Chapter 187 I entered Beiman Zhongzhai

I lived in Beijing for half a year, and none of the adults in my family mentioned my enrollment. It seemed that everyone was trying to adapt to this strange and ancient environment.I couldn't bear it anymore, so one summer evening, I proposed to my uncle, Mr. Yang Zijing, that I wanted to go to school.At that time, besides teaching my younger brothers to read at home, he was also very bored. In unfamiliar Beijing, and he didn’t know any legitimate entertainment venues, he often went to the YMCA on Mishi Street to read books and newspapers, play ball, and The YMCA officers made friends (he also sent my eldest brother Xie Weihan and his own son Yang Jianchen to the YMCA night school to study English).When my uncle asked his YMCA secretary friends about any good middle schools for girls, they introduced Beiman Girls Middle School of Dongcheng Dengshikou Congregational Church, which is closest to our home.

My parents did not object to me entering a missionary school, because my second uncle, Mr. Xie Baoyu (Mu Ru), taught Chinese at Yinghua College in Cangqian Mountain, Fuzhou, which was also a missionary school. My second uncle’s son, I Xie Weishu, his cousin, studied there.It seems that apart from teaching and going to school, they are not forced to join the teaching.The male and female teachers of Yinghua College are all missionaries, and they have also visited our home in Fuzhou.Also because there are two elder brothers above me, both of whom were delivered by a midwife, and her delivery equipment was not sterilized, so they both got umbilical cord madness and died young.So when my three younger brothers and I were born, my father asked a female doctor from the church hospital to deliver the baby.I still remember the American female doctor who delivered my younger brothers, wearing Chinese-style tops and skirts, but with a hat on her head and leather shoes on her feet.Before the younger brothers were full moon, they even came to visit on their own initiative, and they all came up from the bottom of the mountain.So parents have a good impression of them.My father said: The teaching in the church school is serious, and the spoken English is also pure, so you can go to school.

So in the autumn of 1914, my uncle took me to Bayman Girls' High School to enroll. At that time, Beiman Girls' High School was located in a group of curved ruler-shaped buildings in the northwest corner of the Dengshikou Congregational Church compound.At the turning point of the curved ruler, on the southeast wall of the building, there are four golden characters "Beiman Zhongzhai" written horizontally - at that time, church schools used traditional Chinese names: middle schools were called Zhongzhai, universities were called colleges, and universities were called colleges. Primary school is called Mengxue.The Congregational Church has Peiyuan Mengxue (six years), Beiman Zhongzhai (four years), and Xiehe Women's College (four years). Because there is also a Concorde College for men in Tong County, the word "women" is added to the Women's College. .This Beiman Zhongzhai was established with donations from an American named Bridgeman. "Beiman" is the transliteration of Bridgeman. Walk up about ten steps and enter an office on the left side of the corridor.A middle-aged American female priest, probably the principal, led me into a classroom and handed me a lecture topic given by my Chinese teacher, which was "Learning and then not knowing enough".I did this topic in my family school, so I solved it without thinking.The principal, Reverend Fei, was very surprised and admired, and said to my uncle: "She can be inserted into the first grade, and she can go to school tomorrow by paying the fee."

The procedure of examination and admission is so simple, which is beyond our expectation. I am both happy and uneasy. The next day I went to school with the tuition fee (16 yuan) for one semester.When I checked my schoolbag after arriving at school, the sixteen yuan bill was gone. In the principal's office, I was so embarrassed that I almost shed tears.Priest Fei comforted me and said, "It doesn't matter. If you lose it, you don't have to pay it." I said, "That's not good. I will definitely come tomorrow to make up the payment." At this moment, Priest Fei rang the bell and said to an old lady who came in, "Call Tao Ling." Soon a second-grade classmate entered the door. ——A well-spoken and carefree Manchu girl, that is, Tao Ling, who kept calling me "Xiao Xie" until I was eighty-two years old—she took me into the big classroom upstairs, and there was a podium in the lobby , there are several rows of seats for two at the same table below, which is the place for all students in the school to study and hold meetings.

I was ushered to the first-grade seat and sat down.There are many students who are not in class at this time sitting in this lobby, all bowing their heads and working hard, so silent that there is no sound.After a class or two, I sat timidly in my seat at lunch time.The classmates have all left, and I dare not take the initiative to follow.After school in the afternoon, I quickly picked up my schoolbag and went home.The first day of school was not smooth. I lost my tuition and didn’t have lunch. I was very depressed and cried when I got home! I paid the tuition fee the next day.The nanny of my second brother, who came here to send me to school, also told the old lady in the school reception room that I didn't have lunch yesterday.She laughed, so when it was lunch time, it was Tao Ling, my classmate from the second class who was always talking and laughing, who took me to the inner room of a large dining room downstairs, where day students eat.The food is good, rice, four dishes and one soup, it can be regarded as a "small stove".

