立委NLP频道

After middle age, old memories drift through the mind like scattered fragments, yet they refuse to coalesce into a complete picture. In the ocean of memory, every wavelet carries sweetness and bitterness, surging and swirling without order.

My ten years of primary and secondary school coincided exactly with the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Our studies were neglected, our foundations weak. Out of more than 200 students across four classes in our grade, only seven or eight managed to leap through the dragon gate of the college entrance exam (including junior colleges). The rest slowly found employment in local factories, replacing retired parents or being recruited. In terms of educational advancement, our generation was sacrificed to the times.

The aftershocks of the Great Revolution's factional fighting persisted all the way to our primary school graduation. As soon as classroom windows were fitted with glass, they would be shattered; in winter we had to cover them with plastic film or pasted newspaper to block the wind. The brightest period came during what was called the "bourgeois line resurgence" (our first and second years of junior high), when good students like us were particularly valued. As a subject representative, entrusted by teachers, I would stand at the podium during morning self-study sessions to lead the whole class through exercises — this cultivated a confidence in handling public occasions.

Among our middle school classmates was a small group of "aristocrats" — children of military families sent down with the 127th Military Preparedness Hospital. Four students from the 127th came to our class, all girls, each more beautiful than the last. These "modern sisters" from the army compound stood in sharp contrast to us local kids. They spoke standard Mandarin, were dazzlingly clever, and carried themselves with grace. One of them, a fair-skinned girl called Z, had a gentle disposition and could answer teachers' questions with eloquence and poise — the envy of everyone. When Z raised her hand to answer the teacher's question about Ye Ting's poem "The Door Through Which One Enters and Exits Is Tightly Locked," she spoke with assurance and concluded: "We revolutionaries must have our own integrity. We would rather rot in prison than beg to 'crawl out through the dog's hole.'" Z's performance earned the fervent praise of our Shanghai-born female teacher, who appointed her Chinese language subject representative.

I remember in the first semester of ninth grade attending a tearful testimony by Basang, a Tibetan former serf who had been "liberated" (and later became vice-chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region Revolutionary Committee), denouncing the evils of Tibet's slave system before liberation. He described torture methods like flaying people alive and gouging out eyeballs — it made our hair stand on end. That was the most successful class education lesson of those years. Every student's heart ached with shared grief and righteous fury. Even the most mischievous troublemakers in class were moved, united in common hatred.

That year, our "learning from the peasants" program sent us to a mountain village to live and eat with farmers for two weeks. At night, boys and girls sat together on floor mats playing cards; since it was cold, everyone shared the same quilt, which felt especially thrilling. At school there were strict boundaries between boys and girls, but away from campus these rules relaxed. The hazy mutual curiosity and attraction between teenage boys and girls found its fullest expression during that time.

Every morning we rose early and braved the cold to wash our faces by the river — the water was bone-piercingly icy, our hands could barely open. I remember racing a male classmate to cut rice in the fields. We cut faster and faster until my sickle sliced off the tip of my little finger — so much blood, and it took two or three months to slowly grow back new flesh. The mountain nights were pitch black, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. We often got lost, and with dogs barking everywhere, there was a real sense of terror — yet also great excitement. When I return to China and see today's children, burdened with heavy backpacks, pushed to their limits for the college entrance exam, I naturally think of how we spent our days — learning from the peasants, the workers, and the army, always roaming outdoors. I remember one evening when our intern teacher led us to a hillside near the chemical fertilizer plant for a field exercise (learning from the army). Under a bright moon and scattered stars, we used pine branches as camouflage, ambushing the enemy, confusing the enemy — looking back, it all feels impossibly romantic. There was also the long-distance march to the former New Fourth Army site at Maolin; we walked an entire day, as if the road would never end. I was slight and frail, nearly collapsing from exhaustion. Yet the ecstasy when we finally arrived remains vivid to this day. Later, for "learning from the workers," we entered a walking-tractor factory, where I learned lathe work under a beautiful female master in work clothes — I was utterly captivated by her gallant poise.

In the second semester of ninth grade, the political climate veered further left. Over the next two years of high school, academic classes existed in name only; learning from the peasants, workers, and army consumed ever more of our time. During high school, everyone had to learn a "revolutionary skill." I chose to learn how to operate a walking tractor. Many classmates chose the acupuncture skills of the "barefoot doctor." Day after day they'd hold a needle and jab it into their own wrists. The quick learners soon dared to cover their wrists and heads with silver needles — a terrifying sight.

Those were the days of promoting revolutionary "newborn things." Reports appeared of PLA medical personnel using traditional Chinese acupuncture to cure deaf-mute patients — miracles of iron trees blooming and the mute speaking. The first words most of the mute spoke were invariably "Long live Chairman Mao." In the documentary films of the time, you could see the touching scenes of the formerly mute, tears streaming down their faces, thanking their beloved People's Liberation Army. Soon came more happy tidings: acupuncture anesthesia had been successfully tested, and compared to conventional anesthesia, it had the advantage of no side effects. Radio stations began broadcasting revolutionary songs praising the tiny silver needle, and for a time the needle was touted as something almost miraculous.

Barefoot doctors, sunflowers blooming, putting down roots across the vast land…
The thousand-year iron tree is about to bloom… the deaf-mute daughter is about to speak.
The east wind brings warmth, red flags reflect the rosy clouds — Chairman Mao has sent his dear PLA soldiers to my home.
A tiny silver needle in hand — spring thunder explodes in the silent world…
Grateful for Chairman Mao's boundless kindness.

Amid this fervor, one of my classmates happened to need an appendectomy and it was performed entirely under acupuncture anesthesia. I will never forget the horrific account he later gave me of his suffering. He still believed acupuncture anesthesia might work, explaining that it probably varied from person to person — it simply didn't work for him. He said that at first, the silver needles in his ears distracted him from the surgery, but soon the pain in his abdomen became unbearable. He howled like a pig or sheep being slaughtered through the entire procedure; no amount of heart-rending screaming made any difference. The story made my hair stand on end.

— Written on October 12, 2006

The North Wind Blows

An old friend online recommended I watch the sent-down youth drama The North Wind Blows. Fragments of memories from the Great Revolution era drifted back — hazy and disjointed, yet among them were scenes of startling clarity and sounds of transcendent beauty.

I was about seven, during the fiercest period of factional fighting between the "Criticism United Headquarters" and the "Sweep the Black Line" factions in our county town. Gunshots were heard nightly. The two factions held separate territories, each with its own strongholds. At its worst, machine guns and even mortars were deployed. Beyond the command headquarters, each organization had departments for logistics, security, medical care, arts and culture, internal liaison, and foreign affairs, each performing its designated function — it was like a communist utopia in miniature, where the masses' ingenuity found full expression.

The Criticism faction's headquarters was set up inside the building materials factory on the east side of town. My impression is of concrete pipes everywhere — perfect for children playing hide-and-seek. The faction's commander-in-chief was Uncle P, our neighbor — tall and imposing, in military uniform, with a pistol holstered on each hip, radiating an intimidating authority. They said he was an expert marksman. And then one night, something went wrong. The story goes that he was out on night patrol when a dark figure appeared ahead. Commander P shouted, "Password!" The figure stammered something unintelligible. The password was wrong, and the commander, thinking it was an enemy scout sneaking up, fired a single shot and dropped him. Only later was it discovered that it was one of their own — young, inexperienced, and inarticulate, he became a wrongful death in the blink of an eye.

As factional skirmishes grew more frequent, casualties mounted and often couldn't receive timely medical care. The county hospital was in the Sweep faction's territory on the west side of town. To strengthen the Criticism faction's medical capacity, Commander P summoned my parents to help establish a mobile field operating theater. He dispatched operatives to secretly infiltrate our home and relocate our entire family to the Criticism faction's headquarters, where we were treated with the utmost courtesy. From then on, we began our life within this revolutionary commune.

My father's memoir records this:

"One evening, a 'plainclothes female fighter' from the Criticism faction burst through our back door straight into my inner room. From the sole of her shoe she extracted a slip of paper — a handwritten order from Commander P, demanding I rush immediately to the headquarters to 'save a life.' It was, of course, a 'heavenly command.' Heaven's command could not be defied; saving a life brooked no delay; and self-preservation left no alternative. I set out at once. But our home was deep in Sweep faction territory — how could hostile forces tolerate such an act? My journey that night was an adventure in itself. Fortunately, the moment I stepped outside, a plainclothes escort detail was there to guard against ambush, and we reached our destination at top speed."

I remember how bitterly cold that winter was — I still shiver thinking about it. One day, a few of us children were playing outside until our hands and feet were swollen and red from the cold. Both our parents were too busy working to look after us. Eventually an older sister led us into a small room with a charcoal brazier. I couldn't wait to huddle close to the fire, stretching out my red, swollen hands and feet. I never imagined that frozen limbs, suddenly exposed to warmth, would produce an unbearable, bone-deep itching — as if ten thousand arrows were piercing the heart. Later, when I read Tracks in the Snowy Forest, I felt a deep resonance. The book explained that frostbitten hands and feet must never be warmed up immediately. First you must slowly massage them with snow, wait until the blood circulates and the fingers can move again, and only then gradually increase the temperature.

As New Year approached, the Revolutionary Propaganda Team under the Arts and Culture Department rehearsed The White-Haired Girl in the assembly hall — my favorite place to be. The propaganda team was full of talent. A full-scale production, scene by scene, polished to perfection — it was the cultural feast of the revolutionary era, an inexhaustible delight. The young man playing Dachun was a family acquaintance, a strikingly handsome fellow. In the corner of the stage, a sister with a voice like a lark provided vocal accompaniment. She wore a military uniform — valiant yet alluring — and held a grass-green megaphone shaped like an army trumpet, singing "The North Wind Blows, the Snowflakes Drift." This song was already the most artistic and humane gem of the revolutionary era, and that female voice — pure beyond purity, drifting out from the megaphone — was so transcendentally beautiful it moved the soul. In my young heart, I always believed that such heavenly music could not possibly be a human voice; it must be the magic of that wondrous megaphone. For a long time afterwards, I regarded the megaphone as a box that could turn stone into gold. The image of that uniformed girl holding the army megaphone, accompanied by the melody of the north wind and drifting snowflakes, settled deep in my consciousness — the ultimate aesthetic experience. The "North Wind Blows" in the ocean of my heart is perfect, irreplaceable. Guo Lanying's original recording, distinctive as it is, feels rustic by comparison, not light or ethereal enough. I've sought out and compared many versions; only Zhu Fengbo's delicate voice comes close to my childhood memory.

— Written on New Year's Day, 2010

朝华点滴（上）

人过中年以后，陈年往事象碎片一样徘徊心头，可就是拼接不出完整的图画。在记忆的海洋里，每一朵浪花伴随甜蜜咸涩，聚散无序，翻腾萦回。

我的中小学十年，恰好与文化革命十年重合。学业荒废，同学基础都很薄弱，结果同级四个班200多学生，总共高考跳龙门成功者（包括大专）不过7－8个，其余同学大多在本地顶职、招工慢慢就业。就升学而言，我们这代是时代的牺牲品。

大革命武斗的余震一直影响到我们小学毕业。教室一有玻璃就被打碎，冬天只好用薄膜或糊报纸挡风。最风光的时候是所谓"资产阶级路线回潮"那阵（初一、初二），我们学习好的特别吃香。作为科代表，受到老师委托，在早自习课上上讲台当小老师，带领全班做习题，培养了应对场合的自信。

中学同学中有一小批"贵族"，随军队备战医院（127医院）下放来的子女。我们班一共来了四名127同学，全是女生，一个赛一个靓丽。部队大院出来的"洋姐儿"，与我们本地孩子形成对比。她们讲普通话，冰雪聪明，举止优雅。其中一位皮肤白嫩的女生Z，性格温善，回答老师问题出口成章，让人羡慕。Z举手回答老师关于《叶挺：为人进出的门紧锁着》的提问时，侃侃而谈，最后说， 我们革命者应该有自己的骨气，宁愿牢底坐穿，也不能祈求"从狗的洞子爬出"。Z的表现获得了上海女老师的激赏，指派为语文科代表。

记得初三上学期听过藏族翻身农奴巴桑（后来成为藏族自治区革命委员会副主任）的血泪报告，控诉解放前西藏奴隶制度的罪恶。提到活剥人皮、挖眼珠等酷刑，听得毛骨悚然。 那是当年最成功阶级教育课了，全班同学无不心痛如绞，满腔仇恨。甚至平时最调皮捣蛋的学生也都被感动了，同仇敌忾。

那年学农去一个山村跟农民同吃同住两周。晚上男女同学一起围坐在地铺上打牌，因为天冷，大家盖同一个被子，觉得特别兴奋。在学校有男女界限，人在外就放松一些。少男少女蒙蒙胧胧的相互好奇和吸引，在学农时表现得最充分。

每天清晨起床，冒着寒冷去河边洗脸，水凉刺骨，手展不开。记得在田里跟一位男同学比赛割稻。越割越快，镰刀把小手指头割掉了，流了好多血，两三个月才慢慢长回新肉。山村的夜晚那个天黑，伸手不见五指。经常迷路，加上狗叫，真有恐怖感，又感觉很刺激。我回国探亲看现在孩子，背着沉重的书包，为高考超负荷运转，就自然想到我们当年学工学农学军，整天在外面野。记得有一天晚上，实习老师带领我们去化肥厂附近的山坡上搞野营（学军）。月明星稀，用松树枝打掩护，偷袭敌人，迷惑敌人，现在想起来还是充满了浪漫。还有长途拉练到茂林新四军旧址，走了一整天，好像路永远没有尽头。我比较体弱瘦小，几乎累垮。可是到达目的地时候的狂喜，至今历历在目。后来学工进了手扶拖拉机厂，跟一个很漂亮穿工装的女师傅学车工，被她的飒爽英姿完全迷住了。

初三下学期，形势进一步转左，后来高中两年，文化课形同虚设，学农、学工、学军占了更多的时间。高中阶段，每个人都要学一门革命的本事，我的选学项目是开手扶拖拉机。不少同学选的是学习"赤脚医生"的针灸技能。整天拿一跟针，在自己手腕上扎下去。学的快的很快就敢把银针插满自己的手腕和脑部，看上去很吓人。

