Chapter 112 I am from Yangzhou

I am from Yangzhou In some Mandarin textbooks, my articles are selected, and in the notes, it may be said that I am from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, or that I am from Jiangdu, Jiangsu—that is, from Yangzhou.Some people suspected that people from Jiangdu, Jiangsu Province were wrong, so they wrote letters from far away to ask me.I said that neither of the two native places is wrong, but if I speak the official language, I must be counted as a native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang.Shaoxing, Zhejiang is my ancestral home or origin. I have filled in this hometown since I entered elementary school; until now, I have served in the school for almost 30 years, and I still report this hometown.However, I have only been to Shaoxing twice, and only stayed for one day each time; besides my late mother, no one in my family can speak Shaoxing dialect.

It was from my ancestors that my family came to Jiangsu Donghai as a petty official.The East China Sea is Haizhou, which is now the end of Longhai Road.I was born in Haizhou.When I was four years old, my father went to Shaobo Town as a petty official and took us there.I don’t remember anything about Haizhou. I only have a feeling of intimacy with Haizhou dialect, because my father’s Yangzhou dialect has a lot of Haizhou accents.I have lived in Shaobo for almost two years, in the Longevity Palace.The courtyard of the Longevity Palace is very large and quiet; the entrance is the canal.The river ridge is very high, and I often throw tiles into the river to play.Uncle Shao has a Tie Niu Bay, where a Tie Niu suppresses.My father's errand often took me to see it, ride it, and stroke it.I've pretty much forgotten about the town, too.I only remember studying in a family's private school in the town, where I met a good friend named Jiang Jiazhen.I often went to his house to play, and in the evening we sat on a fallen dead tree trunk in the barren garden of his house and talked, reluctant to leave, not wanting to go home.This is my first good friend, but unfortunately he died when he was underage; I remember he was very thin, maybe it was a lung disease?

When he was six years old, his father moved the whole family to Yangzhou.Later, he adopted his grandfather and grandmother.My father was an official in Jiangxi for a few years, and my second brother and I also went to Jiangxi for a year; but our hometown has always lived in Yangzhou.I went to elementary school in Yangzhou, but didn’t graduate; I went to high school, but I graduated; I went to middle school, but I also graduated.My English is thanks to a Mr. Huang in the higher primary school, who has passed away.There is also Mr. Chen Chuntai, who is now a well-known mathematics teacher in Beiping.These two gentlemen explained English very clearly, which inspired my interest in learning. I only regret that I have never learned English well, and I am ashamed of these two teachers.There is also a Mr. Dai Ziqiu, who passed away long ago. I learned Chinese from him, and I learned it well. That was when I was in his family’s night school after the Revolution of 1911.After graduating from middle school, I was 18 years old, and I was admitted to the preparatory course of Peking University that year, and I have not been in Yangzhou often since then.

In the winter of the year I was eighteen, my parents married me in Yangzhou.Ms. Wu Zhongqian, my wife, is from Hangzhou, but she was also raised in Yangzhou.She had never been to Hangzhou; it was the first time to go with me later.She later died in Yangzhou due to tuberculosis, and I wrote an article "To the Dead Woman" for her.Grandpa had been dead for several years when I married her.A year after the wedding my grandmother also died.Both of their elders were buried in Yangzhou, so my family has ancestral tombs in Yangzhou.Later, the deceased woman was also buried in this ancestral tomb.My mother passed two years before the Anti-Japanese War, and my father passed four months before the victory. Unfortunately, I am not in Yangzhou; they are also buried in the ancestral tomb.What made me sad in the middle was the death of my second daughter!She has a good temperament, loves to read, is responsible for things, and treats her friends best.I'm an adult, I don't know what kind of disease, and it's over in a day and a half!She was also buried in the ancestral tomb.I have nine children.In addition to the second daughter, another boy died in Yangzhou when he was less than one year old; the four children of the other deceased wives had lived in their hometown in Yangzhou for many years.This old family was not disbanded until the beginning of this summer, but there is still an elderly concubine there.

The relationship between my family and Yangzhou is probably as good as the ancients said, "I was born here, I died here, I sang and cried here".Now the four children born to my deceased wife all call themselves Yangzhou natives; I am more of a Yangzhou native than they are, so naturally I should be considered a Yangzhou native.But in the past, I have been riding on the wall so-so, and I often call myself a native of Zhejiang, so why?Half of this is because the report is from Zhejiang, and I hope it is consistent; the other half also has some other reasons.The first of these principles is that one's native place doesn't matter.At that time, to be an international person, even the nationality felt narrow, let alone the province and county.At that time in college, I felt that fellow countrymen's associations were the most meaningless.The people I live with and associate with are almost all Yangzhou people, but because I am from Zhejiang, I don’t want to join Jiangsu or Yangzhou hometown associations.But even though I was from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, I didn’t associate with a real Zhejiang person, so no one invited me to hold a Zhejiang Association, let alone a Shaoxing Association.Perhaps this is the benefit of being amphibious or straddling the fence?But after leaving school, I often meet authentic Shaoxing people.Since I can't speak Shaoxing dialect, and besides Huadiao and Lanting, I know almost nothing about Shaoxing, so I often have to admit that I am a fake Shaoxing native.Although that was half a joke, it was also a little embarrassing.

