My grandmother was the daughter of the Zhang family in Tongcheng, Anhui Province. Tongcheng Zhangjia is a prominent family in Anhui, father and son prime minister, and the tenth Hanlin. The father and son prime minister refer to Zhang Ying and his second son Zhang Tingyu. Zhang Ying (1637-1708), a scholar in the sixth year of Kangxi, was a scholar of Wenhuadian University and a scholar of the Ministry of Rites. Zhang Tingyu (1672-1755) was a scholar in the 39th year of Kangxi, and was an official to the Baohedian University and a scholar of the Ministry of Officials. My grandmother was born in 1854 and was probably Zhang Tingyu's grandchild.
This old lady is very good at enjoyment, quite like the Jia mother in "Dream of Red Mansions". She was the center of the family, and her house naturally became the center of the family's activities. She is very particular about eating, and she has to cook Anhui's hometown dishes during festivals every year, such as: ten coriander and fried rice during the New Year, lard and black sesame Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, and salted meat dumplings on the May Festival. Every winter, it is necessary to pickle a large vat of vegetables, a vat of cabbage, and a vat of lid vegetables. These are all commanded by her personally.
My grandmother believed in Buddhism, chanted scriptures, and was a vegetarian, but after a few days of vegetarianism, she would shout "I have a little panic in my stomach", so my mother quickly told the cook to simmer chicken soup and secretly gave it to her, and she also opened and closed her eyes. After eating the chicken soup, I no longer shouted "my stomach is too panicked".
My father wanted to give her seventy or eighty silver dollars a month for her pocket money, but she always had not enough. She had a lot of expenses, for example, as soon as she went out, there would be one or twenty beggars waiting for her at the gate to ask for money, so she ordered her servants to give money, ten copper plates each. At that time, a silver dollar was exchanged for two hundred and forty copper plates. The male servant Li Yu cleaned the glass windows and the floor for her, and after wiping it, he also gave him twenty copper plates. We greet her in the morning, and we will give her a few copper plates. She never cares about spending money, and when she finishes spending her monthly money, she goes to work as a pawn, or borrows money from her personal maid. Later, she played mahjong again and went out to play at two or three o'clock every day. When she went out, she always told the servant to put down the tent and put the pillow against the wall, saying that in this way the gambling god would ensure that she was good luck and could win. But she rarely wins, almost every fight she loses, and when she loses, she owes her debts. If you owe too much, you will get sick, and when you get sick, my father will have to pay her debts. I remember one time when she owed too much money and was so anxious that she had a sore on her neck, so she asked a Japanese doctor to operate on her at home. The operation cost more than 1,000 yuan, and the gambling debts owed were two or three thousand yuan.
Later, her leg was broken and she couldn't walk, so she played mahjong at home, but she didn't think she would win or lose too little, but it wasn't enjoyable. After her leg was broken, the family specially invited a masseuse to massage her while chatting with her to relieve her boredom. Our children gave this masseuse a nickname - "Old Pinch". This old pinch earns about 30 yuan a month, plus a snack every day.
My grandmother had two maids, one surnamed Cui, who smoked a lot of cigarettes, combed her hair, and accompanied her when she went out, so she always carried a bag of clothes with her. Inside the bag is a change of clothes for my grandmother, a thicker one when it's cold, and a thinner one when it's hot. Another maid, surnamed Yang, is a miscellaneous worker and has no home. This person has a very bad reputation, and even my grandmother was a little afraid of her. She had saved one or two thousand dollars, and her grandmother often borrowed money from her. My grandmother also had a maid who was married, but she stopped working and cooked separately like her master. Everyone called her Mrs. Bear, and she died when I was a child. Every day of her death or on New Year's holidays, my grandmother would send a valet to bring a few dishes to her grave to pay respects.
My grandmother's birthday was on the 5th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, when many relatives and friends came to give gifts. There are those who give longevity peaches, longevity noodles, and banquet tickets. There are also chrysanthemums that are sent, each with as little as ten pots, and as many as twenty or thirty pots, so at this time there are chrysanthemum pots lined up in a row under the porch, and chrysanthemum mountains are placed outside the living room. On my birthday, we had the usual day off, and my father didn't go to work. At 10 o'clock, my grandmother sat in the hall facing south, and received three prostrations from the family. First my father prostrated his head, then my brothers prostrated in turn, then my three mothers prostrated in turn, and my four sisters (three sisters and one sister) prostrated in turn. Follow the manservant and the maid in turn. The happiest thing I did when I was a child was when the valet prostrated and rode on top of them, so that it would not be easy for them to stand up, and I laughed with joy. When the men and women prostrated to them, my grandmother gave them money. At noon that day was a table of wine in my grandmother's hall, with her at the top and my father at the bottom. Our brothers packed a table, the younger ones, all with a nanny behind them to take care of them and help with the dishes.