那是提倡革命"新生"事物的时代，于是有解放军医务人员，运用中医针灸治疗聋哑病人，使铁树开花哑巴说话的奇迹报道。多数哑巴开口说的第一句总是"毛主席万岁"。当时的专题纪录片，也能看到哑巴说话以后，热泪盈眶，感谢亲人解放军的动人场面。紧接着，又传来喜讯，针灸麻醉试验成功，比较传统麻醉，具有无副作用等优点。电台开始播送歌颂小小银针的革命歌曲，一时间银针被吹得神乎其神。

赤脚医生向阳花, 广阔天地把根扎……
千年铁树要开花……聋哑女儿要说话。
东风送暖红旗映彩霞，毛主席派来亲人解放军到了我的家。
小小银针手中拿，无声世界春雷炸……
感谢毛主席的恩情大。

在这样的热潮下，我的一个同学赶上阑尾炎需要手术，完全采用针灸麻醉。我永远不能忘记他事后对我描述其痛苦的惨状。他还是相信针麻可能有效，解释说可能因人而异，对于他是无效的。他说，刚开始时候，耳朵上插上银针，分散了对手术的注意力，但很快腹部的疼痛变得不可忍受。他象被宰割的猪羊般吼叫了整个过程，撕心裂肺也无济于事（可能是中途换成传统麻醉等于宣告针灸麻醉失败，当时的医生可能担当不起这个罪名）。说得我毛骨悚然。

—— 记于2006年十月12日

北风那个吹

网上有老友推荐看知青电视剧《北风那个吹》，大革命时候的一些往事片段飘忽而来，断续朦胧之中，也有清晰明丽的场景和绝美动人的音响。

我大概七岁，是我们县城"批联部"和"扫黑线"两派武斗最激烈的时候，夜间常听到枪响。两派割据，各有自己的地盘和大本营。最严重的时候机关枪和迫击炮都用上了。组织内部除了司令部外，下面设有后勤、保卫、医疗、文艺、内联、外交等部门，各司其职，俨然是个共产社会大家庭，人民群众的才智得到充分发挥。

批派的大本营设在城东的建材厂里面。印象里面到处是水泥管道，很合适孩子躲猫猫用。批派总司令是邻居P叔叔，魁梧高大，着戎装，腰间左右别了两只手枪，威风逼人。据说他枪法很准，终于有一天晚上出事了。说是那天夜里出外巡视，前方闪现一个黑影，P司令喝到："口令！" 那小子支吾一声，口令不对，司令以为是敌方的探子摸过来，随手一枪，撂倒了对方。后来发现原来是自己人，年轻无经验，口齿不清，一不小心就做了冤死鬼。

当时两派常有武斗摩擦，死伤人渐多，常不能得到及时救护。县医院在城西扫派的地盘上，P司令为了加强批派的医疗力量，请我父母出山，帮助建立战时流动手术台。他派手下秘密潜入我家，把我们全家转移到批派大本营，礼遇有加，从此我们开始了革命大家庭里面的生活。

老爸的回忆录里对此有记载：

一天傍晚时分，"批"派一个"便衣女战士"从我家后门直冲我内室，从鞋底里抠出一张纸条，是该派P司令的手令，让我火速赶去大本营"救人"。当然是"天命"了。天命不可违抗，二则救人不得迟疑，再则保己也无二选，立马出家。可我家是"扫"派阵地，敌对双方，哪能包容此举。所以我的这一出诊，也是一次冒险。好在一出门，就有"便衣"一队护卫，以防堵截，火速抵达目的地。

记得那年冬天真冷啊，现在想起来还打寒颤。有一天我们几个孩子在外手脚都冻红肿了，爸爸妈妈都忙着工作，顾不上我们。后来是一个大姐姐把我们领到一间生了炭火盆的小屋子去。我迫不及待挨近火盆取暖，把红肿的手脚伸上去，没想到，冰冻的四肢乍一热和，从肉到皮，奇痒无比，万箭穿心。后来我看《林海雪原》，深有同感。里面说了，在冰天雪地冻伤的手脚切忌立即回暖，要先用雪漫漫搓揉，等冻僵的手脚血液循环，指头可以伸展了，然后才能慢慢增加温度。

新年快到了，文艺部下面的革命宣传队在礼堂彩排《白毛女》，是我最爱去的地方。宣传队能人很多，一台大戏从头到尾，一幕一幕，精益求精，是革命年代的文娱大餐，美不胜收。演大春的小伙子是我家熟人，很英俊漂亮的小伙子。舞台角落有一位百灵鸟一样的姐姐在伴唱，她穿着军装，英气又妩媚，手里拿着草绿色的象军喇叭一样的扬声器，清唱《北风那个吹，雪花那个飘》。这歌本来就是革命年代里最富有艺术性和人情味的极品，那女声纯而又纯，从喇叭飘出来，是那样超凡脱俗，打动人心。在我幼小的心灵里面，总以为这样的天籁非人声可为，许是那神奇的喇叭的魔力。那以后很久我一直把喇叭看成是点石成金的匣子。那位军衣少女手执军喇叭的形象，伴随着北风吹雪花飘的音乐声，积淀在心，成就美感体验的极至。我心海里的《北风吹》是最完美的，不可替代。郭兰英的原唱尽管很有特色，但显得土气，不够轻盈灵秀。寻觅对比过多种版本，就朱逢博的细腻嗓音，似乎与我儿时的记忆较为接近。

—— 记于2010年元旦

From 朝华午拾 (Morning Glory at Noon). Original Chinese: 朝华点滴 & 北风那个吹.

My mother's death in middle age is the eternal ache in my heart. On Mother's Day 2005, I built an "Online Memorial Hall" for her, a place to anchor a grief that only deepens with time.

（Mom and me，1965）

She died of stomach cancer at 49. Those were the darkest days of my life — days I still cannot bear to look back upon. Mom had been overworked her entire life, which may well have contributed to her illness. By the time it was discovered, the cancer had already reached its late stage. She held on for three months, and then she was gone. Mother toiled all her life. After Grandmother passed away, the care of three children and all the housework fell on her shoulders alone. At work, the pressure was no lighter — as head of obstetrics and gynecology at the county hospital, she threw herself into consultations, surgeries, and family-planning campaigns until she was utterly spent. Just before she died, she passed the examination to earn the title of Attending Physician — among her medical-school classmates, she was one of the first to attain that intermediate rank.

Parents should never have to leave their children too soon. Even though I was already 24 when she passed, I simply could not accept this brutal reality. I was in graduate school in Beijing at the time; I wept in secret for an entire year. Parents are a child's sky. As a boy, I dreaded talking about death and it felt impossibly distant. Mother's passing taught me in a single instant how fragile life truly is. The day I learned of her cancer diagnosis was the darkest day of all: desperate, helpless — as if heaven and earth had changed color.

Mom was born in the fourth lunar month of 1935, into a farming family in a village about three kilometers from the historic town of Sanhe in Anhui — a remote spot at the junction of Shucheng, Feixi, and Lujiang counties. I remember visiting her hometown twice as a child with my parents, and what an ordeal it was. It felt like crossing a thousand mountains and rivers: by bus, across the Yangtze by ferry, by train, then a small steamer across Chao Lake to Sanhe, and finally another six li on foot to the village. That last stretch of walking felt as if the road would never end. Mom once told me that she walked that very road every day going back and forth to secondary school.

In winter, crossing Chao Lake on the steamer — there was no heating at all, no shelter, just hours adrift in the open. The wind howled through the lake passage; the cold bit into your bones. To this day, thinking of it makes me shiver. Winters back then were brutally cold, regularly dropping to minus seven or eight degrees Celsius; with the wind chill, it felt like minus twenty or thirty.

But once we reached the old home for the New Year, everything came alive. Uncles and aunts laid out a full welcome, with every kind of delicacy: salt-cured pork, salt-cured duck, pig tongue, pig ears. I remember one morning when there were five-spice tea eggs — so fragrant that after eating one I simply could not stop. I polished off eight in one go. I must have been only seven or eight. I ate myself sick, and for two whole days I could not touch food; the very sight of it made me retch.

My maternal grandparents had ten children — six boys and four girls. Mom was the seventh child, but the eldest daughter. Though they lived deep in the countryside, Grandfather and Grandmother were remarkably open-minded: all the boys stayed home to farm or run small businesses, yet they sent every single girl to school — no small feat in that era.

Grandmother was a woman of the old school, a master of household management and farming, who ran the family with a steady hand. Life was harmonious and thriving. Grandfather, a man of modest education and a merchant in Sanhe, came home on weekends to direct the farm work. They were the archetype of a hardworking peasant family maintaining a frugal, modest comfort. Through careful planning and tight saving, Grandfather purchased a plot of land just before Liberation (1949). The whole family labored from sunrise to sunset in the fields, dreaming of a modestly prosperous life. Two years later, the land reform labeled them "landlords," and the entire family lived under that shadow for over thirty years, enduring widespread social discrimination.

As a child, Mom attended a village private school for a few years, taught by an elderly distant cousin in the Confucian classical tradition. In 1950, she gained admission to Sanhe Secondary School. She walked to school and back every day with her cousin, covering fourteen li round-trip through wind, rain, frost, and snow — leaving before dawn, returning after dark. Lunch was dry rations she carried. Life was one of poverty and deprivation. Fortunately, Grandmother could make and mend shoes, and there was just enough food at home to stave off hunger — every other desire was surrendered.

（Mom was 20 years old）

She had to drop out for a year due to poverty, struggling all the way, but in 1954 she finally graduated. That year, catastrophic flooding struck her hometown, turning it into a vast sea. It was Fifth Uncle who poled a small wooden boat to send Mom (his sister) to the provincial capital to sit for exams and attend school. She enrolled in Hefei Medical School — a specialized secondary program (only seven from her school were admitted, and Mom was the only girl). It was the pivotal step of her life: food and lodging, all free of charge. In September 1957, upon graduation, she was assigned to Nanling County Hospital — the first physician ever appointed there directly from medical school. At last, Mom had walked out of that remote village to become a state cadre with her own income, meager as it was; she could finally support her own parents.

Mom bore three of us, each two years apart. According to Father, when she was six months pregnant with my elder brother, she and Father were dispatched by the hospital on a mobile medical tour through the countryside. She waddled along the ridges between rice paddies, her belly heavy, treating peasants for every ailment. The grueling work, brutal conditions, and poor nutrition caused her to go into labor prematurely — my brother was born on those very fields, nearly three months early. They say when he was born, his eyes were shut tight and he made no cry at all. Were it not for the medical team being right there, he could never have survived under those conditions.

By the time Mom had me, the "Three Years of Hardship" had begun — famine everywhere, corpses on the roadsides. Grandfather, Grandmother, and an aunt all starved to death in the old home villages during that time. (Eldest Uncle also fled the famine-stricken village and vanished without a trace.) Mom was desperately weak after giving birth. The hospital leadership, taking pity, specially approved "half a pig" for the new mother — that half pig, dripping brine, weighed just over two jin.

（Family portrait，1978）

In her career, Mom was a force of nature. She performed every kind of obstetric and gynecological surgery with mastery. She was the first in the entire prefecture to pioneer extraperitoneal cesarean section. She could complete a tubal ligation in an average of ten minutes. On family-planning campaigns to rural villages, she routinely performed seventy to eighty ligations a day, without a single error. She visited every production brigade in the county, relieving countless women of the pain of disease. Her extraordinary medical skill drew a constant stream of patients. Later, as head of both clinical and administrative operations in OB/GYN, she displayed remarkable leadership. Her warmth, competence, and tireless dedication earned her the deep respect of her colleagues and widespread prestige. In 1974, she was one of only three in the entire county promoted to the rank of Physician (one of the other two was my father). In 1981, she was one of only seven in the county promoted to Attending Physician (again, Father was another — all technical title evaluations in China had been suspended before then). Three days before her death, Mom and her department were simultaneously awarded Provincial Advanced Individual and Advanced Collective honors for family-planning work.

Mom was plagued by illness her entire life — gallstones and filariasis flared up constantly, tormenting her. She underwent two operations for gallstones alone. In October 1983, she began experiencing heartburn and vomiting, but she assumed it was just another gallstone episode. With the year-end family-planning drive in full swing, there was no time for a checkup; she simply gritted her teeth through the pain and worked around the clock. The relentless pace finally broke her on January 4, 1984. After completing an emergency surgery to stop a rural woman's postpartum hemorrhage, Mom collapsed beside the operating table — the pain so severe she could no longer stand.

She went down and could never rise again. Tests revealed late-stage stomach cancer. After she was bedridden, we found a slip of paper in the pocket of her coat, on which she had recorded her workload during those agonizing months. Reading it, we could not hold back our tears. Suffering from a fatal disease, enduring searing pain, Mom had completed a volume of work that would stagger any healthy person. The slip recorded the following:

January to November 1983, inpatient OB/GYN caseload — Hospitalizations: 1,829. Deliveries: 692. Difficult deliveries: 243. Home visits: 38. Emergency rescues: 108. Deaths: 7. Abortions: 799. Late-term abortions: 1,164. Tubal ligations: 466. IUD insertions: 144. IUD removals: 140. (The above excludes ligations performed on trips to communes. The department had only three doctors at the time.)

On March 29, Mom's condition suddenly worsened, and she went into shock. Father sent an urgent telegram to me in Beijing — I had just returned from home — telling me to come back immediately. I caught an express train and arrived home on the afternoon of the 31st. After 48 hours in a coma, when Mom saw me, her eyes miraculously opened, and her pupils began to follow my movements. During that time, her blood pressure and urination even returned to normal. At 9:30 that evening, Mom finally stopped breathing. She had left us forever — left the home she loved, left the work she cherished.

Later, people said that Mom had held on for two extra days just to see me one last time. In truth, on March 29, she already sensed the end was near. She refused to sleep, saying over and over to the family: "I must not sleep. I must not sleep. Once I sleep, I won't wake up again. I won't see you again."

Those words proved prophetic. She had saved countless women from the brink of death, but she could not save herself.

Following her dying wish, we buried Mom beside her mother our Grandma. Mom never had a single day of ease — her entire life was poverty, overwork, and a battle against illness. She struggled so hard to raise us children, and when at last we were grown, she could no longer receive our filial devotion.

Mom suffered too much. She worked herself to death.

At her memorial service, the three of us children wrote this elegy for our mother:

Busy at work, busy at home — busy for thirty years. Hardship for Husband, hardship for children — hardship for a lifetime.

This was the true portrait of Mom's life.

