Chapter 4 1. Beijing girl

Mr. Yang Jiang usually speaks Mandarin with a southern accent, but whenever he recalls the old things in Beijing, such as the kindness and politeness among neighbors, he always greets him when he meets, "Good morning, have you eaten?" "Go slowly, see you later."... It is actually a Beijing accent.I once talked about the Tsinghua Jingzhai students in the 1930s. At that time, the female dormitory had a reception room. When male students came to visit, the maids in the dormitory usually announced loudly, and the girls who were notified went to the reception room to meet the guests. "Miss ××× is looking for someone!" Mr. Yang imitated the call of the maid in the dormitory for us, full of Beijing flavor.

Mr. Yang seems to have a deep impression on the little girls from Tsinghua University from Beiman Girls' High School. They are very childish, and these five sentences frequently appear in their daily conversations: "Hey, it's fun"; "It looks good; "Give it to me";" Hate"; "Hit you". The pronunciation is pure, the tone of voice is charming, and she looks like a Beijing girl! I was surprised that Mr. Yang was good at capturing the characteristics of people, and suddenly remembered that she was a Beijing girl in the first place. On July 17, 1911 (the 22nd day of the sixth lunar month in the Xinhai Year), Mr. Yang was born in Beijing.His father Yang Yinhang (named Butang, pen name Laopu) was teaching in a political and legal school in Beijing at the time, and at the invitation of Prince Su Shanqi, who was "assisting the government" in Xuantong, he went to the palace to give lectures on law in the evening.Ordinarily, when Mr. Yang was born, he already had three older sisters, Shoukang, Tongkang, and Runkang, who would not receive much attention. Unexpectedly, his father, Mr. Lao Pu, loved this fourth daughter very much since she was a child. it is good.Maybe it's because this is the first child he gave birth to after he fled overseas to study in the United States, or maybe it's because the baby is born with a sense of spirituality, which makes people like it.Mr. Lao Pu named his daughter Ji Kang, nicknamed A Ji.

It is said that Ah Ji was born with a love of laughter, and after crying at birth, his eyes were dripping and looking around.Despite the extreme uneasiness and distress at home due to the turmoil in the current situation and the riots in various places, she smiled very happily.When she was born, the family bought an ice cream bucket, because Mr. Lao Pu loved to eat ice cream and often made it at home.On the day Ah Ji was born, it happened that a bucket of ice cream was made at home.The second aunt pretended to give her some ice cream, her little mouth turned purple from the cold, she licked it patter, savoring it!

Ah Ji's three elder sisters were all born in Wuxi, and the midwife Wen Po (also known as "Old Lady") only needs one hundred copper coins for each delivery, that is, ten copper coins, which is a corner of the ocean.A Ji was born in Beijing, and the "old lady" in Beijing is known for being strong and rough, and the southern wives can't bear it.So Ah Ji was delivered by a Japanese obstetrician, and the delivery fee was fifteen taels of silver.The sisters talked and laughed with Ah Ji, saying that all the childbirth expenses of their sisters and brothers together were less than a fraction of fifteen taels of silver (because one tael of silver is more expensive than a silver dollar).

Dad once said to Ah Ji: "Ah Ji, you have been hated since you were born." At that time, her family She is next to her uncle Jing Su (that is, the teacher Yang Zhixun in Hu Shi's "Forty Self-Reports").The maid of their family came over and asked: "Is it born? Boy or girl?" The answer: "Girl." The maid said: "I hate it to death!" Mr. Lao Pu heard this and angrily gave her a silver coin "announcement money".Ah Ji heard what his father said afterwards, and was very unconvinced.Papa said the maid was "happy and unexpectedly satisfied, what's not to like?"

