Chapter 16 friendship on the other side

A pair of newly married young Americans suddenly broke into the lives of Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng.They were Fei Zhengqing (Fairbank John King) and Fei Weimei (Wilma) who later became famous sociologists and sinologists. At that time, Fei Zhengqing and Fei Weimei were students who had just graduated from college. Fei Zhengqing was from South Dakota, and Fei Weimei was from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Young people meet and fall in love there.Based on their common hobbies and pursuits, they also chose ancient Beiping as their wedding location. In a beautiful courtyard house in the east city of Beiping, this pair of young people from across the ocean lived the life of old Beijingers with a lot of novelty.Every morning they go to the entrance of the alley to drink soy milk and eat fried dough sticks, and the hawkers with baskets hawking "radish and pears" also arouse their great interest.Every day, they would buy a few "Xinxinmei" radishes, chewing them crisply and chewing out a piece of authentic Beijing rhyme.One of their favorite things to do is to take a rickshaw and walk through the streets and alleys of Beiping. The ancient culture made them enter a classical oriental dream.

They found a Chinese teacher and began to learn the Chinese language. The mysterious square characters gave them another context of horizontal and vertical.In their spare time, they went to the Forbidden City or the Buddhist temples in Xiangshan to investigate, but what attracted them more was the gate towers and city walls of Beiping. Although the scenes of live dramas on the inside and outside of the walls were still so strange to them . Two months after their marriage, they met Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng, and since then, they have maintained a lifelong friendship of blood thicker than water.In her later years, Fei Weimei recalled how they felt when they met, saying:

"Neither they nor we thought at the time that this friendship would last for many years, but its first year captivated us both. They were young, admiring each other, and eager to reciprocate our affection for their company. Hui (whei)—the short name he gave himself for his close foreign friends—is particularly beautiful and lively. Sicheng is more composed. He is polite and responsive, and occasionally displays an eccentric Witty, both are bilingual and familiar with Eastern and Western cultures. Hui balances her husband's restraint with her eloquence and laughter. By exchanging stories of American college life, she quickly learned that we are both He studied at Harvard, and Zhengqing came to Beijing when he was a graduate student at Oxford University."

Often true friendship begins with an adventure in the soul, but the acquaintance of these two couples has no story at all. They met at a party and were attracted to each other. They were overjoyed. The new friendship injected fresh vitality into Lin Huiyin's life. At that time, she and Liang Sicheng had just moved back to Beiping from Shenyang and started to build a school in China. Worrying, Fei Weimei recorded when remembering these days: At that time, Huiyin was experiencing the misery of housework for the first time in her life. It was not that she had no servants, but her family, including her youngest daughter A son, and perhaps most troublesome, a mother who is completely emotionally attached to her, whose mind is bound as tightly as her feet.Chinese tradition required her to take care of her mother, husband and children, and she was called upon to take on the role of the household "manager", responsibilities that consumed most of her time and energy at home.

It should be said that, as a Western woman, Fei Weimei’s perception of Lin Huiyin is deep-seated. She found all the crux of her Chinese friend’s pain at the acupoint of Chinese and Western culture. Fei Weimei said: "Lin Huiyin is of course a member of the transitional generation, and she rebels against the conventional restrictions. Not only did she receive Western education when she was in elementary school in China, not only in the United Kingdom and the United States. She lived a free life abroad as a college student. This is the kind of life that she and Sicheng planned together in Shenyang. But at the moment everything at home seems to make her go home.

She never had a moment's peace at her desk or her pictorial newspaper, 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 a building or writing a poem, but instead of fighting, she turned her attention to solving pressing human problems. " Lin Huiyin opened her heart completely to her new friend Fei Weimei.During those days, Fei Weimei often rode a bicycle or a rickshaw to Liang’s house before dark, and walked through the garden to find Lin Huiyin. The two sat down in a warm corner of the living room and made two cups of hot tea. They sometimes compared the different values ​​and lifestyles between China and the United States, sometimes talked about literature and art, and told each other unreservedly the memories of friends they did not know. Of course, Lin Huiyin talked most about Xu Zhimo, she recited long passages of Xu Zhimo's poems to Fei Weimei, and from her tear-filled eyes, Fei Weimei read out the deep yearning.

Soon Fei Weimei also became close friends with Lin Huiyin's group of friends. He was Jin Yuelin, a logician. Everyone called him "Old Jin". In fact, he seemed to be a member of the Liang family. He lived behind the Liang family courtyard. In a small house, a small door of the residence of Liang and his wife connected with Lao Jin's courtyard.At the parties of Liang's family, Lao Jin is always the first guest to arrive, and sometimes such parties are also held at Lao Jin's home.As a logician, Lao Jin, together with his humorous personality, is so unique. Even when Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng quarreled and quarreled, Lao Jin heard the sound and came to persuade him. He never asked questions, but talked a lot. The relationship between his life and philosophy always puts out the "fire of war" quickly and effectively. Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng also admire Lao Jin's rational and logical thinking.

