Chapter 21 18.Kuntaqian

With two children and grandmother, Huiyin left Kunming in a truck at the end of November 1940. There were 31 other people on board, ranging in age from seventy years old to infants.Each family gets a measly luggage allowance.They sat on the open truck in the "horse crouching position", with their feet spread apart on the luggage roll, which was a common mode of transportation in China at that time.The journey lasted two weeks. "Carrying the young and the old over the mountains in mid-winter weather".On the day he left, Sicheng suddenly developed a fever, so he had to be left in Kunming. He arrived three weeks later.

"Shortly after arriving," he wrote, "I went to Chongqing to raise some funds for the Construction Society, and then Huiyin fell ill and stayed in bed for three months. March 14 (1941) , her little brother Lin Heng, who we called San Ye at the same time in Bu Zong Buhu, died in an air battle over Chengdu. I had to go to Chengdu to take care of his funeral. It was not until April 14 When I got home, I found that Huiyin was much more ill than she had told me in her letter. Despite being ill, she bravely faced the tragic news.” In the same envelope was a note from Whein: "My little brother, he is an excellent pilot, in an air battle, after shooting down a Japanese invader plane, the poor boy was shot in the head himself." And fell and died."

Lao Jin wrote about him in this way: "Since the start of the war, he has moved from one place to another with the school. He arrived in Kunming in the summer of 1939. In the spring of 1940, it can be said that he graduated with honors. Ranked second among more than 100 students. In just a few years, he has become an experienced pilot, an air force pilot. He got the profession of his own choice, fulfilled his mission, and he died a worthy death.” Huiyin's mourning for her brother was combined with her grief over the deaths of eight other "brothers" (young trainees she met in Huang County).Three years later she wrote a poem:

crying third brother Heng ——Thirty years of air combat killed (Note 1.) Brother, I don't have the language for the times to mourn your death; It is the request of the times to you, Simple, you give. This cold and simple heroism is the poetry of the times This silent glory is you. If on this inevitable truth Given more sorrow, I want to cry out, That's—you know it yourself— because you left too early, Too early, brother, for your bravery, With the backwardness of machinery, your chances are too miserable! For three years, you were killed in battle over Chengdu, The difference made in these three years,

Don't be sad if I tell you, Because most of them are not our old country, It's others moving through the times, Our souls bleed and explode into holes. We have allies, supplies and arms, Just what you ever hoped for. I remember, remember how I was with you Discuss and discuss, count and count, Every day you are so patiently waiting, But every day passes in vain, as slow as a camel! Now the chaser is not what you want most of the day Like the "Eagle Seven-Five" driving-- So stupid, so slow, ah, brother, don't be sad, You have done what you can, Don't say who missed you, it's the times that can't be measured,

China still has to move forward, and the night is waiting for the dawn. Brother, I have used so many unbeautiful words It is a poem to commemorate you, Believe how bitter my heart is, how hoarse my throat is, You're never coming back, I know, The blood of youth has been replaced by science; The sorrow of China is forever in my heart. Ah, don't be sad, I can't comfort you when you're sad. I have thought about it several times a day: You have given all you have, brother who goes with you So too, give your life; All the youth you have; the opportunities you will have in the future,

The work of the prime of life possible, the wisdom of old age; possible love, family, children, and all that The rights of life, the joy; and the disputes of life! You give so much, for whom?you believe How many people in China will be happy in the future Your front is more important than yourself; the immortal China's history still needs to be permanent in the world. You believe, you do, and in the end you surrender. Why do I still cry for you when I fully understand? Just because you were a child and left nothing for yourself, I look forward to your happiness when I was young, your safety in wartime,

Today you have no children to worry about and need care and comfort, And the portraits of thousands of people have forgotten, who are you dying for! 33 years (Note 2.) Li Zhuang. After returning from Chongqing and Chengdu, Sicheng devoted himself to academic work with renewed enthusiasm.Now that he has funding from the Ministry of Education, he can not only support his own family, but also pay the salaries of Liu Dunzhen and several young staff before he is caught up by rising inflation.A recent field trip, difficult as it was, reminded him that there was still much interesting research to be done.

The library of the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica and its very important collection of Chinese and English books have become the focus of Li Zhuang's researchers.Sicheng has colleagues in related fields who understand his work.His younger brother and outstanding archaeologist Siyong's family all moved here, and Li Ji and other old friends were also there. Although they were conducting their own investigation and research, they were also related to Sicheng's work. In addition to arranging housework, Sicheng brought back from the well-established library the books that Huiyin could read in bed, which restored her interest in academic research.He wants to study the Han Dynasty rock tombs he found on his research trip, and she can help him in delving into the history of the Han Dynasty.He wrote to me and said:

"Huiyin is very interested in your research on the combination of Han tombs and rubbings. Maybe you don't know that she has also explored the history of the Han Dynasty herself. She has worked very hard to get acquainted with famous figures, emperors and queens of the Han Dynasty in private, Generals and ministers, their favourites, and their enemies, she speaks of them as if they were best friends next door! Not to mention, she associates their habits, their dress, their architecture, their dispositions. If she At the present pace, she will become a particularly learned young woman in the study of the Han Dynasty. Even now, she can tell the stories of most of the historical figures of the Western Han Dynasty in detail.