Another reason is that I hate Yangzhou people a little; I hate the stinginess and emptiness of Yangzhou people.Being small means being quick-sighted, being vain is bluffing, and being stingy requires no examples.Empty Qi is like the late Yangzhou Central Committee member, who was walking on the street in a chartered car. In addition to pulling the cart, he followed four people pushing and running beside the cart.I once wrote a short article pointing out these problems of Yangzhou people.Later, the Commercial Press refused to include this article in the prose collection "You and Me", fearing that there would be another case of "gossiping about Yangzhou".This is of course also because they always think that I am from Zhejiang, and Zhejiang people will offend Yangzhou people if they scold Yangzhou people.But I don't deny the benefits of Yangzhou. I once wrote an article, and I also mentioned the peach blossoms in Yangzhou Fuyuan Nunnery.Besides, now that I am older, I feel that stinginess and vainness can be regarded as local spirits, not just Yangzhou people.In the past, I often promised people that I was from Shaoxing, but half of it was because Shaoxing people were a bit naive, while Yangzhou people seemed too smart.In fact, people in Yangzhou are not without their stupidity. My friend Mr. Ren Zhongmin (Erbei) has been running the Hanmin Middle School for so many years. Whether people pay attention to it or not, isn’t he not stupid enough?Although Shaoxing people have a stubborn temper, there may be other tempers that I hate, but I don't know it very well.Perhaps this was Ah Q's idea?However, I did gradually become intimate with Yangzhou.

Yangzhou is really, as some people say, a famous place.Needless to say, Yangzhou in Li Dou's "Yangzhou Painting Boat Record" is enough to envy.But now it's in decline, and the economy is in rapid decline, just look at the listless salt merchants.People from Yangzhou are called Jiangbei Lao in Shanghai, which generally means a low-level person.Mr. Jiang Bei was bullied in Shanghai, so they learned some nonsense Shanghai dialect to pretend to be Shanghainese.At this point, they will forget why they are bullying those new Jiangbei old people.This has cultivated the inferiority complex of Yangzhou people.Since the Anti-Japanese War, many people from Yangzhou came to the Southwest, and most of them called themselves Shanghainese, relying on the nonsensical Shanghai dialect; even without this, they still called themselves Shanghainese.In fact, Yangzhou people also have their pride locally.They called people north of Xuzhou Kuzi, and those people spoke Kuhua.They laughed at people from Zhenjiang who spoke in a rustic way, and people from Nanjing who spoke with a big tongue, even though these two places are in the south of the Yangtze River.They call it barbarian in English, and those who speak this kind of language are of course barbarians.However, I had to say these words behind closed doors at home. When I saw them in Shanghai, I would immediately be half-short, and I would not dare to lick my tongue.Yangzhou is really in decline!

I am also an old man from Jiangbei, and a lot of Yangzhou accents are my signature, but I don't want to be a Shanghainese; Shanghainese are too cunning.Besides, Shanghai is too unfamiliar to me, and the degree of unfamiliarity is almost the same as that of Shaoxing; because although I may know more about Shanghai than Shaoxing, Shaoxing is my ancestral home after all, and Shanghai has nothing to do with me.However, when I get older, people in the world can't do it after all. I want a hometown.Mr. Yu Pingbo has a line of poem that says "lose my hometown".In fact, he lost his hometown and found another one; the intimacy mentioned in his poems and essays in Suzhou is enviable, and Suzhou is considered his hometown.He spent his childhood in Suzhou, so he mentioned every bit of it with affection. The childhood memory is the simplest and most vivid, with the deepest and longest influence; all kinds of joys and sorrows are the most interesting in retrospect. "Green lanterns are flavorful as childhood", in fact, not only green lanterns, everything in childhood is flavorful.Looking at it this way, if you spend your childhood there, even if it is your hometown, maybe it is about the same?Looking at it this way, only Yangzhou can be regarded as my hometown.What's more, my family is "born here, died here, sang and cried here"?So whether Yangzhou is good or bad, I should be considered a native of Yangzhou.

Made on September 25, 1946 (Originally published in "People", Volume 1, Issue 10, October 1, 1946)