Chapter 93 Grandma Fu - A Noble Person

At the beginning of June 1929, while I was still teaching at Yenching University, I caught a bad cold and lived in the nursing home of the girls' school.There is only one American female doctor and two waiters in the courtyard. The doctor called them Shu Ma and Fu Ma (the doctors and waiters only take care of people with mild illnesses, and those with more serious and complicated diseases are usually sent to Xiehe Hospital).These two waiters are both Manchu and speak pure Beijing dialect.Mama Shu is older, more sophisticated, and loves to talk and laugh.The rich mother is quieter and speaks softly.I always feel that she is different from Mama Shu. Whenever she is by my side, the phrase "Adults should behave carefully" always pops up in my mind.

One day she suddenly asked me in a low voice: "Mr. Xie, will you employ someone after you get married? I would like to help you." I said, "That's great, that is, there are only two of us in our family, and we don't have many things to do, and they have already paid for you." We introduced a chef (at that time, in addition to cooking, the master chef in the teacher's home of Yanda University also took care of laundry, bed linen... cleaning the downstairs study and living room, etc.). No heavy work..." She said, "I can do your sewing. You've got to have curtains, sheets, tablecloths in your new house, and I can prepare them for you first." That didn't occur to me.At that time, the small building assigned to us by Yanda University - No. 60 Yannanyuan was almost completed.After I got better from the cold, I went to our new house with her and measured the size of the doors and windows. I wanted to use rose-colored curtains for the living and dining room downstairs, bean green for the bedroom upstairs, and pink for the guest room (that kind of curtain). Houses generally have double curtains, the outside is a layer of transparent white gauze, the inside is just a short horizontal curtain and long narrow curtains on both sides, and the curtains on this layer are colored).I just bought these several colors of Suzhou cotton silk and gave them to her.On June 15th of that year, after Wen Zao and I got married, we went south to visit relatives. We went to our homes in Shanghai and Jiangyin. The bed sheets and quilts in the room are all made of white muslin and edged with the same color cloth as the curtains, and some small flowers are "patched" on it, which is really harmonious and elegant!After we furnished the house, she only came one morning a day to help us tidy up the room.In 1931, after our eldest son Wu Ping was born, she came to help me take care of the child, lived in my house, and worked all day long.At that time, Wen Zao's mother also came and lived in the original guest room.I still have a few classes a week, and my health is not very good. The care of the children is almost entirely dependent on the rich grandma (she is ten years older than me, and since she came to work in our house, we all call her grandma).Speaking of her life experience, her life experience is quite bleak. Some people say that she is the cousin of the Manchu Song Gongye. Police, much older than her, she gave birth to six children, all of whom died young, the last daughter survived, named Xiuqin, her treasure.When she came out to work, she referred to "Fu" as her surname.She has heart disease, and she has to go to Yanda Hospital to get medicine once a week, but she still took all the children's clothes (except the sweater).

She always dresses up her children very elegantly, with small flowers embroidered on the collars and sleeves that match the color of the sweater. At that time, the wives of Yanda Chinese and American colleagues all boasted that our children were more neatly dressed than anyone else. In fact, it was rich grandma who dressed them up. My daughter Wu Bing was born in 1935, and she took care of her. Wu Bing was not a "picky eater" since she was a child, and she grew very fat. Grandma Fu paid more attention to girls' clothes. Wu Bing was pushed out by the car. Whoever sees who loves.In 1936, it was Wenzao’s sabbatical year (professors of Yanda University take a vacation every seven years), we first went to Japan, then went to the United States to congratulate Harvard University on behalf of Yanda University on the 300th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University, and then went to England , Italy, France, etc., Wen Zao himself went back to Oxford and Cambridge University in the UK to study their tutoring system. I was pregnant with Wu Qing at that time, so I stayed in France and lived in Paris for a hundred days.

Although Wen Zao's mother was also in Beijing at that time, grandma Fu took care of everything about the two children.When we returned from Europe in 1937, Beijing fell within a week.Because Yan University is run by the American church, we have not been disturbed for a while, and we are still teaching at Yan University. While waiting for Wu Qing's birth in November, we are preparing to go to Yunnan University.Because Grandma Fu has heart disease, I was afraid that the weather on the Yunnan Plateau would be unsuitable for her, so I planned to recommend her to work at the home of an American professor.

There are only two old couples in their family, and the work is very easy, but Grandma Fu said: "You don't worry if you take three children away alone. I will send you to Hong Kong and come back." We didn't know where we were going until we arrived in Hong Kong. Yunnan must take a small train from Haiphong in Annan to enter Yunnan. This road is difficult!Grandma Fu insisted again: "You and your husband will never get along with these three children. I'd better go to Yunnan with you." I had to agree with tears.Needless to say, the hardships and hardships along the way.Fortunately, when passing through Hong Kong, my cousin Liu Fangyuan’s family also took refuge in Hong Kong. They handed over a very capable girl, Ruiwen, to me, and said: "Ruiwen is eighteen or nineteen years old. I’d like to find someone for her in Hong Kong, so why don’t you take her to the Mainland to find someone for her.” Of course it would be much more convenient to have Rui Wen on the road, Grandma Fu treated her like her own daughter, and the two got along very well.When she arrived in Kunming, Rui Wen took up the position of chef. She learned how to cook Fujian cuisine from my cousin, which made us and our friends who moved south with Peking University and Tsinghua University a real treat.

