Chapter 262 Preface to Liang Shiqiu's "Recalling Old Knowledge"

Mr. Liang Shiqiu's collection of essays "Nostalgia for the Elegant House - Recalling the Past and Knowing" will be published by China Friendship Publishing Company, please let me write the preface.I read the catalog of this collection first, and I am really moved! Shiqiu is my wife Wu Wenzao's classmate, and we are old friends who have known each other for decades.In 1923 we took the same ocean-going ship to study in the United States. Almost all the passengers were Chinese students. Tsinghua University’s preparatory school for studying in the United States had more than a hundred people. Xu Dishan, Tao Ling and I went to Yenching University. There is a male classmate surnamed Li whose name I forgot.In addition, some went abroad at their own expense.The ship sailed the Pacific for two weeks, and most of us got to know each other.I remember that Xu Dishan from Yanda University and Liang Shiqiu from Tsinghua University and other people who love literature ran a wall newspaper called .I also wrote a few short poems on it.

When I arrived in the United States, I went to graduate school at Wellesley University for Women near Boston.A year later, Liang Shiqiu also went to Harvard University in Boston.Boston is the cultural center of the United States. Famous universities such as Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have many Chinese male and female students studying abroad. We often gather together.After returning to China, I have been teaching at Yenching University, while Shiqiu is in Qingdao, Shandong, but we still correspond from time to time.But there is one thing that I remember really well, that is, in the autumn of 1929, Shiqiu and Wen Yiduo came to my new residence in Yannanyuan, Yanda, where I married Wu Wenzao, and they walked upstairs and downstairs. , sitting and drinking tea in the living room, suddenly the two stood up at the same time, and said with a smile: "We will come after we go out for a while." After saying that, they left. We thought they were going to see other friends in Yanda, but they didn't care.Unexpectedly, they came back soon, with a pack of cigarettes in their hands, and said with a smile, "Everything is good here, but there is one thing that is the best for hospitality." They opened the packs, and each lit a cigarette with a lighter. While throwing the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table, he said with a smile, "Leave a memo for you, don't forget to treat guests with cigarettes in the future!" Although Wenzao and I don't smoke, there is no shortage of cigarettes for hospitality .

After the Anti-Japanese War, we all went to Chongqing, but we lived in Geleshan, and he lived in Beibei. Although we also had contacts, we didn't often stay together.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, we first went to Japan and then returned to the mainland.But Shiqiu arrived in Taiwan, facing each other across the sea, forty years, no news!This time, I know from his essay "Recalling Bingxin" that he thought we were dead, and even wrote a memorial article!I am grateful for the nostalgia for our old man. I have never been to Taiwan, so I can’t imagine the living conditions in Taiwan, but the situation in Beijing is really endless on paper. I hope Shiqiu will come back and see the real life of the two of us. , Look at the spiritual outlook of his own sons and daughters and our sons and daughters in their work and life.Beijing has changed a lot, but the things he loves to eat can still be eaten, and the places he has visited or not visited are even more beautiful.In short, it is better to see once than to hear a hundred times. Seeing is believing. We are all over 80 years old. Come back and have a chat. How about it? We and your children are waiting for you!