The male guests who came to pay their birthday in the morning were entertained by my father in the living room of the front yard. At two or three o'clock in the afternoon, the female guests began to come. At this time, the female guests will play mahjong gradedly, playing ten yuan and one "bottom" to sit together, and playing five yuan and one "bottom" to sit together. Mahjong is always played until 12 o'clock at night. Mahjong women have a snack at five o'clock and dinner at nine o'clock. Playing mahjong has to be "tapped", and the money is distributed to the male and female servants, which is an opportunity for them to make extra money every year. Most of the women who came were ministers, governors or overseers, and the wives of managers. This day is also the time when they are relatively broad, get dressed, put on jewelry, play mahjong, and take their own car - horse-drawn carriage, car or rickshaw - as for the temporary hire of the car, there are absolutely no exceptions. The coachmen should be given money for wine and food, and the amount of money given depends on the size of the owner.
My grandmother sang a church opera on her 70th birthday, and the play was sung in the Anhui Hall in front of our house. The scene was sung for two days, the first day was sung by famous ticket holders in Tianjin, and the second day was sung by famous actors invited by Beijing. I still remember Yu Shuyan and Hao Shouchen's "Yangping Pass", "Dingjun Mountain", "Wujie Mountain", Chen Delin and Xiao Changhua's "Judging the Head Thorn Soup", Qiu Guixian's "Lock Five Dragons", and Shang Xiaoyun and Ma Lianliang sang plays. The church cost about 30,000 silver dollars, and I couldn't get so much cash for a while, so my father had to take a carriage to the "Wuhua Building" gold shop to exchange for gold.
This time, there is also an innovation in the order of Shoulian and Shou Building. Generally on both sides of the stage and in the middle of the back wall to hang the official sent by the longevity or longevity, this time my father asked to send my servants to send a pair of longevity on the pillars on both sides of the stage, the back wall is hung with an embroidered image of "Magu offering life", the next paragraph reads: "Yefu family dedication." "Putting the gifts of the servants in the most prominent place cannot but be said to be a revolution.
At that time, President Cao Kun also sent a plaque, my father and Cao Kun were brothers, and the plaque sent by Cao Kun did not indicate this relationship, and my father was very unhappy. As for how to greet this piece, a few guests came up with ideas and asked my father to go to the train station to greet him in person, because the plaque was sent to Tianjin from Beiping. My father thought that he was a brother and should not do so. In the end, it was decided to perform three bows after the plaque was hung above the sudo.
The theater of the Anhui Hall is very large, it is an old-style building, which can accommodate more than 1,000 people, and more than 100 tables of banquets were held that day, and it is estimated that more than 1,000 guests came. The first five rows of the theater are enclosed with wreaths and are dedicated to high-status guests such as ministers, overseers, governors, etc. That day to pay homage to the birthday of the British HSBC comprador Wu, he is very rich, after the birthday, straight to the first five rows in the wreath, to the entrance, was blocked by my housekeeper Meng Bin, said "please Mr. Wu sit outside", neither call him "Lord Wu", and do not ask him to sit in the front row, he is very angry, but also endured it, or sit outside. Afterwards, my father praised and said: "Meng Bin did a good job, he should have sat outside, although he has money, but his status is not enough." Wu wanted to pull the relationship between these eunuchs at that time, but these people still looked down on him. I am afraid that the main reason why he does things for foreigners is that he is a major reason. So, in my father's circle, you can't squeeze in just because you have money and no political status. However, our children especially like Wu's seventh aunt. She also patted my grandmother's ass, and every time she came to my house, she always brought some gifts, including foreign snacks and chocolate candy, which were difficult for us to eat when we were children.
My grandmother's 70th birthday was my fiancée's grandfather, Zhang Xiluan, who was in the limelight. This person once served as the governor of the three eastern provinces in the Qing Dynasty, and was the person who incorporated Zhang Zuolin. As soon as he came, the play stopped, and he followed the "jumping plus official", at which point he ordered his follower to reward 100 silver dollars. After dancing the "plus official", Meng Bin walked onto the stage, held up the big red envelope over the top, and shouted: "Xie Zhang Dashuai will reward 100 silver." Then he continued to sing. didn't finish watching a play, Zhang Dashuai turned around and left. The purple satin robe and yellow velvet waistcoat he wore that day, a variegated pigtail at the back of his head, and two gems set in front of his red hat sparkled.
My grandmother went to the theatre at 2 p.m. to receive a bow from the whole family, including the male and female servants, at Shoutang. After bowing, go upstairs to the theater to watch the play. After sitting upstairs, someone notified the backstage manager, and the play was stopped, and the official was added, and the money was rewarded, and then the play in front of him was sung.