When we arrived in Kunming, we immediately wanted to bring Grandma Fu's husband Huang Zhiting and daughter Xiuqin to the rear so that her family would not be separated.At that time, Seabold, the U.S. consul in Kunming, Yunnan, was very friendly with us. They often said that the accents of Yunnan workers were difficult to understand. I said, "Let me recommend a Beijinger for you." Friends brought Huang Zhiting to Kunming to work in the US consulate.Grandma Fu’s only daughter, Xiuqin, had to stay in Beijing to finish high school. After we moved to Chongqing in 1940, she was brought by our friends. When we arrived in Chongqing, we immediately sent her to Fudan University. All expenses are covered by us.At this time, Grandma Fu was completely relieved. When we arrived in Chongqing, Huang Zhiting was originally brought to my house to "help". I wrote a letter to my daughter word by word.It is really "poor parents in the world"!Grandma Fu didn’t know how to write, so she always asked me to write down what she wanted to say on paper, and then copied it out stroke by stroke. I often said to her:

"You don't need to bother, Huang Zhiting and I will write for you, why bother writing it yourself?" She said: "Xiuqin will be happy to see my handwriting." Not long after we arrived in Chongqing, we moved to live in Gele Mountain because of the frequent bombing by Japanese planes.Soon Wenzao got pneumonia again, and I stayed with me in the hospital for more than a month, and Grandma Fu presided over everything at home.In those few years we were really poor and sick. Wen Zao recovered from his illness, and I vomited blood every three days. Although the doctor said it was not a fatal disease, every time I vomited blood, I had to lie down and rest. This caused a lot of trouble for Grandma Fu. , At that time, she was also gradually exhausted, and had to lean on the bed often.I remember that once in winter, Wu Ping, who was studying at Nankai Middle School in Shapingba, went up the mountain in the heavy rain on the weekend, and his cotton trousers were half wet.Grandma Fu asked him to take off the cotton trousers distressedly, and sat under her quilt to keep warm.She used a pair of my old trousers as face, and used white flour pockets and white cloth as lining, and made him a pair of cotton trousers on the bed overnight.I heard her say to Wu Ping in a low voice: "Your mother is really, she has money to send someone to college, and her son doesn't even have a pair of cotton or woolen pants!" This is the last time she will work for my child!

One day she said to me intermittently: "I don't think my disease can be cured. Although your house is an earthen house, it was bought with money. If I die in this house, the children will be afraid in the future. You Take me to the hospital." I thought the hospital would take better care of me, and there were many acquaintances in the Central Hospital (now the Shanghai Hospital) at the foot of the mountain, so I sent her down the mountain and asked Huang Zhiting to accompany her. I am preparing for her funeral.Just at that time, I heard that there was a dilapidated rich man who had a pair of finished coffins for sale at a low price. I bought it for only a little over 100 yuan (part of the manuscript fee) and stored it in a carpenter's shop at the foot of the mountain. .

Soon after arriving at the hospital, she said goodbye to us forever.She was buried in the cemetery in Geleshan.On the day of the funeral, I vomited blood again and did not go to the funeral, but her husband, daughter and my children all went.I heard that after Wu Ping solemnly performed a boy scout salute in front of the grave, she and her two younger sisters, Wu Bing and Wu Qing, were so crying that they couldn't stand up!In the mid-1950s, I participated in a delegation of the National People's Congress to inspect the Southwest. I passed through Gele Mountain in Sichuan. I wanted to go up to see her tomb, but I couldn't because there was an anti-aircraft artillery team stationed there.

Huang Xiuqin married her college classmate Li Jiaju from Sichuan, and soon took her father Huang Zhiting away.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, we returned to Nanjing and went to Japan. The Huang family stayed in Sichuan, but our communication continued. Huang Xiuqin also died after giving birth to two sons and two daughters.We lived in the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing in the 1960s. Her second son, Li Daxiong, was studying at the Beijing Institute of Posts and Telecommunications. During the holidays, he came to our house and called me "grandma".Until now, when he and his wife are on a business trip to Beijing, they still give me oranges, "vegetable heads" and other things we love to eat.Our children and their children have always been as close as one family...I have long wanted to write about this noble man, a small photograph of her and our three children in a small brass frame, for decades Always by my side, now in a glass bookcase behind me.Today is cloudy, and there are no "uninvited guests". I wrote the deeds of the most intimate person who has worked with me for more than ten years since 1929, and my tears flowed. I can't get enough of her, but my memory of her is endless! Evening, June 5, 1987