Chapter 16 (twelve)

Before Zhongshu took his daughter to visit relatives in Wuchang, in May 1957, his niece who was studying at university in Beijing came to my house to play and said that the students of Peking University had put up big-character posters.We sneaked out at night to read big-character posters, and they were really all over the walls.We were amazed to read it. After the "Three Antis", we always thought that people have changed.It turned out that nothing had changed, our minds were very ordinary, more peaceful than what was revealed in the big-character posters.We read the big-character posters here and there in surprise and joy, and our hearts were greatly relieved.I have been uncomfortable for several years, and this time I have been comforted.People are people.

The next step is to call for leadership.Zhongshu once went to Zhongnanhai to hear Chairman Mao's speech with his own ears. He felt that it was a sincere call for release, and he did not think of "leading the snake out of the hole".But after seeing various records and hearing various theories many years later, we know that it was a long-term and carefully planned event, which makes us terrified of "politics". Immediately a call was issued in the institute.What we think of as a call is a political movement.We are consistently ignorant of political movements. After the "three evils", he criticized Yu Pingbo's "color and space thought".Next came the campaign against counter-revolutionaries, and again against Hu Feng.I can't remember the order of the movements one by one.I only remember that after Yu Pingbo was criticized, he was promoted to a first-level researcher, and Zhong Shu was also promoted to a first-level researcher.Next is the preferential treatment for high-level intellectuals, high-end cars for travel, and high-end hospitals for medical treatment;

It is natural that the wind is warm and the sun is warm, and the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming.When called upon, we are vigilant.Since we read the big-character posters, we have been relieved and satisfied.The higher-ups only call for "Ming Fang" and constantly lure and urge them in all directions.We feel that political movements tend to go to extremes.I said to Zhongshu, "Please eat, and don't eat if you can. Don't let go, everything you say is correct.For example, someone asked, do you feel unfree at work?I said, "I don't think so." I was telling the truth.When we occupied Shanghai, no matter what kind of work, as long as it was legitimate, I would do it. How could I have the freedom to choose?A friendly reporter asked me to release it.I honestly said: "I'm sorry, I don't like 'booing.

When Zhongshu went to Wuchang to visit his sick father at the beginning of this year, he felt that a storm was coming.Sure enough, the "Anti-Rightist" movement was launched soon, and a large number of intellectuals were labeled as "Rightists." When the movement started, the leaders said it was a "contradiction among the people".It is not surprising that internal conflicts are inevitable.But when the movement ended, we knew the seriousness of the rightist problem.We have always been correct. When the movement concluded, it was correct and honest to say that it "resonates with right-wing speech", but we did not have a word of right-wing speech, so we escaped bad luck.

Zhongshu was only worried about his father talking indiscriminately.I don't know if my father-in-law is a "quasi rightist" or a "rightist who slipped through the net". Anyway, the movement is over and he is gone. Although political movements emerged one after another, Zhong Shu and I never stopped working.He can always read books after work; I "make up for my weakness with diligence" and try my best to read books within the scope of my work.I completed the translation of "Gil Blass" as planned, and just wrote an academic paper of 50,000 words.I can't remember if it was 1956 or 1957. I accepted the task of retranslating "Don Quixote" entrusted to me by the editorial board of three series of books.

Just in the spring of the "anti-rightist" year, my academic paper was published in a journal, but it did not attract attention."Selected Notes on Song Poetry" completed by Zhong Shu at the end of 1956 and published in 1958. After the "anti-rightist movement" came the "double-anti" movement, and then a "pulling the white flag" movement was launched in our institute.Zhong Shu's "Selected Notes on Song Poetry" and my thesis are both white flags.Mr. Zheng Zhenduo was originally a big white flag, but he was killed on duty, so he no longer "pulled".Zhong Shu went to the city in 1958 to participate in the final work of translating Mao Xuan.All the criticisms of "Selected Notes on Song Poetry" that "pull out" him will be conveyed by me on my behalf.Later, due to the praise of the book by Japanese sinologists such as Yoshikawa Kojiro and Ogawa Kanki, they did not pull it out.I only suffered from my shapeless little white flag, which was pulled down and torn to pieces.I made up my mind not to write any more articles, and from then on I escaped into translation.Zhongshu laughed at me for "returning the soul from the corpse", but I just wanted to "escape from the body".

Many people think that the selected items of "Selected Notes on Song Poems" are not good.Zhongshu admits that he is not satisfied with the selection: the ones that need to be selected are not selected, and all the unnecessary ones are selected.In fact, in the anthology, I can't help but give up my favorite poems; it is not easy to choose the poems that Zhongshu thinks is unnecessary.There are a few small poems, which either reflect the suffering of the people, or describe the sorrow of the people who have fallen into the enemy's territory. They have their own value, and if they are not selected, they will be buried.Zhongshu selects poems according to his own standards, and the titles are up to him. For example, he did not choose Wen Tianxiang's "Song of Righteousness", which is very bold.

When choosing Song poetry, there is no ready-made "Complete Song Poems" to choose from.Zhong Shu read all the Song poems and chose it alone.He doesn't have an assistant, and I'm just a "good wife" who buys books with him, cuts and pastes for him, and listens to his discussions with me.He read all of such a large number of Song poems, and even selected a few young poets to choose from.He has had a heavy workload in the past two years, and I don't know how many people have paid attention to it. "Selected Notes on Song Poems" was published despite being criticized.His achievements have not been erased.My research papers are worthless, but there are plenty of books, which I have legitimately read.When I fell into Shanghai and was a maidservant under the stove, could I study in such a grand manner?Our feeling in the old society is that we sold our lives to survive.Because time is life.In New China, the life of intellectuals is taken care of by the state, and we are assigned suitable jobs, and we only need to serve the people wholeheartedly.We serve the people wholeheartedly, but we will not serve the people because we are not qualified.Then the state lost money to re-educate us.We receive high wages and receive education, which is clearly a loss for the country.

