lived in the Philippines, and her husband was the consul general in Manila.Her mother came from Tianjin, probably for medical treatment.She had a cancer resection while she was in Manila. In the summer of 1922, her father Pai Sicheng came to Manila to take her back to Tianjin.On his arrival, he wrote to his father to report that his mother had "completely recovered from her serious illness (Note 1.)." Now that his fears were all over, he bought a car for the family at his father's order, And as a gift from my eldest sister, I bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle for myself.Both cars were loaded onto their boat and brought back.

Huiyin and her father returned to China in the second half of 1921 and raised the issue of her marriage with Sicheng again. In early 1923 they made up their minds. On January 7, Liang Qichao wrote to his elder sister saying, "Sicheng and Huiyin have agreed to get married." He added an important note, "I told them that they must complete their studies before they get engaged. We want to get married quickly. But the Lin family insists on their immediate engagement, and so do most of our friends. What's your opinion?" Father's advice was followed.The engagement was not announced until the autumn of 1927, and the wedding did not take place in March 1928.What my father cared about was Sicheng and Huiyin's studies.Birth control was neither known nor available at the time.Starting a family within the first year of marriage interrupts their studies and leaves them with costs and responsibilities beyond their means.

Just this week, Mr. Liang wrote another visionary letter.This time it was written to Xu Zhimo.My father, like many others, was full of admiration for the young poet who had long been his disciple.Of course, he is also familiar with the danger of Xu's unrestrained "wild horse" temper.Xu Zhimo divorced in March 1922.Liang Qichao's purpose in writing this long letter was not only to condemn Xu Zhimo for abandoning his wife, but also to protect Huiyin and Sicheng from the chaos Xu Zhimo was fully capable of causing.He didn't mention Huiyin in the letter, but he asked Xu Zhimo not to "build his own happiness on the pain of others" and not to "pursue the paradise in the dream" (Note 2.).

Huiyin still respects and loves Xu Zhimo, but her life has been firmly connected with Sicheng.A long-term plan has been made, and she will be able to devote herself to the New Moon Club founded by Xu Zhimo.This was an association of young writers who were active in the Baihua movement, which was to promote the now generally accepted practice of using the spoken language for literary writing (Note 3.). This is the beginning of Huiyin's writing career.She wrote some of her earliest poems, short stories, and essays.But according to Sicheng, her first published work was a translation of Oscar Wilde's romantic prose poem: "The Nightingale and the Rose".I don't know where it was published, but it was probably in the literary supplement of a newspaper in Beijing or Tianjin, which were important early gardens for members of the Crescent Society.

In the early 1920s, cultural activities in Beijing were very active, especially for the visiting envoys of Western culture.This aroused Xu Zhimo's passion to introduce the achievements of Western art to Chinese audiences.He and Huiyin were responsible for organizing a very successful concert by violinist Fritz Kreisler, which was the first time a Western artist brought a well-known Western classical music program to the ancient capital of China. That year was Sicheng's last year at Tsinghua University. In summer, he and his classmates should use the boxer indemnity scholarship to study in the United States.He is going to the University of Pennsylvania to study architecture.This led to his marriage with Huiyin.Years later he told me that she had a classmate in London who could spend hours drawing houses on a sketchpad.Huiyin likes it very much.Her friend described architecture as a profession under urgent inquiry.Huiyin immediately determined that this was exactly the career she wanted, a career that combined daily artistic creation with practical use.She also had no difficulty guiding Sicheng to such a decision after she returned to China.He has always loved painting, and vaguely feels that he is a professional artist.The building was exactly what he wanted, and the Taoist building was also what they wanted.

On May 7, 1923, Sicheng, Siyong, and their younger brother came to Beijing from Xishan to participate in the protest demonstration on the anniversary of the national humiliation day on May 7, 1915, when Japan demanded and was allowed to take over Shandong Province from the Germans.The Liang family's compound is on Nanchang Street, a Haibei Street in the city center.The southern end of the street not far from Liang's house leads to Chang'an Avenue, a bustling east-west avenue, which adjoins the front of Tiananmen Square.At about eleven o'clock, Sicheng pushed out the motorcycle, a gift from his elder sister, and let Siyong ride behind him, and drove south to catch up with the parade. When they turned into the main road, they were hit sideways by a big car , the motorcycle was knocked over.It fell heavily to the ground, threw Siyong far away, and pressed Sicheng underneath.The officer in the limousine ordered his driver to drive on.