At this time, the singing of "Thank you for the meal" sounded in the big restaurant outside, and almost all the students who lived in the school ate there.They sang standing up, and then sat down to eat after singing.They eat steamed buns and steamed buns, and the meals are also very simple. The classmates gradually got to know me well, and I found that almost all of them were Christians, and almost all of them were promoted from Congregational girls' primary schools in Baoding, Tongxian, Beijing or other provinces, and almost all lived on campus.They are all stiff and serious, and they are all dressed in blue clothes and green skirts, very plain.In the first month of school, I felt very restrained and depressed.The Bible class was unfamiliar to me. At that time, I was reading "Kings", which was the history of the ancient kingdom of Judea, and it was boring.Arithmetic is also algebra. I only learned addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the preparatory class of Fuzhou Women's Normal School, and there was a big gap in the middle.In the first monthly exam, I only got 62 points and failed!This "failure" has never happened since I was studying, and it stimulates me a lot!I once wrote it in the "My Teacher" section.This teacher is Ding Shujing, she has taught me history, geography, geology and other courses.But she is not my algebra teacher, nor has she ever given me extra lessons, and other descriptions are all facts.Later, during the summer vacation of 1915, a mathematics teacher from Peiyuan Mengxue filled in the gap for me.But in other subjects, even the Bible and English, my scores are almost not below 95 points. The composition teacher even gave me 100 plus 20 points.

Gradually, the classmates in the senior class also got to know me well. Girls are girls after all, and they are also very naughty and love to joke. They called me "Xiao Wan'er" because my scientific name was Xie Wanying; they called me "徉子" because when I started answering questions in class, I used authentic Yantai dialect, and the teacher couldn't understand, so they told me to speak on the blackboard. Write the answer above.When the classmates are able to joke around, it shows that we are already close.I not only love them, but also learn from their hard work.The textbooks we use are compiled by the church school system itself, and most of them are translated from English textbooks. For example, in the algebra exercises, there is the noun "four open silver horns", which we can't even count.Until 1923, when I went to study in the United States, I used quarters, which were silver coins of twenty-five cents, a quarter of a yuan. There was no such currency system in China.Our history textbook is an excerpt from the "Historical Summary".Only English is used in the textbooks of the Commercial Press, which also started from ABoyAPeach. The teacher is an American Finn priest. She is very young and just came from the United States. She is not very proficient in Chinese and often talks and laughs with us in simple English. progress faster.

In addition to class every morning, we also have a meeting in the last half hour, most of which are Chinese and American teachers from our school or pastors of the Congregational Church who come to "speak" to me.In addition, there is the "Bible study class" on Sundays. The non-Christian students in the school are grouped together regardless of shifts. Before going to the Congregational Church for worship, the principal of Concord Women's College, Mrs. Mak, will teach us for half an hour bible story.Bible study and prostration are both burdens to me, because only on Sundays can I spend the whole day with my parents and younger brothers, or help my mother with some housework, and I often excuse myself not to go.But in the bible study class, there are many classmates I like, such as Tao Ling from Zhai Er, Chen Kejun from Zhai San, etc. I especially like Chen Kejun.When Bei Manzhongzhai and later were classmates at Xiehe Women's University, we often participated in performances together. The "My Classmate" I wrote in "My Classmate" was Chen Kejun.

There is also a group activity in Bayman, which is the "Literary Society" every Wednesday afternoon, which is a gathering for students to practice speech and debate.This will be held in large classrooms. There is a chairman on the podium, who hosts and announces the program; there is also a secretary, who records the meeting process; there is a timekeeper in the audience, who puts a clock on her desk, and when the speaker has passed the time, she rings the bell to urge her to step down.Programs include newspaper readings, speeches, debates, etc.In a debate, four people come to debate a topic, with two people on the front and the back alternately appearing on the stage to debate.After the meeting, the chairman asked the teachers sitting by the stage to make some comments.I started to get really scared of this rally.The first time I was asked to read a newspaper, I walked up to the stage, and saw hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at me, I was so embarrassed that I hurriedly finished reading that section of the newspaper, and then ran back to my seat, using both hands. Covering my flushed face, my classmates all looked at me and smiled.Over the past year, I have gradually honed it, and I also like this opportunity to express my opinions.I think this training is very good, so that I will dare to make impromptu speeches in public in the future.

Not long after I entered school, I encountered the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Beiman Zhongzhai. I was a student in a small class and a day student. I had no memory of other celebrations.I just remember that many guests and alumni came to watch the gymnastics performance of our class that day.The physical education teacher was an American, and the command she gave us to do lower body exercises was "Left left foot, come back! Right foot right, come back!" We all tried our best to hold back our laughter and bit our lips! In the second half of the first academic year, in January 1915, the Japanese military government proposed to Yuan Shikai's government the "Twenty-one Measures" to destroy China, and on May 7 they proposed an "ultimatum". Conspiring to proclaim himself emperor, in exchange for the support of the Japanese emperor, he openly accepted Japan's request on May 9.This was strongly opposed by the people of the whole country, and large-scale anti-Japanese patriotic movements against Yuan were launched in various places.We were also outraged, together with all the students in Beijing, rushed out of the school gate, led by the chairman of our student union, Li Dequan, a classmate of Zhaisi, lined up and paraded to Central Park (now Zhongshan Park), on the podium where there were thousands of people , classmate Li Dequan gave a generous speech, I remember she said angrily: "Don't underestimate us Chinese! We 40 million people spit one mouthful, and we will drown the Japanese soldiers!" We handed in patriotic donations one after another, and returned Swear not to buy Japanese goods.

