Chapter 9 Ten years in Germany

The peach blossoms in front of the horse are very bright when viewed from a distance, but not necessarily so when viewed up close. I stayed in Berlin for a few months. There are quite a lot of Chinese students studying abroad.Since Chiang Kai-shek, many senior officials of the Kuomintang have children who "study abroad" in Germany.These high-level "yamen" look down on me, and I despise this group of walking corpses even more, and I am ashamed to be with them. "This place believes in my land", and in late autumn, I left Berlin and went to Göttingen, a small town and a famous city of science.Since then, I have lived here for seven years and never left.

Germany gave me 120 marks a month, the rent accounted for more than 40%, and the food was about the same.There is almost no money left.Compared with the eight hundred marks a month for government-funded students, it really pales in comparison.I have lived in Germany for such a long time, and I have never had a winter or summer vacation, and I have never traveled. One is because I am "shy", and the other is that I cherish every inch of Yin and want to study more. I came all the way from afar to learn.But what to study? Initially, I didn't have a very clear plan.In the first semester, I chose Greek, which seemed to miss European classical languages ​​and literature.In this respect, however, I cannot compete with the German pupils, who have already studied eight years of Latin and six years of Greek in secondary school.I hesitated.

In the spring semester of 1936, when I saw Waldschmidt's elementary Sanskrit class on the schedule, I was overjoyed.When I was in Tsinghua University, influenced by Mr. Chen Yinke's lectures, I became interested in Buddhism.But at that time, no one in China offered Sanskrit classes. How can I not be ecstatic when I accidentally got it? So I immediately took Sanskrit classes.In Germany, if you want to get a doctor of philosophy degree, you must take three departments, one master and two associates.My main departments are Sanskrit and Pali, and my two sub-departments are English Linguistics and Slavic Linguistics.I have since embarked on the path of formal learning.

In 1937 my fellowship expired.At this time, the Japanese army launched the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, with the intent of annexing all of China and Asia.I am looking forward to my hometown and sighing, but it is hard to return home.But there is no such thing as a path, and Xia Lun, the head of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, invited me to be a Chinese lecturer.This lecturer doesn’t have much work, so I will still be my student. My study base is still at the Institute of Sanskrit, and I occasionally come to the Institute of Sinology.This situation continued until I left Germany in the autumn of 1945.

In 1939, World War II officially began.I originally thought that such an extremely cruel massacre of human beings, which kills so many people and piles up rivers of blood, should shake the three worlds, shake the five continents, make animals tremble, and make human beings lose their color.However, I was lucky enough to be there, and only heard the howls of the fascist leaders a few times - which was commonplace in Germany at the time - as if they had just woken up from a dream and entered the war silently.In the early stages of the war, the victory of the German army drove the Germans crazy, and it was a blow to me.Every time they win, I take sleeping pills at night.Accumulated for a long time, insomnia became a disease, and became a lifelong chronic disease that has tortured me for decades.

Life wasn't affected much at first.Slowly meat and butter were rationed, slowly bread was rationed, and slowly other daily necessities were rationed.Before you know it, the screws of life are getting tighter and tighter.By the time people clearly feel it, the screw has been tightened very tightly, but except for a very few anti-fascist people, I have not heard a single complaint from the common people.The German fascist leaders are skilled in ruling, and the German people are also a very strange nation. To me, it is like a mystery. Later, the flames of war spread, Germany was blocked on all sides, and supplies became increasingly tight.I starved every day, and dreamed every night, dreaming of Chinese peanuts.I have no ambitions when I was young, even eating.People with high ambitions must dream of swallow saliva and shark fin. How can a worthless person like me only dream of peanuts? When I was very hungry, I felt like I was in the hell of hungry ghosts. I wish I could swallow the whole earth.

