Meet you in the most beautiful years

Chapter 3 I don't know why I suddenly fell in love with you (1)
Snubbed love letter
Who said that when love comes, we often don't understand love.

A flower bloomed quietly, and it was so beautiful.She didn't realize it herself, but it burned the heart that loved her.It hurts to love someone deeply, even though he is willing to burn for her recklessly, willing to be the ashes after the catastrophe.

I have thought countless times, how happy is that woman who is loved by him so wholeheartedly.

One day in February 1930, for Zhang Zhaohe, a famous lady, was the starting point of her beautiful love life.After that day, she became the most magnificent woman in the love legend.

On this ordinary winter day, a letter arrived in her hands after twists and turns.She opened the letter to read, and the first sentence was: "I don't know why I fell in love with you all of a sudden." The letter was signed by Shen Congwen.

I can't fathom the mind of that young woman more than half a century ago.Thinking about how I feel now, if it were another girl, at that moment, there would definitely be a grand spring, covering her whole body and mind, and sprouting in her heart.

But this girl happened to be Zhang Zhaohe.This dark-faced, beautiful and handsome woman was a student of Shanghai Wusong Chinese Public School at that time, a beautiful girl who was used to being calm in the eyes of countless admirers-the third lady of the Zhang family in Hefei.

When she read the letter full of love and sorrow, she didn't have the surprise of a woman in Huaichun, and her brows were slightly furrowed, showing the distress of being overwhelmed.This pursuer is different from those young students in the past. He is a young lecturer in a Chinese public school who teaches an elective course in modern literature. Zhang Zhaohe has attended his class more than once.

Before that, Shen Congwen's three characters had already gained fame in the Chinese literary world.

At that time, Shen Congwen was in his best years, and he had experienced a lot in his best years.He has tasted all the tension and crampedness of the world, the joys and sorrows of impermanence in life, in Xiangxi, where he was born and raised, and during his childhood and growing up.These experiences soaked in the blood and tears of life, like nutrients in a piece of black soil, soaked into his blood, nourished his keen mind, enriched his creations, and gave him depth and content.

Such a young man is undoubtedly attractive.He is handsome and elegant in a green cloth gown, with a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose. The eyes behind the lenses are deep and hazy. He has a vicissitudes of experience, and he is just at the right age. When he walks through the campus, it is like his works that have touched countless people. Like readers, it is not difficult to impress a girl's heart.

At that time, Shen Congwen's appearance could be regarded as elegant and outstanding, because as early as a few years ago, Ding Ling had heard Hu Ye frequently say that Shen Congwen was "good-looking", and they made a special trip to visit Shen Congwen's "narrow and moldy small studio" in Beijing together.

However, for Miss Zhaohe, all these are not enough to make her heart flutter.It's not that she doesn't understand the kindness of this man, it's just that her emotional growth is a little slow.

She is the bud with dew sticking out of the fence. The spring breeze loves her and cannot help kissing her lightly. The butterfly also loves her and cannot stop dancing for her. .Regarding the budding style of love, her love sinus has not yet begun.

Therefore, like any previous courtship letter, Zhang Zhaohe chose to remain silent about the young teacher's show of love.

Shen Congwen's first love confession, although it was like the morning sun and warm wind, it couldn't illuminate the woman he loved, and couldn't open her heart.

This winter is still desolate and cold.Under the old wall outside the window, the withered grass was withered and yellow, and the vines hung on the wall. Shen Congwen waited patiently with them, waiting for the news of spring.

The reply from the beautiful woman did not come for a long time.Shen Congwen, who was in so much pain, wrote many love letters to Zhang Zhaohe one after another, but there was no news of them all.

He is so close to her, in Chinese public school, he can see this dark-faced, pretty and quiet female student almost every day.In his eyes, she is as pure as a water lotus, with thousands of fragrances in front of her, they all serve as the background and foil.Seeing her, he seemed to see the Tuojiang River and the clear Yuanshui River in his hometown, as well as his turbulent but extremely kind youth.

He was obsessed with her, and when he thought of her, his heart felt tender and painful, as if his whole heart had been swept away by her life and death.This young man, who grew up drinking water from western Hunan, experienced wandering hardships, and miraculously emerged in the Chinese literary world, fell into a purgatory unrequited love for a female student.

Many years later, looking back on this unsatisfactory first meeting, there will be a smile blooming in the bottom of my heart: it turns out that all of this is a kind of fulfillment.

