Chapter 7 fish and bear's paw

In the summer of 1930 our high school class graduated.Dozens of candidates jointly "go to Beijing to rush for the exam".At that time, there were all kinds of universities in Peking, including national, private, and church-based universities.The level is extremely variable, and the attractiveness is also very different.The most respected among them, exactly as they are today, are Peking University and Tsinghua University, the two "national" universities.Therefore, all the applicants who rushed to take the exam in the country did not fail to apply for these two universities.These two universities seem to have become dragon gates, and the threshold is terribly high.Often one out of dozens of people is admitted.The title of the gold list that was admitted, the carp turned into a dragon.In the year I came to apply for the exam, there was a fellow from Shandong who had applied for the exam five times, but failed in every time.This year, he applied for the exam with us again, that is, the sixth time, but the result was still no name on the list.He was mentally disturbed, and he wandered around the Xishan area in a trance for seven days before he woke up.Since then, he gave up his college dream and returned to his hometown in Shandong, where he disappeared.

Of course I also applied to Peking University and Tsinghua University.Different from other high school students, I only applied to these two schools, as if I was very confident-in fact, I didn't think so much at the time, I did it almost instinctively-other students applied to many universities, second-rate Some people report to as many as seven or eight institutes.I have taken hundreds of exams in my life, from primary school to the highest degree; but I have had good luck with exams, and have never failed.This time it hit again.Happy God, I was admitted to Peking University and Tsinghua University, and I became the envy of people for a while.

However, Peking University and Tsinghua University have become fish and bear's paws for me.Where to go? It became a head-scratching problem for a while.I think left and right, and it is always difficult to make this move.At that time, the "study abroad craze" was no less than today, and I couldn't escape it.If you consider it from the perspective of studying abroad, Tsinghua University seems to have a long day.At least that's how people saw it back then. "I follow the crowd" and finally decided on Tsinghua University, and entered the Department of Western Literature (later renamed the Department of Foreign Languages).

In old China, the Department of Western Literature of Tsinghua University was famous all over China.The main reason is that the professors are almost all foreigners, and the lectures are of course in foreign languages, and Chinese professors also mostly use foreign languages ​​(actually English) to teach.This is very attractive.In fact, almost all foreign professors are ignorant and incapable of teaching in middle schools in their own countries.Therefore, among all the required courses in this department, there is no one course that I am satisfied with.On the contrary, it was the two courses I attended and took as electives that I will never forget and benefit from for the rest of my life.The audience was Mr. Chen Yinke's "Buddhist Scripture Translation Literature", and the elective was Mr. Zhu Guangqian's "Literary Psychology", which is aesthetics.Among the Chinese professors in this department, Mr. Ye Gongchao taught us freshman English.His English is probably good, but sometimes he deliberately slovenly, as if he wanted to learn "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove", which did not leave a good impression on me.Mr. Wu Mi's two courses "Comparison of Chinese and Western Poetry" and "British Romantic Poets" left a deep impression on me.

In addition, I also attended or eavesdropped on many classes of foreign departments.For example, I have listened to the classes of Mr. Zhu Ziqing, Yu Pingbo, Xie Wanying (Bing Xin), Zheng Zhenduo, etc., and the length of time varies.In this kind of audition activity, I have had successes and failures.The most failed time was being kicked out of class by Mr. Bing Xin politely with many male classmates.The most successful is to attend Mr. Xidi's class.Mr. Xi Di is open-minded, treats people with sincerity, has no airs of teaching, and has no sense of helping others.Several of us young college students—Wu Zuxiang, Lin Geng, Li Changzhi, and myself—had personal contact with him through attending lectures.Together with Ba Jin and Jin Yi, he edited the large-scale "Literary Quarterly", which was a major event that caused a sensation in the literary world at that time.It is a great honor for us that he should let us little-known nobodies serve as editorial board members or staff writers of "The Quarterly", and our names are printed on the cover of the magazine.As a result, we became friends with Mr. Xi Di, and maintained a friendship for life until he died in a plane crash in 1958.Today, when we think of Mr. Zheng, we can't help feeling sad.