Hu Shi and his father were really together for a very short time.
1891 (the 17th year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty), Hu Chuan was transferred to Taiwan under the order. On December 17 of the same year, Hu Shi was born. In 1893, Hu Shi went to Taiwan with his mother to work as a house.
1894 (the 20th year of the Guangxu period), 1894-1895 war broke out. Because Japan had the possibility of invading Taiwan, Hu Shi had to return to Shanghai with his mother, and later returned to his ancestral home to Shangzhuang Village, Jixi County, Huizhou, Anhui Province, and went to a private school to study. On August 22, 1895, 55-year-old Hu Chuan died of Xiamen .
At that time, Hu Shi was not yet 4 years old. With all his plans, he lived with his father for less than two years. The mother bears the heavy responsibility of raising and teaching.
1
Hu Shi's mother is Feng Shundi .
Feng Shundi's father is Feng Jinzao. He is a poor farmer and has the skills of tailoring. His greatest wish in his life was to build his own new home, but he never got what he wanted because of poverty. When her daughter was 17 years old, Feng Jinzao began to look for her husband.
Feng Shundi has been kind, gentle, smart and capable since childhood, diligent in his hands and feet, and gets along well with his neighbors. Everyone in all villages knew that the Feng family had a good daughter. Hu Chuan asked his aunt Xing Wu's sister-in-law to tell Feng Jinzao that he was 49 years old at that time. Although he was a court official in Jiangsu, both wives died early, leaving behind three daughters and three sons. Is it really good to marry his daughter and re-string him? His father Feng Jinzao has no objection to this. When he is at the age of getting married, he will marry anyone, let alone the Hu family who can give him a generous dowry?
The daughter married not only to fill in the house, but also faced a stepson and daughter-in-law who was older than her, and there were also a lot of relationships. If one of them was not handled well, she would be discredited. Can a farmer’s daughter be happy to marry into such a family? The mother was worried about her daughter and firmly disagreed.
But the kind and filial Feng Shundi agreed to the marriage without hesitation. The daughter of this poor peasant thinks that marrying Hu Chuan can change her parents' poor life, not to mention that as long as she abides by her duties and treats others well, she will definitely be able to handle these complex relationships well.
After getting married, the couple became harmonious and spent a happy time. On December 17, 1891, 19-year-old Feng Shundi gave birth to a son in Chuansha County, Songjiang Prefecture, Jiangsu Province (now Pudong New District, Shanghai), named Hu Shi.
Who knew that "the good things in the world are not strong, and the colorful clouds are easy to scatter and the glass is broken." In just four years, Feng Shundi tasted all the joys and sorrows. First, my husband moved to Taiwan (and followed his husband for two years in the middle), and then he had no choice but to return home due to the war. He finally waited for his husband to return home, but he was waiting for the family to reunite, but news came that his husband died of illness in the middle way.
That day, 23-year-old Feng Shundi was accompanying his son. He suddenly heard that his husband died, and he was like thunder thunder. He suddenly fell over the stool and fainted.
2
Feng Shundi is a strong woman. My husband passed away, and my son was still waiting for his own upbringing. The huge family still needs people to take charge.
She wiped away her tears and buried her sadness in her heart. In the future, her mother's identity will take charge of housekeeping.
Hu Shi's eldest sister is 7 years older than Feng Shundi, and her second and eldest brother are also older than Feng Shundi. It is indeed even more difficult for the young stepmother Feng Shundi to manage such a special big family well.
After Hu Chuan's death, his family could not count on his elder brother who was 20 years older than Hu Shi. In Hu Shi's own words, the elder brother "has been a child, smoking opium and gambling. He gets nothing. He goes home and makes a decision after everything is gone. When he sees the incense burner, he takes it out and sells it, and takes it out and snatches with the tin teapot."
squanders like this, no matter how big the family business is, it will be ruined, let alone the family's finances are no longer abundant? But what can Feng Shundi, a young stepmother, do? She invited the elders of this family to come several times and set the monthly fee for this "oldest son". But he is not enough, and he owes cigarettes and gambling debts everywhere.Every New Year's Eve, a large group of people come to collect debts, and the eldest son hides far away early, leaving behind a mess. Despite this, Feng Shundi never complained and tried his best to pay back a little to every creditor.
Fortunately, the "second son" is relatively reliable. The family's expenses are all dependent on his business and dispatch in Shanghai, so Feng Shundi was able to handle the internal affairs wholeheartedly.
Family and talent are all prosperous. If you are in charge of a big family, if you are weak and impatient, how can you be harmonious? Feng Shundi is his stepmother and wife, so he pays attention to everything and is particularly tolerant of everything.