Although there are four daughters in the family, the eldest daughter and the second daughter live and study at Qiming Girls' School in Shanghai, and the third daughter stays in their hometown in Wuxi according to their grandmother and eldest aunt, so Ah Ji became the "single daughter" of the family for a while, the center of joy. My mother told Ah Ji that after she was born, she sometimes cried and screamed, and her father would hug her and pace back and forth, humming Japanese lullabies in his mouth. ". The heights of the Aji sisters are in the shape of ingots: the eldest sister and the eighth sister are taller, the third sister and the seventh sister are next, and Aji is in the middle and the shortest (the second sister is born early, so it is not counted).According to the second aunt, Yin Kafen, when Ah Ji was born, she had to hold her with both hands close together, but if she was too far apart, she fell off.When Ah Ji grew up, he was short in stature. Mr. Lao Pu, who loves cats, said with a smile: "Short legs and short stature are good cats."

It's just that Ah Ji was not a "only daughter" for a long time: on the eve of the Revolution of 1911, Mr. Lao Pu resigned and returned to the south to take care of his grandmother and others. Then he took refuge in Shanghai with his wife and Ah Ji, and joined his eldest and second sisters.Later, the eldest brother Baochang, the younger brother Baoao, the seventh sister Yang Shu, and the eighth sister Yang Bi were born one after another. Ah Ji had three older sisters, and his younger brother had two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Ah Ji never competes for favor at home, but she is talented, intelligent, and considerate. She is very close to her parents, teaches her parents aloud, and is a silent example.

Aji's father is a bit different, which certainly stems from his straightforward and open-minded nature, but also has something to do with his education.He is upright and upright; he treats his family members equally and respects him; he does not favor boys over girls, and boys and girls are equal.He never beat or scolded the children, nor did he spoil them.He believes that children cannot be pampered, and they cannot ask for everything to be takeforgranted. He (from the child's point of view) "deserves it"; as long as they are pampered, children will definitely be selfish in the future.

Ah Ji said that his father was "dignified and powerful", and the children were afraid of him; but they were afraid of him, but they were very close to his father.We all know that he loves children from the bottom of his heart.When Mr. Qian Zhongshu saw Mr. Lao Pu for the first time, he was also a little scared. Later, he said to A Ji: "My father is like 'looking at it like it is, and receiving it is also warm'". The father called the children "old and young" in Wuxi dialect.When the young and old were mischievous and affected his work, he didn't do anything and didn't reprimand him. He just asked his mother to lead the young and old to other places for training.

The father likes the children to eat some sweets around after meals, and often asks the mother to buy some delicious things to "put in the flame mouth". "Fang Yankou" is a phrase borrowed from the Menglan Penhui, which in the Yang family means daddy's treat, and is used by children to ask daddy for something to eat, use, or play with. When "flaming mouth", the old and the young are happy, the father is happy, and the family happiness is endless.Therefore, after many years, the children have grown up, and even have their own children, and they still ask their fathers to "flame their mouths".