"She plans to give you an excerpt from Han history about mural paintings depicting actual life. It seems that the Han people had a particular fondness for painting on walls or clapboards, which she has documented quite a bit. She even thinks that the Han The drawing skills of the people of the dynasty were greater than what we saw on the stone carvings or reliefs of that period. Sometimes it is necessary to use architectural representations to carve pictures on stones. People appear fat, and their grace is not so graceful, especially It's on those bas-reliefs. From some of your rubbing reproductions we can see beautiful one-line diagrams depicting dynamic horses and dogs. Just imagine assuming that these lines were drawn with a brush on the walls of palaces that have historically appeared in the Han Dynasty , what will we see." At this time, by coincidence, the Liangs received my first published book.This is a book about Han dynasty reliefs from the Wu family cemetery in Shandong Province, which I visited in 1934.My idea of ​​sorting out the scattered stones eventually led to the proposal to rebuild the three ancestral halls. I was very moved by Sicheng's reaction to the version I sent him. "It interests me extra because I'm not just dealing with some of the pictures you're working on, as I originally thought, but you've made a valuable contribution to the study of Han Dynasty architecture. It's not just dealing with the Wuliang Temple materials new approach, but also new perspectives on the concept of Han Dynasty burial remains...I greatly appreciate your thoroughness and patience in obtaining the necessary materials, references, and means by which your plans were realized and indisputable... …You make us realize that in pre-Buddhism China, these small ancestral halls built to commemorate the dead were the embodiment of religious concepts at that time. In this concept, the universe, direction, morality (many of the past made Good things), ancestor worship (a series of past emperors), military exploits (battle scenes), the concept of the five elements, love of learning, respect for high officials, etc., all mixed with the concept of life and death, happy life, and family succession. All The mixture of these things is still the basic religious belief in China now, so it must have been the entire religion at that time. It is true that this small ancestral hall can explain more than many pages of history books can describe. Amazing. Whein thinks it means more than I thought (and this is an argument worth remembering). - [Whein himself adds a line here] 'A very important one with no main gods and no dead A small ancestral hall of portraits or statues, but a coherent whole in which the basic elements of human beings and virtues are scrupulously integrated.' "Now your article has been lent to many friends of Academia Sinica who asked to read it. Li Ji was very interested and wanted to read it. Dong Zuobin, he himself tried to rebuild a tomb from a set of rubbings with the help of matchboxes. In the end, I thought it was futile and gave up, and I am very envious of your tenacity and success." Sicheng said in the letter that Li Zhuang’s life “is difficult to describe to you, and it is also difficult for you to imagine: under the vegetable oil lamp, making children’s cloth shoes, buying and cooking cheap rough food, we lived our father’s life in their Life as a teenager but doing a modern job. Sometimes reading foreign magazines and looking at the colorful advertisements of modern facilities is like facing a miracle. The climate and scenery in Kunming is very lovely, we like it very much .Sichuan is terrible. We live next to a less attractive tributary of the upper Yangtze River. Since moving south, my office staff has doubled, and I have been able to raise more than I have gotten in the past two years Funds. My salary is just enough to feed my family, but we are happy with the good life we ​​have. My charming sick wife is happy that we can still go about our jobs unwaveringly." Li Zhuang's letter reflects much more than it literally tells.Letter papers of all shapes and sizes, most of which are thin, yellow and brittle, may have been wrapped with meat or vegetables brought back from the street.Sometimes there are precious blue letter papers given by friends.But the common thing is that every small piece of space is used.The top, bottom, and subsections are not left blank, and the last page is often only half or one-third of a page, and the rest is cut out for other purposes.And the number of stamps affixed to the still-used envelope gives an idea of ​​how expensive—and therefore hasty—correspondence was then, even outside of China.This also explains why one envelope often contains several letters that have been accumulated over the past few days for a big waste of postage. The Ministry of Education—perhaps Academia Sinica—may want Lizhuang to be a safe haven for scholars to work undisturbed by the war.Huiyin made a bitter comment in his letter in August 1941: "Even though I'm almost 100% sure that the Japanese invaders would never drop bombs on this remote town of Lizhuang, the 27th that flew over our heads with that indescribable roar an hour ago The planes still give me goosebumps—a strange feeling of fear that they might be hit at any moment. They flew upriver and bombed somewhere, perhaps Yibin, and are now flying with that menacing roar and Deadly purpose flies over our heads. I'm going to say it makes