Regarding love, China has had many descriptions and verses praising it since ancient times, as early as the pre-Qin period, Confucius collected folk songs and compiled them into the "Book of Poetry", the first poem in the opening is the "Guan Ju" that describes the love between men and women, and the sentence "Lady, gentleman is good", has become an ancient famous sentence for countless young girls to express their admiration.
Cui Yingying in "The Tale of the West Chamber" is precisely because she read "Lady Miao, Gentleman is good", so she suddenly had a sentimental thought, and boldly talked about free love with Zhang Sheng in the feudal era. Although Cui Yingying has long passed away for many years, her yearning for love has always been passed down and fully embodied in a strange woman named Zhang Maoyuan.
Zhang Maoyuan was born in 1901, although she herself is not very famous, but her niece Zhang Ailing is very famous, Zhang Ailing also wrote many things about Zhang Maoyuan into articles, we can still read today, know that Zhang Maoyuan is a very independent, very assertive and very spirited girl. Zhang Maoyuan's father was Zhang Peilun, a famous minister of the late Qing Dynasty, and his mother was Li Jule, the daughter of Li Hongzhang.
At first, Li Hongzhang took a fancy to Zhang Peilun's character and talent, so he married the twenty-two-year-old Li Juling to Zhang Peilun, who was already forty years old, and then Li Jurong gave birth to a son Zhang Zhiyi and a daughter Zhang Maoyuan, and Zhang Zhiyi was Zhang Ailing's father. Zhang Ailing and her aunt Zhang Maoyuan have been extremely close since childhood, and the temperament of the two is also very similar, and their yearning for love is similar.
However, Although Zhang Maoyuan's love life is not as gorgeous as Zhang Ailing, the ending is better in comparison. It was in 1925, when Zhang Maoyuan was on a travel ship to study in Britain, and he was breathless because of seasickness, a tall and elegant man Li Kaidi quietly appeared behind her, Li Kaidi very gently handed over a handkerchief, wiped the dirt from her mouth, and then offered her piping hot tea and told her to drink some hot water.
At this time, Zhang Maoyuan, who was in a state of weakness and self-defilement, looked back and felt that the tall Li Kaidi next to her was so gentle and handsome, and at the age of twenty-five, she suddenly had a very subtle feeling in her heart, just like Cui Yingying saw Zhang Sheng, just like some of the "innocent" girls in the pre-Qin period saw their lovers, just as the so-called "golden wind and jade dew meet, they will win countless victories in the world."
Zhang Maoyuan and Li Kaidi soon fell in love, they came to life together, always very eagerly sharing bits and pieces of each other's lives, but when Li Kaidi knew Zhang Maoyuan's origin, he showed a desperate silence. He began to dislike Zhang Maoyuan's bad origins, because her maternal grandfather Li Hongzhang was a "traitor" in the eyes of the youth at that time, so Li Kaidi chose to marry someone else.
Zhang Maoyuan did not complain about the cause of the incident after learning the cause of the incident, let alone lie and play tricks, she just quietly said a sentence of "I will wait for you", there are some feelings of "a gentleman, a lady is good", the beauty is beautiful, but there is no lack of pain. Zhang Maoyuan, who was obsessed with waiting, has passed 52 years in the blink of an eye, and the girl who was once young has become a faltering old man.
When Zhang Maoyuan was 78 years old, Li Kaidi's wife Xia Yuzhi died of illness, and before he died, he took Zhang Maoyuan's hand and said: "I already knew that you and Li Kaidi were a pair of lovers, and Li Kaidi was prejudiced against your origin... Rushed to fall in love with me and get married... After I pass away, I hope that you can marry Li Kaidi to end my lifelong wish..."
Not only to comply with the last wishes of the deceased, but also the long-cherished wishes of the two living, 78-year-old Zhang Maoyuan finally married the one she fell in love with when she was young, and accompanied each other through the last days of their lives. In the "Book of Poetry", it is said that "there is no beginning, and there is an end", and Zhang Maoyuan and Li Kaidi can also be regarded as "there is a beginning, there is an end", but it is inevitable that people will sigh in the middle of the passage of time.