My colleagues and I went to Changli with the leaders of the Academy of Social Sciences to "see the flowers on a horse" and to Xushui to see the fields that produced tens of thousands of catties of rice per mu.We participated in national steelmaking, the national "Great Leap Forward", and intellectuals went to the countryside to work in factories to reform themselves.There are three people in my family, scattered in three places.I was sent to the countryside in November 1958 and returned to Beijing at the end of December.I once wrote an article "Going to the Countryside for the First Time", remembering my "decentralization".Zhongshu was still finalizing the draft in the city at that time. He sent to Changli in early December and returned to Beijing at the end of January of the following year (that is, the end of the lunar calendar).Ah Yuan delegated the factory to make steel.

Qian Yuan arrived at the factory and followed a master who was an eighth-grade worker.The master asked her to draw because she belonged to the art group at school and could draw.The posters drawn by the art group are far from the same as the pictures of steel factories.Ah Yuan hurried to the bookstore to buy books and studied hard.The master admired this good apprentice very much and took her around everywhere.The master often had original ideas, so he asked Ah Yuan to draw pictures according to his original ideas.Ah Yuan could draw precise pictures.Models can be made according to the drawings, and molten iron can be poured.She stayed in the factory for a long time and admired her master very much. She often told us about the master's family.The master gave her a Chairman Mao badge as big as the mouth of a rice bowl as a souvenir.This one is the largest one I have seen.

When Zhongshu sent Changli down, he was more pitiful than me and Ah Yuan.I once went to Changli to "take a walk to see the flowers". Our group was entertained, and Changli is a wealthy area.When Zhongshu was released, the "three-year famine" had already begun.His job is to smash manure, and his food is corn bread mixed with moldy sweet potato flour.When he returned to Beijing at the end of the lunar calendar, he was actually very good at taking care of his family, and brought back a lot of soap that was no longer available in Beijing and a large amount of candied fruit produced locally.I still remember how nervous I was when I went to the train station alone to pick him up, for fear that he would not be picked up, and that he would have to go back when he arrived in Beijing. Our husband and wife were separated for three months and reunited again.In 1959, the Institute of Literature moved to the Old Navy Yard in the city.In May of this year, my family moved to the dormitory of the Literature Research Institute at No. 1 Dongsi Toutiao.The house is smaller than before, with only one large office divided into five small rooms.A family of three and an aunt actually live there, and there is one for the living room, and one for stacking boxes and cages. After moving into the city, it is convenient to work in the "final drafting group", and it is also convenient to go to the market and eat restaurants.Zhongshu loves to eat. The "Three Years of Famine" began, and political movements quieted down.But we have one big thing on our minds.Ah Yuan is about to graduate.She came from a bad background.She is a "white college" herself, and her parents are both "white". She is just a student doing her duty. Where will she be assigned to work?The volunteer she filled in was "Bianbian".If it is the "side" in the north, I have to make a "pi Daha" for her. Since she entered university, she has had many activities on campus, unlike going home every weekend in middle school.Before steelmaking, the art team she belonged to was often too busy to sleep.Once she came home suddenly in the afternoon and said: "The teacher asked me to go home and sleep, Mom, I will sleep until 4:30 and wake me up." So she fell asleep.At 4:30, I couldn't bear to wake her up, and I had to wake her up, and I didn't dare to ask more questions, for fear of delaying time.There is Ah Yuan's bed in my bedroom as big as dried tofu, but she doesn't come home very often.We feel that since Ah Yuan went to university, he has become estranged from his family; if his job is assigned to a distant place after graduation, our daughter will be lost to somewhere. But things are often unexpected.The school assigns Ah Yuan to stay at the school as a teaching assistant.When we heard the news, we couldn't say enough about our satisfaction.Because in that era, graduates had to obey the assignment.Whereas the assigned job is for life.Our daughter can be with her parents forever. My aunt at the time was not good at cooking.Zhongshu and I often took our daughter out to restaurants, and we ate everywhere in the city.Zhongshu wrote in his early article "Eat Meals" that "Eating exquisite meals is actually just eating food." He did not say that eating food is mainly about ordering.He can always order something good at any restaurant.He can choose.Selection is a special skill, seeing all at once and choosing the best of them.Both he and his daughter are good at this: you can buy good books in bookstores, select good articles at academic conferences, and select good clothing materials in silk cloth shops.As for me, it seems like a fool.After all, the dishes I ordered were unpalatable. Eating restaurants is not only about food and vegetables, but also an entertainment that others can't think of.Zhongshu is short-sighted, but has very good ears.Ah Yuan has sharp eyes and ears.While waiting for our food to be served, we observed the diners at other tables.All I heard was their half-spoken words, and they didn't pay attention.Both Zhong Shu and Ah Yuan could hear the full text.I can listen to and watch the play or story in front of me from their continuous comments. "The two people over there are husband and wife, arguing..." "The man who ran here was the subject of a couple's quarrel—isn't he the one who both of them said their names many times?...Look at their faces..." "This table is for relatives" - who is the host, who is the host and guest, who has what relationship with whom, and who loves to talk nonsense, they are all well-informed. Our dishes were served one by one, and we watched while eating.When the accounts were settled after dinner, some "plays" had already ended, some were still in full swing, and some were new. We eat restaurants and watch theaters in succession.The three of us are together and always have endless fun.