Thirty years forward, a visit to the old home in 2005. The Nanling hospital compound was the place where Mom and Dad raised us, toiling day and night. The old neighbors were still there; the ginkgo tree by our door was still in full leaf. The old house we had lived in, through thirty years of wind and rain, still stood. How much heart and soul Mom poured into that home. I remember, when she was gravely ill in the hospital, she told me she didn't want to stay in the ward — she wanted to go home. That wish could never be fulfilled in her lifetime. Only on the day of her funeral did we escort Mom's urn to pause one last time at the old home, to comfort her spirit in heaven. The back room of the old house was my brother's and my childhood den — on winter mornings, Mom would come early to light a charcoal brazier and warm our clothes before we got up. The old well in the yard bore witness to Mom hauling water day after day; the little bridge recorded her toil washing clothes. Wandering through the old places, searching for Mom's footprints and our childhood memories, I found myself speechless, choked with tears.

Forever remembering my dear mother.

朝华午拾 · 第七章：永远怀念亲爱的妈妈

妈妈的中年早逝是我心头永远的痛。2005年母亲节，我为妈妈建立"网上纪念堂"，寄托日久弥深的哀思。

妈妈49岁患胃癌去世。这是我一辈子最伤心、不敢回首的日子。妈妈常年劳累过度，可能是诱发她癌症原因之一。发现时已经晚期，维持了三个月就不行了。妈妈一辈子操劳，外婆去世后，三个孩子，全部家务，都落在妈妈身上。工作上压力也不轻，担任县医院妇产科主任，出诊、手术、计划生育，把自己往死里累。去世前，还通过考试，获得主治医师职称，在她的医校同学中，是第一批获得中级职称的。

父母对于儿女，实在不能早走。尽管当年已经24岁了，还是不能接受这一残酷现实。我那时在北京上研究生，暗自哭了整整一年。父母是孩子的天。小时候很怕谈死，也觉得死亡很遥远。妈妈去世，一下子感受到生命的脆弱。听到妈妈癌症确诊消息的那一天，是最黑暗的一天：绝望无助，天地变色。

妈妈于一九三五年阴历四月出生于一个农民家庭，故乡离安徽著名古镇三河约三公里，是舒城、肥西、庐江三县交界处，较为偏僻。我小时候跟父母去三河老家探亲两次，可难哪。千山万水似的，乘汽车，过长江轮渡，转火车，再乘小轮穿过巢湖到三河镇，然后还要步行六里路到村子里。最后那步行，觉得路永远没有尽头。妈妈跟我说，她当年上中学就每天走这条路来回。

冬天在巢湖上坐小轮，完全没有取暖设施，无遮无挡地行驶大半天。湖面过堂风大，天寒地冻，那个冷冻彻骨，现在想起还打寒颤。那个年头冬天奇冷，经常零下7-8度，加上冷风，感觉零下几十度似的。

不过，到了老家过年就热闹了，舅舅姨姨全力款待，有各种美味：咸肉，咸鸭，猪舌条，猪耳朵。记得有一天早上有五香蛋，那个香，吃了还想吃，结果不能节制，一口气吃了8个。才7-8岁吧，真撑坏了。整整两天什么也不能吃，见食品就要吐。

外公外婆共有十个孩子，六男四女，母亲是老七，但是女孩中老大。外公外婆虽在偏僻农村生活，但思想开明，几个男孩都在家种田或做小生意，却把女孩全部送到学堂读书，在当时社会环境下，是十分不易的。

外婆是旧式家庭妇女，善于操持家务，熟悉农计，统率全家，安排日常生活，家庭和睦兴旺。外公为略具文化的士绅，在三河经商，周末回家支派农活，维持一个低水准的小康之家，是艰苦创业的农家典型。靠精打细算省吃俭用，外公在解放前夕买了一批土地。全家日出而作日落而息在田里耕种，梦想着过上小康生活。结果两年后办了个地主的成分，让整个家族成员三十多年生活在阴影中，倍受社会歧视。

妈妈小时候在本村上了几年私塾。私塾先生是位年长远房堂兄，以古文为主，是孔孟教学典型。1950年，妈妈考取了三河中学，与堂兄结伴走读上学，七里地远，风雨霜雪，早出晚归。经常是天亮前出发，天黑后回家，中午吃餐自带的干粮，过着衣食不全的困苦生活。好在外婆可以做鞋补纳，回家勉强充饥，其他一切奢求都舍去。中间贫困辍学一年，跌跌爬爬，终于，1954年毕业，家乡厄遇水灾，一片汪洋。是五舅撑着小木船，直送妹妹去省城考学和上学，省城合肥医校中专（妈妈所念的中校仅七人考出去，妈妈是唯一女生），迈出人生关键的一步。有吃有住，全部免费，捱至1957年9月，毕业分配到南陵县医院，妈妈是南陵县医院第一个由医校毕业分配来的医生。母亲终于从偏远的农村走出成为国家干部，有了自己的收入，虽然微薄但却能承担外公外婆的赡养。

妈妈共生我们兄妹三人，每个相隔两年。据老爸说，妈妈怀我哥六个月的时侯，和爸爸一起被单位派到乡镇农村巡回医疗，挺着大肚子在田埂上奔来奔去，为农民看病治病。由于过度劳累，条件太差和缺乏营养，母亲早产了。我哥提前近三个月，出生在田间。据说生下时，两眼紧闭，也不啼哭，如果不是在医疗队里，在那种条件下我哥是很难活过来的。到妈妈生我时，正逢"三年困难时期"，粮食匮乏，饿殍遍野。爷爷外公姑姑三人都是那个时候在老家活活饿死的（大舅也从农村老家逃荒走失，人间蒸发）。妈妈极度虚弱，领导开恩特批了"半头猪"给产妇，而那滴着盐水的半头猪总重二斤多。

在事业上，妈妈是个强者。她熟练地进行妇产科各项手术。妈妈率先在全地区首创腹膜外剖腹产术。妈妈替人结扎平均每例十分钟，去农村突击计划生育的时候，常常一天结扎七八十例，无一差错。母亲走遍了全县每个大队，为众多女性解除了疾病的痛苦。妈妈高超的医术使得求医者络绎不绝。妈妈后来担任妇产科业务和行政的领导，显示出很高的管理能力。妈妈的热情、干练和刻苦赢得了同事的尊敬，获得很高威望。七四年妈妈是全县首批晋升医师三人中的一个（三人中另一人是我老爸）。八一年妈妈又是全县首批晋升主治医师七人中的一个（七人中另一人也是我父亲，此前中国中断了所有技术职称评定工作）。临终前三天，妈妈与她科室同时获得省计划生育个人和集体先进的嘉奖。

妈妈疾病缠身，胆石症和丝虫病常常发作，折磨一生。仅胆石症就动过两次手术。八三年十月妈妈出现心口痛和呕吐，妈妈以为又是胆石病复发。因为年终计划生育突击工作繁忙，没有时间去检查，就忍着病痛，日以继夜。高强度工作终于使她在八四年元月四日病倒。在坚持完成一个农村妇女产后大出血急症手术后，母亲倒在手术台旁，剧烈疼痛让她无法站立。

妈妈倒下了，再也无法起床。经过检查，妈妈已到胃癌晚期。在她病倒后，我们从她外套口袋里找到一张纸条，上边记载看妈妈病痛这段时间的工作情况，看后不禁泪下。母亲拖着病身，忍着剧痛，完成了常人难以想像的工作。纸条记载如下：八三年一月至十一月妇产科住院部工作：住院1829人，生产692人，难产243人，出诊38次，抢救108次，死亡7人，人流799人，大月份人流1164人，结扎466人，上环144人，取环140人（以上不含到各公社计划生育结扎人数，妇产科当时仅有三个医生）。

妈妈三月二十九日病情加重，突然休克。爸爸急电刚刚返京的我速回，我乘特快三十一日下午回家。妈妈在昏迷四十八小时后，见到我时，眼睛奇迹地睁开了，眼珠也能随着我身影而转动，其间血压，泌尿均恢复正常。晚上九时三十分，妈妈终于停止了呼吸，永远离开了我们，离开了她留恋的这个家，离开了她热爱的工作。

后来有人说，妈妈为了等见上我一面，才多坚持了两天。其实在三月二十九日，妈妈己感觉不好，她坚持不睡觉，反复对家人说："我不能睡，我不能睡，一睡就不会再醒来了，就再也见不到你们了。"

这话果然验证了。她挽救过无数频临死亡的妇女，却不能挽救她自己。

根据妈妈生前遗愿，我们将妈妈安葬在外祖母身旁。妈妈为了我们，没有一天享受过，一生过着清贫劳累和与疾病作斗争的生活。好不容易把孩子拉扯大，她却再也享受不到我们的孝心。

妈妈太苦了，她是累死的。

我们子女三人在母亲追悼会上，为母亲写下了这段挽联：

在班上忙，在班下忙，忙了三十年 为爸爸苦，为子女苦，苦了一辈子

这是妈妈一生真实的写照。

时光倒流三十年，2005老家之行。南陵医院老家是妈妈爸爸辛苦养育我们长大的地方。老邻居仍在，家门口的白果树也依旧枝叶茂盛。我家当年居住的那间老屋，历经三十年风雨，伫立依旧。妈妈当年为这个家付出多少心血。还记得妈妈病重住院时跟我说，不想住病房，想早日回家，可这个愿望妈妈生前无法实现。直到送葬那天，我们才护送妈妈的骨灰盒最后一次在老家停留，安慰妈妈在天之灵。老家的后屋是我们兄弟当年的窝，妈妈冬天清早会过来生一盆火，把衣服烘热，好让我们起床。老家的老井记录了妈妈担水的操劳，老家的小桥刻印着妈妈洗衣的辛苦。重游旧地，寻找妈妈的足迹和我们儿时的记忆，竟无语凝噎。

永远怀念亲爱的妈妈！

记于2005年五月八日

From 朝华午拾 (Morning Glory at Noon). Original Chinese: 永远怀念亲爱的妈妈.

Morning Glory, Noon Blossom — Chapter 6

In 2007, while on my way back to visit my alma mater in Vancouver, I received word that my father had suffered a sudden major hemorrhage and was hospitalized for emergency surgery. I was on the other side of the world — helpless, unable to be at his bedside, unable to face the storm together with him. I was consumed by guilt.

My father was the pillar of our family, a man who had weathered every storm life threw at him with remarkable grace. He worked tirelessly his entire life, never truly retiring, sustained by his robust constitution and unshakeable optimism.

Dad always looked remarkably young for his age. I remember when I was starting university, he insisted on escorting me all the way to Anqing. We were the Class of '77, the first cohort admitted after the Cultural Revolution — society had accumulated nearly a decade of aspiring college entrants, so the incoming students spanned a wide age range, including the "old high school graduates" from before the turmoil, some 10+ years my senior. Dad accompanied me to the campus clinic for the new-student physical examination. The nurse pointed at Dad and said to me: "One at a time — wait until he's done, then it's your turn." She had mistaken Dad for a freshman, my peer LOL. That was how youthful and spirited he appeared.

Four years later when I graduated, Dad still couldn't rest easy and chose to come to Anqing to pick me up. He stayed on campus for a week, spending his idle hours playing Chinese chess with my "subordinate" — my lower bunkmate Lao Ding, who always called me his "superior." This bunkmate was from the pre-Cultural Revolution cohort, born in 1949, the same year as New China was born. Watching from the sidelines, Dad — who had graduated in the 1950s — truly seemed like one of our classmates, as if he were simply another member of our generation.

With Dad taking care of everything, I didn't have to worry about a thing. He helped pack my luggage, and after bidding farewell to our classmates and teachers one by one, we said goodbye to Anqing, crossing the Yangtze to catch a long-distance bus home. The ferry was delayed, and a quick calculation told us we were cutting it dangerously close. Miss this bus, and we'd have to return to Anqing for another day. Without a word, Dad hoisted every piece of luggage onto his shoulders the moment we stepped off the ferry and sprinted toward the bus station, half a mile away — charging ahead like a young man. And there I was, a strapping 21-year-old, empty-handed, gasping for breath, left far behind by Dad.

Dad never had the chance to attend a full medical college — he studied at a vocational medical school — yet the heights he reached over four decades of surgical practice are achievements few can rival. His secret? Boldness paired with meticulous care, relentless practice, and an unyielding devotion to study. I remember as children, whenever we came home to find our parents gone, we would always head to the operating room. Dad worked over ten hours a day, and at home he would immediately bury himself in medical texts — I rarely saw him rest. Over the years his reputation spread far and wide, and patients came seeking his care in an unending stream. Even when the relatives of the surgery department head at the next higher level of hospital needed an operation, they would come looking for Dad — only his "knife" gave them true peace of mind.

Doctors were respected, but they were also poor. In the Mao era, wages and prices remained frozen for decades. Dad earned 46 yuan a month, Mother 43 — a family income of 89 yuan supporting six people (including my maternal grandmother), enough for subsistence but little else. Life was hard, but we never thought of it that way. To be honest, we never felt hardship — even though at every meal, a household of that size would have just one or two small dishes to share. Everyone was poor, after all, and plenty of people couldn't even get enough rice to eat, surviving on gruel or dried sweet potato. Father's real dilemma was: where could he find the money to buy books? Those hefty medical tomes — Surgery, Orthopedics, and the like — were frightfully expensive, yet absolutely essential for his work. Who could have guessed that many of those books were purchased with blood Dad sold in secret? Three hundred cc of plasma at a time, at 30 yuan per draw — money that ordinarily would have taken six months to scrape together. One time Mom found out and was furious. Dad was so lean; she feared selling blood would ruin his health. But Dad would always say: the human body has its own hematopoietic mechanism — losing a little blood does no harm. And yet, what other option was there? No matter how refined his surgical skill, it couldn't be converted into cash. I remember that for a missed-meal allowance during surgery, the subsidy was just twenty cents — or sometimes they would provide a free bowl of shredded-pork noodle soup instead, which our parents couldn't bear to eat themselves and would bring home for us children.

