Chapter 22 Postscript: Long Yingtai's children recall their mother and childhood

Ten years ago, Long Yingtai wrote based on his own experience of motherhood, from the birth of his eldest son Hua An at eight months and his younger brother Hua Fei to Hua An at eight years old. Conflict... Let us see that Long Yingtai is like a mother; this very influential pen in the Chinese language circle is educating her children in this way.Now, An An and Fei Fei in the book are teenagers aged 19 and 15. How do they view the influence of their mother on them?On the eve of the publication of the 10th anniversary edition, Hua Fei and Hua An respectively wrote about their childhood time with their mother. (editor)

She seems to know a lot about abstract thinking, big vision, and big issues, but Hua An knows a lot about the trivial details of life in Germany.Because of this "split", I often have different opinions with her. In the worst case, I even feel ashamed because I have such a mother who does not enter the "situation"... Childhood seems to be very close, but the childish memory is vague, and the impressions of the fragments have no chronological order. It is difficult for me to find a logical and clear line to narrate.I spent little time with my father when I was a child, but the individual scenes are clear, and most of the time revolves around my mother, but because of too much, the impression is hazy.

My parents were very different: my father played a laissez-faire role, but he didn't understand the details of my upbringing. In contrast, my mother became a strict educator who combined responsibility, but was full of warmth.The biggest difference between my mother and me is that I only care about having fun, but she cares about the talents or characters I need in the future.For example, playing the piano, I pretended to practice in front of my mother for eight years, but in fact I didn’t practice at all, and I forgot all about it today; I won this tug-of-war.For example, swimming, my mother said that swimming is important, so I tried my best to boycott and always walked to the gym at the slowest speed. Several times, when I got there, the swimming class was over.When I was caught by my mother, she would drag and pull me into the car and "bet" me all the way to the swimming pool, but in this cat-and-mouse game, the mouse always has a higher chance of winning.

I admit that I am a naughty child.I can't play the piano well, I can't swim well, and I can't "accuse" her in reverse, saying, "I was young, you should force me", because I remember so clearly, she said, "Okay, now I won't force you anymore, but when you grow up, don't turn around and complain that I didn't force you." Despite this growing "tug of war" between us, my mother still, in a quiet, subtle way, raised me to be, in her words, "as upright as a young tree." people.The Germans I came into contact with always said, "Andrei has a particularly mature mind and manner", and I probably have to thank my mother.It was she who taught me how to make deep criticism and rational thinking, especially how to be sensitive to phenomena.Of course, not everything is good.My super "sharp mindfulness" ability is often not used where it should be used, such as boring lectures in the classroom, but where it should not be used, such as singing birds outside the classroom.On the report card for four consecutive years, different tutors all wrote the same comment: Andre was not attentive enough.

Compared with my father who "let go" of everything, my mother is simply the "family dictatorship" of my brother and me.Today I can understand: on the one hand, she is extremely strict with me, urging me to study hard and do things seriously, but on the other hand, she is extremely particular about freedom, respect and rational thinking.These two somewhat contradictory attitudes come from two imprints of her own growth: one is the upbringing she received in Taiwan—conservative and traditional; the other is that she grew up in the late 1960s, Intellectuals in the early 1970s - advocating freedom and rationality.

There is a difference between Hua Fei's childhood memory and my "boss" one.In his memory, my mother made a lot of verbal threats but never actually used force against us—that was his part. I remember her comb and that tiny feather duster. Sometimes she also spanked, and, a total of two times, she even spanked me in the face. Of course, the most vivid memories are those warm and sweet times.On weekends, the three of us gathered around the bed and read aloud and told stories all night long.From "Andersen's Fairy Tales", Greek mythology to traditional Chinese folk tales, from Hua Mulan to China, our vision horizon is simply an infinitely broad development.This kind of intimate way between mother and us seems to be a model of intellectual education that would be advocated in modern parent-child textbooks, but for us at that time, it was just a tender moment with mother at night, and, in order not to sleep, The time for storytelling and reading aloud can be delayed as long as possible, the longer the better.

As I write, more memories seep into my mind bit by bit.In terms of my relationship with my younger brother and my mother, I don't feel that these two people are my "family" at all. Instead, I feel that they are my best friends.I don't want to admit it to my friends, but the truth is that I grew up with Hua Fei day and night, and my mother was once the core of my universe.On a typical afternoon, having done my homework (or rather, I pretended to have done it), the two of us must have been hanging out in Mother's study.Whenever "Didi" and I messed up something whimsical in the study, my mother would look up from the desk and say, "Hey, how about reading a book?"