Aji is handy. When her father eats fruits after meals, she can peel them; when he eats dried chestnuts and pecans, she is good at peeling the shells and removing the clothes.In short, regardless of whether the fruit is fresh or dry, once it is in her hands, it is guaranteed to be clean. The old and the young are sensible, and they often disperse automatically after lunch and dinner, so that father can take a lunch break.But his father once stopped Aji and said, "Actually, I like to be accompanied by others, but don't make any noise." From then on, Aji obediently accompanied him to read books, walk and do things, tiptoeing without making any sound.In winter, there is only a stove in the father's house, and the children use hand stoves and foot stoves that simmer charcoal to keep warm.The stove needs to add coal from time to time, and Ah Ji's movements are light, and her sister and younger siblings all admire her for being able to add coal without making a sound. Father respects and loves mother, and mother fully understands and supports father's maverick behavior. This kind of equal-to-other husband-wife relationship is rare in the old society where the power of the husband is dominant, and it is also rare among old-fashioned couples. Aji's mother, Tang Xulai, was also from Wuxi.According to Mr. Yang, my father must have changed the ancient name of mother.Because when he was the Chief Prosecutor of the Higher Prosecutor's Office in Beijing, every New Year's Day, my father had to wear a Western-style dress and a top hat to celebrate the festival at Huairen Hall;Madame needs to have a business card.Mr. Yang's natal family is a businessman, and his mother's nickname is Xibao, but I don't know what her real name is.Dad changed it to be more elegant, and the character "嫈" is an ancient character.Mr. Yang also remembered a joke.Every New Year's Eve, my mother said, "Take out the top hat", and her elder brother would cry aloud, saying, "Don't take out the big civet cat". A Ji's mother was the same age as Lao Pu, and when they got married at the age of twenty, Lao Pu was still a student.The mother is literate (because the Tang family is a wealthy businessman, the family hired a female teacher to teach their daughters to read and write), and is reasonable.He used to attend classes at Shanghai Wuben Girls' School, and loved to read novels, both old and new.After two years of marriage, my father was sent by Shanghai Nanyang Public School to study in Japan. Not long after he arrived in Japan, he learned that his wife was about to give birth, so he asked the official for personal leave to return to China for visits. He arrived home just before the birth of his eldest daughter Shoukang.Although she came and went in a hurry, she only stayed at home for a week; the mother felt relieved and was deeply moved by Lao Pu's affection, which she regarded as a proud thing in her life. After returning from his stay in Japan, his father was wanted by the Qing court for advocating revolution. His mother specially made a fake braid for his father and nailed it to the melon cap.One night when I came back from outside and was about to arrive at the house, I felt that someone behind me pulled the fake braid to cover it twice.Knowing that someone was following him, the father fled in a hurry.With the help of Aji's grandfather to raise funds, he absconded to his alma mater, Waseda University in Japan, and was admitted to the graduate school of the university, specializing in law.In July of the following year, he passed the dissertation and received a Bachelor of Laws from Waseda University.That is to say, he went to the United States and entered the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. The father went away for more than four years, and the mother lived with her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephew in her hometown in Wuxi, raising three daughters. In 1910, when his father returned to China, he first worked in Beijing. After the Revolution of 1911, he became a lawyer in Shanghai.Because of the homicide case of bullies in Hangzhou, he insisted on the independence of the judiciary, disagreed with the governor of Zhejiang and the governor of Zhejiang Province, and was transferred to the Chief Prosecutor of the Beijing Normal University. Since my father returned to China, no matter where he went south or north, my mother always took her children with her, accompanied her father, and managed the housework in an orderly manner, so that the children believed that the mother was capable and omnipotent! As far as A Ji can remember, from childhood to adulthood, he has never heard his parents quarrel once.She recalled: There are often old-style couples who don't quarrel, but the woman will feel grievances and boredom in her heart, and there is not much common language between the couple.Her parents are like old friends, talking about everything.They talked so much: about the past and the present;They think that it is not good to benefit oneself at the expense of others, and it is even worse to harm others without benefiting oneself.Sometimes they laugh, sometimes lament, sometimes self-reflect, and sometimes sum up experience. Aji described his father and mother: "The conversation between the two of them is like a long river, which sounds like reading Jeandela Bruyere's "Human Nature and the State of the World" (Les Caracteres). It is a pity that Aji was young and ignorant at that time. I listened to the intermittent conversations without paying much attention, and my current understanding is the accumulation of years of careless smattering of knowledge.I once asked Mr. Yang Jiang