I still continue to study and teach.In addition to starvation, bombing from the sky was initially very rare.I finally finished my doctoral thesis.At this time, Professor Waldschmidt was conscripted into the army, and his predecessor, the retired old professor Prof. E. Sieg (Sigg), taught him classes.It took him decades to master Tocharian, and he became famous all over the world.In terms of age, he is equal to my grandfather.He was totally a grandfather to me too.He must pass on to me all the good things he is good at: ancient Indian grammar, Vedas, and without my disagreement, he must teach me Tocharian.I took advantage of Professor Waldschmidt's sabbatical and passed the oral exam in Bronn in Russian and Cyrillic and Rodel in English.After passing the exam, he is still studying under the guidance of Professor Sick.We met every day, and at dusk in winter, on the snow-covered long street, I helped my eighty-year-old teacher from a foreign country and sent him home.I forgot the flames of war and hunger, and I only had this old man beside me in my heart.

Of course I miss my country and my family.At this time, the post office has long been cut off.Du Fu's poem: "For three consecutive months, family letters are worth ten thousand gold."In fact no letters were received at all.This greatly intensified my insomnia, and the amount of medicine I swallowed at night increased day by day. The only comfort I had was my research work.At this time, British and American bombing had become commonplace, and I wrote several papers during the hunger and bombing.The university has become the world of girls, and the boys are all arrested and enlisted in the army.Not long after, some of the boys came back, but they were either missing a hand or a leg.The sound of crutches hitting the ground echoed back and forth in the classroom building, forming a unique ensemble.

By this time, the frontline had suffered repeated defeats, and although the fascist leaders were brazenly bragging about it, it was empty and weak.From the perspective of us foreigners, the game is doomed, and no one can recover from it. How about the German people? After ten years of observation and experience, I feel that the Germans are worthy of being one of the best people in the world.Culture is prosperous, science and technology are at the forefront of the world, great writers, great philosophers, great musicians, great scientists, no modern nation can compare with it.Moreover, he is upright and simple, and everyone is honest and honest.Politically, they are relatively simple, and the vast majority of them sincerely support Hitler.What baffles me is that Hitler vilified the Chinese to such an extent that they regarded them as destroyers of civilization.It stands to reason that I should have had a lot of trouble in Germany.In practice, however, I had no trouble at all.I heard that in the United States, it is very difficult for Chinese people to break into American society.But I am in Germany, I have been in the German society from the beginning to the end, I live in the German family, my German teacher, my German classmate, my German colleague, my German friend, never treat me as my own, no No discrimination at all.This is something I will never forget.

How does such a nation view the losing battle situation now? They seldom talk to me about war issues. They seem to be indifferent to the extreme hardship of life and the extreme brutality of bombing. They are a little dazed and indifferent.Until the spring of 1945, when the American army invaded Göttingen, fascism was completely finished, and the Germans were still indifferent, resigned, and seemed to have been hit in the head. In addition to being dazed and indifferent, they were also a little dizzy. Confused. The thrilling world war, which lasted for six years, has finally come to an end.When I was in shock, I immediately thought of my motherland and my family. It has been ten years since I left my motherland, and I felt the call of my motherland to me, an overseas wanderer, deep in my heart.After several negotiations, the U.S. occupation authorities agreed to take us to Switzerland in a jeep.When I said goodbye to my teachers and friends from Germany, I felt very painful, especially Professor Sick. I saw this octogenarian with a sad face and trembling hands. We all know that this is the last time.I didn't even dare to turn my head back, and my eyes were filled with tears.My landlady burst into tears at me.Her son is away, and her husband is dead. After I leave, the house is empty, and she is the only one left.In the past few years, she and I have actually depended on each other for life. Now, how will my life be?When I left her, I didn't dare to turn my head back, and boarded the American jeep with tears in my eyes.I put an old poem in my mind and thought it into a poem:

Studying in Germany has been ten frosts, Return to the heart day and night to recall the old state, crossing the border into Switzerland without reason, The guest tree looks back into the hometown. In the past ten years, the fascist rule, the extremely cruel world war, and the afterimages of nostalgia for wanderers have been reflected in my mind mirror.