After the grandmother entered the gate of the Anhui Hall, she was supported by the eldest lady and her goddaughter, the daughter-in-law of Yuan Shikai's sixth son. They went by carriage, and when the carriage arrived, the band (Chinese music) played music, and at the same time 10,000 whips were fired. Generally, my father entertains and accompanies relatives and friends in the birthday hall, and my relatives can go upstairs to kowtow to Mrs. Zu, but there are very few. All the upstairs seats are women, and the downstairs are men, and men and women are seated.
On the day of the gate of the Anhui Hall, there was a color archway, and there was also a color archway at the entrance of the theater. The interior of the theater is full of longevity buildings, longevity couplets and six or eight long coupling longevity screens. There are several police officers standing guard at the gate of the Anhui Association to maintain order, and there is a constant flow of vehicles. After the guests arrived at the gate of the Anhui Hall, there was a band playing a welcome song, so a manservant took the business card, held it high above the top, and led the guests to Shoutang to pay respects. When the guests pay their respects, some bow, some kowtow, and then the guests watch the play. When the guests arrive at the Shoutang, the valet who leads the guests shouts "Lord So-and-so has arrived" or "Master So-and-so has arrived". Those with high status are called "adults", and those with low status are called "masters".
The show starts at 12 p.m. and lunch is not served. The play is performed until 4 o'clock, and the guests are given a snack. Dinner at 8-9 p.m. The dinner was for eight people per table, and the banquet for ten people was supposed to be very good at the price at the time. Normally, the banquet in the church is reserved for the big restaurant, but my cook, Lao Zhi, asked my grandmother and my father many times before his birthday to make the banquet for his birthday. The original reservation of a hundred tables, but the number of guests greatly exceeded this number, so he had to deal with it temporarily, cutting corners, and Lao Zhi also took the opportunity to make a lot of money. When he had earned the money, he did not give it to the servants, so they rose up against him, so that he could not stay in my house any longer. Later, there was another cook named Li Wu, but my father also called Lao Zhi to help when he was treated. After he left my house, he opened a chicken and duck shop in a large vegetable market in Guanyinhao, and at first his life was not bad, but later he closed Zhang and opened a small restaurant next to Peiyang University in Tianjin, specializing in selling food to students, and the situation was much worse. During the New Year's holidays, he also came to pay his grandmother and father's New Year's greetings.
My grandmother had her seventieth birthday in 1924, the year I turned ten. My father died in 1929, at the age of fifty-eight. After my father died, the family moved my grandmother to live in my mother's house downstairs in the backyard, and my father's coffin rested in my grandmother's outer room. My father died suddenly, so my grandmother was so frightened that she spent the day in tears. But she still wanted to live, and after my father's funeral, she said to my eldest brother, "Your father will give me the monthly money I have paid in the same amount, and I want to live with you for a few more years." In fact, she was very sick and bedridden at that time. When my father died, it was still hot, and when my grandmother died, it was cold and she was already wearing a jacket. Their deaths were only two or three months apart. After the grandmother's death, the servants said, "If the old lady died in front of her son, what a beautiful situation!" "In fact, the specifications of my grandmother's funeral after her death are basically the same as my father's. There are many relatives and friends who come to mourn, and they did not cold the relationship because my father died first.
After my grandmother died, my family tightened its expenses, the eldest lady moved to the front yard living room, the second lady and the third lady moved to the front yard, and the backyard building was vacated and rented out. Two sedan cars and one caban carriage were also sold, leaving only one rickshaw for my eldest brother's use. Male and female servants are dismissed in a major event, and each of them is paid a severance pay according to their seniority. The amount of severance pay is not large, I remember the most was $150. I proposed severance pay, and I held it on the grounds that people had been working in my house for decades and should not be kicked out all at once. After I proposed, the third brother agreed, although the eldest brother was stingy, it was not easy not to do it, so he had to reduce the amount of severance pay. My father's eldest lady was an old miser, and she was very dissatisfied with the severance pay, but she could only mutter, "This is all Nen (your)'s world!" "
Mrs. Dai
The eldest lady's surname is Cang, a native of Jinan, Shandong, and is known as "Shandong Beauty". She had given birth to a daughter, and she never gave birth to her. Her father was a candidate for the family, and the family was not very wealthy, so in order to marry this daughter, he almost lost all the family property. For as long as I can remember, the Cang family is still in Jinan, and the eldest lady sends money to support her, that is, her family's expenses are provided by my family. I remember once my father had a fight with her, and my father said, "I raised all your mother's family, what else should I do?!"
She and my father didn't get along, and I don't know why. My father never went to sleep in her room and rarely spoke to her. But she was in charge of the family's accounts. She is a shrewd person who can calculate, and it is said that part of my family's monthly expenses are swallowed up by her. She went out to play mahjong with her grandmother and often won money.
