It is forty years since grandpa died. Every time I visited the grave, my sister would tell me about my grandfather’s preference for sons and his love for me, so when he died, I cried the most. My 11-year-old child was standing by the body of an old man, just two people in a room, without knowing how to fear. Forty years ago, the love of a poor man’s family did not frighten anyone: he just liked to take me to bathe, for six cents each time, and his reward was to buy a three-cent pancake. During the famine of 1959-61, what grandma could buy from the market was “trumpet vegetables” — the old leaves on the outside of cabbages. Later even such old leaves are also out of order, I do not know where to get back tofu residue steamed in the steamer, and carrot head, a room of tofu residue plus the fishy smell of carrots, so That I can not touch carrots today, a eat on the stomach. In order to save food for the child, the father fainted from hunger. If it weren’t for those baked cakes in grandpa’s bathhouse, Maybe I would have had a similar experience, at least not as tall as I have grown.
Grandpa has no education and can’t read a single word. I remember that he had two habits: one was to “cherish the calligraphy paper”, and to pick up any piece of paper with writing in the room carefully; Two is every time after relieving hands should put both hands in front of the chest blow breath, that can solve bad luck, good luck. I don’t remember him ever getting angry or saying much, so that when old neighbors met today, they would say, “Hairy Daddy is good-natured.” Life in the fifties was grey, but he had no grudge against it. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, winter solstice, he will be very serious: the Mid-Autumn Night, he will put taro, edamame in the yard, burn incense to worship the month; At noon on the winter solstice, the family must gather together, kowtow, worship ancestors, burn paper money. It was just such a muddle-headed old man at the bottom that I later went to Taiwan to listen to my old grandmother’s “painful talk about the history of the revolutionary family”. Only then did I know that he also had a mysterious and even shocking act.
1948 Old grandmother is young, and beautiful, must follow the foreigner I have never met. Grandfather is the kuomintang army company commander, forthright and violent disposition, a word does not agree, will draw a gun and fire, up to now in the hometown village of acacia tree, and he left bullet gun mark. Father-in-law said at that time can not move the daughter, can only to the future son-in-law conditions: to marry the daughter can, must quit the military service. Old grandfather is a two flute son, incredibly took off that body military uniform, take old grandmother to elope. In 1949, the rural land reform, the young couple could not survive, fled to Shanghai.
I asked my grandmother to recall where she lived in Shanghai. The old grandmother said: “The northeast piece of the Five Corners, an empty army camp, the yard grass knee, The Japanese left the house, with tatami. I was shocked: if she remembered correctly, the romantic retreat of a couple of former Kuomintang officers was the same “Communist barracks” where, 35 years later, I enlisted as a military instructor after graduating from graduate school! The next thing was even stranger:
The old grandmother said that when they hid there, it was my grandfather who secretly sent food to them, and then took them to see Du Yuesheng. I was afraid that her historical memory had artistic processing, so I asked her about Du Yuesheng’s face. “Long face, gold teeth in mouth, Local Shanghai accent, right?” she replied. Indeed, these features are consistent with the records and photographs I have seen in books. I asked again, how can my grandfather know Du Yuesheng? He is a bottom worker who can’t read a big word, in my impression, connect Nanjing road where all not clear, how can take them to go to the Du residence of The East Lake road of French concession! This time is the turn of the old grandmother asked me: “Yi, your grandfather is du Yuesheng’s student son, you do not know?” I asked the old grandmother to say a little more detail, the old man said the past particularly striking:
“As soon as Mr. Du saw the student bringing a stranger, he asked why he didn’t live in the countryside. And when we had finished, he waved his hand and said, ‘Out, out,’ and left me to play cards with his ladies, and the three men went out to dinner and talked.”
I asked the old grandmother how to leave Shanghai? She was even more surprised:
“It was your grandfather who launched us out of Wusong mouth! None of your family knows?”
I do not know, indeed I do not know; the two banks are so far apart, and so long ago. I ask my father to return to Shanghai, he more surprised than I am, how also can’t understand his father joined the mobsters unions, also don’t know once send meal to wujiaochang barracks, more can’t imagine she so cowardly diminutive figure, can in the dark night, shaking a leaf boat to a man and a woman send wind high seas of the Yangtze river estuary.
This was what happened at the bottom of Shanghai in the so-called first year of liberation. My understanding now is that grandpa is not deliberately keeping secrets, but like many people at the bottom of society, he acts according to his nature and keeps silent according to his nature. The historical events they experienced, even the historical storms, were explained by his grandchildren who had read too much history books. They are history themselves, but have no sense of history, and thus avoid a shock. No memory, no meaning, no story, no history, so many days to pass, come and go.
Recent Comments