The eldest son is worried, and the eldest daughter-in-law is the most incompetent and ignorant person. The second daughter-in-law is also very capable, but she is a very narrow-minded person. Therefore, a pair of sisters-in-law often argues. The mother-in-law is a role model for kindness. When the sister-in-law is angry, she openly scolds and beats each other. They don’t say anything and put on a blue face for others to show, which makes the whole family cautious, for fear of having to order explosives.
Later, both daughters-in-law gave birth to a child. When they were angry, they beat and scolded the child and vented their anger. The words they cursed were very sharp. Whenever this happened, Feng Shundi just pretended not to hear, and never quarreled with his two daughters-in-law. Sometimes she couldn't help it anymore, so she quietly went to her neighbor's house to chat for a while.
Hu Shi and his elder brother's daughter are only one year apart. When the two children have a small dispute, Feng Shundi always blames Hu Shi and asks Hu Shi to give in to his niece in everything.
The result of harmony is to be the most important and tolerance is to suffer yourself. If the daughter-in-law is angry, she can vent her anger, and if she is wronged, she can cry to her husband. Feng Shundi, a young widow, takes her young son to manage the life of a whole family. Who should she look for when she is wronged? She would cry when she couldn't stand it. However, she never cried loudly, nor did she expose her resentment to others, nor did she say a word that hurts people's feelings.
Hu Shi remembers it very clearly. He wrote in his diary:
She also has her own way. At dawn on that day, she stopped getting up and cried softly. She didn't scold anyone, she just cried her husband, she cried her own miserable life, and could not keep her husband to take care of her. When she cried first, her voice was very low and she gradually cried out. I woke up and persuaded her, but she refused to stay. At this time, I always hear a door open in the front hall (the second sister-in-law lives in the front hall east room) or the back hall (the eldest sister-in-law lives in the back hall west room) and a sister-in-law walked out of the room and walked towards the kitchen. After a while, the sister-in-law came to knock on our door. I opened the door, and she walked in, held a bowl of hot tea, and sent it to my mother's bed, persuaded her to stop crying and asked her to have a hot tea. My mother slowly stopped crying and reached out to take the tea bowl. The sister-in-law stood and persuaded her for a while before leaving. There was no word about anyone, nor did there mention the angry face of the past ten or half months. However, everyone knew in their hearts that the sister-in-law who made tea was always the angry person for the past ten or half months. It’s strange that after this cry, there will be at least one or two months of peaceful and peaceful days.
This is Feng Shundi's generous and wisdom. She treats people kindly and gentlely, but she is also very principled and will never tolerate insults from others.
Hu Shi's fifth uncle is a ronin with no job and is idle all day long. One day he complained in the tobacco shop, saying that Hu Shi's mother always asked someone for help if she had something to do at home, which would definitely give him benefits. This sentence reached Feng Shundi's ears. She was so angry that she cried. She invited several of her family to come and called her fifth uncle to question him in person, what benefits she gave to someone. She didn't give up until Uncle Wu admitted his mistake in public and apologized.
All this, Xiao Hu Shi saw it in his eyes and remembered it in his heart. The rural life of childhood and the character of his mother had a huge and profound and inertible impact on his birth. The development of a good temper in the future should also have a lot to do with this.
3
Although Feng Shundi is just a farmer girl, she is very insightful and pays special attention to the education of Hu Shi.
Perhaps the image of her husband's hard work and loyalty to the country is too profound in her heart, and she also hopes that her son will be like her husband one day. Before Hu Shi was 3 years old, she asked him to recognize square characters and learned about a thousand words.
When Hu Shi was 5 years old, the mother and son returned to their hometown of Jixi County, Anhui Province. Feng Shundi immediately asked him to study in a private school run by his fourth uncle. After studying in his hometown for 9 years, Hu Shi has read classics such as "The Book of Filial Piety", "Primary School", "The Analects of Confucius", " Mencius ", " University ", " Doctrine of the Mean ", " Book of Songs ", "Book of Books", " Book of Changes ", and " Book of Rites ".
In the study of his son, Feng Shundi can be said to be a mentor and strict teacher. At that time, the tutor's teaching methods were for students to memorize by rote. But Feng Shundi asked his son to read but he had to understand it very much.
Despite the family's difficulties, Feng Shundi never stings with his son's education phone bill. The tuition fee was only 2 yuan at that time, and Feng Shundi paid 6 yuan in the first year. It will increase year by year after year, and the last year it has increased to 12 yuan. Feng Shundi’s only requirement for his husband was that when he was teaching a book for his son, he would have to say the meaning of one word every time he read and the meaning of one word.
Her purpose is very clear, that is, Hu Shi must understand the meaning of a word every time he reads a word; every time he reads a sentence, he must understand the meaning of that sentence. Feng Shundi's unique teaching method laid a solid foundation for Hu Shi's Chinese studies and paved the way for his future academic achievements.