Every era has its own way of living. Still, the thought of a celebrated physician, a man who pursued surgical excellence with unrelenting dedication, having no means to own medical books except by selling his own blood — such a thing, in all of history and across all nations, could probably only have happened under Mao. But I cannot say Father missed his era. Measured by professional fulfillment and spiritual satisfaction, that particular time and its particular circumstances gave Dad a rare canvas on which to work. A county-level hospital was like a blank sheet of paper, facing an endless stream of rural patients — people who had always lacked access to medical care and who possessed no financial means. Most such patients, if a county hospital could not treat them, would simply be left to live or die at heaven's mercy. Dad was one of the hospital's founders; he had full autonomy, and as much energy as he could muster translated directly into work — for decades, he performed several surgeries almost every day. I once knew a young rural doctor who, unable to find an outlet for his abilities, grew weary of medicine and switched to studying English education. Yet when the topic of Father's surgical skill came up, he was full of admiration: "Do you know? Your father is the most remarkable surgeon in the world. He can perform major operations that many provincial-level hospitals haven't even begun to offer." He explained some cases to me, which I didn't fully understand, but I knew in my heart that Dad was forever surpassing himself, climbing toward ever more complex surgeries. Later, when I asked Dad about it — which difficult operations he still wanted to attempt but couldn't — he said he had basically done everything within reach, but certain procedures, like microsurgery and limb reattachment, required equipment far beyond what a county hospital could provide. That, he could only regret.

Unlike the old bureaucratic establishments where "without money, don't bother entering," back then even impoverished farmers could afford surgery at the grassroots hospitals. As I recall, minor operations (like appendectomies) cost less than 10 yuan, mid-level operations (gastrectomies and the like) a few dozen yuan, and major procedures (heart, brain) just over a hundred. Of course, scraping together even that sum wasn't easy, but most families managed — by tightening their belts or selling the family pots and pans. The truly destitute could apply for assistance at the civil affairs bureau. This aspect of the pre-reform era deserves recognition. The fundamental reason for such low fees, naturally, was rock-bottom costs: doctors were state cadres on fixed salaries, with no additional expenditures.

Speaking of surgery — my own body bears one of Father's "masterpieces." When I was about ten years old, one morning shortly after breakfast, my stomach suddenly began hurting intensely. Dad came to examine me, pressed on my lower right abdomen, and asked if it hurt. "A lot," I said. He suddenly withdrew his hand, and a searing pain shot through me — tears streamed down my face. Father told me this was called "rebound tenderness," the classic sign of acute appendicitis, and said to prepare for surgery. Before noon he was helping me into the operating room. Having grown up watching operations, I knew an appendectomy was minor surgery and I wasn't afraid at all. But when it actually came time to get on the operating table, I absolutely tried to refuse. I mainly suspected a misdiagnosis — that I'd be cut open for nothing. I'd been perfectly fine that morning, had drunk half a bowl of congee, and I often had stomachaches anyway. This time, without any blood tests or other examinations — just a touch of my abdomen — and that was the diagnosis? The outcome, of course, proved my worries unfounded: the removed appendix was swollen like a little carrot, and because the surgery had been timely, it hadn't yet suppurated. Many surgeons refuse to operate on their own family members, fearing they'll be too tense. But Dad didn't trust anyone else and naturally performed the surgery himself, with Mom assisting at his side.

Normally, using conventional spinal or epidural anesthesia would have allowed a relaxed, unhurried procedure, but Dad, wanting to minimize post-operative reactions, insisted on using only local anesthesia. I could clearly perceive every step of the operation. Most appendectomy incisions are several inches long, but Dad made an opening barely an inch or two on my abdomen — so small that after closing, it required only two stitches, just enough to admit a single finger. What's more, unlike most incisions, Dad used a transverse cut, which added considerably to the surgical difficulty. Dad explained that a transverse cut follows the natural grain of the abdominal muscles, so the scar would be barely visible after healing (he was right — I've seen the scars from vertical incisions, which remain thick, red, and prominent long after healing, sitting there quite unsightly). The operation was a complete success: I went home the same day, and by the next day I could get out of bed and walk about gently. That said, there was a stretch during the surgery that truly hurt — I cried and wailed, which put enormous pressure on Dad. That was when he inserted his finger to try to capture the inflamed appendix. Hardly my fault — an inflamed appendix hurts even when you don't touch it. Fortunately, the pain didn't last long before Dad seized hold of it and quickly administered another dose of anesthetic. Later, Dad admitted that despite all his care, the incision point was slightly off, causing me more suffering than necessary. Being slightly off was no big deal; he could have simply enlarged the incision to compensate. But Dad insisted on the smallest possible opening, unwilling to leave me with a permanent large scar. I told this story to my daughter, and when she found my nearly invisible scar, she exclaimed: "Grandpa did a terrific job!" From then on, whenever her stomach hurt, she would cry out in alarm, suspecting appendicitis, and wouldn't rest until I checked that there was no "rebound tenderness." She even said that if she ever got appendicitis, she'd fly back to find her grandpa — she didn't trust American doctors: how many operations could they possibly have done? Grandpa had performed tens of thousands over his lifetime!

(Family Portrait, 1962)

Dad frequently made house calls to rural clinics and farmers' homes (as an obstetrics department head, Mom did the same). When an emergency demanded surgery, no matter the conditions, he would proceed. No electricity? Gather some flashlights, improvise, set up the operating table — saving the life came first. During the factional fighting of the Cultural Revolution in 1967, the two factions held their separate domains, with frequent clashes and occasional face-to-face combat. In the early days of street brawling, the weapons were still steel bars and cleavers; later they escalated to real firearms. The hospital was semi-paralyzed, located in territory controlled by the "Sweep Faction" — a radical mass organization calling itself the "Sweep the Black Line" group. Ideologically, Dad and Mom probably belonged to the moderate loyalist camp ("loyalist" meaning they opposed the purge of veteran cadres) and leaned toward the "Critique Faction" (the "Critique Alliance Group"), which had a loyalist tilt — though they took no part in its ideological or political activities. The Critique Faction's commander-in-chief had once been our neighbor, a strapping man. I remember that after assuming command, he wore a broad belt around his waist with a Mauser pistol holstered at his side — an image of martial splendor. It was this commander who quietly sent men to bring our entire family into the faction's headquarters; they urgently needed skilled medical hands to treat the wounded from the fighting. And so Dad set up a wartime surgical theatre — not unlike Dr. Norman Bethune's field hospital — and saved many lives.

In peacetime, the county hospital's white ambulance carried Dad, Mom, and our childhood to every corner of the county. When destinations were close, they would walk or bicycle to their patients. I remember when I was six or seven, our entire family moved to Hewan, a remote rural town, to support the village hospital for a year. Dad often bicycled out on night calls, sometimes taking me along. The sky was always so dark, and the route invariably passed through one or two cemeteries, the cold wind whistling overhead. Entering a village, we would hear dogs barking in waves. I would hide in Dad's arms on the front seat, often too frightened to open my eyes. After the treatment, beneath the dim glow of an oil lamp, the host would always cook two eggs in brown-sugar water and serve them steaming hot as a token of gratitude. Then, lighting the way with a flashlight, they would see us off — and I would be sound asleep long before we got home.

I was never very robust as a child, but at home I was sensible beyond my years — I would often volunteer to sweep the floor and wash the dishes. At school my grades were good, and I was the delight of my parents' hearts. At every major step of my life, from being sent down to the countryside to the oral examination for college entrance, from university registration to graduation and then graduate school interviews — until I was married and had a family of my own — Dad was always there, escorting and protecting me. Now that Dad had fallen ill, I was in a foreign land, unable even to bring him a cup of tea or water, unable to fulfill the most basic filial duties. Whenever I dwell on this, grief wells up from deep within.

But misfortune can turn into blessing. Dad's sudden illness led to early diagnosis and timely treatment, which was in his favor. What gives me comfort is that Dad received the best possible medical care, and most of the family was at his side looking after him. He recovered swiftly after the surgery, and the strength in his voice reassured everyone.

Dad is now semi-retired at home, still living modestly. He shows none of the signs of a man in his eighties — his life is orderly, his health robust, and he retains an eager curiosity for new things, handling a computer more adeptly than many young people. Beyond effortlessly consulting English-language medical literature, he has built up an English vocabulary over the years through extensive reading that rivals my own, even though I'm a "trained linguist." That his children have each found their own successful path is his greatest comfort. And the little stories of his grandchildren's growing up bring him abundant joy.

爸爸保重

朝华午拾 · 第六章

2007年我正在回访温哥华母校的路上，得知老爸突然大出血住院，行大手术。我远在天边，爱莫能助。无从床前伺候，共同面对风雨，深感愧疚。

父亲是我们全家的主心骨，大风大浪闯过来，人生很精彩。父亲操劳一辈子，一直退而不休，仗的就是身体好和心态好。

父亲比同龄人显得年轻很多。记得我上大学的时候，父亲不放心，一路送我到安庆。我们77级是文革后第一届大学生，社会上积压了近10年的高考大军，所以新生的岁数相差很大，包括一批被文革耽误的老三届高中生，比我年长10岁左右。父亲陪我到学校医务处做新生体检，护士指着我跟父亲说：一个一个来，等他检查完了，你再来。她把父亲当作新生了，可见父亲的年轻精神。

四年以后我毕业了，父亲还是不放心，来安庆接我，在学院住了一周，没事就跟我的"老下级"（我的下铺，因此总叫我"老上级"）下象棋。老下级是老三届，49年生人，与新中国同岁。从旁观看，50年代就毕业的父亲真地象我们同学一样，仿佛我们中的一员。

有父亲照顾，我什么都不操心。父亲帮助把行李打包，我们与同学老师一一道别，就跟安庆说再见了，过江去赶长途公共汽车回家。轮渡误点了，一算时间非常紧张，一旦错过这班车，就不得不回安庆又耽搁一天。父亲二话不说，下了轮渡，把大小行李扛上，冲也似地往一两里外的汽车站赶，跟个小伙子一样。可怜我21岁正当年，空着手却气喘吁吁，被父亲远远抛在后面。

爸爸没有机会进入医学院，上的是医专，可他行医四十年所取得的成就，达到的高度，是常人难以企及的。靠的是，胆大心细，勤于实践，刻苦钻研。记得我们小时候，回家不见父母，总是到手术室去找。爸爸每天工作十多个小时，回家也是一头扎到医书里，很少见他休息。多年下来，名震四方，求医者络绎不绝。甚至上一级医院外科主任的亲属需要手术，也来找爸爸"这把刀"才觉得放心。

医生受人尊敬，但却是清贫的。在毛泽东时代，工资和物价均几十年不动。爸爸46元，妈妈43元，家庭收入89元一月，维持一家六口（加上外祖母）温饱，难有积余。生活苦点，倒也无所谓。其实我们从来也没有觉得苦，尽管每餐饭，一大家人才有一两碟小菜。反正大家都苦，还有很多人吃不饱饭，只能喝粥、吃红薯干呢。爸爸的难题是，到哪里去攒买书的钱呢？那些大厚本的专业书籍《外科学》、《骨科学》等，定价不菲，却是工作必不可少的。谁能想到，许多医书是爸爸瞒着家人卖血换来的。一次300cc血浆，当时的价格30元，这可是平时半年也难攒下的钱啊。有一次，妈妈发现以后非常生气。爸爸很清瘦，担心他卖血损害了身体。可爸爸总是说，人有造血机制，失点血无碍。不过，除此之外，还有别的办法么？医术再精湛，也变不了钱。记得手术误餐，当时的补贴也才两角，或者供应一碗免费肉丝面（爸爸妈妈舍不得吃，常常带回家给我们孩子吃）。

一个时代，一种活法。可是，一个享有盛誉、对医术精益求精的医生非卖血不能拥有医书，这样的事古今中外，大概也只有毛时代了。不能说，爸爸没有赶上好时代，从事业的追求和精神的满足看，那个特定的时代特定的条件，给爸爸一个难得的施展空间。基层县医院象一张白纸，面对的是源源不断的一向缺医少药、经济能力匮乏的农村患者。多数这样的患者基层医院不能救治，也就只好自生自灭，听天由命了。爸爸是医院的开创者之一，有充分自主权，有多大精力就有多少工作，几十年来几乎每天都有几台手术。我当年认识一位农村青年医生，由于不能施展，而厌倦行医，转报英文师专，当谈起爸爸的医术，却充满钦佩："你知道么？你爸爸是世界上最了不起的医生。许多省立大医院尚未开展或普及的大手术，你爸爸也能做。"他给我讲解一些案例，我也不懂，但是心里明白，爸爸一直在超越自己，向越来越复杂的手术攀登。后来，跟爸爸谈起来，还有哪些疑难手术，想做而做不成。爸爸说，能做的差不多都做了，但是有些手术，比如显微外科，断肢再植等，对于器械要求太高，县医院没有这种条件，只好遗憾了。

跟"有理无钱莫进来"的衙门不同，当年在基层医院贫苦农民也能开得起刀：印象中小手术（阑尾摘除等）收费不到10元，中等手术（胃切除等）收费几十元，大手术（心脏、脑等）也不过百元。当然，凑足这钱也不容易，但是为看病节衣缩食，或砸锅卖铁，多数人还是想出了办法。对于特困户，可以到民政局申请补助。改开前时代的这一点，还是值得称颂的。收费低廉的根本原因，当然是成本底：医生是国家干部，拿固定工资，没有额外支出。

说到手术，我的身上也留有爸爸的"杰作"。我十岁左右，有一天早饭不久，突然肚子疼得厉害。爸爸过来检查，按住右小腹，问疼不疼，我说，"很疼"。他突然把手抽回，我一阵剧痛，眼泪都出来了。爸爸告诉我，这叫"反跳痛"，是急性阑尾炎的典型症状，说准备开刀，不到中午就扶我进了手术室。从小看惯了开刀，知道阑尾摘除是小手术，我一点也不怕。可真要上手术台了，我却怎么也不愿意。主要是怀疑弄错了，白挨刀了。早上还是好好的，喝了半碗粥，我平时也常闹肚子疼，这次，也没有验血或做其他检查，摸摸小腹，就这样确诊了？结果自然是我多虑，割下的阑尾肿得象棵小胡萝卜头，因为手术及时，还没有化脓。不少外科大夫不给自己亲人开刀，怕太紧张。可爸爸不放心别人，理所当然亲自动手，妈妈在旁做助手。本来，如果使用常规腰麻或硬膜外麻醉，也可从容不迫，但爸爸为了术后反应小，坚持只使用局部麻醉，我能清楚知道手术的每一个过程。多数同类手术刀口总有几寸，可爸爸只给我开了一条一两公分的小口子（关腹后只缝了两针），刚够伸进一个手指。这还不算，跟多数刀口不同，爸爸用的是横切，这更增添了手术难度。爸爸说，横切符合人的腹部的自然纹路，愈合后刀疤不显（确实如此，我见过其他竖切手术的刀痕，愈合后很久仍然粗粗红红地立在那儿，很难看）。这次手术很成功，我当天回家，第二天就可下床轻微走动。不过，手术中有一阵确实很疼，我大哭大叫，给爸爸增加了很大压力。那是爸爸伸进手指试图捞取发炎的阑尾时。也不怪，阑尾发炎，不碰它尚且疼痛得很呢。好在疼得时间不长，爸爸就逮住了它，赶紧补上一针麻醉。后来，爸爸说，尽管费了心思，下刀之处还是略偏了点，使我多受了一些苦。偏一点没关系，如果把刀口加大点，也好办，可爸爸坚持尽可能小的口子，不愿意让我落下一个永久的大疤痕。我把这个故事讲给女儿听，她找到我的几乎看不见了的刀口，惊叹："Grandpa did a terrific job!"。从此，她肚子一疼，就大叫，怀疑得了阑尾炎，非让我检查发现没有"反跳痛"才安心。还说，她要是得了阑尾炎，就飞回去找爷爷，可信不过美国的大夫：他们才开过几个刀，我爷爷一辈子开刀何止成千上万！

