Chapter 13 10.The Liang family in Beijing

The birth of Huiyin and Sicheng's son in August 1932 was a great joy.Although they are already Sibbi in many ways, the jubilation of having a boy to inherit the ancestral line and security of life is still not exempt.They decided that the newborn child would be named after the architectural genius of the Song Dynasty that both parents admired.They had already expressed their love for Li Jie when they chose the date of the wedding.Now, four years later, they honor him again and name their son Congjie, which means "follow the (Li) commandment." At that time, Huiyin was experiencing the misery of doing housework for the first time in her life.It wasn't that she didn't have servants, but that her family consisted of a young daughter, a newborn son, and, perhaps most troublesome, a mother who was completely emotionally attached to her, whose mind was bound as tightly as her feet.Chinese tradition requires her to take care of her mother, husband, and children, supervise six or seven servants, and have to see clearly the people and utensils that come to cater for meals outside. In short, she is required to act as a legal family manager.These responsibilities consume most of her time and energy at home.Outdoor errands were left to servants.The matriarch of the family usually only goes out when visiting relatives, funerals or special celebrations.

Lin Huiyin is of course a member of the transitional generation, and he resists the conventional restrictions.She received Western education not only in the UK and the US, but also when she was in primary school in China.What she lived abroad was the free life of a college student, and the life she co-designed with Sicheng in Shenyang was also this kind of life.But now at home everything seemed to bring her down.She never had a moment's peace at desk or drawing board, undisturbed by children, servants, or mother.She is effectively the prisoner of these ten people, and they look to her for every decision.Of course it was partly her own fault.Of all the things she cares about, her concern for people and their problems is overwhelming.She hated being interrupted in the middle of sketching an architecture or writing a poem, but instead of fighting, she turned her attention to solving pressing human problems.

This was the time when we met, and my position in Lin Weiyin's life was born from this narrow condition.She needs a like-minded sympathizer to listen to her.She finds it fascinating to have the opportunity to use her English skills to speak out about the whims of her everyday life.On my part, I had just crossed the threshold of Chinese life, and her vivid story captivated me and led me to the door. I entered the life of the house and was looked upon with suspicion by my mother and servants.Although I am invited, I am an outsider.My foreign face and clothes showed my difference, which was safe to meet on the street, but a little ominous at home.In spite of these misgivings, it was not long before my ingress was admitted.

As our friendship deepened, I often went to Liang's house by bicycle or rickshaw after dark.A servant unlocked the red-painted double doors at the courtyard entrance, and I walked across the small garden to find Huiyin.Sitting down in a warm corner of the living room with two cups of hot tea, we hurried to tell stories and thoughts we each kept for each other.We sometimes analyzed and compared the different values ​​and ways of life in China and America, but then we turned to our many common interests in literature, art, and adventure, telling each other memories of friends we didn't know.

The talented poet Xu Zhimo is certainly one of them.She talked about him to me from time to time, and never stopped talking to think of him.I've often thought that her wide-ranging, impassioned conversations with me in fluent English might be an echo of their lively conversation, which opened up a wider world to her as a little girl in London. Xu Zhimo's friend, the philosopher Jin Yuelin who everyone called him "Lao Jin", was actually a later member of the Liang family and lived in a small house next door.There is a small door in the living room of the Liang couple, which leads to "Lao Jin"'s house through his small courtyard.Through this door, he was often called to the parties of the Liangs.By Saturday afternoon, when Lao Jin was at home with old friends, the flow was reversed.At such times, the Liangs would pass through his small courtyard and enter his inner room to mingle with the guests, who were also their close friends.

This group of people is Lao Jin's close colleagues in the university.These included, among others, two political scientists.Zhang Xiruo is a principled person, straightforward and touching.Qian Duansheng is a sharp Chinese government analyst with a keen interest in international issues.Chen Daisun is a tall, self-respecting and unsmiling economist.There are also two older professors who have made breakthroughs in their respective fields.Li Ji, who studied anthropology and archaeology at Harvard, led the excavation of the Yin Ruins of the Academia Sinica.Sociologist Tao Menghe once studied in London and led an influential social research institute.These people, like the architect Liang Sicheng and Lao Jin himself, are some modernists determined to use scientific methods to study China's past and present.Come Saturday, some wives will be present and join in the lively conversation.