My eldest brother was raised by her after he was born, and she took good care of her eldest brother and was ruthless to the other children. She drank liquor every afternoon from three o'clock, and she didn't drink much, that is, two taels, but she drank until dinner. The wine and food are specially prepared for her by the chef Lao Zhi, because she controls the food and directly controls Lao Zhi, so Lao Zhi prepares some dishes for her every time, such as choking shrimp, drunk purple crab, braised chicken wings and so on. The wine was kept in her own house, and of course it was good wine, and if there was alcohol as a gift, she kept it for herself. Her family also has the red satin ridge (happy event), blue satin ridge, banquet ticket, etc., which are also in her hands.
She was literate, and I often heard her read when I was a child: "Grape wine glow-in-the-dark glass, if you want to drink pip, urge immediately." Drunk and lying on the battlefield, Jun Mo smiled, and a few people came back to fight in ancient times. "This is the first poem I know from her.
Every time she finished drinking, her eyes blinked and released a fierce light, white eye droppings oozed from the corners of her eyes, and her facial expression changed completely. At this time, she was about to find fault and scold, and everyone avoided her. One of the things she always likes to scold the children is, "Bastard, this is all Nen (your)'s world!" "At this time, even my grandmother told her to give three points and ignored her. She snorted and smoked a hookah after she finished drinking. It is said that when we were young, the second and third ladies had to make her bed and comb her hair, but when we were older, they stopped serving her. But she always thinks of herself as Mrs. Zheng, and she can't be equal to the second and third ladies. For example, only she could wear a red dress, and the second and third ladies had to wear a dress with embroidery. The second and third ladies could not eat at the same table with her. When my family celebrates a birthday or invites spring wine, there are always more than a dozen tables of mahjong, and the second and third ladies also play, but they can't play mahjong as big as her. When she goes out to socialize, she goes out, and the second and third ladies never go out. Another example, after my third brother graduated from university, he got his salary in the first month, and gave one to the eldest lady and one to the second wife. When the eldest lady knew that the two shares were equal, she refused to accept it, and her share had to be more.
After my father's death, my brother and I grew older, and her prestige gradually diminished. I remember one summer vacation, we were eating in the courtyard, I was at the same table with her, I forgot why, I was so angry that I overturned the table, and all the dishes and bowls on the table were broken. But she endured it and didn't make a big fuss. Another time, I invited my classmates to dinner, and the kitchen opened the bill and handed it to her as usual, but this time she was very unhappy, but she just muttered and scolded: "This is all Nen's world", and did not dare to ask me why I was treated. Another time, when there was a plainclothes team in Tianjin, I lived in Nankai, Tianjin, and withdrew to the concession with the brigade, and I lived in my fourth brother at the Industrial and Commercial College, so I borrowed 30 yuan from Huaxin Bank. By this time my father was dead, and I borrowed it from a white slip. Later, when my eldest brother and her learned about it, they were very dissatisfied, but they didn't dare to say anything about me, but just muttered in a low voice: "This kid dares to borrow money!" When I heard this, I was furious and said, "I don't borrow money, what do I eat!" "
She also has a habit of eating leftovers. She puts the good leftovers in a casserole, boils them every day, adds the leftovers at any time, and eats them all the time. Because she is from Shandong, she doesn't eat rice, and my family has rice for every meal, so I have to prepare steamed buns for her.
She lived until 1943 or 1944 before dying, at the age of about seventy-five or sixteen. My eldest brother was very good to her, and the house told her to live the best, and the food was opened. She had savings of her own, and she had a share when we split up. After her death, this property went to her eldest brother. After her death, she was buried in the Balizhuang cemetery in Beijing, in the same burial place as my father.
2. Mrs.
The second lady is my mother, known as "Mrs. Auntie", we call her "Auntie", and we call Mrs. "Mom". She is a child in rural Henan, and when the Yellow River flooded, her family put the child in a large wooden basin and let her drift through the waves to survive. I don't know how old she was at that time, but she was very young anyway. She was rescued when she drifted to the shore, and later sold to a family of eunuchs as a "girl", because the eldest lady did not have children, this eunuch family gave my mother to my father to make a second room. She was only about seventeen or eighteen years old when she got married, and she used to laugh and say that on the night of her wedding she was so frightened that she went under the square table.
She can cook, so every day she arranges the dishes for the small pot of rice to the cook, and she only orders the dishes, regardless of the accounts, and the accounts are still managed by the eldest lady. As for the dishes of the big pot rice, it is arranged by the chef himself.