me sick and then I realize I'm already sick and it's just making me sicker for a while, The body temperature is slightly elevated, the heart is uncomfortable and the heartbeat is racing. Nowhere in China today is there a single person who is safe from war. We are linked to it as an inseparable whole, whether we actually participate in the war or not." They are now "fortunately to have a good and faithful, young and good-natured country maid".Her only downside is that she has too much energy. "If in a family of five there are only seven old pillowcases and about the same number of sheets of different sizes and textures, and white cloth is as impossible to buy in the street as gold leaf, you don't like to pay for half the sheets and two You wouldn't be surprised if a pillowcase crumbled to pieces after a serious wash. You wouldn't like to see half of your shirt buttons come off the front of your shirt after every wash and your old shirts rot away after every wash. Now any shirt is worth forty dollars or more. The same goes for food and utensils that fall into the hands of this maid. Of course we try to use unbreakable, but in fact nothing is unbreakable, and everything is So expensive or irreplaceable. "Sicheng is a slow person. He likes to do one thing at a time. He is the worst at housework. But there are so many housework, and they all come to him, just like there are different trains arriving at New York Central at any time. station. Of course I'm still the station master, and he might be that station! I might get run over, but he never will. Old Kim (he's been here for a while) is that kind of guest, either to the train To drop people off, or to pick them up, he interferes a little with the normal timetable, but also makes the station a little more attractive and the stationmaster a little more excitable." Lao Jin also wrote his confession at the end of the letter: "Facing the station master and typing at the station, the passenger was so confused that he couldn't say anything or do anything. He could only watch the train leave. Yes. I've passed Grand Central in New York many times without ever seeing the station master, but here I actually see both, or I might have confused the station master with the station." But Sicheng (supported, as always, by his steel vest) noted at the bottom of the page, "Now it is time for the station to speak. Due to architectural defects, its main The unsightly steel brackets designed and installed are now seven years old, and the heavy wartime traffic seems to have shaken my foundations." The headquarters of the Construction Society in Lizhuang is a simple L-shaped one-story farmhouse, and its long arm runs north-south.On one side of this arm, from south to north, is an open workshop with rough tables and stools for sketching and writing.Opposite is the maid's room, storerooms and three junior researcher's bedrooms lined up.Walking through a narrow corridor is the short arm of the L-shape extending eastward.There are two bedrooms as soon as you cross the corridor, one is the bedroom of the grandmother and the baby, and the other is the son's.Beyond that are the two rooms of the Liangs, a bedroom and a study, and this is all about the short arm.Their house faces south, and the window overlooks a shaded and pleasant courtyard.Huiyin's cot was placed in this room (everyone slept on bare boards and bamboo mats).On the opposite side, on the west side of the L-shaped long arm, is a larger patio, mostly towering camphor trees, dotted with small clumps of banana groves.There are also some small bungalows scattered in the courtyard, one is used as a kitchen, the farther one is a canteen, leaving some room for Mo Zongjiang to sleep, and the farthest one is an outdoor toilet. The layout and decoration of the workshop is a big step forward along the formal path of the architectural society that was planned when the workshop was in the Imperial Court of Beijing.The place where Liu Dunzhen made his home was not far away.Sicheng's junior assistants Mo Zongjiang, Liu Zhiping and Chen Mingda are all available on call.Sicheng wrote that he "wanted to write a popular 'History of Chinese Architecture' these days. A joking letter sent by Lao Jin from Lizhuang at the end of November 1941 hinted that Sicheng had already started to work on it. Engage in the history he imagined: "He is still the same as in the past, taking a walk before and after going to work, and his main job at work is to write a brief history of Chinese architecture and manage the finance of the institute.His responsibilities as a historian are somewhat unusual: he bakes bread, builds a stove, weighs coal, and does all sorts of household chores, and if he's suddenly naked and dumped to America one day, he'll be fine. Maybe even better than now, just follow the example of the Americans and be a laundryman. " As for Hui Yin, Lao Jin reported, "She is completely immersed in the Han Dynasty. No matter what she mentions, she will immediately go to that distant dynasty, and she will never come back by herself." As for himself, the logician, he has a philosopher's view of inflation. "In these difficult times, it is important to think about the things you own, their cash value is so amazing that people feel rich; thing." Note 1. Refers to 1941 AD,——Translator's Note Note 2. 33 years refers to 1944 AD.The original continuation of the whole poem was published in May 1948, "Literary Magazine", Volume 2, Issue 12. ——Translator's Note