Preface
In September 1916, Liu Bannong's daughter landed, but after Liu Bannong saw his daughter, he said to his wife: "I said to the outside world that I gave birth to a son." The wife nodded in agreement.
As a pioneer of the New Culture Movement and the inventor of the word "she", Liu Bannong has been respecting and defending women's rights and interests all his life, why is there a great contrast when facing his daughter?
created the word "she" but was scolded for many years
Liu Bannong was born in Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province, his father Liu Baoshan is a talent and runs a private school in the local area.
At the age of three, he was able to recite poetry fluently and had a good understanding of classical poetry. After entering the Jiangyin County School to study, he also had excellent grades, and then was admitted to Changzhou Mansion Middle School with the first place in Jiangyin County.
It's just that Liu Bannong, who is so good, chose to drop out of school because of his dissatisfaction with the school system, and then went to Shanghai and found a job at Zhonghua Book Company.
During his years in Shanghai, Liu Bannong published many articles and devoted himself to literary creation, which was well received by readers, and was known as one of the most outstanding representatives of the "Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School".
In 1925, Liu Bannong won the French Chinese Philology Award for his thesis on Chinese phonology. Liu Bannong's avant-garde thoughts, Chen Duxiu admired him very much, invited him to join the editor of "New Youth", and a year later he was recommended to Peking University as a professor of Chinese literature.
Liu Bannong only has a junior high school education, but his ideological height is incomparable to many people.
In 1920, Liu Bannong had the opportunity to study in Europe, but this study abroad allowed him to create an unprecedented word.
Because the life of studying abroad is very difficult, there is not enough money to support the family, and in the most difficult time, I can't even afford to buy a loaf of bread.
In order to make his family's life better, Liu Bannong chose to write poems and translate to earn manuscript fees. It was at this time that he encountered a problem, that is, he could not distinguish between men and women in Chinese.
Liu Bannong respects women very much, especially her wife, who has suffered a lot and been neglected because of her preference for sons, so he desperately wants to make men and women equal, and this first step is to start from creating a woman-only word.
At that time, there were "he" and "she" to distinguish between men and women abroad, but there was only one "he" in China, and there was no way to distinguish between men and women.
For this reason, Liu Bannong coined the word "she", which refers specifically to women, but who would have thought that it was this word born for equality that made him suffer for many years of abuse.
At that time, the words next to the female character were mostly insulting words such as "prostitute" and "prostitute", so when the word "she" first appeared, it was also recognized as an insult to women, and Liu Bannong used a poem "Teach Me How to Don't Want Her" to prove himself, saying that he had no malicious intent at all, and since then women have their own Chinese characters, and the word "she" has also been used by us to this day.
But such a person who complains about women, but after giving birth to a daughter, he announced that he gave birth to a boy, is it because his respect for women is pretended?
In fact, Liu Bannong's achievements, in addition to his own excellence, are largely due to his love for his wife.
A marriage with twists and turns
The so-called belly has poetry and books, Liu Bannong, who has read poetry and books since he was a child, responded to this sentence, although he is young, but his temperament is outstanding, so he was only 11 years old when he was a noblewoman, and wanted to marry his 14-year-old daughter Zhu Huixu to Liu Bannong.
The Zhu family is a well-known wealthy family in the local area, and Liu Bannong's mother thought that this family affair was very good after hearing about it, but the marriage was a major event, and the decision could not be made at the time, so Liu's mother said that she would go home and discuss it with her husband.
Who knew that when Liu's father heard that the woman was three years older than Liu Bannong, he immediately refused, and he felt that the two were not suitable.
The Zhu family really liked Liu Bannong and didn't want to miss this family business, so they visited Liu's father and said that there were two daughters in the family, and if they felt that the eldest daughter was old, it was okay to marry the younger daughter.
Liu's father saw that the Zhu family was very sincere, so he agreed to this matter, so when Liu Bannong was 11 years old, he married the youngest daughter of the Zhu family. But soon after the engagement, the youngest daughter of the Zhu family died of an emergency, so the Zhu and Liu families discussed, and this family affair fell on the head of Zhu Hui, the eldest daughter of the Zhu family.
There was a rule in the society at that time that the bride and groom were not allowed to meet before they got married, so Liu Bannong did not have the opportunity to meet Zhu Hui.
But who is Liu Bannong? He was advanced in thinking and had never accepted the shackles of feudal etiquette, so he ignored the rules and secretly went to Zhu's house to see Zhu Hui. When he saw that Zhu Hui was a small-footed woman, Liu Bannong was instantly dissatisfied, he couldn't accept that his future wife was a small-footed woman.
