Chapter 9 Chapter 7 The head on the tower above the city gate

At that time, my grandmother brought my two aunts to Peiping from the northeast.My father had already entrusted someone to send my mother and my siblings from Nanjing to Peiping, telling my friends that I was going to take care of my mother-in-law.After my father returned to Beiping from Harbin, he decided to stay in North China as much as possible and contact the underground anti-Japanese workers in Northeast China in various ways in order to grasp the situation.At that time, Beiping was not very safe, there was no protection, and Japanese spies often collected data, so we moved to the French Concession in Tianjin.My elder brother stayed in Peiping with my grandmother, and my mother sometimes visited them from Tianjin.During this period, my mother began to take on a new role in her life: hosting the family and students of the revolutionary from her hometown.I remember one day, an aunt Gai and my mother were crying in the house, and my mother asked me to take her two little boys to play in the yard. The little brother of the Gai family said, "I don't know why my father's head is hanging on the city gate?" In 2000, at the opening of the "Qi Shiying Memorial Library" of Sun Yat-Sen Middle School in Shenyang, someone gave me the commemorative picture album "Don't Forget September 18". The bloody head of a strong man, with angry eyes and bared teeth, and the bloody national hatred and family feud have not been let go, which is confirmed by my childhood memory and will never be erased.

However, even in the concession, it was still not very safe, and the surname "Qi" was very conspicuous, so my father often changed his surname. I remember that our most common surnames are "Wang" and "Xu".When my surname was "Wang", I was in the third grade of "Laoxikai Primary School" in Tianjin.Because the family dared not let a little girl run around in the big city, they hired a rickshaw to pick her up.I remember that when I was leaving school in a rickshaw, sometimes naughty classmates would shout from behind: "Fucking bastard! Fucking bastard!"

After a while, my father changed my surname to "Xu". Because of the change of surname, I had to change schools.There are some British missionaries in that school who can teach a little spoken English, but the English I learned in the third and fourth grades is not usually used, and then I completely forget it. After my surname was "Xu" for a while, I also had the surname "Zhang".Because the father had to change his surname constantly, and the mother kept being "Mrs. Wang" and "Mrs. Xu"....Before I go to school, I often ask: "Mom, what is my last name today?" It is really ridiculous for a seven or eight-year-old child to ask "What is my last name?"

In the days of crisis and constant relocation, my mother was no longer a weeping woman. The relationship between her and my father began to establish a solid foundation in such a turbulent situation. She felt happy to be able to share the troubles with him. That kind of wholehearted acceptance and dedication gave me the greatest sense of security during my growth.Not long before she passed away at the age of eighty-three, we talked about women's right to choose marriage in the new era. I asked her if she would still choose to marry her father?She didn't answer at that time, but a few days later, she said: "I will still marry him. Although he is not a man who puts his family first, he is a gentle and clean gentleman."

After returning to Nanjing from Tianjin, my family first rented a house and lived in Fuhougang Street. It was a small new house, with a large open space opposite it, full of tall pagoda trees, and in early summer, clusters of light yellow fragrant flowers bloomed. It was my favorite in life, and it was the same as the peony flower, which gave me a strong feeling. happiness at home. Every morning, my classmate Duan Yonglan and her cousin Liu Zhaotian went to the "Drum Tower Primary School" along the newly built Jiangnan Railway. There were endless dandelions and variegated flowers on the road.

During the summer vacation in 1933, my mother gave birth to my eldest sister. My father named her "Ning Yuan" in memory of her hometown, Liaoning. She was a round, fat, very healthy and lovely baby who laughed a lot during the day and cried a lot at night.My mother was afraid that she would disturb my father's sleep, so she had to carry her around the house. Mother Li, who had just come to help with the children, was worried that she could not help, so one day she asked Mr. Yang Mengzhou, an underground anti-Japanese comrade who came to Nanjing to report on his work (he lived at my house at the time, and was waiting to go to Xinjiang to join Sheng Shicai), and wrote a letter for her. An edict from her hometown, Fengyang, Anhui:

"Tianhuanghuang, Dihuanghuang, there is a crying man in my family, and the gentleman who is a pedestrian reads it three times, and sleeps until dawn." I beg my brother to stick it on the telephone pole on the road when he goes to school. Every day we pass by, we pay attention to whether there are people who stop and read three times, and we are afraid that our father will be angry if he finds out.His biggest ideal in joining the Nanjing central government is to get rid of superstitions and bad habits, and build a new China for the whole people. When I was in Gulou Elementary School, Nanjing was full of new atmosphere. I was already nine years old, and I remember that there were slogans of "New Life Movement" everywhere; we elementary school students also helped put up slogans, such as "No Spitting", "Be Strong" ……etc.

These words are no longer spoken today, but when we first came to Taiwan, "no spitting" was still a goal of struggle, and slogans were hung on the streets, such as thrift, no drinking, no gambling, breaking superstition...etc. China, with Nanjing as its capital from 1928 to 1937, was full of hope, and new construction was being promoted everywhere.That period was called the "Golden Decade" in modern history.Japan has official records mentioning that the military advocates launching the war as soon as possible, and there is no need to wait any longer, because if China is not attacked now, it will be impossible to fight when the country becomes stronger.