Si-young stands up bleeding from his wound to find his brother lying unconscious on the sidewalk.He immediately ran back home. He was covered in blood and frightened his family. He shouted: "Quick! Save Sicheng! He crashed!" A servant ran to the accident site and carried Sicheng back.His face was pale and his eyes could not move.Twenty minutes later, he regained consciousness, and the blood was on his face again.His father leaned over him and took his hand. "He grabbed my hand and kissed me on the cheek," Liang Qichao wrote. "He said to me, 'Papa, I am your unfilial son. I destroyed my whole body before you and mother handed it over to me. Leave me alone, especially don't tell mother. Where is the eldest sister, and how can I see her?'(Note 4.)”

"At this point my heart was about to break," the father wrote. "I just said, 'It's okay, don't be afraid.' I was comforted when I saw the color come back to his face. I thought, as long as he survived, I would be content with being disabled. Then the doctor came He made a comprehensive examination on him. He diagnosed that there was nothing wrong with him from the waist up, except that his left leg was broken, and he took Sicheng to the hospital by ambulance.” During this time, Siyong was busy taking care of others. Sicheng.Later he fell asleep, so the family worried about him and sent him to the hospital.There he found only a broken lip and minor abrasions on his legs.The two brothers shared the same ward in the hospital. Si Yong was discharged within a week, while Si Cheng had to stay for eight weeks. At first, the surgeon at the hospital told the family that Sicheng did not need an operation because the bones were not broken.This diagnosis is wrong and delays the correct treatment.In fact, he suffered from a compound fracture of the femur. By the end of May, Sicheng had undergone three operations.In a hopeful letter to his eldest sister, the father said that the legs had been fully joined and that Sicheng would be able to "walk like a normal person".But it was not the case. Since then, the left leg has obviously been much shorter than the right leg.The inevitable result is a lifetime of lameness and back braces due to spinal weakness.For a person whose occupation requires frequent long walks in the countryside, climbing and inspecting roofs and trusses, this disability is unbearable. The father used this passivity of his active older son to take advantage of it.About two weeks after the accident, he asked Sicheng to study Chinese classics, starting with Mencius. "During these two months, you should be able to digest and even recite those passages that are useful for self-cultivation, and then you must read the full text of "Zuo Zhuan" and "Zhan Guo Ce" to increase your wisdom and improve your writing style. If you still If you have time, read some "Xunzi", that would be even better." These classics have been compulsory reading for imperial examination candidates for the past 800 years.Here, the reformist leader Liang Qichao clearly returned to his neo-Confucian stance, and saw the recitation of classics as a useful supplement to Tsinghua University's monotonous, nameless curriculum. Sicheng's mother was particularly angry at the official whose car hit her two sons and ran away.She went to the President of the Republic and demanded that the official be punished.In the end, it was determined that it was the driver's fault, and the mother refused to give up until the president apologized for his subordinates (Note 5.). Mother had other worries at the same time.That summer was extremely hot, and the patient was lying in bed with bandages wrapped around his waist.His beautiful Huiyin was haggard by the news of the car accident and visited him in the hospital every day.Without the shyness taught by her elders, she sat by his bed every afternoon, talking to him enthusiastically, joking or comforting him.This behavior of the younger generation shocked his mother.Huiyin also won Liang Qichao's respect and gratitude for recording the messenger Liang Qichao dictated to the elder sister to let her understand the situation at this critical moment.Later we learned that the eldest sister also had doubts about bringing this modern girl into the family. It was not until July 31 that Sicheng was discharged from the hospital. At that time, his father had already discussed with the doctor that his plan to study in the United States in the summer had to be postponed for one year. "If your body is not fully recovered," his father wrote to him, "you may have trouble on the journey. The risk is not worth the risk. Life's journey is a long one, and a year or a month is nothing. Your life path is too flat. Small difficulties may be a good opportunity for you to develop your character. And as far as academics are concerned, you have nothing to lose by preparing for an extra year in China. (Note 6.)” Sicheng postponed his departure from China to the United States until the summer of 1924.During this period, Huiyin completed her studies in Beijing on the one hand, continued her writing on the other hand, and prepared to leave China with him to study in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Xu Zhimo responded to Liang Qichao's warning letter scolding him for divorcing his wife with a long letter full of emotion, "I will search for my soul mate in the vast sea of ​​people. If I find her, it is my luck; if I If you can't find it, it's fate." Huiyin's name was not mentioned throughout the article. Liang Qichao apparently decided that the problem no longer threatened his family. In the summer