The outspoken political scientist Zhang Xiruo and international issues expert Qian Duansheng, the unsmiling economist Chen Daisun, Li Ji who studied anthropology and archaeology at Harvard, and the sociologist Tao Menghe who studied in London often attended the gathering. Wait, I'm also a regular here.It should be said that most of the people gathered in the Liang family's living room at that time were the elites of Chinese academic circles. Every Saturday, the wives of scholars often came to the party, and Fei Zhengqing and Fei Weimei were naturally welcomed by everyone.Their Chinese level also improved rapidly in such gatherings.

The climax of the gathering on Saturday was the dinner in the restaurant at noon. Almost every time Lin Huiyin told everyone a happy story, and the protagonist of the story was often herself. There is a story like this: Chen Ma, a servant of the Lin family, ran to report in a panic one day that there was a big crack in the roof of the neighbor to the west of Liang’s house, because the tenants living there were too poor to repair it. On the roof, Tuo Huiyin pleaded with the landlord and asked the landlord to pay for repairs. Lin Huiyin immediately went to the landlord and learned that the rent for the three HOS houses that the tenant lived in only paid 50 copper coins per month, and the tenant's ancestors had been living there since the Qianlong period. I have been renting this house for more than 200 years. The monthly rent is fixed and has never been raised. Therefore, the landlord has no ability to pay for the maintenance of the house. The end of the matter is that Lin Huiyin donated a sum of money to the landlord to repair the roof That's all.

Everyone laughed happily.Like the Chinese, Fei Weimei raised her thumbs up and said loudly, "Hui, you really belong to me!" It seemed that only Lin Huiyin's mother and servants did not welcome the Fei couple. The old lady always stared at the pair of yellow-haired, blue-eyed foreigners with puzzled eyes.Whenever Fei and his wife knocked on the door knocker of Liang's house, the servant who opened the door only opened the door a crack, looked at them from top to bottom for a while, and then put them into the yard. They chased into the living room, and every time Huiyin pushed her mother back to her own room.

When Lin Huiyin was in a bad mood, the Feis took her to the suburbs to ride horses. The hustle and bustle of the city was far away from the gray walls and gray mood, and what appeared in front of them was another kind of pleasing scenery. landscape.The crops on the vast plain are green all the way to the foot of the city wall, and the vigorous green exudes a fresh and tender atmosphere.The high and low earth houses are scattered among the green bushes. The western and northern mountains in the distance are as pale as a grayish blue smoke trail. Through the sparse trees, the shadow of the tower in the distance can be vaguely seen.The sky is as blue as a piece of satin, and strands of clouds are floating in the Xiaoyue River. The earthen city wall of the Yuan Dynasty winds like a gray snake, undulating in the chaotic jungle. Lin Huiyin rode forward, and her sitting posture on the horseback was really great. Even Fairbank, known as the American Knight, was amazed. The towel fluttered in the wind like a burning flame. Because she often went horseback riding, Lin Huiyin simply bought a pair of saddles and a set of breeches. Wearing this attire, she seemed to be a heroic female jockey. During those days, Lin Huiyin’s impression was fresh and beautiful. After Fei and his wife returned to China, she recalled the past in her letter, still in high spirits: I have grown a lot younger and more alive since the two of you appeared around us and gave me new vigor and hope for life and for the future.Whenever I think back on all I have done this winter, I am so grateful and amazed. You see, I was brought up biculturally and it cannot be denied that exposure and activities in both cultures were essential to me.Before you actually appeared in our life in No. 3 (Beizongbu Hutong), I always felt a little lost, a feeling that something was missing, a spiritual poverty that needed to be filled.And your blue notifications fit exactly that need.Another question, my friends in Beijing are older and more serious.Not only can they not give us any fun, but they also want to find Sicheng and me for inspiration or let us make things more lively.How many times have I felt exhausted! This autumn or rather early winter picnics and horseback rides (and a trip to Shanxi) have changed the world for me.How could I have survived all the excitement, confusion, and melancholy caused by our frequent national crises without all this!That horse riding is also very symbolic.Out of Xihuamen, which used to be just Japanese and their prey for me, now I can see trails, endless winter plain scenery, thin silver branches, quiet small temples and people who can hold legends The bridge of pride crossed. Through the projection of the years, Fei and his wife seem to hear the echoes of memories under the ancient city wall on the other side of the ocean under the gust of hooves and drums...