how her father and mother's open-minded, heart-to-heart, understanding relationship had influenced their sisters.Mr. Yang replied: "Among our sisters, three are married, and all of them are good wives; we all feel ashamed that we are not as gentle and considerate to our husbands as our mother is to my father." Self-effacing, otherwise the unusual meeting of "the three of us", how could the mutual relationship be so natural and harmonious, and Qian Yang's "human nature and state of the world" are so wonderfully interpreted! When Ah Ji was four years old, she returned to Beijing with her parents and started her life as a "Beijing girl".This time I went north, my eldest sister and second sister did not come with me, and they still stayed at Qiming Girls' School in Shanghai to live and study.The third sister lives in Wuxi according to her grandmother and eldest aunt.Later, my father was transferred to be the director of the Higher Judgment Department of Zhejiang Province and moved to Hangzhou.When the mother gave birth to the baby brother, the eldest aunt went to Hangzhou to take care of the mother during confinement, and brought the third sister to Hangzhou. At that time Ah Ji was three years old, the darling of the family, very muddy, the first time I saw my third sister, and ordered her to "call Ji Kangguan".The third sister said, "Why did I call you?" At that time, the eldest sister and the second sister also came back from Qiming for a family reunion.Ah Ji likes the second sister the most, and she is the only one who can coax Ah Ji to be good.But no one thought that Tongkang, the smartest second sister among the sisters, would never be able to reunite with her parents and siblings after this farewell.She died of paratyphoid fever in Shanghai in 1917 when she was less than fifteen years old. This was a great sadness in the life of her parents.The mother who rushed to visit immediately took the eldest sister back to Beijing. The eldest sister went to Beijing Sacred Heart School, but she returned to Shanghai Qiming to live and study soon. Ah Ji's family first arrived in Beijing and lived in Dongcheng.The landlord was a Manchu, so Aji got to meet Manchu women with "bantou", cheongsams, and high-soled shoes.Their high soles are not on the heels but in the middle of the soles. They are wooden, round, and carved from a whole piece of wood, so they are not easy to break, and they can walk steadily when worn.Mr. Lao Pu once asked Ah Ji if he wanted to wear high-soled shoes.Ah Ji thought about it seriously, and said seriously: "Yes!" Ah Ji entered the kindergarten class in Beiman Nursery.Later, the whole family moved to No. 25, Dongxie Street, Xicheng. Ah Ji followed his third sister, Runkang, to go to Xidan Pailou No. 1 Mentoring Home, and Ah Ji went to preschool. Ah Ji was six years old. He graduated from the preschool class of the No. 1 Mengyang Nursing Home and was transferred to the primary school affiliated to the Women's Normal University in Picai Hutong. He still went to the same school as his third sister and commuted by rickshaw every day.My father went to work in a carriage, and my third uncle went to work in a chartered car.The third uncle returned to his hometown in Wuxi due to illness, and the chartered car was owned by Aji's family, and the driver was also used by her family, so they took a chartered car instead. They provide lunch at school at noon.At that time, Yin Yu, the third aunt who served as the "supervisor" of the Women's High School, once accompanied the guests to the dining room when the elementary school students were eating. The whole dining room was suddenly solemn, and everyone concentrated on eating.Ah Ji sat with his back to the door, and dropped a lot of rice grains in front of the bowl.The third aunt came over and whispered something, and Ah Ji quickly picked up the rice grains and ate them.The elementary school students next to him seemed to quickly pick up the rice grains they dropped on the table and eat them.The third aunt described to Mr. Lao Pu this group of girls who looked similar to A Ji from behind, "one with a white neck and two braided horns", and they hurriedly picked up rice grains and put them in their mouths, which was very interesting.The third aunt laughed out her dimples when she said that, she obviously liked these little girls very much. Perhaps because of the third aunt, Ah Ji was taken to the university department by the students of the women's high school from time to time, was borrowed as a "flower god" when acting, and performed rope skipping with college students at the sports meeting. In the spring and summer of 1917, when Aji was enjoying the happiness of her childhood carefree, the family was hit hard and faced serious challenges.As a student who just entered elementary school, she couldn't figure out why her father, who had always been diligent and dedicated to public affairs, suddenly quit work. She went to Baihua Mountain with Wang Zinian, a botanist who loves poetry and a classmate of Waseda, to collect and make plant specimens. It took a week to come back tanned.Soon, the family carriage was sold, as were the two horses, and the groom and the groom all left.There is only a chartered car left at home. Two years later, Ah Ji entered the third grade of junior high school.My mother, who never traveled, visited the Summer Palace, Fragrant Hills and other scenic spots in the suburbs of Beijing one after another. She also bought a lot of famous Beijing medicines such as Meihuadiantongdan and Zijinding, and Beijing specialties such as palace-made silk flowers, and planned to take them back to her hometown as gifts.Then, I