It is said that my grandmother liked her, and for a while my grandmother recited the Buddha every day, and she also recited the Buddha and recited the Diamond Sutra aloud in the Buddhist hall. My grandmother was a vegetarian diet, and she followed suit. After eating vegetarian fasts for a long time, my grandmother said to her, "Recently, my stomach has been in a panic. "My mother secretly arranged for the cook to simmer the old hen and ham soup for my grandmother. And only soup can be given, not meat, because meat is solid and can be seen. Breaking the fast and eating meat is very disrespectful to the gods and Buddhas, so my mother always said behind my grandmother's back after drinking the chicken soup, "The old lady doesn't know it's meat, so let me bear the sin." "
My mother was honest and upright, and everyone behind her back said, "My aunt's wife has no heart." "She doesn't know how to raise her children, and she is always obedient to them. She has given birth to my eldest brother, fourth brother, me, ten brothers, twelve brothers, fourth sisters, and fifth sisters. The tenth brother was a little fat man, very stupid in school, and died of scarlet fever at the age of ten. He was a grandson that my grandmother loved very much. My eldest brother, who is also the eldest son in the family, was given to the eldest lady to raise as soon as he was born. Later, my fourth sister also gave it to the eldest lady.
Every summer, my family would buy watermelons, eat them from the beginning to the end, and every day at about 3 p.m., my mother would open the watermelons in the hall of the two-room courtyard. There were always three or four melons a day, and before the knife could cut the watermelon, the little hands of the children around the table went to grab the watermelon, and my mother always laughed and shouted, "Be careful to cut off your hands!" "I remember every time I ate watermelon when I was a child, I had to eat my little belly bulging. When I can't eat it, I eat a piece of salt bamboo shoots, so that I will soon go to the yard to urinate a big bubble of urine, and my stomach will go down, so I will quickly go to the hall to eat again. Because of the rush to eat, it is always not clean, and there are a lot of melon pulps left on the watermelon skin. The leftover melons we ate were "rinded by the servants".
When eating watermelon, the teachers also have a portion. When I encounter a good watermelon, I will cut a piece for my grandmother first, and the eldest lady doesn't seem to eat much watermelon. On the day of the beginning of autumn, they will no longer eat it, leaving two or three big ones to make offerings to the rabbit in the moon during the eighth month of the lunar calendar. The season of eating watermelon is the happiest time of the year. Especially when grabbing watermelons every day, it is noisy and laughing, and it is very lively. The servants gave watermelons once a day on the day of "counting". When cutting watermelon, my mother was always too busy to supply, and sometimes she cut it to the end before she could eat a piece of melon butt. But at this time, she was always very happy, and a table was surrounded by seven or eight boys, clamoring to grab watermelons, and she was like an old bird with worms in her mouth, feeding the little birds one by one. I was impressed by the heartfelt smile she had at the time. My sisters didn't grab watermelons with us, they gave them to eat in their own rooms.
I still remember a few things about my mother when I was young. First, after my grandmother left my house, I moved to the back room of my mother's apartment, and slept on a large wooden bed with my fourth brother. In the summer, she always uses a "mosquito lamp" to suck mosquitoes and bed bugs for us in the middle of the night. Bed bugs are hidden in the cracks of the plank bed and on the wall next to the wood. I'm not afraid of bed bug bites, probably because I've been bitten by bed bugs since I was a child. Also, my grandmother was a peasant in the north, and she used to sleep naked and naked at night. When I was with my grandmother, I was the same, but when I moved to my mother's place, she must have told me to sleep in my pajamas, which I was not used to. So whenever I got under the covers, after she left, I would secretly strip my clothes. In the middle of the night my mother would come to see how we were sleeping, and when she saw me take off my pajamas, she would open the covers and spank me. It was a long time for me to get dressed and go to bed.
The first thing my mother did when she got up in the morning was to freshen up, and her cosmetics were semi-feudal and semi-colonial. She used an old-fashioned wood shavings brush head, rubbed the "duck egg powder" of "Laurel in the Moon", and used old-fashioned rouge; On the other hand, we also use French "sandalwood soap", British POND's alabaster cream, and Chinese "Shuangmei brand" toilet water. Much of her hair was very dark, and it was not white until she was in her seventies before her death. As far as I can remember, she wore a horizontal S head, which was a new style at the time, different from the old one.
She didn't study, that's natural, but then she became literate and could write letters.
Her physique was not bad, but when I was about 10 years old, she had nephritis, and the Japanese doctor Kageyama said, "This disease is very bad, and it will kill people." At that time, her face was a little swollen, her hands and feet were also swollen, and she somehow managed to get through this hurdle. When she was about fifty years old, she contracted lung disease, and after the age of sixty she was often bedridden, and she always had a basin of Lysol in her house, and when she went out, she asked someone to wash her hands in this pot. She doesn't ask people to sit in her bed, especially children, because she is afraid of contagion, which shows that she believes that lung disease is contagious.