We were also invited, sometimes as guests of Huiyin, during our first days in Beijing.We were welcomed by Lao Jin, and the others tolerated us, speaking, whispering and laughing in Chinese, of course, as they told each other stories.When Fairbank became a teacher at Tsinghua University the following year, and we learned Chinese better, we were no longer outsiders. The Saturday afternoon gathering at Lao Jin's house often moved to a Chinese restaurant to continue, and one night was particularly memorable, when Hui Yin told his friends an extraordinary story at the dinner table. ——In the messy way of life in the living room of the Liang family, some things always happened, especially the loyal maid Chen Ma often went in and out, telling Huiyin some troublesome things, asking her to make a decision, Every troublesome matter, whether it happened at home or in the next door, had to be submitted to Hui Yin in this way to find a solution.

Huiyin's story begins like this: Chen's mother ran in in a panic one day and reported that there was a big hole in the roof just to the west of the high fence of Liang's house.She said that the tenants there were too poor to repair the roof, and asked Huiyin to tell the landlord.As usual, Huiyin immediately dropped everything to investigate the matter.When she talked to the landlord, she found out that the tenant lived in three rooms and paid only fifty copper coins or ten cents a month for rent.The landlord said that the ancestors of the current tenant rented the house during the Qianlong period two hundred years ago and paid a fixed monthly rent.Since the same family has always lived there, according to Chinese law, the landlord cannot raise the rent.Huiyin's vivid and detailed account of the incident ends with Huiyin giving the landlord a donation to repair the roof.We all laughed and clapped. "You proved to us that Beijing's past still exists, Huiyin really has you!"

Huiyin's south-facing sunny living room is often as crowded as Lao Jin's Saturday "family gathering", and the people who come here are of all kinds.Besides children and servants running around, there were relatives of all ages.Several nieces of the Liang family who were in college at the time loved to bring their classmates to this lively home.Here they often met poets and writers who had come as admirers of Whein's published works, often returning because of the charm of her presence. The famous novelist Shen Congwen grew up in the wilderness of western Hunan.He served as a soldier there and traveled to many places.Now he lives in Beijing and has written many novels based on his early life.He once taught at Tsinghua University. In 1934, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the literary supplement of Ta Kung Pao, where most of Huiyin's works were published.He and Huiyin are about the same age.She loved the artistry of his books and the strange life they described—so far removed from her own experience.A close friendship develops between them.She had a kind of motherly concern for him, and he, like a dear son, would go to her for advice whenever he had a problem.

An example is that Shen Congwen's beloved young wife went back to her natal family to the south, leaving him temporarily alone in Beijing.One morning he almost cried and rushed to Liang's house to seek comfort from Huiyin.He told her that he wrote to his wife every day, telling her his feelings, emotions and thoughts.Then he showed her the letter he had just received from his wife, which had caused him pain.He wrote a long letter to his wife that frankly expressed his love and concern for a young female writer in Beijing. One sad sentence in it aroused his wife's jealousy when she read the letter.He defended himself in front of Huiyin.He could not imagine any conflict between this feeling and his love for his wife.When he loves and cares about someone, that's what he does, how could he not write to tell her?He can love so many people and things, that's just how he is.

For Huiyin, small emotional entanglements like this are a necessity of life. "If I wrote a novel with the same plot and the same arguments, people would think that I had invented the plot and not been true to life! But now you accept it or not, it is what it is. And among many , there was him, the taciturn, understanding, emotional and lively being, a novelist himself, a genius for it! A child feels the same way when it happens to him. The poet in him betrays him, and feels so bewildered and at a loss before life and its conflicts, that I think of Shelley and recall how Shimo was at odds with worldly sorrows. Struggle. I couldn't help feeling innocent joy. How charming and pleasing he was that morning! And I, sitting there talking to him, scolding him, persuading him, discussing with him life and its injustices, human nature and its Charm and misery, ideal and reality, how old and tired they seem!  … "It never occurred to me in the past that someone like him, living and growing up in such a different environment, would have feelings that I can totally understand and have problems that I know of in other settings. This was a new and profound experience for me, which is why I don't think there's such a thing at all about proletarian literature. Good literature is good literature, regardless of people's ideology. From now on I will be critical of my The works have a new confidence, as Lao Jin has been hoping and trying to convince me of their value. Wow!"