Chapter 2 Part 1: Across the Thick Red Door-1

one In a few days, the Garden Bureau will come and cut down the forty-year-old tall banyan tree in the front yard.In fact, this tree died last year, so it should be cut down, but I can't bear it to disappear without a trace.Originally, the front yard was a pair of banyan trees. In 1960, I was just 25 years old when I moved with my parents from the courtyard in Dongsibatiao to this ancient courtyard.At that time, the trees in the front and back yards were all newly planted.Later, the banyan tree in the front yard grew quickly, and it became shaded after two or three years.Still later, the pink, fuzzy flowers of the banyan tree covered the top of the tree.These flowers can last a whole summer, and every day when the sun goes down, they begin to emit a refreshing fragrance. For 40 years, that fragrance has been the fragrance of "home". Whenever I step into the threshold of this courtyard, whether I am happy or depressed at that time, this fragrance will make me feel the warmth of home.

The owners of the courtyard house have changed several times, and now it is only me and my daughter who are often away from Beijing.Over the past 40 years, the courtyard house has experienced the ups and downs of history with its owner, and witnessed the joys, sorrows, joys, life and death that happened in this courtyard.It also experienced glory and humiliation with the owner of the courtyard, experienced the bustling prosperity and the coldness of the world in front of the door.But this pair of banyan trees will always remain loyal and bloom a tree of pink flowers every year, soothing the heart of the owner with its sweet fragrance.But about four years ago, the one on the west suddenly became "sick", as if it had a terminal illness. The "disease" came on violently, developed rapidly, and died completely in the second year.Someone from the Garden Bureau cut it down, took it away, and laid square bricks on the place where it had grown, and it just disappeared.At that time, I was very excited and sad for a long time.I pray to God to bless the one on the east side near the door opening.However, bad luck still fell on it who lost its partner. In the second year after the one on the west died, the one on the east began to show signs of malaise.After another year, it will not bloom much; last year, when spring came, it barely grew half a tree of thin and yellow leaves, but before the summer flowering season, it completely withered and died!I couldn't bear to let it go, thinking that a miracle would happen this year, and it would still be a dead tree in spring.But the miracle did not happen.It's finally going away.

Because the banyan tree is about to be cut down, when I walk in the backyard every morning, I often walk to the front yard to look at it and stroke its peeling trunk.Now, in the two front and back courtyards, only the crabapple tree in front of the North House Gate, which is as tall as a four-story building, was planted when we moved into No. 51 courtyard 40 years ago.The rest were replaced later. When I got older and really fell in love with the courtyard, I realized that the designers who planted these trees were really experts who knew the characteristics of the courtyard.And the trees we've been planting for forty years are really out of order.At the beginning, the house was a typical official residence-style courtyard, grand and solemn.There should be three courtyards at the front and back of it-the front yard, the middle yard and the back yard. The middle yard is the main yard, and the row of houses facing north and south between the front yard and the middle yard is the hallway. The lobby for receiving visitors.The backyard is an attached courtyard.When I don't know which senior official of the Qing Dynasty lived here, there was a side courtyard in the east.With the changes of the times, the side courtyard has become a large miscellaneous courtyard, which is completely separated from the main courtyard. There are now more than a dozen families living there.You can imagine how magnificent this courtyard house was back then!When our family moved in, it was supposed to be a courtyard with complete front, middle and back yards.But my mother insisted not to have so many houses.The Administration Bureau of the State Council could not persuade her, so they had to cut out the backyard, and the middle courtyard became the backyard.This is a great pity.

When we first moved into this yard, all the trees in the yard had been planted.In the front yard are the two banyan trees, tall and elegant, covering the entire courtyard with green shade.In front of the north house in the backyard are two crabapple trees with pink flowers.Begonia is probably a kind of tree that is particularly favored by courtyard houses. It seems that there are begonias planted in many old courtyard houses.The two tall crabapple trees in front of our north door are both majestic and graceful.The backyard is very large, about twice the size of the front yard, so on the south side of the crabapple tree, near the south house, two lilacs were planted. This layout is really beautiful.In spring, the pink of the crabapple and the light purple of the lilac cast an elegant and soft atmosphere on the yard.And when their flowers wither, the banyan flowers in the front yard bring a quiet floral fragrance to the summer garden.I think that arrangement of lilacs is brilliant.Between the tall banyan trees and begonias at the front and back, Lilac is only as tall as a person, but its branches and leaves spread out, forming a circular pattern between the tall trees standing on both sides.