I came home full of grief and indignation, and saw my father silently pasting a piece of white paper on the wall of the study, which was written in Yue Fei's handwriting "May 7th Incident" in six large characters.Both my father and I stood under this horizontal drape for a long time with tears in our eyes. We encouraged each other to never forget this national humiliation day! On December 12, 1915, which was the first half of the year I lived in Zhai Er, Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor, and changed the fifth year of the Republic of China to the first year of "Hong Xian", and he also named him vice president. Li Yuanhong was called "Prince Wuyi" and he was placed under house arrest in Yingtai in Zhongnanhai.Li Yuanhong and my father were students of the same grade in the Zizhulin Naval Academy, but my father learned to drive and he learned to be a tube wheel. For many years, there was no relationship.After the founding of the Republic of China, he became the vice president and lived in Dongchang Hutong. He once invited my father to play, but my father didn't go.At this time he was living in Yingtai, and my father sometimes went to see him, saying that he played chess with him on the wooden kang—I never knew that my father could play chess—every time before going to visit him, my father would always wear woolen trousers. Wear an extra pair of flannel pants underneath, saying that it is very cold in the room there. At this time, the "National Defense Movement" was launched across the country, and Yuan Shikai's emperor's dream was shattered after only 83 days.The campus temporarily returned to calm.Our Bible class has read the "New Testament" from the "Old Testament", and I learned about the "person" Jesus Christ from the "Gospel".I saw that the illegitimate son of a poor carpenter family had so many people who believed in him, and he was cruelly crucified for promoting "love your neighbor as yourself". This image is respectable.But I don't believe in preaching such as "Trinity" and "Resurrection", and I haven't become a believer. There were very few extracurricular activities in Beiman Zhongzhai. In the summer vacation of 1917, the third year of my Zhai, some classmates and I participated in the summer meeting held by the Young Women's Association at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Xishan.We took a rickshaw to Xizhimen, and then rode a donkey to Xishan. This is my first outing since I arrived in Beijing, and I am very excited.Recalling the joy of riding a horse in my childhood, I took the donkey as a big horse and galloped on the dirt road. Among my classmates, I was the first one to reach the Reclining Buddha Temple!In addition to the meeting, we also took a tour of the mountains and got to know many students from other girls' schools, such as students from the Chinese and Western Girls' School in Tianjin.They dress better than we do.I remember that when the YWCA officers asked Chen Kejun and me to perform "Angel" in a program, the white silk dress was borrowed from my classmates at the Chinese and Western Girls' School. When I returned home after the meeting, the city was already in chaos.There were many rumors that something big was brewing between the warlords of the North and the South, and Zhang Xun's braided army was going to Beijing to mediate.The discipline of the braided army is extremely bad, and they will harass others when they come.After thinking about it, my father asked my mother to take us, my siblings, to Yantai for a while. I like sea travel the most, but this time the ship from Tanggu to Yantai was so crowded that we only bought tickets for the cargo compartment.Go down to the dark cargo hold, which is full of large wooden barrels.We had to spread matting over the uneven surface of the barrel.Mother was sweating while fanning us.After dozens of hours of darkness, heat, suffocation, and hunger and thirst, the boat finally stopped, got out of the cabin, breathed the sea breeze, looked around, and the sea and mountains of my childhood were listed in front of me again. Sadness is joy! Uncle Zeng Gongfu, father's friend and principal of Yantai Naval Academy, came to pick us up. Let's live in the west half of the former house.During this short period of time in Yantai, I took my younger brothers to the beach to play several times, and I also described my state of mind at that time in "Past Events (1)".The people are getting bigger, and the sea seems to be getting smaller, but the lights of the lighthouse on Zhifu Island on the opposite side are the same as before, jumping in my heart twinkling and twinkling! The scandal of restoration only lasted twelve days from July 1, 1917, and we soon returned to Beijing to prepare for school. Four solid years of Bei Manzhongzhai have passed. In the summer of 1918, when we graduated, there were only 18 students in our class.With the highest score, I wrote the lyrics of "farewell to teachers and friends" according to the tradition of the school, and gave a speech on "farewell to teachers and friends" at the graduation meeting.Most of my classmates who were promoted from various church middle schools have returned to their alma mater to teach since then, and the romance has disappeared!Only me and Wu Lumei, Kuang Shuzhen and her sister, those of us who had no obligation to teach, entered the Concord Women's University Preparatory School. I am very excited to write about the serious and serious life of these four years.This training really restrained my "wildness" and prepared me for a relatively steady start before entering the colorful life of the university. March 14, 1984 (This article was originally published in Issue 4, 1984.)