So he went home and told his mother that he didn't want to marry a woman with small feet, and unless Zhu Hui put his feet and no longer bound his feet, he would not get married. These words seem to be a boycott of this family business, but in fact they are thinking about Zhu Hui, after all, women's foot binding is a bad habit, and it has caused irreversible damage to women's bodies, Liu Bannong's move is to "liberate" Zhu Hui.
After Zhu Hui knew about this, he was very moved, Liu Bannong thought about himself so much, and he had hope for his future life.
When Liu Bannong was 19 years old, Liu's mother was seriously ill, in order to let Liu's mother be able to see her son start a family during her lifetime, Liu Bannong and Zhu Hui completed the wedding, and Liu's mother died soon after the marriage.
It's just that Liu Bannong didn't have time to be sad, because the Wuchang Uprising broke out and the situation was turbulent, Liu Bannong came to Shanghai at this time, and his wife Zhu Hui ran the house alone.
In order to subsidize the family, Zhu Hui often went to odd jobs, causing her to be overworked and miscarriage twice, which caused great damage to her body.
It's just that Zhu Hui, who worked so hard, didn't get the distress of his father-in-law Liu Baoshan, he blamed Zhu Hui for her miscarriage, and even sent a letter to Liu Bannong, asking him to divorce his wife and marry again.
Liu Bannong was very angry when he learned about it, he was angry that his father scolded his wife, and he was angry that he did not fulfill his responsibilities as a father, which made his wife suffer a lot of grievances. So he found his mother-in-law, and the two secretly took Zhu Hui from his home to Shanghai.
Although the life in Shanghai is not rich, with Liu Bannong's considerate care, Zhu Hui does not have to be so tired, his body slowly recovers, and in 1916, he gave birth to the first child of the two.
Looking at his infant daughter, Liu Bannong was very happy, but after only a while, he was troubled again, Liu's father was patriarchal, if he knew that Zhu Hui gave birth to a daughter, he would definitely make it difficult for Zhu Hui.
So in order for his wife not to be blamed, he said to the outside world that he gave birth to a son, and his usual dressing is also a boy's style, in order to make his wife less troublesome.
Later, Liu Bannong studied in Europe, during which Zhu Huiyou gave birth to a dragon and phoenix fetus for him, this time I finally didn't have to worry about Liu's father's harsh criticism, and the eldest daughter Liu Xiaohui finally became a girl again.
Two jokes, but accurately predicted the death of him and Xu Zhimo
Liu Bannong has been contributing to gender equality and the ideological progress of the Chinese people all his life. But this person's mouth is probably a little open, and he has become a prophecy twice: once to Xu Zhimo, and once to himself.
On November 18, 1931, Liu Bannong invited friends to a party, including Xu Zhimo. Xu Zhimo was going to attend Lin Huiyin's lecture on Chinese architecture in Beiping the next day, and he had to rush back to accompany Lu Xiaoman to dinner that night.
After hearing it, Liu Bannong quipped, "The scene of flying in the sky, you are good, but I dare not taste it", Xu Zhimo did not feel taboo after hearing it, but returned jokingly: "Danger is inevitable, I am willing, if I have an accident on the plane, you have to make a couplet for me!" ”
Liu Bannong smiled and agreed, at eight o'clock in the morning of the 19th, Xu Zhimo took the Chinese airline "Jinan" postal plane to Beiping, but when the plane arrived in the area of Dangjiazhuang in Jinan, it was suddenly foggy and difficult to discern the direction.
In order to find the route accurately, the pilot could only reduce the flight altitude, and as a result, he hit the mountain and turned into the valley, and the fuselage instantly caught fire, killing all the people on board.
Unexpectedly, Liu Bannong's joke turned out to be true, and Xu Zhimo really died in the plane accident.
As for Liu Bannong's death, it was also because of one of his jokes that came true.
In June 1934, Liu Bannong led an expedition to the Mongolian Special Region to investigate folk customs, and at night, they stayed in a temple.
Everyone else slept on the temple's kang, but Liu Bannong brought a marching bed and propped it up in the middle of the room.
In order to enliven the atmosphere, Liu Bannong joked: "I'm in the middle hall!" A few days later, Liu Bannong was bitten by lice during the investigation, and his wound became infected and feverish, and after returning to Beijing, he delayed treatment and died in mid-July.
epilogue
For Liu Bannong's death, it was really a bit sudden, and people had to sigh fate. However, what Mr. Liu Bannong has done for China should be remembered, and in that era when patriarchy prevailed, he was one of the first people who was determined to speak out for women.
To this day, the topic of equality between men and women still occupies the front row of the list, and I don't know how many "Liu Bannong" are complaining about it in order to achieve real equality, and we look forward to that day, and I think the same is true for Mr.