爸爸常常出诊到农村医院和农民家中（作为妇产科主任，妈妈也一样）。遇到急诊需要手术，不管什么条件，也要进行。没有电，就集中一些手电筒，因陋就简，搭起手术台，救命要紧。文革武斗那年（1967年），两派割据，常有摩擦，亦有短兵相接的时候：初期街头械斗，用的还是钢钎菜刀之类，后期可用上了真枪真炮。医院处于半瘫痪状态，并且地处"扫派"（叫"扫黑线"，一激进派群众组织）掌控辖区。爸爸妈妈思想上大概属于温和保皇派（"保皇"即反对揪斗老干部），倾向有保皇色彩的"批派"（叫"批联部"），但并不参与其意识形态和政治生活。批派的总司令曾是我家的邻居叔叔，身材魁伟。印象中担任司令以后，他腰扎宽皮带，挎盒子枪，好不英武威风。是总司令派人悄悄把我们全家请到这一派的大本营里，他们急需医疗好手救治武斗中的伤员。于是爸爸搭起战时手术台，就跟白求恩的战地医院似的，也救了不少人的命。

和平岁月，县医院那辆白色救护车，载着爸爸妈妈和我们的童年跑遍了全县每一个角落。如果路近，也步行或骑自行车出诊。记得我六七岁的时候，全家去偏远乡镇河湾，支援农村医院一年。爸爸晚上经常骑车出诊，有时也带着我。天总是那样黑，也总要经过一两个墓地，头顶冷风飕飕。进入村子，总有此起彼伏的狗吠声。我躲在车前座爸爸怀中，常常不敢睁开眼睛。看完病，在昏黄的油灯下，主人总要用红糖水煮两个鸡蛋，热气腾腾端上来，款待我们。然后，照着手电，送我们上路，而我不等到家，就已经睡熟了。

我从小身体不大好，小时候在家很懂事的样子，常主动要求扫地洗碗，在学校成绩也好，很讨爸爸妈妈的欢心和疼爱。直到结婚成家前，我生活的每一大步，从下乡插队到高考口试，从大学报到到毕业离校再到研究生面试，都有父亲陪同呵护。如今父亲病倒了，我却远在异国他乡，不能端茶递水，略尽孝道。每念及此，不由得悲从中来。

坏事变好事，父亲这次急病倒下，对病情的早期诊断和及时治疗有利。得以宽心的是，父亲得到了最好的医疗条件，家人也多在身边照顾。父亲术后恢复很快，说话很有底气，全家人都松了口气。

爸爸现在半退休在家，依旧清贫。一点不象80多岁的老人，生活有条不紊，身体健康，仍保持对新事物的好学之心，电脑玩得比许多年轻人还熟。除了熟练查阅英文专业资料外，长年博文强识，普通词汇量跟我这英语"科班"出身的也有一比。子女各自发展，是他最大的安慰。孙儿辈的成长花絮，更给他带来欢乐。

From 朝华午拾. Original Chinese: 爸爸保重.

Nearly half a century has passed since my grandmother left us, yet her gentle, kindly face still often comes to mind.

My parents, both doctors, were far too busy with their work. So when their first child was born, Grandmother came to help — and from that day forward, she looked after us three children for fifteen years, until the day she died. I'm told my elder brother was a restless infant. Grandma had to rock his cradle without a moment's pause, humming lullabies the whole time. If she nodded off for even a second and the rope to the cradle went slack, he would wail at the top of his lungs. She later said that child wore her out so thoroughly that she was still anxious when I arrived two years later. But to her surprise, I turned out to be a remarkably quiet baby — I never cried at all. The trouble with me was that I was pitifully frail, constantly falling ill. Every sickness brought vomiting, often with high fever. I had night blindness too, and worst of all, a rectal prolapse that made every trip to the toilet agonizing and messy. Grandma would have to carefully push the prolapse back in each time. She had given birth to ten children in her lifetime, more than half of whom had died young. Looking at me, she worried constantly that I wouldn't survive either. Fortunately, being born into a doctor's family meant I received prompt treatment whenever I fell ill, and with Grandma's devoted care, I slowly made it through my sickly childhood. A child blessed with a grandmother's care is a fortunate child. Grandma kept our home immaculate and orderly, with hot meals always ready. Our childhood was carefree, and our parents, freed from domestic worries, could pour themselves completely into their work, day and night.

Grandma was a woman of the old order — she had bound feet, had never been to school, spoke little, and possessed a gentle disposition. I never once saw her lose her temper. For over a decade, her life followed the same steady rhythm: she never left the house, diligent and unassuming, asking nothing of the world, and all our neighbors sang her praises. Every morning before dawn, Grandma would rise, wash, and dress herself with care — always neat and tidy as she began the day's work. Looking after the children, cooking, never a moment's rest. In her rare spare time, she would sit by the door and stitch shoe soles. She would paste together scraps of cloth, dry them in the sun, then sew them with endless stitches into firm, solid soles — every cloth shoe our whole family wore was made by her hands. After she passed, she left behind a large box of soles that we continued to wear for years, until eventually we began buying plastic-soled shoes instead.

Each month, my parents gave Grandma three yuan as pocket money for us children. She was tight-fisted with it — she had to make it last all three children to the end of the month. I remember I could coax two or three fen out of her each day, and I would often go to the street vendor to buy a small steaming hot sweet potato, then come home and share it with my little sister. I told this story to my daughter, and she loved it — she brings it up now and then with a laugh: "When you were my age, sweet potato was only two cents a piece, and you always asked Granny — that's my Great Granny — for two cents to buy one and share with my auntie GuGu, but never with my uncle DaBai."

I remember during the mass travel of the Cultural Revolution, my father and mother joined the tide and went to Shanghai and Hangzhou for over a week. When transportation broke down and they couldn't get home on time, Grandma was left alone with the three of us. Every day the loudspeakers in the street blared out chaotic news — it felt like the world was falling apart. In those days there was no way to get word of travelers' whereabouts, and the whole household waited with straining eyes. Grandma grew desperate and began to weep. When we children saw her crying, we all cried too — young and old alike, terrified of losing our anchor, weeping together in a heap. Even the neighbors wept with us.

The second year of the Cultural Revolution, because Grandma was classified as a "landlord" by origin, the hospital's Rebel faction ordered her to stand in the street every day, hanging a sign around her neck that read "Counter-Revolutionary Landlord Woman." Poor Grandma, trembling on her bound feet, forced to endure such humiliation. This left a deep wound on us children — we simply could not reconcile our kind, gentle grandma with the image of a hated landlord's wife. Fortunately, my parents sensed things were turning dangerous and quickly decided to send Grandma back to her home village to hide. They specially asked Uncle Xu, our family's most trusted friend and a three-generation "poor peasant", to escort her on the journey. When Uncle Xu returned, he told us that Grandma could not comprehend what was happening, and could not bear to leave the three grandchildren. Heartbroken and wronged, she wept the entire way. They traveled by bus, crossed a river by ferry, transferred to a train, then took a small steamer across Lake Chao — and finally had to walk ten li on foot to reach the village. That last walk took an entire day, and she nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

It was a blessing that Grandma was sent home when she was, because the situation soon deteriorated dramatically — armed factional fighting broke out. First, the young Red Guard factions — the "Criticize the Liaison Group" and the "Sweep Away the Black Line Group" — fought street battles with steel spikes and daggers. One clash took place right in front of our house. I remember we were terrified and fascinated at once. We children climbed up to the second story of one of the courtyard houses and watched through the street-facing window. I was timid; I only stole one glance — I saw the two sides facing off with steel pikes — then heard shouts of slogans and the sounds of combat. This was just the early phase of the armed struggle. Later, the two factions set up separate territories and began using real guns and cannons; we would often hear gunfire at night. Our whole family was secretly moved to the headquarters of the "Criticize the Liaison Group", and my parents became the core doctors at that faction's wartime hospital.

When the "Revolutionary Great Alliance" was formed and the factional fighting stopped, my mother brought Grandma back, and we resumed our daily life together. In the months Grandma had been gone, when we came home from school, the door was always locked. We wore keys around our necks and often had to go to the operating room to find our parents and wait until they finished surgery before we could go home. Only when Grandma returned did the house feel like a home again — life became settled and ordered.

Two photos capture this chapter in our family story. The first shows Grandma as I remember her — serene, dignified, in a traditional collar. The second is a family portrait from 1969: all of us, including Grandma and our young aunt, along with our dearest neighbors Mama He and Sister Xiaohui, gathered before the front door of our home.

I was thirteen when Grandmother developed oral cancer — a tumor the size of a goose egg swelled on her right cheek. When it first appeared, we children would often stroke it gently with our small hands, hoping it would slowly disappear. But the tumor only grew larger. Grandma herself said: "This is a poison tumor — I may not recover." In her final days, my uncle and cousin both came from the home village; it was my uncle who mainly tended her bedside. I heard Grandma murmur, "My children are all here now. It's time to go."

When Grandma died, the record said she was seventy-one, but her real age was probably sixty-nine. I remember she once told me she had added two years to her age, adopting my grandfather's age, as a way to remember him. My grandfather had died of starvation in the home village the year I was born, in 1960 — just like my paternal grandfather and my aunt on Dad's side, a victim of the Great Leap Forward. Grandmother never spoke of my grandfather's story, but you could see that she carried his memory with her, silently, in her heart, all those years.

— Written on September 22, 2007, on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival

外婆的回忆

我的外婆去世已经快半个世纪年了，可她老人家的慈祥音容仍时常浮现在眼前。

作为医生的父母工作太忙，所以第一个孩子一出生外婆就来帮忙，从此看顾我们三个孩子15年，直到她去世。据说我哥哥小时候不老实，外婆只好摇着摇篮，哼着催眠曲，不敢稍有懈怠，有时候一个瞌睡过去，摇篮牵绳的手一停，他便大哭大闹。外婆说，这孩子带得太辛苦，到两年后我出生的时候，她还后怕。没想到，我小时候乖极了，从不哭闹。就是可怜兮兮的，老害病，每病必吐，常伴有高烧。还有夜盲症，最要命的是脱肛的毛病，每次如厕十分痛苦，一片狼藉，外婆要小心翼翼把脱肛顶回去。外婆一辈子生养过10个儿女，夭折过半，看我这样子，老担心我活不长。还好，因为是医生家庭，有病能及时处理，加上外婆的悉心照看，我慢慢度过了病孱的童年。有外婆照顾的孩子是幸福的，外婆总是把家整理得井井有条，热饭热菜，我们的童年无忧无虑，父母也因此可以没日没夜全力扑在工作上。

外婆是旧式妇女，小脚，没念过书，少言寡语，性情温和，从来没见过她发脾气。外婆的生活十几年如一日，足不出户，刻苦本分，与世无争，街坊邻居无不夸赞。每天一大早，天还没亮，外婆就起床，开始梳洗，她总是把自己收拾得干干净净，开始一天的劳作。看孩子，做饭菜，一刻不停。稍有空闲，她就坐在门前纳鞋底。她把碎布条用浆糊黏上晒干，一针一线纳成结结实实的鞋底，我们全家大小的布鞋都是她老人家做的。一直到她去世，留下的一大箱鞋底，我们还穿了好几年，后来才开始买塑料底的成品鞋穿。

父母每个月给外婆三块钱，作为我们孩子的零用钱。外婆手很紧，因为她要保证这零用钱维持三个孩子到月底。记得每天可以从外婆那里讨来两三分钱，我常常到街头买来一个热腾腾的小红薯头，回家跟小妹分享。这个故事我跟女儿讲，她很爱听，不时拿出来说笑一番：when you were my age, sweet patato was only two cents a piece and you always asked Granny, that is my Great Granny, for two cents to buy one and share with my antie GuGu, but never with my uncle DaBai.

记得文革初期大串联的时候，爸爸妈妈也随大流去上海杭州串联了一个多星期，由于交通堵塞不能按时回家。外婆带我们三个孩子在家，每天听高音喇叭传出各种消息，给人兵荒马乱的感觉。当年通讯不便，行踪无从打听，一家大小望眼欲穿久等父母不回。外婆急了，开始垂泪，我们孩子看见外婆哭了，也都哭了，一家老小怕失去依靠而哭成一团，连邻居也陪着掉泪。

文革第二年，外婆由于地主成分，被医院造反派勒令每天挂"反革命地主婆子"的牌子站街示众。可怜外婆小脚，哆哆嗦嗦，却要受此羞辱。这对我们孩子刺激很大，我们无论如何也无法把慈祥的外婆跟可恶的地主婆联系起来。还好，父母感觉形势不对，很快决定送外婆回乡下老家躲避，特地请我们家的至交三代老贫农的徐叔叔一路护送。徐叔叔回来说，外婆无法理解发生的一切，又舍不得三个孙儿，委屈伤心，走一路哭一路。乘汽车，过轮渡，转火车，再乘小轮穿过巢湖，最后要步行10里才到老家。最后那步行，走了一整天，人几乎瘫软。

幸亏送外婆回了老家，后来的情势越来越遭，武斗开始了。先是两派小将（"批联部"和"扫黑线"）拿钢钎匕首在街头械斗。有一场械斗就在我家门前，还记得我们又害怕又好奇，几个孩子爬到院子里一家的二楼上，透过临街的窗户观战。我胆子小，只瞄了一眼，看见双方手拿钢钎对峙的样子，然后听到口号声和厮杀声。这还是武斗初期，后来双方割据，拿起了真枪真炮，常常夜里听到枪响。我们全家也被秘密转移到批联部的司令部去了，我父母因此成了批派战时医院的核心医生。

革命大联合的时候，武斗停止，妈妈把外婆接回来了，我们恢复了跟外婆朝夕相处的日子。外婆没来的时候，我们放学回家，家里总是锁着门，我们脖子上挂着钥匙，常常要到手术室去找父母，等父母手术完回家。外婆来了，家才象个家，生活安定而有秩序。

全家包括外婆和老姨，以及邻居至友何妈妈小卉姐在家门前合影，1969

我13岁那年，外婆患口腔癌，右腮长出鹅蛋大一个瘤子。记得瘤子刚起的时候，我们经常用小手抚摸，希望它慢慢消失。可是，那瘤子还是越长越大，外婆自己也说：这是个毒瘤子，怕好不了了。外婆临终前，舅舅和表哥都从老家赶来，最后几天主要是舅舅在床前伺候。我听外婆喃喃说，儿女都在身边，该走了。

外婆去世那年说是71岁，可实际年龄应该是69。我记得外婆生前跟我说过，她虚报了两岁，用的是外公的年龄，为的是做个纪念。外公在我出生的1960年，在老家饿死，跟我爷爷和姑姑一样成为大跃进的殉葬品。外婆虽然从来没有提过外公的故事，可以看出她一直默默在心中纪念着他。

记于2007年九月二十二日中秋节前夕

From 朝华午拾. Original Chinese: 《朝华之五：外婆的回忆》.