It's a pity that the composition of the standard courtyard house that was painstakingly designed at the beginning was destroyed soon after.The main reason is that my mother didn't like the courtyard house at all. She always missed the garden houses in Shanghai, and even the Shikumen houses.She never cared about the grass and trees in the yard.The yard was handed over to Aunt Peng, the nanny who cooks.Aunt Peng poured the leftover vegetable soup down the tree roots.After a few years, the crabapple and lilac in the west died. Later, the yard became less and less like a yard. In the early 1960s, my mother was frightened by three years of natural disasters.At that time, my father was a high-ranking cadre, and he was jokingly called a "tang bean cadre" because the government subsidized two catties of sugar and two catties of soybeans every month.But the food is still not enough, so I can only cook porridge for dinner every day.My mother was afraid that such a day would come again, so she had a whimsical idea and made a large round table in the middle of the yard, that is, the central open space between the four trees, spread soil in the middle, and planted peanuts and corn.This was not enough, my mother loved to eat amaranth, so she asked someone to dig out part of the floor tiles and plant a piece of amaranth.The mother is very happy, and so is the daughter Niu Niu.The grandparents and grandchildren are busy harvesting tender corn and urging the shavings to grow.The courtyard of this tall official structure, whenever the harvest season,

turned into a farm yard.Then, something even worse happened. In the early 1960s, Chairman Mao called for "preparing for war and famine", saying that the United States and the Soviet Union would invade.The State Council decided to dig an air-raid shelter in the courtyard for all senior cadres living in the courtyard.The engineering team went into the courtyard and dug out the mother's corn, peanut and amaranth fields, and dug a rectangular "air-raid shelter" entrance next to the crabapple tree in the east. Turning the corner, a square exit was dug from the pear tree on the west side of the south house. The entrance was very spacious, and cement and stone steps were built to go down.The exit is very narrow, and a climbing ladder is built on the cement wall of the entrance wall.The exit and entrance are very simple, except for two thick iron covers. The entrance is two meters long and one meter wide, and the exit is one meter square.Since the entrances and exits of these two air-raid shelters were established, the main courtyard has been completely destroyed.

Later, my father died in Hong Kong.According to the instructions of Premier Zhou Enlai, Guanhua gave up the courtyard at No. 55 Shijia Hutong, which was renovated for him by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and moved into my courtyard.After he moved here, he once wanted to rearrange the trees in the yard.We discussed it many times, disagreed, and did not reach an agreement.He wanted to plant two phoenix trees in front of the north house and two willows in front of the south house.Guanhua's favorite trees during his lifetime were sycamore, willow, tasong, sweet-scented osmanthus and clear bamboo.He has always regretted that the severe cold in the north is not suitable for planting sweet-scented osmanthus and bamboo.So when I built his cemetery in Dongshan, Suzhou, I planted a Tasong, a Golden Osmanthus, and a Silver Osmanthus for him.

I had no reason to disagree with him at the time.I said that willow is not good. It is called "WEEPING WILLOW" (weeping willow) in English, which is not auspicious.It is a pity to pull out crabapples when planting sycamores.Guanhua didn't insist.Twenty-four years later, I really regret not following his advice.I think the arrogance and straightness of Wutong and the tenderness of Yangliu are just two aspects of his own personality.If these trees were planted at that time, although they are rare in courtyards, they might leave a quiet memory of Guanhua. The trees were not changed. According to my opinion, we built a grape trellis in front of the south house, planted a jujube tree in the east courtyard, and planted a persimmon tree in the west courtyard.These are all fruit trees in traditional Beijing courtyards, which later brought a lot of joy of harvest.