My grandmother liked her more because she arranged for my grandmother's food and drink. As usual, in the summer, fresh walnuts that have just come down are eaten once or twice, and everyone sits around a square table in my grandmother's house, peeling off the seeds of the fresh walnuts, dipping them in soy sauce and eating the kernels. In autumn, crabs are always eaten two or three times, also in the grandmother's house around a square table. When eating crabs, use a set of utensils (small hammers, tweezers...... ) to help peel the skin. When I ate like this, my grandmother used her own private money to pay for it, and my mother ran back and forth.
Before my father died, she secretly smoked a few big puffs, as if she was not addicted. My grandmother had a pair of tools for smoking a lot, and sometimes she was uncomfortable, such as eating too much, getting tired of playing mahjong, and having pain in her waist and legs. When my grandmother smoked a cigarette, my mother burned it. After her father's death, she slowly became addicted to cigarettes, and she stopped smoking behind her back. Later, due to lung disease, the doctor refused to let him smoke, so he quit. Another reason why she didn't smoke was because she didn't have that much money in her pocket. She also smoked a hookah, and in her old age, she also quit due to lung disease.
My mother treated the servants with great respect, telling us to call the male servant "second master" and the female servant "great". The maid she used was stupid, but I never saw her scold the maid. When I opened the Tianjin Knowledge Bookstore under the leadership of the Communist Party, she expressed her understanding and told me to be careful, "as long as nothing happens," she "will be at ease." In fact, she vaguely knew that my bookstore had something to do with the Communist Party, and she did not object. On July 7, 1937, when the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, I immediately left Tianjin, and when I was leaving, she sorted my clothes and put them in suitcases, and I told her not to bring more clothes, I went to Japan. With tears in her eyes, she muttered to herself, "When will I be back?!" She didn't say anything she wouldn't let me go.
She had been suppressed until the eldest lady died, and shortly after her death, she was also bedridden with lung disease. After Japan's surrender in 1945, eight years after my absence, I returned to Tianjin, and when I saw her for the first time, she burst into tears of joy and said, "You're still back!" It means that he did not die outside.
My eldest brother was not affectionate to her, especially before the eldest lady died. However, in her old age, my eldest brother treated her well. But she has suffered from people's popularity since she was a child, when she was a girl, and when she was a "aunt's wife", she was obedient and accustomed to the bad attitude of others.
After Japan's surrender, I got married in 1946 and began to live in a courtyard house in the Hutong of Beiping City, and the house was very wealthy, and I really wanted to take her over to live with me, and my wife Sun Zhu also agreed. But at that time, I was unemployed, specializing in the underground activities of the NLD, and my life was very insecure. For a period of time, we planned to go to the liberated areas, but due to the birth of our first child, Ah Liang, we were unable to make the trip. After the liberation, I moved from the city to the Bailou dormitory of the Beiping Agricultural Experimental Field in the western suburbs, which is now the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. When I was in prison, my heart ached every time I thought about it. So when I finished my sentence and got 18 yuan for the first time, I sent her 5 yuan, and she had already passed away at that time, and I didn't know it. When I had just finished my sentence, I was so hungry that I watched people eat "salted meat and glutinous rice", and I kept swallowing saliva, but because of my love for my mother, I finally endured it and overcame my strong appetite.
After I went to prison, I didn't tell her, I just said that I went to study, and after many years, when I was mentioned, she said: "This kid is not stupid to study, he has only graduated from college for four years, why has he studied for so long this time, and he has not yet graduated?!" Later, she probably thought I was dead and stopped mentioning me. She must have been very painful in her heart at that time, since the twelfth brother left Tianjin during the Anti-Japanese War, there has been no news, my mother thought he was dead, and I had no news, her mood can be imagined.
When the Cultural Revolution came, the eldest brother's daughter, Ye Weiqi, was teaching Marxism-Leninism at Beijing Normal University and was a member of the Communist Party, so she took her students to her father's house in Tianjin to rebel and let her do an examination. She is a housewife and she is recuperating in bed, what can she detect? It didn't take long for the old lady to die, and she could have lived a few more years. The eldest brother died after the defeat of the Gang of Four, and by that time the third brother and I had been rehabilitated, and the sixth brother Dulian, the seventh brother Duzheng, and the ninth brother Ducheng had also resumed their work. After my eldest brother died, my brother and I went to Tianjin to help her family take care of the funeral, help them get back the house that was occupied during the "Cultural Revolution", and transfer her younger brother from Lanzhou back to Tianjin, which was not easy at that time. Before asking for a house, she offered to ask the fourth brother and four sisters-in-law to move in after the house came back, and then the house was going back, and when the fourth brother and four sisters-in-law were preparing to move, they suddenly sold the house and did not greet us before selling the house. Probably she herself was embarrassed, and since then she has not had any contact with our brothers, and our brothers have not looked for her again when they meet every year.
