Chapter 6 6. The teahouse listened to bragging, and Reagan hung the second card

Our living conditions at that time were extremely poor, especially for teachers.Those famous professors in the past, such as Feng Youlan, had a salary of four to five hundred yuan a month before the war, and could buy a courtyard house in Beijing. After the war broke out, things went from bad to worse.In the past, coins were used, such as silver dollars with the heads of Yuan Shikai or Sun Yat-sen on them, or copper plates, but they were both troublesome, and a little more would be heavy, cumbersome, and very dirty. In 1935, the Kuomintang government invited British expert Liz Ross to come to China to reform the currency system, switching to French currency (that is, legal currency), and the bank of the central government will issue banknotes uniformly throughout the country.This is of course superior to coins, useful in the first place, and money is needed to fight wars, where does the money come from?The bills come out as soon as they are printed, so the easiest way for the Kuomintang authorities is to print the bills.But how can you bear to dig holes like that? From 1935 to 1937, the Kuomintang was indeed making great efforts to reform, because it knew that war was inevitable, including the reform of the currency system as preparation for war, but you cannot blindly rely on this method.From the war in 1937 to 1938 and 1939, prices rose significantly, resulting in inflation, which led to the collapse of the entire economy, and finally it was difficult to even eat.

The food was poor, the clothing was poor, and the housing was also poor. A thatched dormitory accommodated 40 people, which was a bit similar to the dormitory of our May 7th Cadre School in the 1970s.However, life was not stable during the war. Some people dropped out of school, some rich people rented a small house outside, and some simply worked outside. There are often not enough people to live in, but there are also twenty or thirty people, which is very crowded.There was a classmate in my dormitory, who later became a famous writer, named Wang Zengqi.He is at the same level as me, about the same age, both eighteen or nineteen years old, and can only be regarded as a young man, but at that time he had long hair, wore a ragged blue cloth gown with only two buttons, and pulled a pair of cloth shoes. Lifting heels, often telling jokes, and smoking, with a very decadent appearance, is completely the style of old Chinese intellectuals.Wang Yu from the History Department of Peking University is already a teaching assistant, and he also has this style.

But fortunately, there is no money, no money for school, board and lodging. Students rely on "loans" to eat every month, and they don't have to pay back. This is very different from today.If tuition fees were required at that time, I believe that most of the students would not be able to go to school, not only we would not be able to go to school, but even celebrities, no matter how big they are, would not be able to go to school, including Yang Zhenning.At that time, professors had too little money. Yang Zhenning’s father, Yang Wuzhi, was the head of the Department of Mathematics. He was a big family, and he didn’t have enough food to go to school.The difficult times back then are probably unimaginable today.

As mentioned earlier, the most important thing about happiness is the hope for the future. First, you think that the whole society and the whole world will become better and better, and second, you think that your future will be better and better.It was also quite interesting at that time. Japanese planes often came to bomb and life was very difficult, but morale was not affected, and there was no defeatist sentiment. I was always optimistic and naively believed that the war would definitely be won, and after victory, it would be A beautiful world, a democratic, peaceful and free world, this is the happiest place for the youth of our time.

The vast majority of the students of the Lianda University are away from home, and they can’t go home during the winter and summer vacations. Basking in the sun on the grass, or chatting.There is a Fengzhu Street outside the Great West Gate of Kunming. There are dozens of teahouses on the street. Everyone goes to the teahouse to drink a bowl of tea when they have nothing to do.In fact, it doesn’t matter what you drink, it’s very cheap, about the equivalent of a dime today, it’s nothing more than tea mixed with boiled water, some people really study there with a book, but most of them just go to chat, the sea and the sky can say anything Have.I remember the most time when I saw two talents in the physics department, Yang Zhenning and Huang Kun, who were a class above us, talking about it.In fact, we have no contacts, but they are well-known students in the school, and everyone knows them.Huang Kun asked: "Einstein published another article recently, have you read it?" Yang Zhenning said that he had read it, Huang Kun asked what he thought, Yang Zhenning waved his hand, and said with a look of disdain: "There is no originality. (Innovation), you must be old and confused." I heard this with my own ears, and I still have a deep impression on it until now. At that time, I thought: "How can you be so arrogant at a young age? How dare you scold the big names in contemporary physics?" Grandmaster, are you scolding me so badly?! It’s too outrageous to use such a disrespectful tone.” But then I thought, young people probably need to have this kind of courage to surpass their predecessors.

When I was in Kunming, I often watched movies, and they were not expensive. I could watch them two or three times a month. I probably watched more than two hundred movies in seven years in Kunming.At that time, a Nanping cinema was newly built, with new equipment and the latest films.I remember playing a piece of the national anthem every time before a movie, "The Three People's Principles, the foundation of our party, to build the Republic of China, to enter Datong..." Everyone stood up, and the screen showed the portraits of Sun Yat-sen, the father of the country, Lin Sen, the chairman of the country, and Chairman Chiang Kai-shek in sequence. , the next step is to watch a movie.There are several types of films, one is topical documentaries, such as Rommel and Montgomery's desert battle in North Africa, and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, which will be released soon.What surprised us that time was Roosevelt's aging.Roosevelt was only sixty-two years old that year, which should be the right age for a politician, but he was really old, he was ninety-two years old, and he was a different person from not long ago.Sure enough, within a few days after watching the film, he had a cerebral hemorrhage and died instantly.The other is feature films, many of which are about World War II, such as "Casablanca" (then called "North African Spy"), "Blue Bridge", and "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", which is a new film At the end of 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States bombed Tokyo in the spring of the following year. The bombing was played in the movie.There is also a movie about the naval battle of World War II. After watching it, I realized that the people in those submarines should always be exposed to fluorescent lamps and supplement some ultraviolet rays.The other is literary films, such as, and musical films, such as "Spring Dawn on the Green Embankment" by Strauss. The music is very good. I watched it three times, but some students watched it five or six times. We can sing several songs. "New Wine" is about Schubert's life.And A Song To Remember, written by Chopin.Mr. Chopin was played by Paul Muni, and George Sand was played by Merle Oberon, both of whom were very famous actors at the time. I have watched the film several times, but I just like listening to his music.Later, Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier co-starred, and Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine co-starred (Rebecca), all of which were famous films at the time.

There were a lot of good movies at that time, and I watched a few of Reagan's movies.At that time, he was a second-rate actor. In the jargon of Peking Opera, he was a "second-class actor", and of course he was a "third-tier actor", so it was even less important.At that time, there was a famous British actor named Eroll Flynn, who acted in many war and martial arts films, one of which was called "Journey of Despair", in which Reagan acted as Eroll Flynn. It is said that Mr. Wu Mi was responsible for the title translation of the film at that time. I don’t know if it is true, but judging from some film titles, such as "Your Life", "Soul Returns to Heaven" (both words come from), it is very Like Mr. Wu's style.Incidentally, there was no dubbing in the movies at that time, and some students went to learn English.As a student of the history department, I also learned about some specific ancient life situations from movies, such as the Trafalgar (Trafalgar) naval battle starring Laurence Olivier (Olivier) and Vivien Leigh (Vivien Leigh), and Marie played by Norma Shearer. Antoinette (Chinese translation is "Peerless Cleopatra", that is, the queen of Louis XVI of France), these entertainments have enriched our knowledge.