In order for the son to learn real knowledge, Feng Shundi never had any difficulties as long as it is the book the son hopes to get. Once, she learned that there was a book called "Collection of Books" in her neighbor Song Huan's house, which happened to be a good book that her son had never been looking for. When she learned that the price of Songjia was reduced to 80 yuan, she did not hesitate to borrow money to buy it for her son. In order to support Hu Shi in studying, she even sold her jewelry. Hu Shi sighed, "My mother was embarrassed and still imagined this for her son everywhere."
Although there is only Hu Shi, Feng Shundi never spoiled her only son. To Hu Shi, she is both a kind mother and a strict father.
Hu Shi was weak when he was a child, and Feng Shundi did not allow him to run and jump around with the wild children. Every day at dawn, he would wake up Hu Shi and tell him what he did wrong yesterday and what he said wrongly, asking him to admit his mistake and let him study hard.
She often tells Hu Shi about her husband's various benefits and warns Hu Shi: "You must always take your steps. I only know this perfect person in my life. You have to learn from him and don't fall his stock." When she talks about her sadness, she often shed tears. It was not until the dawn that she helped Hu Shi put on her clothes and urged him to go to early school. Therefore, Hu Shi was the first to open the school almost every day. When the husband came, Hu Shi recited the book of his life before going home for breakfast.
Feng Shundi educates his son in a different way.
Since ancient times, there has been a saying in China that "a filial son comes from under a stick". Although Feng Shundi is strict with his son, he is never simple and rough and pays great attention to methods. Hu Shi said: "She never scolds me or hits me in front of others. I did something wrong, she only looked at me, and when I saw her stern gaze, she was frightened. The thing she did was small, she taught me a lesson when I woke up the next morning. The thing she did was big, she waited until the night was quiet, closed the door, blamed me first, and then punished me."
It is this kind of education method that is both strict and protects self-esteem, which made Hu Shi understand how to be serious and cherish reputation since he was a child, and also laid the foundation for his future progress.
"At the age of thirteen or fourteen, throw it out." Sending the boy out to apply for business is the habit of Huizhou people. But Feng Shundi did not follow his ancestors' practices. When Hu Shi was 13 years old, she resolutely sent him to Shanghai to study.
The mother is worried about her son traveling thousands of miles away. He is far away from home at a young age. Can his son, who is alone, eat, sleep, study well? How could Feng Shundi give up when he thought of his only son who had been with him since he was a widow? But she was very sensible and did not shed a single tear in front of her son and everyone else.
Hu Shi did not disappoint his mother's expectations either. After arriving in Shanghai, he first entered Meixi Academy. Later, due to the incomplete curriculum, he entered Chengzhong Academy and later transferred to Chinese public school . In 1910, 19-year-old Hu Shi passed the entrance examination for the examination and went to the United States to study.Because the execution schedule was decided by the government, Hu Shi was unable to return to his hometown to say goodbye to his mother.
Hu Shi first studied agricultural science at Cornell University in the United States. After a year and a half, he changed to politics, economy, literature and philosophy, and then went to Columbia University in New York to study philosophy. While studying in the United States, Hu Shi could only write letters to communicate with his mother.
Feng Shundi knew that his son's learning opportunities were hard-won. She understood and supported her son. In 7 years, she had never complained, and even when she was seriously ill, she would not tell her son, so as not to interrupt his studies.
Hu Shi once recalled that her mother fell seriously ill in 1913. She was worried that she would not be able to afford it, so she took a photo and collected it. In order not to affect my son's study in the United States, Feng Shundi told his family: "If I don't get sick, I can't tell my son about this. I still have to ask someone to write to him monthly and act like I am still alive. When he returns to China after studying, he shows him this photo of me, just like seeing me."
Hu Shi did not disappoint his mother's expectations. In July 1917, he returned from the United States after studying and was hired as a professor by Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University.
Hu Shi, who thought he could finally support his mother and enjoy his youth, did not expect that in the second year after returning to China, he had not had time to take his mother to Beijing. Feng Shundi, who had worked hard all his life, unfortunately passed away in his hometown at the age of 45.
The grief Hu Shi and his wife, who had just married for less than a year, went home to attend the funeral and wrote the "Lectures of My Mother": I was unable to raise my life, I was unable to serve my illness, and I was unable to share the slightest part of my life and death. I was unable to face the same fate. Life is painful, why is it like this?
Hu Shi went out to study alone since he was fourteen years old (actually only twelve or two or three months). Although he had been with his mother for only more than ten years, he was greatly affected by it. For example, his kindness in dealing with others, his forgiveness and understanding people...
Author : Autumn Moon Fragrance , simple, love the world, like all interesting words .
