Chapter 29 26．last letter

March 31, 1948 was the 20th anniversary of Sicheng and Huiyin's marriage in Ottawa.Some close friends joined the Liang family for a tea ceremony at their Tsinghuayuan home.Huiyin surprised everyone with an impromptu report on the capital of the Song Dynasty.But Lao Jin was very worried about the "groom and bride".Huiyin's incision had been split by almost an inch and was being treated with streptomycin.At the same time, Lao Jin wrote that Sicheng himself was very thin, took very heavy classes at Tsinghua from Monday to Friday, and "everyday life was like a telephone switchboard - so many lines intersected in him. ".

That year was the second year of Tsinghua's Department of Architecture, and the students enrolled were naturally only the first and second graders, a total of 41 students.Sicheng is responsible for teaching the main history courses, first describing the evolution of Western architecture, and then talking about the history of Chinese architecture.He also attends architectural critique classes twice a week. In May 1948, towards the end of his first year at Tsinghua, he wrote, "I never liked teaching much. I would rather do research work. But the work of the students compensated me. Generally they were very intelligent and Concentration, I am generally satisfied. But it keeps me busy as hell and prevents me from doing my research work. It's really a contradiction."

Field trips were of course impossible during the Civil War, and his architectural society has not worked out a work plan since it moved back to Beijing.Moreover, his several months in the United States have intensified his interest in studying urban and architectural elements.These considerations led him to reorganize the Department of Architecture into two sections—architecture and urban planning.Clarence Stein donated two hundred volumes for faculty and students for the new major. Sicheng must have hoped to have time to study this new field and its application to China.He looks beyond the exigencies of the current construction.His priority was to provide a healthy general environment for his people to live in.He wants to make sure that his students are not just technically proficient, they have a deep understanding of human needs for beauty, comfort, space, health, safety, and neighborliness.

In 1948, a new friend entered the Liang family's life.Lin Zhu is a young girl who has just graduated from a middle school in Shanghai.She came to Beijing because she wanted to study in Tsinghua University, and her father wrote a letter of introduction to Huiyin.Based on her initial impression of the Liang couple, she portrayed them vividly, and at the same time gave us an initial impression of the writer when she was so young: silent and shy, intelligent and sensitive.It is no surprise that she became a close friend of the Liang family. "I thought about going to see Liang Sicheng and his wife, two well-known figures, and I couldn't help feeling uneasy. What should I talk to them about? I have never dealt with people from my father's generation alone. But, I really saw them After that, all my worries disappeared, and Mr. Lin enthusiastically arranged for me to stay at Professor Wu Liusheng's house. When she knew that my academic English was the worst, she offered to help me with English tutoring, and stipulated that every Wednesday and Friday Twice. Because I am not good at talking, I am most afraid of dealing with strangers, but to see Mr. Lin, I just need to go with my ears, she is so talkative and funny, except for giggling from time to time. She is the most beautiful and graceful woman I have ever seen in my life. Of course, when I saw her, she was already in her forties, and the disease had tortured her to the point of The next bone. But once in contact with her, the real Lin Huiyin disappears, and all you feel is her spirit, her wisdom and the radiance of beauty. I am often intoxicated in my appreciation of her.

"At that time, her health was very bad, and she often had a low fever in the afternoon, and she insisted on teaching me, a student who didn't study hard. I felt very guilty. But she was so attractive to me, that I didn't want to give up every opportunity to be close to her. We always start class at 3:30 in the afternoon, and drink tea at 4:00. Mr. Liang will drink with us when he is at home. Sometimes the house is full of guests. When there are not many guests, Mr. Lin will tell me about the planning of Beijing City. Talking about architecture, or talking about literature and art seems to never consider that I was still an 'architecture blind' at that time, and I was simply an ignorant child compared with her. And it was in this kind of chat that I increased my knowledge of architecture to a certain extent, and had a better understanding of architecture. Architecture took an interest.

