Chapter 6 1. Foreigners laugh

Grasshopper accompanied me out of the towers of the ancient capital Kaifeng, into the endless wilderness. I am like a rabbit that just got out of the cage, looking around in my own world.An ox cart with four wooden wheels was crawling in endless ruts.The clouds flew across the plain with huge shadows like a big bird spreading its wings, and there was a sudden chattering noise in the field.The villages hid under patches of green shade raised by the plain, staring at me with their black eyes from their gun towers.The dignified scenery of the Great Plains in Eastern Henan has entered my memory.

Mother said that the ancient state of Qi was located on this great plain.When I was growing up, I tried to share my worries with the "worried man".I found that the sky of Qi State is not supported by mountains, the land of Qi State is not protected by forests, Qi State is located in a closed inland plain, and there are no wide rivers and seaports for Qi people to sail away.Qi Ren bares himself to the sky at a glance, and he has reason to worry. In the old capital of Qi State, we stayed at my uncle's house.The uncle opened a square box and shook the handle. A black disc began to rotate continuously on the box. A monster with a crooked neck poked its head over the disc, and the brass horn with its head held high let out a thrilling laugh. .I think it was a crazy man hiding in a square box laughing at me.The laughter for no reason lasted for a long time, and the laughter of men and women joined in.Laughter jumped up and down in the air around me like tongues of flame.I was terrified and trembling all over, and my curiosity and self-esteem made me hold on to the skirt of my clothes and refused to leave.My mother said that it was the "foreigner's laughter" that my uncle brought back from Shanghai.

There are people coming and going in Uncle's living room.When the foreigners laughed at me, my uncle and the people of Qi State discussed the affairs of Qi State with anxiety.It wasn’t until the foreigners went away with laughter that my uncle came over quickly, closed the square box, and asked me, “Does it sound good?” I shook my head, and asked my uncle, “Why are foreigners laughing?” I have never encountered such a problem, so I thought for a while and said, "It's because we Chinese are not up to date!" I couldn't understand the meaning of this sentence, but I could feel the sadness in my uncle's tone.He prolongs the pronunciation of the word "Qi", turning it into a long sigh.

I adore uncle.He is tall, with blazing eyes, wearing a suit that is said to have been specially made for him by a foreign tailor when he was studying in Shanghai, and he comes and goes like the wind in places where there are no worries.My mother led me into the Confucian Temple in Qidi, where Qi people sacrificed to Confucius, and it is now the school building of a private middle school founded by a doctor in Germany.The doctor is the brother of one of my aunts.The uncle accepted his entrustment and came here to be a school director who did not receive a salary, managing school affairs on behalf of the doctor.

This is an awe-inspiring temple. The distant years are like blackened vines hanging on the branches of the old pagoda tree and the raised cornices of the main hall, fluttering in the wind.The students were singing in the temple yard. It was the song I heard in Kaifeng, "Chop off the devils' heads with a big knife!" My mother led me to an old locust tree, saying that it was planted by the ancestors of the Qi people in the Tang Dynasty. A locust tree with a blackboard hanging on the tree and a map of China hanging on the blackboard.There is also such a map of China hanging at home in Kaifeng. My father said that it is like a beautiful crabapple leaf, and we are the little dewdrops on this crabapple leaf.And I imagined myself as an insect called "flower damselfly" crawling around on the crabapple leaves, it was wrapped in a bright red coat mixed with black spots, that's what I looked like wearing a flower pocket.On this piece of crabapple leaves in Qidi Confucian Temple, there are two small black triangular flags.Uncle is planting another small black flag on the crabapple leaves.The mother looked at the little black flag and said, "Have the devils occupied Shangqiu again?" The uncle said, "It's almost Lanfeng." He stroked the wrinkled bark and the boils that were bleeding from the tree, his eyes danced. Black fire. "Shame!" he said, "a shame every day!"

I don't understand what "shame" means.But I saw the little black flag victoriously shaking against the wind, like greedy and dirty tongues licking on the crabapple leaves.My uncle noticed that I was staring at the black flag in a daze, so he stroked my head and asked me, "Are you a boy?"The uncle nodded in agreement and said: "Okay, when you grow up, you should be a hero. China needs heroes." Then he said to my mother: "We can't let the sky fall on the children's heads." I don't know if I've become a hero.But I know that this is my uncle's will to me.Four years later, my uncle died inexplicably, without a grave or bones.

