Chapter 5 Read "The Three of Us"

I couldn't sleep at night, so I finished watching Yang Jiang's. Look at a warm family, from two innocent boys and girls falling in love, to giving birth to a little boy, to being separated in the face of death decades later.Before being separated, Yang Jiang was an old man in her 80s. Her husband and daughter lived in a hospital far away, and they were going through the last journey of their lives.She takes care of her husband, talks to her daughter on the phone every night, and visits her at the hospital in Xishan once a week.In their last days, they maintained the family's decades-long sense of humor, laughing at themselves in crooked letters.

Talking about myself is always good, understating and joking, but seriously thinking about my relatives, taking care of my basic necessities of life.This sense of humor, this gratitude for their family, this warm, velvet-like hand-sweeping mood, lasted through their lives.Even their letters to their mother-in-law were written in Wu Nong's soft words, jokingly saying that another family who approached them was also included in their happy circle. I have come from the same age, and of course I know how much resentment they can look back on their lives.People now even complain that the older generation of intellectuals in China have not fought for decades.But I have experienced another kind of persistence in life: insisting on the value and value of family affection, insisting on normality and happiness in the small piece of land that I can protect, maintaining and preserving the seeds of civilization, and insisting on common sense and common sense , and spread such a civilization through a dedicated work attitude and love for relatives and friends.Who can say that this is not a constructive struggle.Just like a Jewish female painter I read, she not only painted beautiful flowers in the Nazi concentration camps, but also taught children to draw bright landscapes.She did not escape from the danger because her husband could not obtain a departure passport, and she believed that family affection was more important than life.

This book brought me back to my hometown a long time ago, as if I could touch the back of my father's hand.Thinking back to my father, he was always smiling too, saying things that made me laugh too.When we were growing up, schools were closed.We all sent to the countryside, saying that we want to "take root", but it seems that we have no future and hope.At that time, I made a lot of friends. My elementary school and middle school classmates and the "jumping in line" kids who kept coming in and out of my house all liked to sit there and chat with my father.My father told them that I hope there will be, that people should study in the harsh environment. "People can have their own independent spiritual life," my father said, "no one can take that away."In the era of poverty and scarcity, the father used the saved food to cook and burn snacks for the children from various backgrounds.After we grew up, the university finally opened its doors, and the children all became the pillars of the country, running around with great pride.Father is gone.A few years ago in Boston, I happened to meet a classmate from elementary school. I hadn’t seen him for decades, and I didn’t know him.We sat together for half an hour before we dared to stand up and recognize each other.After the first sentence of greeting, she said, your father was so kind to us at that time, and taught me a lot of truths.

As the years passed, the environment became more relaxed, and the children who grew up began to surpass the limitations of our parents, and began to look down on our parents, thinking that the intellectuals of the previous generation had no backbone.I think back then in front of our parents, how ridiculous and scary we were under the trend of the times.Because of love, the parents swallowed the things they didn't like, even swallowed the harm we did to them, and forgave our youth.Today, when we look back at our predecessors, we are so picky. We may have the backbone and sharpness that we value, but compared with Qian Zhongshu, Yang Jiang, and Yuanyuan's family, we have lost gentleness, honesty, modesty, humor, tolerance, and stability.This is not only the different personal qualities of the two generations, but also the thickness of civilization of different eras shown in the intellectual class.

It's a family story, but it reminds me: It's not easy to break it, but it's extremely difficult to set it up.