packed my luggage and prepared to go back to the south.One morning not long after the start of autumn school, Ah Ji boarded the train with his parents and family and headed back to the south. This is Ah Ji's second "return to the south".The last time was shortly after she was born, on the eve of the 1911 Revolution, the situation was turbulent, local riots, her father resigned and returned to the south to serve his grandmother, and then took refuge in Shanghai; on heart.It wasn't until she suddenly left home that she realized that she hadn't said goodbye to her best classmates, "I was very sad". It was only later that I found out that the Beijing Higher Prosecutor’s Office, which my father presided over, had violated the official practice of hearing the bribery case of Xu Shiying, the chief of the Ministry of Communications: after the office started the investigation, despite subpoenas, interrogations, search for evidence, and handing over to the local office to continue the investigation, everything It is carried out in strict accordance with the law, and there is no disagreement at all. It is just that the director of the Ministry of Communications, who is suspected of a crime, has served in many important positions such as the president of the Dali Yuan, the director of the Ministry of Justice, and the director of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Beijing government. Intercede for him.On the night of the summons, the Yang family kept calling all night.After dawn, my father was suspended by the Attorney General.Chief Justice Zhang Yao had intervened in advance, ignoring media reports and parliamentary inquiries, intending to stop investigating the case.The father ignored the hint from his superiors, and instead "asked the Chief Justice personally, whether the Chief Justice personally believes that Xu Shiying is of high morals and there is no room for suspicion? Saying so, but when the senior prosecutor of the Beijing Normal University summoned the criminal suspect for interrogation and searched for evidence on May 4, 1917, the Ministry of Justice immediately sent a letter to the President to convict the High Procuratorate of the Beijing Normal University under the pretext that the prosecutor "violated his duties". Chief Prosecutor Yang Yinhang and Prosecutor Zhang Rulin ceased their duties and were handed over to the Judiciary Disciplinary Committee for discussion. Aji later deduced from the facts at that time that his father's suspension from work was not long, probably the week when he went up the mountain to collect plant specimens.Although he was not reinstated after the suspension, he still served in the Ministry of Justice.However, my father, who has studied the law intensively and is passionate about the rule of law, was very discouraged after this incident. He had seen through the Beiyang government, which protects officials and officials, and had no intention of continuing to be an official.He and his boss are on top of each other.Two years later, he resigned and returned to the south. Before the resignation was approved, he took the whole family and set off south. What left the deepest impression on Ah Ji was that on the day he left Beijing, there were an unusually large number of people at the railway station to see his father off. It’s a great pride to be different.” This may reflect the attitude of the people from one aspect, I think.The public opinion at that time was sympathetic to and supported Yang Yinhang, Chief Prosecutor of the Beijing Normal University. On May 25th and 26th, 1917, the "Declaration" reported the important news of "High Prosecutor Yang Yinhang summoned Xu Shiying to hand over punishment", the full text of Prosecutor Yang's defense was submitted to the Ministry of Justice for punishment. Published at the same time, so that readers can have a glimpse of "the merits and demerits of this case". Yang Yinhang's statement of defense, based on legal principles, explained the essence of the problem in a righteous way, refuted the Ministry of Justice's request for disciplinary action point by point, refuted the so-called "violation of duty" strongly pointed out by the Chief Justice, and accused the Chief Justice of "delivering disciplinary action" Legal, suspected of partiality.The momentum of the statement of defense fully demonstrated his awe-inspiring righteousness and his passion at the time. The above-mentioned information was provided to the author by a reader after reading Mr. Yang Jiang's article "Recalling My Father", so it was not included in the "Collected Works of Lao Pu" in time. In February 2006, the Taipei Times Cultural Publishing Company published the traditional Chinese version of "Six Chapters of Cadre Schools and General Drinking Tea". Mr. Yang Jiang took the above materials as an appendix of "Recalling My Father" and collected them in the book. The case and Mr. Yang's character proposition will be very helpful. In 1992, I occasionally read the "Dictionary of People of the Republic of China" published by Hebei People's Publishing House. Under Xu Shiying's name, I read: "In June 1916, he was appointed as the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; in July, he was appointed as the chief of the Ministry of Communications. Resigned." According to records, this person went to Taiwan in 1950 to serve as a senior adviser to the "Presidential Palace", and died of illness in Taipei in 1964.Author of "Memoirs of Xu Shiying".It is a pity that I have not found the book, and I do not know if the author has any "recollections" and the fact that he was summoned by the Beijing High Prosecutor's Office in May 1917.