Chapter 22 19.capital and village

When the United States entered the war in December 1941, Fairbank and I both served in the Washington administration.We hope and look forward to going back to China, this time to Yunnan and Sichuan in the Great Southwest.Since the Japanese invaded the eastern provinces, the only way to get from America to "Free China" was through India, and from there to Kunming by plane across the Himalayas.Fairbank went first, three years earlier than me.He set off in mid-August 1942, took a short flight down the coast of South America, passed through Easter Island in the mid-Atlantic, passed through Africa to Egypt, crossed the Indian Ocean to India, and finally flew over the "hump" to Kunming.

There, colleagues from Tsinghua University and our dear friends from Beijing all went to the United Nations General Assembly to warmly welcome him, and he sent them to Longtou Village, eight miles away in a US military jeep, where Qian Duansheng and others His family lived there in a house designed by Huiyin.On the other side of the country path, adjacent to it is the self-built house of Liang and his wife, who were still reluctant to part with it when they left.Fairbank thinks it's fantastic: "Local adobe walls and tiled roof, light timber structure and whitewashed lime walls on the inside. Nice little garden in the back among eucalyptus trees."

A week later, he continued to fly to the American embassy in Chongqing to take up his post. The wartime companion capital was novel to Fairbank and many Americans, most of whom had never been to China before being sent there on wartime missions.Not only was this place on the other side of the world, but it was in almost every way the opposite of the Washington they had just left.Located on a steep peninsula at the edge of the confluence of the Yangtze River and its tributary, the Jialing River, Chongqing is a remote Shangshui river port and has been the wartime capital of the Kuomintang since the second half of 1937.Periodic indiscriminate bombing by the Japanese Air Force has reduced much of the city to ruins, and hasty rebuilding to exigencies has created a new city of rickety offices and homes rising from the rubble It is not much better than the muddy bunk with bamboo fence on the edge of the cliff.Extreme climatic conditions exacerbate the situation.Winters are rainy, freezing cold and muddy.The humidity and heat in summer are even worse than in Washington, because there is no means of protection.There isn't even enough water for washing, and many families can only access water from dirty rivers down a few hundred steps.

The rural people of Chongqing and its suburbs, like the rest of China, have shown great wartime endurance for five years.The early patriotic fervor of the fanatical and heroic military resistance to the Japanese invasion of the East had degenerated into a passive resistance commensurate with enduring a long period of military stalemate.This endurance includes working and living according to new routines every day.It requires learning to live under the Japanese bombing every day, and run to the air-raid shelter under the stone wall of the mountain city to take shelter as soon as you hear the alarm.It also includes learning to get along with Sichuanese, or, conversely, Sichuanese learning to get along with "Xiajiang people".

The intolerance of western China that has been manifested in Yunnan in recent years is also evident in Sichuan in the relationship between the Sichuanese and their compatriots from the eastern cities, who traveled 1,500 miles westward up the Yangtze River as wartime refugees. .The Sichuan Basin was rich and well-watered farmland ruled by conservative landowners.Its abundant production could feed a sudden increase in population, and the mountain barrier around its river channel became a natural Maginot line of defense against the Japanese army.In the first few years of the war, government departments, research institutes, and universities moved westward from the eastern cities to Sichuan, which was out of reach of the Japanese army, even more than to Yunnan.At the same time, civilians flocked to the western refuge as much as possible by car, train, boat or even on foot.There are also a small number of communist guerrilla bases in the northwest.Entrepreneurs in Shanghai and the river ports were encouraged to dismantle their factories and ship their machines up the Yangtze River to Sichuan.Despite such heroic efforts, relatively little material or capital was brought west by the influx of people.In this case, the Sichuanese, like the Yunnanese, viewed the "Xiajiang people" as unwelcome invaders.

Since Chongqing was the capital during the war, Sicheng had to go there from time to time to seek funding for government-sponsored research institutes.It takes several days to travel by boat from Lizhuang to Chongqing, which is difficult and time-consuming.When he arrived in the crowded city of Chongqing, his base camp was the guest house of Academia Sinica, which provided lodging for the heads of research centers from other places to accompany the capital to do business temporarily.It was a rough, chaotic guest house, often full, offering only group accommodation--cots after cots in one or two large rooms.