It is destined that their love will start in this way.

The Buddha said that gazing five hundred times in the previous life can be exchanged for rubbing shoulders once in this life.So has the Buddha ever said, how many times does it take a sea of ​​people to rub shoulders in order to get the encounter and bond in this life?The encounter between him and her must have been destined in the previous life. No matter how many scenery he missed, he would eventually meet on the same bridge and look at each other silently.

The so-called fate is the knot that must be connected on the web woven by thousands of threads; it is the winding path that must meet each other in the complicated maze.This kind of arrangement, whether it is smooth or confusing, is the only way to the end.

What Shen Congwen thinks about day and night is that he can be accepted by Zhang Zhaohe; but at the same time, this woman's silence and estrangement from him, and her calm and aloofness in her bones are fatal attraction to him.He suffered from her indifference, yet was fascinated by it.

The woman he can fancy must be the fairy grass that grows on the cliff, and it is hard to reach the refined and lonely, so he will cherish it more and more.

That's why he fell in love with her.Or maybe it was God's deliberate arrangement.

The boy who used to be by the Yuanshui River, he completed his growth process in that magical land, and then traveled through thousands of mountains and rivers, experienced the ups and downs of the world, and finally came to Shanghai to teach... It seems that all the previous events are only for this. The arrival of a moment - like a green tree facing the wind, appeared in front of her.

The Boy by the Yuan River
Xiangxi Fenghuang, I like this place name. It has the exquisiteness of ancient embroidery paintings and the atmosphere and mystery like a totem.But before the second year of the Republic of China (1913), it was called Zhengan. This name has a faint chill.

Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, the town was basically controlled by the Miao people. The aggressive Miao people used long poles as weapons and often provoked conflicts and fights with the Han people. Therefore, under the rule of the Manchus, the imperial court sent troops to station here to suppress it by force. Miaoman "pole", from which Zhengan got its name.

There is a Phoenix Mountain in Zhengan City. In the Ming Dynasty, the Phoenix Camp was set up here. In the Qing Dynasty, the camp was changed into a hall. Fenghuang County.

Today, this phoenix is ​​visited by countless people, because the boy she gave birth to and nurtured has become a legend that attracts the attention of the world in the future.

A person's character and temperament are essentially related to the water and soil that gave birth to him.It is hard to imagine that if there were no soft and beautiful Tuojiang River and Yuanshui River, and the wild and simple life accumulation of the Miao people in western Hunan, there would be Shen Congwen in the history of Chinese literature.Different geographical environments can achieve the same life, but the tone and characteristics of life are always different. Maybe it is the yellow plum rain in the south of the Yangtze River, or it may be the desert and plateau in the northwest.

Therefore, "Rain Lane" belongs to Dai Wangshu from Hangzhou, while "Border Town" can only belong to Shen Congwen from Xiangxi.

Therefore, it is undoubtedly the original and mysterious shadow of Phoenix in western Hunan that left a clear imprint on Shen Congwen's life trajectory.

The world is impermanent, and it seems that everything has a definite number. In 1850, when the poor man named Shen Qishan moved his family from Tongren County, Guizhou Province to Huangluozhai Village, Fenghuang County, Hunan Province, fate began to brew a legend from then on.

Huangluozhai is now a small village in Linfeng Township, Fenghuang County. There is an old Shen family courtyard in the village, and Shen Congwen once lived there when he was young.Obviously, it has been immersed in the long river of time for some years. The simple horse head wall, the old carved doors and windows seem to be able to see the traces left by the mighty long wind blowing through it.

In Shen Congwen's words, this is a cottage with luxuriant pines and fir trees surrounded by Jiashu. The people living here are the remnants of the race forgotten by history at that time. Life.

Shen Qishan was Shen Congwen's great-grandfather. Although he was poor half his life and poor all his life, in the hands of his children, the Shen family began to look prosperous.

Shen Qishan's eldest son, Shen Hongfu, was nicknamed Shen Maogou. Before the Taiping Rebellion, he had been selling horse grass for a living.Later, in order to defend and suppress the Taiping Army uprising, the Qing government asked this brave young man to lead the Zhengan Army. At the age of 22, he served as the guardian envoy of Zhaotong, Yunnan; at the age of 26, he had risen to the most glorious peak in his life-the admiral of Guizhou in the Qing Dynasty.