Morning Glory — Ch.3: The Little Red Guards

Before my career began, family and society shaped our character and worldview. 

**"Forever Be Chairman Mao's Little Red Guard"**

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, I was in the first grade, six years old. More than half a century later, some memories remain as vivid as yesterday.

The three of us siblings, wearing our Little Red Guard armbands, photographed in December 1966.

When the campaign to topple Liu Shaoqi began, the first thing I noticed was Liu's official portrait pasted upside down on the street-facing wall, marked with a red cross. Soon after, more and more long banners appeared across the main street: "Burn Liu Shaoqi!" "Deep-fry Liu Shaoqi!" Then, as negative teaching material, they screened the documentary *Liu Shaoqi Visits Indonesia*. The female narration was syrupy sweet, addressing him as "Chairman Liu" and "Jakarta" in every other breath — to my ears, she sounded like a female spy. Her voice was constantly drowned out by the slogans erupting from the audience: "Down with Liu Shaoqi, Defend Chairman Mao!" "Smash the arch-traitor, arch-spy, arch-scab Liu Shaoqi to the ground and trample him underfoot, never to rise again!" Wang Guangmei on screen was dressed conspicuously well, fitting the standard definition of a bourgeois stinking woman. Later, I saw several living newspaper dramas lampooning Liu — his features caricatured into a long horse face, a high-bridged nose, the classic villain's profile. I also remember a living newspaper piece called *Burning Down the British Chargé d'Affaires Office*, which portrayed the Capital Red Guards, righteous in their fury at British imperialism, acting with militant resolve to set fire to the British Embassy — an act of collective heroism (in reality, this was an extremely serious diplomatic incident that caused Zhou Enlai immense trouble and lasting fallout). I still recall the stage effect when they set the fire: they seemed to hurl a torch into the embassy, followed by a loud bang and a plume of thick smoke. I was in the front row and choked on the smoke, coughing hard, and I was genuinely startled. The artistic creativity of the revolutionary masses, producing such vivid stage realism, left a deep imprint on the mind of a six-year-old me.

Around this time came the campaign to "Destroy the Four Old's" (old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits) and establish the Four New's. Every household voluntarily surrendered items suspected of being "Four Old's" — copper coins, bracelets, ornaments, even ceramic toys of cats and dogs — to be publicly destroyed. The stone lions beside the stone bridge were toppled into the ditch by the young Red Guards; since they couldn't be smashed, chisels were used to disfigure them. The influence spread far: by early 1967, a "Revolutionary Spring Festival" was mandated. Adults had no holiday — they must persist in "grasping revolution and promoting production" — while all New Year celebrations and entertainments were cancelled. Even the traditional four-corner red envelope money for children was voluntarily suspended.

Some elderly people, lifelong habits unbroken, still called matches "foreign fire" and iron nails "foreign nails." These old terms originated in the pre-revolutionary era when China could not even produce matches and nails domestically and had to import them. But by 1966, such old terms could bring trouble. I once saw a tiny-footed old woman totter into a small shop and ask for "foreign fire." The shop assistant replied coldly: "Don't have any." When the old woman pointed to the goods on the counter, the assistant erupted in fury.

Before armed struggle erupted, great debates — the weapon of literary struggle — became prevalent. Even elementary school students debated each other, often turning red in the face. I was too young to get a word in, but I loved listening. What they debated I mostly can't recall, except for one recurring topic: the dialectical relationship between family background and individual performance. The affirmative position was "Heroes beget heroes," while the opposition stressed "What matters is personal conduct." Both sides seemed righteous and indignant, both could quote Chairman Mao's quotations, both seemed to have good arguments. Later, my elder brother took the lead in forming a Little Red Guard revolutionary organization (with a fifth-grader serving as strategist behind the scenes), calling it the "Dagger Squad." Every grade had its representatives. Through this connection, I too was honorably swept up in the revolutionary movement — duties like carrying the paste bucket for the young fighters putting up big-character posters. I remember my brother and his comrades setting up a "Dagger Squad Office" at a table in the corridor of my father's hospital. The squad's most glorious exploit, the one I remember most clearly, was an assault on a school meeting. The squad learned that the school leadership was holding a faculty meeting at seven in the evening and decided on a surprise raid. I had the good fortune to follow my brother on this revolutionary action. I remember the meeting was in progress when the squad burst into the room, shouting: "What kind of black meeting are you holding here?" The leaders, seeing it was a bunch of children, didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and explained that this was a routine school affairs meeting. The squad leader declared: "Then we're attending too." Some leader apparently advised that a work meeting wasn't convenient for students. That set off an explosion. The young fighters, each more righteous than the last, delivered their rebuttals: We are Chairman Mao's Little Red Guards — if we don't attend, who will? You hold black meetings behind the backs of the revolutionary young fighters — how poisonous your intentions must be! Not only will we attend, we demand you honestly hand over all previous meeting records. If you dare not disclose your meeting records, you must have unspeakable criminal aims, and we will rebel against you. And so on. I remember the school leaders finally conceded, agreeing that young fighter representatives could attend all faculty meetings. I was as excited as everyone else, filled with the pride of this initial victory in struggle. Unfortunately, I suffered from night blindness at the time, and on the way back my vision went completely dark. An older girl from a higher grade held my hand and walked me home (my brother, as rebel leader, stayed behind to discuss the next phase of the struggle strategy). This revolutionary action enormously boosted the young fighters' morale and opened the prelude to rebellion against the elementary school leadership, soon followed by a flood of big-character posters exposing the schemes of the capitalist-roaders.

In the early days of the Great Revolution, the three of us siblings, led by our brother every day, would stand before the Precious Book platform for morning pledges and evening reports — earnest and ceremonial, and we kept it up for a long time.

朝华午拾 · 红小兵

职业生涯之前，家庭和社会塑造了我们性格和世界观。父母是天，兄妹是我的依靠和牵挂。

"永做毛主席的红小兵"

一九六六年文革开始的时候，我在小学一年级，六岁。半个多世纪了，有些记忆依然清晰如昨。

兄妹仨臂佩红小兵袖章摄于文革1966年12月8日。

打倒刘少奇的时候，最先是看到临街墙上把刘主席的标准像倒贴过来，打上红叉。后来，看到越来越多的长幅标语在大街上，"火烧刘少奇"，"油炸刘少奇"。接着，作为反面教材，放映了纪录片《刘少奇访问印度尼西亚》，片子里面的女音讲解，甜腻腻的，一口一个刘主席和雅加达，当时听起来觉得象女特务，不断被场内此起彼伏的口号声淹没："打倒刘少奇，保卫毛主席！""把大叛徒、大内奸、大工贼刘少奇打翻在地，并踏上一只脚，叫他永世不得翻身！"电影上的王光美，打扮得很光鲜，符合资产阶级臭婆娘的标准定义。再后来，看到过几个批判刘少奇的活报剧，刘的形象被脸谱化，马脸，高鼻子，一副奸臣像。记得同时还有一个活报剧《火烧英国代办处》，演的是首都红卫兵，对英帝国主义义愤填膺，同仇敌忾，机智果断纵火焚烧英国大使馆的光荣业绩（这是一起非常严重的外交事件，给周恩来的工作带来很多麻烦和后遗症）。还记得，舞台上演纵火时的场面，好像是把火把往使馆内一扔，砰一声炸响，一股浓烟就冒出来，我在前排，呛得直咳嗽，也吓了一大跳。革命群众的艺术创造力所造成的舞台逼真效果，在一个六岁孩子幼小的心灵里刻下了深深的印记。

这前后的破"四旧"（旧思想、旧文化、旧风俗、旧习惯），立四新，我们各家各户主动把涉嫌四旧的物品，比如，铜钱、手镯、装饰品，甚至小猫小狗的瓷玩具，统统缴公销毁。石桥旁的石头狮子也被红卫兵小将推倒在河沟，因为实在砸不烂，就用凿子破相。影响所及，67年初要求"过革命化的春节"，大人没有节假，坚持抓革命、促生产，同时取消了所有过年的庆祝和消遣活动，连四角压岁钱也自觉停止发放了。

当时有些老人一辈子的习惯改不了，仍然称火柴为"洋火"，铁钉为"洋钉"等。老称呼源于旧中国日常生活品连火柴和铁钉都无力生产，需要进口。可是到了66年，这些旧称呼会带来麻烦。我就看到过小脚老太太颤颤巍巍到小卖店要买"洋火"，营业员冷冷一句："没有"。当老人指着柜台里面的商品，营业员就大发雷霆。

武斗开始之前，用于文斗的大辩论开始盛行，连小学生也互相辩论，往往争得面红耳赤。我太小插不上嘴，但是很愿意旁听。辩论什么大多记不清了，但是有一个题目是反复辩论过的：家庭出身和自我表现的辩证关系。正方的论点是"老子英雄儿好汉"，反方强调"重在个人表现"。感觉双方都义正词严，都懂得引用毛主席语录，似乎哪一方都很有道理。

后来，我哥哥领头成立红小兵革命组织（背后有个五年级的孩子做军师），叫"匕首小分队"，其中各年级都有代表。由于这层关系，我也光荣卷入革命运动，比如给贴大字报的小将提浆糊筒之类。我印象我哥哥一伙还在我父亲的医院走廊尽头，摆了张桌子，设立了"匕首小分队"办事处。小分队的光荣事迹记得最清楚的，是一次大闹会场的事件。小分队得知晚上七点学校领导开教务会议，于是决定来个突然袭击。我有幸跟着哥哥参加了这一革命行动。记得会议进行中，小分队一行冲进屋内，叫道："你们这是开的什么黑会？"领导看是一帮孩子，哭笑不得，解释说，这是例行的校务工作会议。分队头头说："那我们也要参加"。好像是某领导劝告说，工作会议，学生参加不方便。这一下炸了窝，小将们个个义正词严予以驳斥：我们是毛主席的红小兵，我们不参加谁参加？你们背着革命小将开黑会，用心何其毒也。我们不但要参加，还要你们老实交出以前会议的所有记录。你们不敢公开会议记录，就肯定有不可告人的罪恶目的，我们就要造你们的反。诸如此类。记得校领导最后让步，同意小将可以派代表参加所有校务会议。我跟大家一样兴奋，充满了斗争初步胜利的豪情。不过，倒霉的是我当时患有夜盲症，回来路上，两眼一片漆黑，是由一位高年级大姐姐，牵着我手送我回家的（哥哥作为造反派头头留下来商量下一步的斗争策略）。这次革命行动极大地鼓舞了小将的斗志，拉开了向小学领导造反的序幕，紧接着是铺天盖地的揭露走资派阴谋的大字报。

大革命初期，我们兄妹三每天在哥哥带领下，在宝书台前，早请示，晚汇报，煞有介事，坚持了很久。

From 朝华午拾. Original Chinese: 《朝华之三: 红小兵》.

A Scholarly Family

Ever since Qu Yuan, Chinese literati have been fond of tracing their ancestry to illustrious roots — "descendant of Gaoyang the Divine Emperor" and such declarations — to signal their noble bloodlines. When I was compiling and editing A Collection of Master Li's Posthumous Writings: Prefaces, I came across this passage in the first piece, "Preface to the Li Family Genealogy," explaining the origin of the family name Li:

"The forerunners of the Li clan, surnamed Ying, traced their descent from Gaoyang of the Zhuanxu lineage. One descendant, Gao Yao, served as Grand Justice (Dali) under Emperor Yao, and the family adopted 'Li' (理, meaning 'principle' or 'justice') as their surname from the title. During the reign of King Zhou of Shang, a descendant named Li Zhen fled with his mother to the lost land of Yihou. Starving, they survived by eating plums (李, li) from the trees. To evade King Zhou's persecution, they changed their surname from 理 (Justice) to the homophonous 李 (Plum), and their descendants have borne this name ever since."

In my earlier, more perfunctory readings of the Posthumous Writings, I had mostly skipped Master Li's abstruse classical prose, drawn instead to the more accessible "modern writings" of my two granduncles in the appendix. As a result, I never registered this origin story. But my daughter once asked me: "Dad, you said our family name Li means plum — how come? Does that mean we Li family like plums in particular?" I had no idea whether the surname Li was actually connected to the fruit, so I dodged the question and told little Tiantian instead that statistically, Li had risen to become the most common surname in China — and perhaps the world. Even in our tiny Buffalo office there were two Uncle Li's — one of Korean descent. But eight hundred years ago, we were all one family.