of 1923, he and Xu Zhimo were often together.They both teach at Nankai University, with Xu Zhimo teaching modern English literature for two weeks.Xu Zhimo wrote poems in the new vernacular style, and many of them have been printed. In the autumn of 1923, Xu Zhimo called his relatives, friends and poets to Hangzhou to enjoy the beautiful scenery of West Lake.His reputation and influence grew. In 1924 he accepted the appointment of a professor at Peking University. Liang Qichao and Lin Changmin are the planners of the Beijing Lecturer Association. This association once hosted the visit of Russell and others to introduce the views of famous outside thinkers to Chinese audiences. Xu Zhimo actively advocated inviting the famous Indian poet Rabindranath early on. · Tagore, he met Tagore at the pier in Shanghai on April 12, 1924, accompanied him throughout his seven-week journey in China, and acted as his English-to-Chinese translator.The two poets became instant friends.Not long after they met, they spent an unforgettable night on a small boat in the West Lake of Hangzhou, reciting poems and discussing poems until dawn (Note 7). When Tagore arrived in Beijing on April 23, he was warmly welcomed by Liang Qichao, Lin Changmin, Hu Shi and many other intellectuals. Tagore saw his visit as a symbol of the ancient religious ties between India and China.He had come to strengthen the spiritual unity of the two great powers in Asia, which, in his view, combined with Western pragmatism, would become the basis of a new world civilization.His audience of researchers and intellectuals in Beijing numbered in the thousands.Many people came here because he was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.And the appeal of his translator, the gifted poet Xu Zhimo, was no doubt a factor.Xu Zhimo asked Huiyin to act as an assistant translator while Tagore was in Beijing.These two became Tagore's frequent companions as he wandered from time to time among the crowd of welcomers and curious ones.The romance created by the visit of Tagore himself hung over them.With him, they too became public figures.This pair of outstanding young people is accompanied by a tall, white-haired saint (Note 8.). The climax of Tagore's visit to Beijing was the birthday feast on May 8 to celebrate his sixty-third birthday.It was hosted by Xu Zhimo's recently founded Crescent Society, which was named after Tagore's prose poem "New Moon", and four hundred of Beijing's most famous figures attended the banquet.After the speeches and presents were over, Tagore's play "Jitra" written in English was performed for the guests.In the play, Huiyin plays the princess, while Xu Zhimo plays the god of love. The next morning Tagore delivered the first of seven speeches he had prepared.It drew sharp criticism from a section of the youth audience.His second class the next day was met with an apparently organized protest.When Tagore found out that leaflets circulated among the audience described him as a reactionary who defended spiritualism and was indifferent to China's current plight, he was very angry. Beginning in 1923, the Chinese Left, led by a handful of people, launched a campaign actively against the "cultural imperialism" of Christian missionaries.For these dialectical materialists, Tagore is simply a piece of fat in the lion's den.He announced that his next lecture would be the last and that the rest would be cancelled.About two thousand people came to this final lesson.Xu Zhimo and Hu Shi defended the poet, but Tagore said that he was physically and mentally exhausted and had gone to the West Mountain to recuperate, and spent most of his last week in China in this way. May 20, the day Tagore left, was an emotional farewell day.The poet himself may have been relieved to have escaped the militant protesters, but he regretted parting from Huiyin, the lovely young woman who was always by his side and enriched his stay in China.He composed a poem for her: the blue of the sky, In love with the green of the earth, The breeze between them sighed "Hey!" For Xu Zhimo and Huiyin, this parting has a special bitterness.Xu Zhimo told Tagore in private that he still loves Huiyin.The old poet himself interceded on his behalf, but did not move her (Note 9.).However, in these last few weeks, she and Xu Zhimo spent their time in the close care of their venerable Indian philosopher.They performed dramatic and exciting public missions in full view, and felt the sudden popularity that Xu Zhimo's personality and poetry had won him. Huiyin will leave for the United States within the next month, and will not return to China until four years later.Xu Zhimo accompanied Tagore to Japan, and got involved in another love entanglement after returning to China.

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Note 1. "Chronicles", June 28, 1922, page 618. Note 2. Letter dated January 2, 1923, page 68 of Xu Kaiyu's Anthology of Chinese Poetry in the Twentieth Century, quoted from "The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo" Hu Shi's preface, pages 4-5. Note 3. Their own publication "Xin Yue Monthly" was not published for a few years, and then it was published in Shanghai. Note 4. "Chronicles", May 8, 1923, page 642. Note 5. "Chronicles", May 11, 1923, page 643. Note 6. Chronicle, June 26 and 31, 1923. Note 7. Li Oufan: "Romantic Generation", page 146. " Note 8. Li Oufan: "The Romantic Generation", p. 146. Note 9. Stephen N. Hay: "Asian Perspectives on East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India" (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1970) p. 195.