After my mother died, she was cremated and packed in a simple urn. In the summer of 1976, after many years of re-education through labor, I returned to Tianjin, just in time for an earthquake. The day after I arrived in Tianjin, I went to the suburban columbarium, took out my mother's urn, put a little heart, and respectfully kowtowed three times, and then I didn't feel tears in my eyes. In 1978, the urn was shipped to Shanghai and buried by the fifth sister in Dongshan, Suzhou. In the summer of 1980, I went to Lushan to recuperate, took a boat from Jiujiang to Shanghai, and was accompanied by my fifth sister to the tomb in Dongshan, Suzhou. The tomb is surrounded by stones, and there is also a small monument. The feng shui (scenery) of the tomb is very good, the terrain is dry, overlooking the river, and the mountains are lush with trees and green. The old lady was unhappy in her life, and having such a place after death was enough to make the living feel at ease.
Mrs. Three
The third lady was originally a drama actress, a veteran singer of Peking Opera, and married my father in Jinan, Shandong. At that time, there was also a prince who was also chasing her, but because my father was prosperous in Shandong and wore many hats, she finally married my father. At home, she is called "Mrs. Second Aunt".
She appears melancholy and is introverted. There is a lot of literacy and a certain level of education. For a while, when my father came home from work, she would sit on a recliner and read novels like "The Traces of the Flower Moon." Another while, when my father came back, lying on the chaise longue, she picked at his feet. It is said that of the three ladies, she was the most favored by my father.
She was in poor health and often fell ill, but she actually had lung disease. A year after my father's death, she also died. The third brother she gave birth to was studying at Yenching University in Beijing at the time, and she loved him the most. On the morning of her death, she was already dead, but she still held on until the third brother rushed back to Tianjin in the afternoon, and she was breathed as soon as they met. When she was ill for a long time, she went to Beijing to see a famous doctor Shi Jinmo, and took a lot of decoctions, but it didn't work. When she returned to Tianjin, the eldest lady was very upset and said something indiscreet, complaining that she was using too much money, and my mother was very upset about it at that time. Before she died, the eldest lady went to see her, she stubbornly got up, kowtowed to the eldest lady on the bed, and asked to wear a phoenix crown when she was buried after death. It can be seen from this that she still obediently recognized the orthodoxy of the eldest lady's "wife of the main house" until her death, and she was willing to be in the position of "concubine", and everything about her had to be dominated by the "wife of the main house". Although she gave birth to many children, it did not change her identity and perception.
The children she gave birth to are: the third brother Duyi, the sixth brother Dulian, the seventh brother Duzheng, the ninth brother Ducheng, the third sister Duya, and the second sister Dux.
San-hsien
The third uncle died before his father. He was only twelve or thirteen years older than me, and we called him "Uncle".
My grandmother doted on my third uncle, at least on the surface. He didn't like to read since he was a child, and at the age of sixteen or seventeen, he went to Tianjin First-class Commercial School, and dropped out before he finished it. Soon, he was sick with willow disease, and he was given 606 injections, which was specifically for the treatment of syphilis. This was before he got married.
When he was about twenty years old, he got married, and his daughter's surname was Min, a dilapidated little bureaucratic family. After getting married, he and his wife had a bad relationship, and often beat her, sometimes making her scream, sometimes stripping her naked, and making her kneel on the ground. At this time, my grandmother called someone to persuade her, and he scolded the person who persuaded her. The Min family also came to my house to protest, but to no avail. After getting married, he had a daughter and two sons, the daughter died young, and the two sons were promising, and after liberation, one was the chairman of the Tangshan trade union and the other was the director of the Tianjin Finance Bureau. They are thirteen or fourteen. Four or five years after the third uncle got married, he died, and it is said that it was "Hualiu ascending to heaven", which is cerebral syphilis. When he died, he screamed and talked nonsense, saying that he was crazy.
He has been pampered since he was a child, has a monthly car, dresses well, and wears a pair of tea-stone glasses, which are said to be worth dozens of dollars. He wears a gemstone ring on his finger and a gold watch in his arms, and a gold bracelet hangs from his chest. There was a manservant and a maid in the house who served him. He eats by himself, but often eats outside restaurants. He has a bedroom in the east wing of the middle courtyard and a study in the west wing of the front yard.
At my house, he was the first to buy an ore radio, and he listened to it with headphones. In addition, he has a camera.
When I was a child, he hooked up with his tenth brother's wet nurse, and they ate sugar cane mouth-to-mouth in the large living room in the front yard, and my nurse let them wind outside the door. The matter was soon discovered, so I dismissed my tenth brother's nurse along with my nurse. My wet nurse let them out, and of course she was bribed by him.