Master Li's own account of this family history — the fall from officialdom, the change from 理 to 李, the "pointing at the tree and taking its name" — struck me as too sparse. So I searched online and found a fuller treatise, On Gao Yao, Blood Ancestor of the Li Surname. It turned out that the primogenitor Gao Yao served Emperor Yao and Shun as Grand Justice — a minister of incorruptible integrity, whose achievements in statecraft were so esteemed that Emperor Shun personally named him his successor. Even Confucius honored him as one of the Four Sages of antiquity. In ancient China, officials took their office titles as surnames, hence 理氏 (the Li of Justice). Tragically, Sage Gao Yao died before ascending the throne. Generations later, under the depraved King Zhou of Shang, a descendant named Li Zheng served as Grand Justice with the same upright character — and for his honesty, the debauched king had him executed. His wife Qihe fled with their young son Lizhen to the lost land of Yihou (in present-day Henan). Starving, they spotted fruit on a tree and ate to survive. Afraid of the king's pursuers, Lizhen dared not keep the surname 理. In gratitude for the "wood-seed" (muzi, 木子 — the character parts that combine to form 李) that saved them, he changed the family name to Li. From this seed, the Li lineage — the largest family name under heaven — branched and flourished across generations.

I told my daughter: not only do we come from a scholarly family, we are the direct descendants of Sage Gao Tao himself.

Master Li — Li Xiansheng, courtesy name Xuexiang — was my great-grandfather. A Collection of Master Li's Posthumous Writings, compiled in vernacular classical Chinese (also called "modern classical style"), gathers his surviving works — poems, lyrics, celebratory couplets, elegies, prefaces, and miscellaneous essays — transcribed by his disciples and privately published in the 1930s.

The Posthumous Writings also includes works by my two granduncles: elder granduncle Li Yingwen and younger granduncle Li Yinghui. My great-grandfather was exceptionally open-minded about education, selling off family land to send his sons (my granduncles) to study in Japan. My own grandfather (Li Yingqi, the second son), however, was kept at home to manage the family estate, forfeiting the chance for overseas education. It's said that every year, my grandfather would travel to Nanjing to remit money from land sales to his two brothers in Japan. In the early 1920s, the two granduncles returned with law and political science degrees from Meiji University — rare credentials for that era, and a springboard for significant careers. That their subsequent achievements remained relatively modest (disproportionate to their education) and confined to the local sphere, I attribute to three factors: first, the times were harsh, with China in ceaseless turmoil from war and upheaval throughout the early 20th century; second, my great-grandfather was indifferent to fame and fortune, urging his children to carry on the family mission of local education rather than venture into the wider world; third, both granduncles suffered from poor health — they lacked the physical constitution for "revolution." Elder Granduncle Yingwen was bedridden for years, and it was country life that gradually restored his health. Younger Granduncle Yinghui died tragically young. Yet their writings reveal open minds deeply engaged with the issues of their day. Besides rustic pastoral pieces like "Li Yingwen — Elegy for a Dead Dove," they also produced fiery patriotic works, such as "Li Yinghui — Manifesto of the Anti-Japanese Association (Modeled on the Denunciation of Empress Wu)" and "Li Yingwen — Preface for Wang Joining the Volunteer Army."

My grandfather died in the great famine of my birth year — a calamity that was three-tenths natural disaster, seven-tenths man-made catastrophe. Among the three brothers, only Elder Granduncle Yingwen was fortunate: he passed away peacefully at home in 1965, surrounded by every Li family descendant who had gathered for a grand funeral (see the family photograph below). I still remember each of us grandchildren, after the coffin was lowered, taking turns to scoop up a handful of yellow earth. As an enlightened gentry figure and a "united front target," Granduncle Yingwen had been treated with courtesy by the local government and was even elected as a county representative to the People's Congress, thus escaping the reach of political campaigns. That he departed this world the year before the Cultural Revolution began was an even greater stroke of fortune — otherwise, given the complexity of his personal history, he would have suffered terribly in that great upheaval. My maternal grandmother, who raised us through those years, was dragged out and struggled against during the Cultural Revolution, forced to wear a "Landlord Element" placard every day, subjected to humiliation that cast a lasting shadow over our childhood.

The above accounts for my "scholarly family" background — except that by my father's generation, the family fortune had seriously declined. Beset by foreign invasion and civil war, the country was in chaos, and life grew harder each day. My father often went hungry and cold as a child. In its heyday, the Li family's Chongshi Academy had enjoyed wide renown, its students scattered across the land like peaches and plums filling the world. Yet this decline proved a hidden blessing: when the Land Reform came, our family was classified as "Small-Scale Land Lessors" rather than one of the "Four Categories" (landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements — later expanded to include "rightists" designated in 1957). This spared us, the younger generation, from the brunt of political persecution.

The matter of "Small-Scale Land Lessor" classification carried its own stories. When we were children, family class status was an all-important political label: children of "poor and lower-middle peasants" were considered born revolutionaries with "red roots and upright shoots," innately superior. Children of the "landlord, rich peasant, counter-revolutionary, bad element, and rightist" classes faced extreme social discrimination — denied opportunities for factory jobs, schooling, and more — and suffered constant bullying in daily life. I remember a girl in our elementary class who came from a landlord family; she cut such a pitiable figure, never able to hold her head up, yet classmates still taunted her relentlessly. In such an environment, we were all acutely sensitive about our family background. My own family situation was precarious: my mother was born into a landlord family — a pitiable sort of landlord, really; my maternal grandfather had saved every penny from a small business, denied himself fine food and clothing, tightened the whole family's belts, and poured everything into buying land in hopes of modest prosperity — and in return won a landlord label. This became a fiercely guarded family secret. Fortunately, a child's class status followed the father, so every time we filled out a form, the "family class" box read "Small-Scale Land Lessor." The problem was, for a long time, we had no idea what this obscure, tongue-twisting classification actually meant politically, which left us perpetually anxious. I remember classmates discussing our strange class label. One self-proclaimed authority declared: "Small-Scale Land Lessor — that means little landlord!" (It wasn't that far off, actually.) And with that, we were suddenly shoved into the camp of "class enemies," utterly mortified. My cousin suffered the same anxiety. Then one day, he announced triumphantly that, after deep research — studying Chairman Mao's works and relevant Party policy documents — he had discovered that "Small-Scale Land Lessor" was essentially equivalent to "Upper-Middle Peasant," which placed us squarely among the "united objects" of the revolutionary ranks. What's more, Chairman Mao himself came from an upper-middle-peasant family. These momentous findings brought us immense relief.

The old family home in Keshan — I visited it as a child, when my cousin led us up the mountain; it felt like the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, remote and secluded. A few years ago, on a trip home to China, my brother drove us back there. It remains a forgotten corner to this day — a single mountain road, bumpy and dusty, narrowing to barely a car's width as you approach. My ancestors must have chosen this Jiangnan hillside deliberately, building their grand compound in a spirit of retreat from the world, carving out their own Peach Blossom Spring. My father's memoir, Decades Through Wind and Rain, contains a vivid description of the family school there:

A Glance Back at the Old Residence

A deep courtyard mansion, antique and elegant, nestled against the mountain and facing a stream, oriented east to west. Above the main gate, the couplet "The Nation's Grace, the Family's Joy / May Men Live Long, May Years Bring Harvest" stood steadfast through the seasons. The main quarters comprised five large rooms in the front row and five in the back, joined in the middle by three open-air courtyards flanked by two wings on either side. The three rows, each two stories high, formed an integrated whole. Upstairs, a continuous corridor circled the entire compound — a gallery on which one could stroll freely. To the left stood two "new rooms"; to the right and rear, a row of auxiliary quarters. The front courtyard, with its large and small gates, contained seven flower terraces, where pines and cypresses complemented one another, blossoms clustered in splendor, and fruit filled the air with fragrance. Among the flowers: plum, chrysanthemum, osmanthus, rose, briar, and sacred bamboo. Among the fruits: persimmon, peach, apricot, plum, and jujube. Every doorway was flanked by stone drums and lions; the courtyards were paved in marble. The bricks and tiles were custom-fired in the family's own kiln, of the highest quality; the timber, first-rate, was floated down the river from Jiangxi on rafts — a testament to the master-builder's meticulous vision. The upper floor of the main building served as classrooms and student dormitories; the lower floor and the "new rooms" were the family living quarters; the foot-house housed the wine-making workshop, kitchen, and firewood store.

书香门第

中国文人自屈原始，就喜欢炫耀自己的祖上，"帝高阳之苗裔兮"云云，以示自己根正苗红，血统高贵。早年整理校对《李老夫子遗墨：序类》，第一篇"李氏创修宗谱序"也提到"李氏"的来源如下：

"按李氏之先，自嬴姓顓頊高阳氏曰皋陶者，为堯大理官，始为理氏，至殷紂时有曰利贞者，偕母逃难于伊候之墟，食李实以全生，复改理为李，子孙因以为氏焉。"

以前读《李老夫子遗墨》比较偷懒，基本跳过晦涩难懂的李老夫子正文，而对《遗墨附录》中更贴近近現代生活的两位叔爷的"时文"感兴趣，因此对这段"李氏"来源的掌故没有印象。女儿小时候问我："Dad, you said our family name Li means plum, how come? Does that mean we Li family like plums in particular?" 我当时不知道"李氏"跟李子到底有沒有关联，只好顾左右而言他，告诉甜甜，据最新统计，"李氏"似乎已经上升到中国的（可能也是世界上的）第一大姓，就連小小的水牛城辦公室就有兩位 Uncle Li's, 其中一位還是朝鮮族裔，但八百年前都是一家人哪。

李老夫子對祖上家道中落、改"理"為"李"、"指树为姓"的歷史，撰述失之簡陋。于是上網進一步搜尋資料，查得《李姓血祖皋陶并李姓考》。原來，李家的始祖皋陶在堯舜時代就任國家重臣"大理官"（司法部長），清明正則，功勛卓著，經邦緯國，英名蓋世，舜帝親立為接班人，甚至孔夫子也拜其为上古"四圣"之一。古人以官为氏，因称理氏。所惜圣皋陶帝業未举而病亡。至商紂王朝，圣皋陶的后代理征仍繼任理官，正直清廉，为荒淫昏庸的纣王所不容，终遭殺身之祸。于是，"理征的妻子契和氏带着幼子利贞逃了出来，奔于伊候之墟（今河南境内），饥饿不堪，见一树上结有果实，便采了来吃，母子得以活命，其后，利贞畏于纣王的追捕而不敢姓理，于是以'木子'救命之恩，改称李氏"。天下第一大姓李氏由此而宗派繁衍，生生不息。

我告訴女儿：咱們非但出身書香門第，還是大圣人皋陶的传人呢。

李老夫子（李咸昇，號學香）是我的曾祖父。《李老夫子遺墨》（現代文言，又稱"時文"）收集了其徒子徒孫傳抄的李老夫子遺作，包括詩詞歌賦、喜壽輓聯、序傳雜文等，由他的門生編輯成冊，內部發行於上個世紀三十年代。

《遗墨》還收錄了我的兩位叔爺（伯祖父李應文和叔祖父李應會）的作品。曾祖父非常開明，重視教育，不惜變賣田產送孩子（我的叔爺）去日本留學深造。但我的爺爺（李應期，行二）被曾祖父留下來幫助理家，失去了留學機會。據說，我爺爺當年每年去南京一趟，將家產變賣的銀子匯款到日本，供給兩個兄弟的學業。兩位叔爺上個世紀二十年代初分別獲得明治大學法學士和政學士學位歸國。在那個年代，有這樣教育背景的人才很難得，本可做一番大事業。他們後來的建樹不大（與其教育水平不成比例），影響止於本地，我猜想原因有三：一是年代不濟，中國自上世紀初開始，兵荒馬亂不斷；二是曾祖父淡泊名利，進而要求孩子們繼承父業，在家鄉興辦教育，而不是鼓勵孩子們出去闖天下；三是兩位叔爺身體都不大好，沒有"革命"的本錢：伯祖父久卧病榻，是鄉間生活使他休養生息，逐漸康復；叔祖父更是不幸，英年早逝。但是從他們所著文字，可以看出，他們思想開明，關註時事。除了鄉居閑篇如"李應文－哀死鴿文"外，也不乏豪情熱血之作，如"李應會－抗日會宣言（仿討武曌檄）"，"李應文－王君加入義勇軍序"。

我爺爺在我出生那年死於三分天災、七分人禍的大飢荒。三兄弟中，就數伯祖父李應文比較幸運，1965年在老家壽終正寢。李家所有晚輩全部到齊，舉行隆重葬禮（李家合影見下）。還記得我們孫兒輩，在棺柩落地後，每人輪流掬一捧黃土。伯祖父生前作為開明紳士和"統戰對象"，受到當地政府的禮遇，曾經當選為縣人大代表，幸免於政治運動的波及。仙逝於文革前一年，更是大幸，否則，以他歷史上的複雜經歷，大革命中少吃不了苦頭。一直看顧我們長大的外祖母在文革中，就被揪鬥，每日掛著"地主分子"的牌子，受盡羞辱，給我們幼小心靈蒙上陰影。

以上可算是我的"書香門第"背景。只不過，到我父親這一輩，由於國家內憂外患（抗日和內戰），連年戰亂，家道中落，生活日漸艱難。我父親小時候忍飢挨凍的事常有。想當年，李家"崇實學校"在當地可是富有盛名，桃李滿天下。不過，家道衰落倒成為一件好事：土改的时候，家庭由此被定為"小土地出租"，而不是"地主"、"富農"這樣的"四類分子"（指的是地主、富農、反革命、壞分子四類，後來又加上57年劃分的"右派"），使得我們後輩少受政治運動的衝擊。

說到家庭成分"小土地出租"，還有一些故事。在我們小時候，家庭成分是一個很重要的政治標簽："貧下中農"子弟被認為天生革命，"根正苗紅"，高人一等；而"地、富、反、壞、右"子弟受到極端的社會歧視，被剝奪很多機會（招工、上學等），而且日常生活中也常常受欺侮。還記得我們小學時班上有一個女生，家庭出生地主，很可憐的樣子，總是抬不起頭。就這樣，還常常有同學羞辱她。在這樣的環境裡，我們每個人對家庭出身自然很敏感。我家情況不是很妙，母親出身地主（是個可憐的土地主：外祖父做小生意賺了點錢，捨不得吃和穿，一家人勒緊褲腰帶，卯足勁置辦田產，以期小康，換來了一個地主帽子），成了我們的一個死守的秘密。好在子女家庭出身隨父，所以我們每次填表，家庭成分欄都是"小土地出租"。問題出在，很長一段時間，我們搞不清這個比較偏僻拗口的成分的政治含義，心裡不免惴惴。記得在班上，有幾個同學議論我家這個奇怪的出身，其中一個自作聰明地說："小土地出租，就是小地主"（其實這個理解不算離譜），一下子把我們推到"階級敵人"陣營，讓我們無地自容。我的堂兄也有同樣的煩惱。有一天，他很高興地宣佈，經過深入研究，學習毛主席著作和有關黨的政策文件，發現"小土地出租"大體相當於"上中農"，屬於革命隊伍的團結對象。而且黨的主席毛澤東也出身於上中農家庭。這些偉大發現使我們大大松了一口氣。

磕山老家，小时候去过，堂兄还领着爬山，感觉是个花果山，僻静偏远。几年前回国探亲，哥哥开车带我们又去了趟老家，至今仍是被遗忘的角落，一条山区小路，颠簸起伏，尘土飞扬。临近老家，山路狭窄到勉强可以过一辆车。当年，先辈择此江南山地而居，大兴土木，大约很有些躲避尘世，开辟桃园的想法。老爸的回忆录《风雨几春秋》中对老家的李家学堂有生动记述：

故居回眸

深宅大院，古色古香，依山面溪，坐东朝西。大门上"国恩家庆，人寿年丰"对联经年常在。正房是前后各五大间，中间一排由三个天井和两边二个厢房组成。这样前后三排，上下两层，构成一体。楼上形成环状贯通的走马楼，左边有两间"新屋"，右边及后面是一排裙屋。前面院子，有大小院门，院内七个花台，松柏相衬，花簇绵秀，果实飘香。花有梅、菊、桂、及玫瑰、蔷薇、天竹；果有柿、桃、杏、李、枣等。所有大门均有石鼓、石狮，天井是大理石铺成。建房的砖瓦是自家建窑特制，质量堪称上乘；木材取自江西，放排顺江而下，更是一流，足见主事者之匠心。正屋楼上是教学场所和学生宿舍，楼下和"新屋"是家人生活区，脚屋是酿酒作坊和厨房、柴库。

From 朝华午拾 (Morning Flowers Collected at Dusk). Original Chinese: 《朝华之二：书香门第》.