But I must also extend my memory of my uncle here. My uncle is also worried about the sky, but the market in Qidi is still noisy. There are delicious "Mojia pickles" in Qidi, which are tributes paid by Qi people to the emperors of past dynasties.There is also "the hemp house, the red curtain, and the white fat man sitting inside." Mothers and aunts would spread this nursery rhyme about peanuts with almost singing charm, but they didn't like the sandy soil where this nursery rhyme was produced. It is "a dish of loose sand" that is bullied.My mother took my hand and wandered through the market with cloth tents and stalls, overcoming all the cries related to peanuts, looking for "tigers" for me.Mother found it on a stall tended by an old grandmother.It was a puffy cloth tiger made of apricot-yellow home-woven home-woven cloth, with the word "king" written in ink on its forehead, a pair of staring tiger eyes and six radial tiger whiskers.My mother said that that year was the year of the tiger, and the Chinese should be born in the year of the tiger.

Here, for the first time in my memory, there was the sound of gong beating, which was a kind of "" spreading to the sky, making the heart tremble.There was a commotion in the market place.A group of middle school students held small flags and swarmed over with bamboo poles propping up blankets with black characters written on them.The uncle walked in the front, and walking side by side with him was a man with a bare upper body beating a gong.He swung his arms vigorously, and the blue veins on his neck were like blue earthworms. He walked and shouted in the sound of "" gong: "Children of Yan and Huang in Qi State, wake up quickly! The devil's bomb has fallen from the sky!" Come down, the tanks with plaster flags are about to roll over from the ground, the sky is burning from the east, and the innocence is about to collapse! Those who don’t want to be slaves, get up! Bloody brothers and sisters, get up! ..."

The sound of the gong accompanied the shout, and it went away like a whirlwind.Mother burst into tears.  But someone in the gatehouse said: "Look, Crazy Wang is going crazy again!" But I have since remembered this "crazy man", a barbarian beating a gong and walking naked.He has a dark face of a farmer in Qi State, with his ribs opening and closing, there is a clanging sound like heavy metal rushing out of his mouth, beating the sky of Qi State together with the sound of gongs.No one could tell that this "lunatic" was Dr. Liude who entrusted my uncle to act as the school's administrator.He ran out of General Tang Enbo's prison and sneaked back to Qidi. After beating gongs and shouting in the market, he disappeared quietly.Four years later, I saw him in exile in a university in the mountainous area of ​​western Henan.He and my father both teach at this university.I deeply regret that I didn't see his bare chest and ribs when he shouted forward, but I saw him wearing a suit that was not suitable for a remote village, and I found a firewood with natural patterns from the firewood bundle. walking stick.The stick fell like a magic wand, beating the dirt road of the village, leaving a series of anecdotes on the road.

He is the first "overseas student" who came out of Qidi. He studied hard in Germany for five years and got a Ph.D. categorically divorced because of his Nazi leanings.But some people also said that the real reason for the divorce was that the beautiful and strong German woman could not bear the excessively high sexual ability of the Chinese doctor.The latter statement made Qidi men feel extremely proud, and even led to the bankruptcy of the "Germanic racial superiority theory".A worker who manages the university's bathhouse announced his discovery in the bathhouse: "Have you seen that thing under the doctor's belly? That kid Hitler is absolutely incomparable, and Hideki Tojo is a fucking loser!" "