She hasn't changed, she still says this sentence to this day──and I haven't changed, I still don't like reading.The idea of ​​wanting me to "fulfill my potential" sometimes led to an extremely embarrassing situation in my mother's mind.I remember when I was in the fifth grade, my mother received a notice from the school: If the child was considered to have musical talent, the parents could take the child to an interview to enter the music gifted class.My mother thought that this was a class that all children had to take, so she took me as promised and arrived at the door of the music classroom on time.The teacher sitting next to the piano asked me to sing the simplest German nursery rhyme, but I was so frightened on the spot that I couldn’t sing a single word. not go down.The music teacher was obviously impatient, and explained to the mother that only children with special "talents" need to come, but the mother felt that the letter she received clearly stated that everyone should come.

Of course my mother got it wrong. It was the first time that I discovered that Germany was a "foreign culture" that my mother was not familiar with. In this "foreign culture" --- my "native culture", I was better than her.At the age of ten, I discovered that she seemed to know a lot about abstract thinking, big vision, and big issues, but Hua An knew a lot about the trivial details of life in Germany.Because of this "split", I often disagreed with her. In the worst case, I even felt ashamed of having such a mother who did not enter the "situation".

Today, I am proud of my mother's "foreign culture" and such a mother.Even though we often had communication difficulties in the past years, I would like to tell her: Don’t forget these past memories, because these memories will follow us throughout our lives, but they are no longer the same as our childhood. obvious.You can say, "Take your time, kid," but sometimes it may be necessary to "let go" quickly.I know it's hard, it's hard, but maybe it's a little bit easier if you remember the sweet times we had as kids, if you know where you will always be in our hearts.