Shen Hongfu is the pride of the Shen family. Although his ending was unsatisfactory-in the end, he died prematurely due to injuries caused by continuous battles, but he "left behind a piece of glory and a piece of property, so that his heirs can occupy the local area. A superior position", and more importantly, he became a spiritual model for the Shen family and even the entire Fenghuang County.Leading the army like Shen Hongfu and being a heroic general has been the dream of Shen Jiaerlang for a long time since then.

However, this famous and brave man had no heirs, so his younger brother Shen Hongfang adopted his second son Shen Zongsi to him, inheriting the property and glory.

Sure enough, Shen Zongsi lived up to expectations, not only inherited Shen Hongfu's warrior spirit, but also wrote another legend in his life.

Shen Zongsi learned martial arts at the age of ten, joined the army when he grew up, and later became the assistant general of Luo Rongguang, the admiral of Dagu, Tianjin.Unfortunately, when the Eight-Power Allied Forces captured Tianjin, the fort fell, and Luo Rongguang committed suicide.During this war, all the treasures that Shen Zongsi carried with him were lost, almost depleting most of the Shen family's property.

After the fall of Beijing, Shen Zongsi returned to his hometown. Since then, his life has been full of ups and downs, full of ups and downs.He first led the local armed anti-Qing uprising in 1911, and then ran for the representative of the provincial council. After the election failed, he went to Beijing to organize an iron blood group to conspire to assassinate Yuan Shikai. Unexpectedly, the assassination failed to leak the secret, so he fled to Rehe and hid his name in a remote frontier. He lived for many years and did not return to his hometown until Yuan Shikai died.In the process, in order to repay the debts owed by the revolution, the Shen family had no choice but to pawn the land to repay the debts, and the family business became increasingly depressed and even went bankrupt.

Shen Zongsi, a man with ups and downs in his life and unfulfilled ambitions, is Shen Congwen's father.

Although Shen Congwen's mother, Huang Suying, was a member of the Tujia family, she was born in a well-known local scholarly family.Her father, Huang Heqing, was the earliest tribute student in the local area, the head of the Confucian Temple Academy, and the only scholar in the local area; her elder brother, Huang Jingming, was the grandfather of the famous contemporary painter Huang Yongyu. He was a military officer and opened the first post office and the first photo studio in Fenghuang County. .Influenced by her elder brother, Huang Suying learned to read, write, and learn to take pictures. She can be regarded as a new-style woman who is educated and reasonable.For Shen Congwen, the influence of his mother, just like the Tuojiang River and the Yuanshui River, subtly nourished his life.

The father is ambitious, vigorous and brave; the mother is gentle and virtuous, with a good temperament. With such genetic factors, the children born to them will have innate advantages. Coupled with the immersion of the beautiful landscape and the grace of the creation environment, a child with the feelings of a child The boy descended gracefully to the bell of the twentieth century.

In the early morning of December 1902, 12, on this day, there must be something different from the past. In this small city by the Yuanshui River in southwest China, a baby boy was born that would make Fenghuang in western Hunan famous.At that time, Shen Zongsi already had a boy and two girls under his knees, and this newborn boy was his second son.

Shen Yuehuan, courtesy name Chongwen, was the first name of this boy from the Shen family.When he grew up, the boy fell in love with culture and writing, so he changed his name to Shen Congwen on his own initiative.

Ever since the great-grandfather came to settle in Xiangxi, the Shen family has been relying on the army to practice martial arts, but fate seems to favor this Xiangxi family too much. Perhaps, it is because of the innate blood and sensitivity of the Shen family, so, from grandfather to father, The two generations of the Shen family were famous in Xiangxi for their vigor and martial arts, but the fourth generation of the Shen family was remembered by history in a cultural way.

According to Buddhism, in the samsara of life, there is cause and effect everywhere.Time always verifies the rationality of cause and effect with a casual attitude.Thinking about it carefully, there are still traces of the transformation of the Shen family from martial arts to literary practice.The beautiful and simple Xiangxi, the fierce and brave Miao people, the beautiful Yuanshui River, the multi-ethnic living environment, and the strong and brave men, gentle and virtuous women, these subtle and complicated factors gave birth to a boy's life. Growing up makes him independent, tough and romantic.

After becoming famous, Shen Congwen always called himself a "countryman". In fact, in Miao Township at that time, in order to avoid being discriminated against by outsiders for their racial identity, the Miao people always vaguely called themselves countrymen.Pure Han blood has an irreplaceable advantage in frontier Fenghuang.