He returned from studying in Germany and was once appointed as the magistrate of Jiyuan County in northern Henan, but he resigned on the 10th or 20th day of his tenure.The problem was that an interrogator was torturing a bandit. The doctor who became the county magistrate walked into the courtroom and said, "Why did you beat him? He also enjoys human rights!" The interrogator said, "He refused to confess." The doctor Said: "Let me ask him." Then he asked the bandit: "You are so good, why do you think you are a bandit?" The bandit said: "The family is poor and hungry." The doctor said: "This is a social problem, how can you blame you!" Immediately untied the bandits, comfortingly said: "Go home and have a good journey!" The bandits felt reluctant to say goodbye to the county magistrate, and "borrowed" a sum of travel expenses from him when they left. He failed to become a county magistrate with a Ph. D., and was employed as a professor of economics at H University.He looked aggrieved and helpless and said: "How can you save the soul of the country from Tongmeng by being this professor Laoshizi?" So he founded primary and secondary schools in Qidi, his hometown, sold his property, cut down on food and clothing, and gradually reduced his professor's salary. Take it back to run school every month.When he returned from the provincial capital, he confiscated the school's rulers and pointers, asked his workers to bring a cart of firewood, called a meeting of teachers and students in the school, and announced the abolition of the barbaric corporal punishment system.He lit the firewood with his own hands, set fire to the ruler and pointer, took off his leather shoes, raised his hand and said: "I was wearing these leather shoes and kicked a student's ass." He said to the leather shoes: "You should be punished in my place." Throw the shoes into the fire.It is said that they were a pair of German leather shoes, which gave off a particularly pungent smell in the fire.The doctor covered his nose and asked: "What is this smell?" The doctor replied: "This is the smell of fascists." The doctor stood barefoot and continued to lecture: "You must remember that from now on, if I kick any of my classmates' ass , you can all kick my ass instead of treating it as the doctor's ass." Everyone laughed, and the doctor stood there without laughing, and said, "In a healthy and reasonable society, the status of the buttocks is equal. " The doctor blatantly posted a notice to teach Marx's "Das Kapital" and "On Imperialism" and Engels' "Anti-Dühring Theory" in university classrooms.A few people of unknown origin hid outside the window and eavesdropped, poking their heads into the classroom. Someone heard a "click", which is said to be the sound of a bullet being loaded.The doctor listened but did not hear, and did not make mistakes in what he said, and his voice suppressed the flow of clouds.When the headmaster came in panic, he bowed deeply to the headmaster and said: "In order not to hurt Your Excellency, please allow me to announce to Your Excellency that I have dismissed me." In the air, let it spin around and walk away. After the doctor dismissed himself, the middle school he founded in Qidi also faced a famine, and he could only pay the teachers four yuan a month for food.A respected and hungry old teacher is about to resign and leave.He led all the students in the school to kneel down in front of the old teacher, and said: "Mr., please eat mixed noodles for a few more days, let me make some ill-gotten gains, and then eat white steamed buns." He got up from the ground, He went straight to Hefei, Anhui, and sought a job from Anhui Provincial Chairman Liu Zhenhua.Before studying in Germany, he had been Liu Zhenhua's tutor, and he was highly regarded by Liu Zhenhua, so Liu appointed him as the director of Anqing Tobacco and Alcohol Tax Bureau.Funds for running a school in Qidi come from Anqing.A year later, he fell ill in Anqing.His wife pawned the leather jacket as travel expenses and came to Anqing to see him.He asked: "Do the teachers still eat miscellaneous noodles?" The wife said: "I have eaten white buns." He said: "Okay, sell my woolen coat as travel expenses, let's go back." The doctor hired a dean who is gentle and elegant, with excellent character and learning, and entrusted him to manage all the academic affairs, but he didn't know that he was a "red bandit" who was wanted and arrested. The "red bandits" took in the lost comrades in the school and turned the school into a base for underground activities.When an important member of the Kuomintang Provincial Party Headquarters visited the school, they met the "red bandit" key criminal by chance and felt familiar. After confirming his identity, he hurried to arrest him.The party officials were furious and ordered the doctor to hand over the "red bandit".But the doctor grabbed hold of the important party member and said, "You scared him away, I was going to ask for someone from you!" The important party member managed to escape and cursed, "You crazy man! "It's nothing.Afterwards, the doctor told my uncle: "Hurry up and dig a hole in the back wall of the school, and if something happens next time, don't tell people to climb over the wall and sprain their ankles!" However, in the bazaar where the war is approaching and still noisy, I only remember him as a barbarian beating the gong with his bare chest and shouting to move forward, and he went away with the distant sound of the gong, disappearing into the clouds of history . The cries in the market are like wisps of thin smoke rising into the sky: "Roasted sweet potatoes are hot!" "Tofu is hot!" "The meat buns are hot!" Qidi's cries are not as good as those in the ancient capital of Kaifeng, lacking the melodious drawl and the passion that arouses desire.Moreover, I heard a man holding a hookah yell, "Crazy Wang is hot!"