Hua An (19 years old) We sat on the bed, my brother and I leaning on pillows next to each other, with the covers over our laps.Mom sat on the edge of the bed with a book open in her hand.She does not read from the book, but speaks.We also kept interrupting her: "How many hairs does Sun Wukong have on his body?" "Zhu Bajie breathes through his nose or through his mouth?" She always has a way to answer our questions, and the answers are always so vivid, fresh and interesting. ... At twelve forty-five, I finally got home. Victoria Primary School in the village is about a ten minute walk from our house, but I usually take twice as long.As soon as school is over at 12:00, several buddies will discuss: which way to go today?Try a different route every day.We walked very slowly, playing while walking.The most "secret" way is to go around the back of the school, through a cemetery, half a deserted forest. Of course, it is absolutely necessary to stay in the small shop for "writing". "Write" is the only small shop near the school, selling stationery, paper and toys.We go to see if there is a new "Lego" every day, and then calculate how much pocket money we have to save before we can afford it.The female boss, who is familiar to all Victorian primary school students, always stared down at us with a very unhappy look, with an expression that wanted to catch us all and throw them out.The strangest thing is that her German surname is "Enthusiasm" and we politely call her "Mrs. Enthusiasm". As soon as I entered the door, I used to shout, "Mom, I'm back!" There was a "yes" answer from the study upstairs, followed by a sneeze.Mom has hay fever. Reluctant, but there is no way, the first thing I do when I get home is to do my homework.While doing my homework, I smell the aroma from the kitchen: it seems to be fried pork liver with onions, and fragrant Thai rice.There is only a little homework, and when it is almost done, the food is probably on the table. At this time, my brother Hua An also arrives at home. It is about 1:30, which is the time to eat together. The conversation at the dinner table always revolves around the school.I am very eager to report our "village history" taught by the teacher today - there is a stream in the village, and we often go to that stream to catch trout with our hands. The "History of the Village" map shows the creek. After eating, there is really nothing to do.I followed my mother into her study.I drew comics on the carpet at her feet, and she wrote on the desk (I didn't know she was writing "articles" until many years later). She keeps sneezing.I would pester her at every turn, sit on her lap, talk to her, and when she lowered her head to write again, I would ask her to come down again, lie on her stomach with me, and look at what I drew. Looking back now, I really don’t know how she wrote at that time. Time goes by slowly, and at this moment Hua An yells from his room, "Mom, my homework is done, can I go play football?" Mom's reaction is always fussing: "How is it possible? You only do ten minutes of homework every day. Less than five minutes? Children in Taiwan have to write for three hours. There is something wrong with German education!" She left the desk, picked up Hua An's notebook and flipped through it. But slow down, conditional: "Can you let your brother go with you?" Hua An was very reluctant, because he felt that the kid who was four years younger than him was annoying, clingy, and annoying.He grinds back and forth with his mother, but he refuses to let his younger brother follow him.As for me, I stood by, pretending to be indifferent, and even said coolly, "I don't want to go at all." But, alas, I thought to myself: Please, let me go. In the end, it was probably my brother who gave in. We went out the door holding the ball as we were tall and short. The pitch is very simple, in fact it's just an open field with an old gate.When it rains, the ground is covered with yellow mud.Hua'an's partners were already waiting for him.We started playing soccer like hell, and after two hours, our hair was caked with mud and sweat, our shoes were full of sand, and there was a layer of mud on our faces, hands, and legs.It's time to go home. Sometimes, my brother is determined and just refuses to let me follow, and my mother understands him and doesn't want to force it.She would take me, and possibly "Little Cabbage," my little blonde girlfriend, to pick flowers on the prairie across from our house.They are all wild flowers. The flowers I picked were put in the bamboo basket brought by my mother and brought home as plant specimens.Mom also got me a glass jar that was meant to hold honey, and she pecked holes in the metal cap with scissors.The grass on the grassland grows very tall, and there are a lot of grasshoppers jumping around.I just grabbed them one by one and put the ones I caught into a glass bottle.It turns out that those holes are for the grasshopper to breathe. After filling glass jars with dozens of grasshoppers, we headed home.I poured the grasshoppers out of the bottle one by one and onto our garden grass.That said, I started raising grasshoppers. But it didn't last long, and I soon discovered that the grasshoppers had eaten all the tomatoes I had worked so hard to plant in the garden. Sometimes, my mother took us to fly kites on the grassland.The prairie is so big, the grass is green enough to make water, we lay down and watch the kites fly in the sky.I feel like I could lie there for the rest of my life. Then it's dinner time.Dinner, usually cooked by our Hungarian housekeeper.She used to make Hungarian goulash for us. After dinner, my mother allowed me and my brother to watch a little TV, about half an hour to an hour, never more.She is very strict about this, and she is not soft-hearted at all.When the time came, my mother appeared.Like a hen, half-pushing and half-leading us to the bathroom. The ritual of "brushing teeth" is like this: There are two sinks in the bathroom, and she puts a low stool in front of one sink, which is the place for me to step on; see mirror.She just leaned on the edge of the tub and watched us brush our teeth, wash our faces, and change into pajamas.My brother turned to leave, but she yelled, "Braces---" My brother had his teeth straightened for three years, and I heard my mother call "Braces---" for three years.She always said the word "braces" in German. Cleaned up, and then came the "Monkey King Time".We sat on the bed, my brother and I leaning on pillows next to each other, with the covers over our laps.Mom sat on the edge of the bed with a book open in her hand.She does not read from the book, but speaks.We also kept interrupting her: "How many hairs does Sun Wukong have on his body?" "Zhu Bajie breathes through his nose or through his mouth?" She always has a way to answer our questions, and the answers are always so vivid, fresh and interesting. .At the same time, look at the pictures with us, let us know the personality and shape of each character in the story. When I heard Zhu Bajie's "pregnancy", my brother and I rolled on the bed laughing.Then I begged my mother: "Tell me again, go to bed later, tell me again..." No matter how bad you are, you still can't escape the time to sleep.After telling the story for twenty or thirty minutes, she closed the book, kissed each other, then turned off the light, and closed the door lightly. We are in the dark, listening to her light footsteps, walking to her study (it will be several years later, when I am old enough, to know that she can start writing at this time every night.). As soon as she left, we got out of the quilt and started making trouble, and the game of "peek-a-boo" officially started.We quietly turned on the lights, played with "Lego" building blocks, or talked loudly, or hid in the kitchen, just to wait for her to find out and wait for her to come.Within a few minutes, she was worried, and she really came.Fake angry curses, throw us into bed, turn off the lights, close the door, and go back to her article.As soon as she left, we came out of the hole like mice, turned on the light, got under the bed, sang, laughed... and waited for her to come. She came again, this time a little out of sorts, and dragged us out from under the bed. Little did she know, the more pissed she was, the more excited we were.It made my mother unable to work, which gave us a great sense of accomplishment. After going back and forth like this for several rounds, it was past ten o'clock, and my mother would be so angry that she would take out a feather duster for beating blankets, make a very "ruthless" look, "stretch out your hand!" and we would start to escape around the room.She couldn't hit it anyway.Seeing that she couldn't hit her all the time, I still remember the pride in my heart to this day.Of course, you have to wait until you grow up to realize, alas, it's not like she really can't hit it. In the end, we exhausted ourselves.Fell on the bed, exhausted. In a vague way, I felt someone coming in. It was my father who had been working all day and came back.He gently opened the door and came in, walked to my bed, touched my head, bent down and whispered in my ear, "Good night, child." Hua Fei (15 years old)