Fairbank described it as "high-level intellectuals living in a state of distress, bedding, pots and pans, children, oranges and chatter. It is a slum, but it is full of highly educated experts. It’s a good tragicomedy.” Ultimately, however, it offers shelter from the elements and the chance to meet like-minded friends from afar.Apparently no one would have expected to find a luxury hotel or even a tidy 'bed and breakfast' inn in wartime Chongqing. . At the end of September 1942, when Fairbank went to the guest house of the Institute, Sicheng greeted him and happily held his hands and feet for five minutes. "He used to come here to raise money and did a pretty good job. Got more grants from both the Ministry of Education and the British Boxer Reparations Foundation."

As soon as Fairbank settled down in Chongqing, the Liangs eagerly waited for him to visit them.Sicheng wrote, "Our meeting will mean that you have finally come to this cursed town that is difficult for anyone to reach. It takes three days to travel from Chongqing to Lizhuang Shangshui by a broken ship, and two days to go back to the water. God. There is no way to shorten the boat trip time or improve the means of transportation. However, I still want to give you a map showing the location of our construction institute, in case you disembark at Lizhuang and there is no one to pick you up at the pier Yes. The ship does not operate according to the schedule. Every arrival here is an emergency. But you can still inform us the name and date of the ship you boarded by telegram. The telegram is sent by letter from Yibin or Nanxi, the two places It's 60 miles (about 20 miles) away, and it could arrive before or after you."

Fairbank's visit to Lizhuang was postponed until mid-November.He has an old friend, sociologist Tao Meng, and his traveling companions for "breaking the ship on the water".On the way he contracted the same Chinese respiratory bug that still sickens unvaccinated Americans.During his week in Lizhuang, he lay in bed with a fever for several days.It is only a hall away from Huiyin's ward.Sicheng was running back and forth between the two beds in the ward with food, medicines, thermometers, etc.So was this long-awaited reunion a total flop?Quite the opposite.After Fairbank left, Whein wrote to him that she was still "under your great influence. I have long been unaccustomed to joking and joking, and now they are a kind of enjoyment to me, in serious conversation The semi-serious, informal metaphors and arguments, besides the friendly whispers and calm discussions, are very touching, very likable and very sweet."

He saw the difficulties of the Liang family with his own eyes, so he promised to help in the future and persuaded Liang Sicheng to spend instead of saving our gift and the extra money they got from selling fountain pens, watches and other things.A good maid, good food and milk powder sent by Fairbank made Huiyin's health miraculously improve. On November 26 she wrote to tell him that she now had "no fever, no cough, no indigestion, good sleep and appetite, good food and gramin milk powder. She especially liked the one made for her bed." Pays for the bed frame. It raises the bed "to bring it closer to human height than to the ground, so that people don't have to stoop so low to give her something." "

Sicheng himself is not that strong. With the help of his colleagues, he has completed 26 paintings of important ancient architectural remains, accompanied by necessary text descriptions and enlarged photos, and sent them to Chongqing to participate in the National Art Exhibition. Hui Yin wrote: "Sicheng's Institute of Construction has come out of the wartime chaos and the tragic days and powerless struggles in the sound of national disasters when we started to create it, and has reached a new state. It has finally At the same time I said goodbye to my old habits of writing, lost touch with my poet-writer friends, and gave up every chance of working on a new play which I loved and which might have some talent and sensibility .” Sicheng is glad that his architectural society has a more solid foundation and is more famous for those who have the means and power to support such research institutions.He has therefore become eponymous with his work, or considered a trustworthy person to do it.He's not as carefree as he used to be; he's now a jack-of-all-trades and fund-raising trot running between here and the capital, forced into the position of manager, a man in charge. The man who built the business side of the society was busy with meetings and contacts, etc., instead of taking his time and focusing on his research, drawing and fieldwork. Her reporting of Sicheng's work was finally appreciated and came with other good news.Sicheng wrote to Fairbank and said, "Our family situation has been greatly improved. You probably can't believe it. Everyday life is very normal. I go to work on time and never stop. Huiyin doesn't feel hard to do housework. She said that it is mainly her The attitude towards things has changed, and it just so happens that there are some small things that make her feel very comfortable, and many things that used to annoy her. Of course, the secret is that our economic situation has improved. And the most gratifying thing is that Huiyin's Gained eight and a half pounds in the past two months." It looks like we finally have every reason to celebrate this turn of events in the Liang family's lifestyle and outlook.