"One day, Mr. Lin asked me which ancient buildings in Beijing I had seen. I said that I had seen almost all the buildings in the city. "She asked me which places I liked the most, and I said I liked the Temple of Heaven and the Taimiao the most, because the Temple of Heaven went through a long Shinto path to the pure white mound looking up at the clear sky, which really gave people the feeling of leading to heaven; the large ancient pine trees in the gate of the Taimiao It is so quiet and solemn. "When I heard about the ancient pine in the Taimiao, Lin suddenly smiled and asked me if I had heard the story of her visiting the Taimiao with Mr. Liang? I shook my head, so she said: 'I was only eighteen or nineteen years old at that time. Cheng went out to play, and I put on a young girl’s reserve, but soon after entering the gate of the Taimiao, he grunted, climbed up the tree, and left me alone! I was really angry.’ I turned back Look at Mr. Liang, he raised an eyebrow and said with a mischievous smile: "But you are still in love with this silly boy." They all laughed, and I was already laughing hard. Once Mr. Lin finished speaking English and asked When I was interested in which subject, I said that I was interested in literature, but I knew it was not the material, so I didn’t plan to develop in this area, it was just a hobby. She asked me which author’s works I liked. I said that there were too many works from abroad. Yes, but Chinese writers I only like Shen Congwen's, followed by Cao Yu's scripts. She was very happy to hear that, and talked to me about Shen Congwen's works, and said that it is unfair to treat Shen Congwen now. A famous writer in the Liberated Area Zhao Shuli's works were deeply influenced by Shen Congwen. She introduced me to read Zhao Shuli's works. It was from Zhao Shuli's works that I gradually got to know the Communist Party in the early days of liberation.

"Mr. Lin is my teacher and the guide of my life. Moreover, even my original marriage was arranged for me during my illness. Soon because Mr. Lin's condition worsened, we stopped English classes. But because at that time Liang Zaibing has gone south, and Liang Congjie is in college, so I often go to Liang’s house. What impresses me the most is their love for the motherland’s culture, dedication to their career, and optimism towards life. "At that time, Mr. Liang's burden was extremely heavy every heating season. Because the teaching staff's residence of Tsinghua University had no heating at that time, they had to rely on coal stoves for heating, and Mr. Lin, who was sick and weak, was particularly afraid of the cold, so he had to give birth to three or four and a half people at home. How tall are the big stoves. How to ensure that these stoves are always burning can only be managed by Mr. Liang himself. I often hear them describe to me a 'battle' of how to save the dying stoves the night before. Now I I realized that according to Mr. Lin’s health condition at that time, the stove going out really meant the end of life. But every time they talked about it, they were so humorous and witty, without any complaints or complaints.”

These intimate, homely words were spoken at a time of great political and military turmoil.Northeast of Beijing, the Communists were overwhelming the Nationalist forces.When Japan surrendered, Chiang Kai-shek's elite troops with American equipment were airlifted in American planes to the three northeastern provinces to take over the big cities, while the Communists in North China went to the countryside.Chiang maintained personal control in Nanking, directing his troops from afar without consulting or taking advice from local commanders.He preserved his troops and equipment by concentrating them in what he thought were fortified strongholds in the great cities of the Northeast.The communists, controlling the surrounding countryside and finding support among the people, surrounded these strongholds and uprooted them one at a time from May to November.Changchun changed hands on October 20, 1948, and Shenyang on November 1.By December 1st, in a crucial battle at Xuzhou, Jiangsu, north of Nanking, Communist forces had captured several Nationalist troops and their equipment.The war is almost over.

Neither Sicheng nor Huiyin showed the slightest interest in politics.They grew up in an artistic environment, advocating rationality in their thinking, devoting themselves to their own careers, determined to make achievements in the fields of architectural history and poetry, and had no time to participate in politics or political speculation.Nor did the hardships they suffered during the war inspire in them the kind of political anger that many of their friends felt.They entered the communist world with hope and childlike innocence. Therefore the following political argument emanating from Hui Yin is completely extraordinary. "The idiotic thought control of the right and the deliberate manipulation of ideas by the left is enough to make one ponder and silence for a while. The kind of liberalism that your country enjoys is far from ours, and our economic life is as good as it gets for those who have survived it." For people who are starving, it means tens of thousands of dollars one day and nothing the next. When life as a whole is messed up, my bedridden life is meaningless gone."