For many young people, leaving one's homeland or staying behind can be an entangled, irresolvable contradiction — much like the dilemma in Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged: those inside the walls gaze out at the dazzling world beyond; no matter how comfortable life within may be, they can never shake the regret of not having tasted the outside firsthand. Those who venture far, having endured every hardship, come at last to understand: homesickness cannot be filled with material things. That was exactly how I felt back then. After graduate school I dug in for five years — my work and life were on a steady upward climb, the future bright. Yet watching my classmates and friends leave for abroad one group after another, I felt an inexplicable emptiness. In the end I caught the last train out. But the sky over a foreign land was so strange — the constellations I knew from childhood summer nights, the fairy tales and daydreams that attended them, could never again be pieced together whole.

I recall those first days in England. Though I was already past thirty, though I'd come to Manchester alongside many friends, though I'd long since weathered in Beijing years of wandering far from home town — leaving my native land still carried an indescribable anguish: like a blade of grass torn out by the roots, battered by wind and rain, a vast bottomless emptiness and disorientation welling up within. At the start of term, in front of the student union building, every kind of student club was recruiting — bustling crowds, peals of laughter — yet I seemed to inhabit another dimension altogether, displaced from reality, unable to grasp the commotion around me, powerless to dispel a nameless melancholy.

Then came a decade of severance. Save for the companionship of Huaxia Wenzhai (China News Digest), and the occasional holiday phone calls or greeting cards to family, I had lost all contact with the motherland. Little did I know that this was precisely the decade in which China underwent its most earth-shaking transformation. Not until my first trip home in 2001 did I realize, with a jolt, that I had once again been displaced in time and space. Standing on the familiar yet alien streets of Beijing, watching the endless streams of people, I felt with an incurable certainty that this world no longer had anything to do with me. Was this the city that had left me so many warm memories? The Beijing I'd yearned for in my dreams now stood before me like a stranger! In the ancient capital I took such pride in, I could not understand the bustle around me, nor could I dispel that nameless melancholy.

Only my childhood hometown remains forever vivid in my mind, never fading. Thirty years have distilled the villages of southern Anhui into thick oil paints: golden yellow, fiery crimson. Endless fields of rapeseed flowers stretching to the horizon, and mountainsides aflame with azaleas in full bloom.

I have passed through countless cities and towns, witnessed many breathtaking scenes — the Gold Coast of Australia, the bays and forests of Vancouver, the autumn leaves of American national parks, and Niagara Falls in Buffalo — searching all the way, yet never finding rapeseed flowers and azaleas like those of home. Not until I returned to visit my family, catching the rapeseed bloom by chance, did I once again behold those patchwork fields of gold and breathe in the fragrance of the soil of home. I captured those golden expanses on video and stored them away, afraid they might slip away again.

Homesickness, like love, is an eternal theme of literature and art. From Li Bai's "Raising my head, I gaze at the bright moon; lowering it, I think of home," to Tao Yuanming's "Come Away Home"; from Chyi Yu's "Olive Tree" to Fei Xiang's "Clouds of Home"; from Ma Sicong's "Homesickness Melody" to the American folk song "Five Hundred Miles." In the still of night, in a foreign land, a gentle folk ballad flows like a quiet stream and soaks into my heart — it is the Kingston Trio singing "Five Hundred Miles," the shared melancholy of every wanderer under heaven.

Homesickness is an invisible net — where does the road of wandering end?

Written October 6, 2005, Buffalo

乡愁是一张无形的网（下）

对于很多年轻人，去国和留守是一对纠缠不清的矛盾：《围城》内外，城内的人看外面的精彩世界，哪怕城里舒适顺遂，也终觉没有亲历外部生活的遗憾；远游的人历尽艰辛终于明白，乡愁无法用物质来填补。我当年就是这样心情。研究生毕业一扎就是五年，工作生活蒸蒸日上，前途一片光明，可看见身边的同学朋友一批批出国，心里觉得空落落的。终于赶上末班车，然而，异乡的天空却如此陌生，小时候夏夜乘凉所识的星空，连同当年的童话和遐想，从此再也无法拼接完整。

想起初到英国的情形：尽管已经三十出头，尽管有很多同学一起来到曼城，尽管此前早已经历过离开家乡在京城的多年飘荡，但远离故国仍然伴随着难以名状的痛苦：好像一棵连根拔掉的小草，任由风吹雨打，内心充满着深不见底的空荡和恍惚。学期伊始，学生会楼前各种学生自发的俱乐部正招兵买马，熙熙攘攘，一片欢声笑语，我却似乎处在另一个时空，与现实错置，不能理解身边的喧嚣，也无法排解莫名的惆怅。

继而是十年的隔绝：除了《华夏文摘》的陪伴，以及偶然逢年过节给家人电话贺卡问候以外，完全失去了和祖国的交流。殊不知，这正是中国翻天覆地的十年。直到2001年第一次回国探亲，才猛然发现又一次时空错置。站在熟悉又陌生的北京大街上，看着熙熙攘攘的人流，不可救药地感觉到，这个世界已然与我无关。这就是曾经留给我那么多温馨回忆的城市么？我梦牵魂萦的北京，如今形如陌路！在我引为自豪的故都，我不能理解身边的喧嚣，也无法排解莫名的惆怅。

只有我的童年故乡，在我的脑海永远鲜活，永不退色。三十年时光把皖南家乡化成了浓浓的油彩：金黄、火红。那是一望无际的油菜花，和漫山遍野的映山红。

走过无数城市乡镇，看到过许多摄人心魄的美景，澳大利亚的黄金海岸，温哥华的海湾和森林，美国国家公园的红叶和水牛城的尼亚拉加大瀑布，一路寻觅，可就是见不到家乡那样的油菜花和映山红。直到回国省亲，正赶上油菜花开的季节，才重温了田野的片片金黄，嗅到了家乡的土地芬芳。我把这片片金黄摄入录象镜头，收藏起来，生怕它再次丢失。

思乡与爱情一样，是文学艺术的永恒主题。从李白的"举头望明月，低头思故乡"到陶渊明的《归去来兮辞》，从齐豫的《橄榄树》到费翔的《故乡的云》，从马思聪的《思乡曲》到美国民歌《离家５００里》。夜阑人静，异国他乡，轻柔舒缓的民歌象涓涓流水，浸润着我的心，那是 Kingston Trio 演唱的《离家５００里》，全天下游子共同的怅惘。

乡愁是一张无形的网，流浪的路何处是尽头？

记于２００５年十月六日，水牛城

From 《朝华午拾》. Original Chinese: 《乡愁是一张无形的网》.

最近，我大学时期的老同学、也是"老下级"（上下铺——他睡在我下铺，hence），老丁，回忆往事，在同学群里感慨道：

【老丁原诗】毕业临别赠言

一九八一年十二月二十七日晚，安庆师范学院英语系师生在迎江寺小餐馆举行毕业聚会。会后回校，同学之间互相在日记本上签字留念。情之所致，即兴拙作分别签赠诸位同学留念：

同窗千日形与影，
别后东西难相逢。
学府同耕书山上，
天涯共航学海中。
战士何愁风霜烈，
园丁但求花木荣。
慧眼识得千里马，
奉献四化到底红。

老下级先唱了，我这个小他十一岁的老上级岂能不和？因此上：

【和诗】

四十四载梦与踪，
鬓边风雪各西东。
当年共挤青春铺，
今日同看夕照红。

>

半生代码半生酒，
一路浮沉一路风。
莫道人间书卷老，
至今胸中有彩虹。

和罢，意犹未尽，因作文遥寄：

【遥寄丁兄】

忆昔辛酉岁杪，霜钟初动，雪意微侵。诸生会饮于迎江古寺之侧，小馆孤灯，杯酒纵横。时则皖水无声，振风塔影摇于寒月；长街将寂，少年意气犹腾。酒酣耳热，相与执手题襟，或悲或歌，竟不能已。

嗟乎！同窗数载，晨分灯火，夜共芸编。上铺下榻之间，笑谈曾惊邻舍；残灯破卷之际，壮怀每指青云。或听VOA于月下，或诵灵格风于霜晨。纸短情长，墨痕狼藉，而青春之气，已横绝一世矣。

未几而东西南北，各赴尘途。兄则振羽桐城，我亦飘蓬海角。或困顿于风波，或沉浮于名利；或折腰稻粱，或白首江湖。昔日青衿少年，而今霜侵两鬓；当年纵谈四海，间或插科打诨，而今各守孤城。人生忽忽，驹隙而已。每念旧游，如闻远钟。

然则世路虽艰，壮心未死。忆当年书山并辔，学海同舟，未尝不自许为天下奇士也。今虽老矣，犹幸肝胆未寒，灯火未灭。酒后谈AI之变，犹如当年纵论四化；夜深观天地新局，尚存击楫中流之志。

故今日援笔和君，不为雕章，只为故人。愿兄老骥伏枥，长怀千里之心；愿我辈残年未晚，犹作时代之客。异日若得重聚，再携浊酒，同话少年。彼时纵黄发满头，亦可大笑曰：

"当年书生意气，至今尚未凉也。"

English Translation (archaic style)

Lao Ding's Original — Graduation Verses

On the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month, in the year 1981, the faculty and students of the English Department of Anqing Normal College forgathered at a modest tavern beside the River-Welcoming Temple for our farewell revels. Returning thereafter to the college grounds, we inscribed parting words in one another's journals, as the spirit moved us. What follows are verses composed in that hour of exaltation, offered to my several schoolfellows:

A thousand days we shared one shadow, one form;
Now East and West divide us after this day.
Together we tilled the mountain of learning,
Together we sail the sea of scholarship.
What warrior feareth the biting frost?
The gardener asketh only that his blooms flourish.
Let the keen eye discern the thousand-*li* steed,
And in service of the Four Modernizations, burn ever crimson.

William's Reply — Forty-Four Years After

Forty-four winters of dreams and traces,
Frost at the temples, scattered East and West.
Once we crowded together on youth's narrow bunk;
Now we watch the same sunset glow from afar.

>

Half a life in code, half a life in wine;
A road of ups and downs, a road of wind.
Speak not of yellowing pages and aging scholars —
Still the rainbow beareth up within this breast.

A Letter Sent from Afar to Brother Ding

I recall the waning days of the xinyou year: the frost-bells had scarce begun to sound, and a whisper of snow hung in the air. We, the graduating class, gathered to drink beside the ancient River-Welcoming Temple — a lonely lamp in a humble tavern, cups raised without restraint. In that hour the Wan River lay silent, and the shadow of Zhenfeng Pagoda swayed upon the cold moon; the long avenue was soon to fall still, yet the ardour of youth still surged. Drink-warmed and flushed with feeling, we clasped hands and wrote upon one another's garments. Some wept, some sang, and none could bring themselves to cease.

Ah! For several years we shared the dawn-lamp and the midnight tome. From upper bunk to lower, our wild talk startled the neighbours; by flickering lamplight over tattered texts, our ambition reached for the blue clouds. Some nights we stole away to listen to the Voice of America beneath the moon; on frosty mornings we declaimed Linguaphone in its pure London accent. Paper was too short, feeling too long; our ink ran riot. But the spirit of youth had already bestrode the age.

Ere long we scattered to the four quarters, each upon his dusty road. You, brother, spread your wings at Tongcheng; I drifted like a thistledown to the ends of the sea. Some were broken on the rocks of fortune, some foundered in the currents of fame; some bowed for bread, some grew grey upon the rivers and lakes of the world. Then we were blue-robed youths; now frost invades our temples. Then we roamed the world in talk, full of jest and ribaldry; now each guards his solitary citadel. Life is as a horse glimpsed through a crack in the gate — a flicker and gone. Whenever I think upon those old wanderings, it is as though I hear a distant bell.

And yet the road of the world, though hard, hath not slain the heart. I remember how we rode stirrup to stirrup up the mountain of books, how we shared one vessel upon the sea of learning. Did we not then count ourselves among the remarkable spirits of the age? Though now grown old, we may yet rejoice that our gall hath not chilled, nor our lamp been extinguished. Over wine we discuss the transformations wrought by AI, even as once we debated the Four Modernizations; in the deep night we survey the new configurations of the world, still nursing the will to strike the oars in midstream.

Wherefore I take up the brush today to answer your verse — not for ornament's sake, but for an old friend's. May you, brother, like the aged steed in the stable, ever cherish the heart that would gallop a thousand li. May we, though late in our years, yet remain travellers in this age. If some distant day we gather again, let us bring our cloudy wine and speak once more of youth. Then, though our heads be full of white, we may yet laugh aloud and declare:

"The bookish ardour of those young days — even now, it hath not cooled."

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