He was in his twenties when he died, and he had been a parasite all his life and had not done any work. After he got married, my father took him out for a while, wanting to open up the situation for him and do some work. But he was so dissolute that after a few times he would not go out with my father.
Once, he took me on his monthly bus (on him) to North Amway, the French Concession, for a snack, and that day we drank the original soup and chicken juice, and cream cake. The waiter was very sycophant to him, a "third master", and as a result, he gave a small account of one yuan. I was very impressed by this time, and I still remember it vividly. At that time, one yuan could buy half a bag of noodles.
Fourth uncle
The fourth uncle, Ye Chongyu (known as Kuanfu), does not live in Tianjin and is a distant relative. He and my father are both Ye Kunhou's great-grandsons, and he still lives in the "old mansion" in Kaifeng. Later, the "old mansion" was sold, and they moved out. He graduated from Henan Higher School, and served as the head of the primary school, the county minister, and the director of the financial bureau. After the Northern Expedition, he was introduced by a friend of the Kuomintang Party Department in Tianjin, and got a job as a messenger in Tianjin, where he lived in my house and ate at the same table as my grandmother.
He is the breadwinner of his family, so his family is not well-off. When he was working in Tianjin, he went to visit the kiln and met my servant. My servants also go there. This matter was shouted, and he felt embarrassed to stay at my house, so he went back to Kaifeng. There may have been a time when the family was very bad, and my parents would send some money to his mother every New Year's holiday, and sometimes before the New Year's Day, she would urge her to ask for the money.
He was a dutiful son, and after the Japanese occupation of Kaifeng, he was left with only two people in his family, his mother was paralyzed, and he walked with her on his back. After his mother died, he fled Kaifeng and went into exile in Baoji, Shaanxi, where he lived by setting up a cigarette stall, and died of hunger and poverty at the age of 66.
He has a son and a daughter, the man is a school doctor at Wuhan University, and the daughter is also a doctor.
One more thing worth remembering. As mentioned earlier, he had a friend of the Kuomintang party department, and my father had invited this person to his house for a meal, but he did not continue to have a relationship, and it seems that he did not play a big role.
[Ye Duzhuang (1914-2000), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a famous agricultural historian and democrat, translated "The Origin of Species" and "The Complete Works of Darwin's Theory of Evolution", etc., and served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Democratic League and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Senate Committee of the Democratic League. After graduating from Nankai High School, Ye Duzhuang studied at the College of Agriculture of Jinling University and the Department of Agriculture of Tokyo Imperial University in Japan. When he was studying in Japan, he devoted himself to "left-wing" activities and participated in the "Chinese Association of Dramatists in Japan", a peripheral organization of the Communist Party of China. During the Anti-Japanese War, he resolutely gave up his studies and returned to China to devote himself to the cause of resisting the enemy. First, together with several younger brothers, he founded the "Knowledge Bookstore" in Tianjin to promote progressive and patriotic ideas. Beiping and Tianjin fell, transferred to the enemy's rear, went through many difficulties and dangers, went to Shanxi to fight guerrillas, and was initially subordinate to the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of Chen Geng's department, serving as an enemy engineering officer. Before the "Double 12 Incident" in 1939, he was assigned by the party to do the work of collecting bandits in Surabaya, Henan, and mobilized more than 2,000 people in just a few days. Later, he went to the Qinyuan area, the eldest son of the southeast of Shanxi and Jin, to help organize the "Military Industry Training Class against the Enemy", and served as the head teacher to teach Japanese. Later, he was assigned by the party to infiltrate the Kuomintang "Special Intelligence Institute" in Chongqing, and founded the "Taiping Company" with Mr. Yu Guangyuan's father-in-law, Meng Yongqian, and participated in the "GBT Group and Company" of the US Strategic Intelligence Agency in Kunming, and participated in the GBT team and AGAS (US Army and Air Auxiliary Team) of the US Strategic Intelligence Agency in Kunming, and went to Beiping to rescue Allied prisoners of war. At the end of the 1940s, he was appointed by the party to join the Democratic League, participate in the preparatory work for the establishment of the Beiping Municipal Committee of the Democratic League, and participate in the peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. After the 1950s, he served as a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for a long time, presided over the compilation committee, and made great contributions to the popularization and improvement of agricultural knowledge in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In 1957, he was wrongly classified as a "rightist", and later arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of being an "enemy special", and suffered grievances for 18 years. In 1976, he granted amnesty to "Kuomintang cadres at and above the county and regiment level" and was released. In 1979, he was rehabilitated and his reputation restored. In his later years, he served as a translator of Darwin's works, and published a variety of translations. He died on January 30, 2000, at the age of 87. Patriotic all his life, never swerving. 】