In the end, even the correspondence must come to an end.Huiyin's last letter was written between November 8 and December 8, 1948, the month the Communist troops arrived.She wrote shortly after receiving her first copy of Fairbank's book America and China (first edition).It's actually a book, with both praise and criticism, as a good book review should. "Now I feel that even without postal difficulties or other possible barriers, I may only have a month or two to write freely to all of you in the United States, so I feel a little bit at a loss. This is the letter... I Just wish it arrived before or at Christmas time.

"Thank you very much for these books, especially the last Fairbank masterpiece, what a book! Of course we all admired, admired, wondered and discussed it. It impressed everyone. It is extremely profound. Sometimes we say inwardly, lovingly and lecturingly, that somewhere Fairbank must have understood our 'special celestial' disease deeply, and somewhere else 'that sense of things'. This kind of feeling', anyway, this time, for a modern Chinese, this book is by no means a 'foreign devil' stuff, not at all. (Zhang) Xi Ruolian loved him and said he liked Fairbank's book, He also said (in Chinese), 'It is true that there is no word that is misunderstood by outsiders, he understands so much', etc. Lao Jin said that this is a very 'reasonable and scientific' summary of all of us, and said that 'some things Fairbank understands very well, he is indeed different from other foreigners'. And I must admit that Sicheng and I were surprised to find that it has no kind misunderstandings or well-intentioned expectations or disappointments of foreigners. I especially appreciate Fairbank used Western terms to describe Western things, and Chinese terms to describe Chinese things, but he used the same Western language. Americans who study China in their own language and Chinese who study their own country in other languages ​​can understand. We absolutely love it. "Furthermore, we often point out to each other with the utmost admiration and without any shame that there are things about China that we know for the first time (!) from Fairbank.' The funny thing is, I never knew corn and Sweet potatoes were introduced to China so late, and many events in the relationship between China and the West are unknown.' "In other words, we all love what Fairbank must have loved to write about. The Liangs have never had such a surprise since Fei Weimei repainted the Wuliang Ancestral Hall. "My only regret, if any, is that Chinese art was not touched on in the review of the book, although I don't see much connection between art and international relations issues! Yet art is such an important part of our lives , so to speak of us in general there is always a 'also there' mingled with the symptoms of our subconscious, and when I say 'art' I also mean 'poetry', by which I may also mean that our language causes Special sensitivities and aesthetic-emotional experiences of or acquired through language, which refers to specific written characters, fonts, word structures, literature, and written traditions and heritage. Our language is actually three-quarters rhetorical and Rhyme, only a quarter of it is clear and accurate words! ... I mean, perhaps, this rich, all-encompassing 'language-poetry-art complex' also makes us and makes us think, feel and fantasy…… "In short, I think that art is at least as important and influential to our mental structure as recipes are to our physical structure. The fact that we eat and tofu certainly cannot but make us different from those who eat large pieces. There is a difference between a steak and a person who drinks a few large glasses of milk with a cream cake. Similarly, the person who sits and grinds ink and patiently draws a landscape painting is different from the person who lives in the Latin Quarter of Paris and is familiar with Balzac's style and late period. The young rebels of the Impressionists, and more recently Mathieser and Picasso, were almost another race. (Same as the young man who traveled as far as Mexico to see the Mexican murals.) "The above is just a little review of my own book for the purpose of providing an argument - an argument for fun with Fairbank. I am going to have a hard time sending this letter! "As for the political views, this time I completely agree with Fairbank. It shows that since we last debated in Chongqing, I have moved closer to his views-or rather, I have watched the daily problems before me for the past two years. I have changed, and I feel that Fairbank is fairer. I am very, very happy that this is the case. By the way, I am very ignorant of many things. An instructive and well-informed overview is much appreciated. We are so familiar with ourselves that we often don't want to draw a clear picture or describe it, so Fairbank's book is excellent reading for all of us, and we It will also give the younger generation a good read through it. "We may not see each other for a long time now ... Next year or next month we may be very different, although we don't know how different. But as long as the younger generation has interesting things to do, Living well and having a job, that's what matters. The vanguard of the Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army liberated Tsinghua Gardens a few days after Huiyin’s final letter was sent, and a month later, in January 1949, Beijing was handed over to the Communists.Correspondence is impossible; our two worlds are out of touch.