Although Shen Congwen's great-grandfather was Han, his mother was a Tujia woman.Later, it was not until his mother died that Shen Congwen knew another truth related to blood: the woman he always called his grandmother was not his real grandmother, but his real grandmother was actually a true Miao people, so He is of partial Hmong descent.This is an incredible story, but it is also a real tragedy.

Back then, Shen Hongfu had no children, and his wife adopted his nephew, Shen Zongsi, as his son. Shen Zongsi's biological mother was a young Miao woman.According to the local customs at that time, children born to Miao people could not take the imperial examination and had no social status.In order to let Shen Zongsi have a good future when he grows up, the Shen family carefully designed a scam. On the one hand, they sent the poor young Miao girl to the countryside to remarry; The Han people, moreover, have passed away.

This big lie, Shen Congwen didn't know the whole story from his parents until he was an adult.The Miao girl who gave birth to two sons for the Shen family, but was kicked out and forced to remarry, her grief at that time, after a hundred years, is still sharp and painful.

When he was only four years old, Shen Congwen went to school with his two older sisters at the home of a lady who was actually their fourth aunt.At that time, the little boy was as strong as a dolphin; when he was six years old, he developed rashes at the same time as his two-year-old brother, and he was in critical condition and dying.The family used bamboo mats to roll up the two sick little people like spring rolls, and prepared two small coffins in the corridor.However, fate favored the Shen family again, and miraculously, the two little boys recovered well.

The young Shen Congwen was clever and bright, so he was very popular with his father.Shen Zongsi felt that although this son was not naturally suitable to be a soldier, no matter what he did in the future, he would always be better than being a general.Because he loves Beijing opera, he sent a dream, hoping that this son will learn opera and become the second Tan Xinpei when he grows up.But soon, this dream was shattered by disappointment.

Shen Congwen went to a private school at the age of six. For him, the rigid and boring teaching of his master was too boring, and the repeated sentences were too simple and easy to learn. The elves of his hands and feet are calling him all the time.After a short time, he started playing truant; in order to avoid the punishment brought by truancy, he started lying again.

"I read a small book and a big book at the same time," he summed up his childhood learning experience in "Congwen's Autobiography".The small books read in private schools are boring, and the big book of nature is the inexhaustible nutrition of the life classroom.Fleeing from the small book to the big book, he saw how the apprentices in the umbrella shop made umbrellas; how the cobbler in the leather boot shop used plywood to make shoes; Singing softly while scooping up soybean milk; watching people twist ropes, weave bamboo mats, make incense, and even watch people fight and scold; and those blue-faced Yamas and white-faced impermanent ghosts in the ghost shop, where he often stops For a long time, I watched how the guys put gold, powder, and color on these necromancers... Watching and watching, I understood many things in life.

Who can deny that this is not the first bucket of gold accumulated in life?The moment of birth is the other side of life. When crossing to the other side, the youthful experience will still be the first ray of air breathed in life, the first dew tasted, irreplaceable, unrepeatable, it will last forever They are all benevolent gifts of life from the Creator Mother.

My heart always beats for a new sound, a new color, a new smell.I had to get to know a life other than my own.My wisdom should be absorbed and digested from direct life, but not from a good book or a good word.It seems that there is only one reason. I was in the school, and my truancy record points were higher than anyone else at that time. ("Congwen Autobiography")
However, the boy's favorite thing is water.He has a relationship with water all his life, growing up on the shore, drifting on a boat, writing love letters on the water, thinking of his sweetheart while looking at the water.It is water that makes his heart soft and affectionate, and also gives him a keen experience of life and nature.

The Yuan River originates from Guizhou, flows through eastern Guizhou and western Hunan, and flows through the land where the young Shen Congwen grew up.At that time, even though the culture of this land was "much worse than any county in the Yuanshui River Basin", its picturesque natural landscape was the beauty of the world and the mother of Chizi.In the small town of Fenghuang, the river water has an irresistible temptation for the young Shen Congwen.The teacher of the private school was worried that the students would go to the river to take a bath. When school was over at noon, he specially used a Chinese ink pen to mark each person's left palm. But the naughty cousin came up with a way. Play for half a day.

My emotions are flowing but not solidified, and the impact of Yipai Shiba on me is really not small.Most of the more beautiful life of my childhood was inseparable from water.My school can be said to be near the water.I know beauty, learn to think, and water has a great relationship with me.My first approach to water was that of my absurd cousin's tie. ("Congwen Autobiography")
(End of this chapter)