Lin Changmin is a famous scholar and official. His poems and calligraphy are very popular in his cultural circle. 1876 was born in Hangzhou. At the age of twenty-one, he passed the student exam (the lowest level) and entered Hangzhou Chinese School to study English and Japanese. The family held a marriage for him, but when his wife was away, he married a second wife and gave birth to his son and heir. She gave birth to three children: a son and two daughters. However, the son died in infancy and the second daughter died in childhood. Lin, born in 1904, is the only surviving child.
My father, like many other gifted scholars of his time, went to Waseda University in Japan for several years. 1909 graduated from political economy. After returning home, he took his second wife and daughter to Shanghai, where he began his political career.
At that time, Yin Hui was five. She has been living in Hangzhou with her mother, surrounded by adults, but has no father or siblings. She is a precocious child, and precocity may make relatives at home regard her as an adult, thus deceiving her childhood. Her father's return must make her very happy, and her agile, intelligent and sentimental personality must fascinate him. It may also be that those years in Shanghai brought them closer and closer.
They moved again, this time to Beijing. There, my father was promoted to a high position in several governments. But for a while, he still had no son to inherit the incense. He married a second concubine in Fujian, and she soon gave birth to a daughter and four sons.
So Yin Hui's life was cast a shadow. The second concubine and her children live in a big front yard of their home in Beijing. This place is full of the noise of happy children. Yin Hui and her mother live in a small yard in the back. Yin Hui's mother is full of jealousy about this mistress. Her successor will be the mother of four sons, which is a powerful reason. Her father made no secret of her preference, which made Yin Hui's mother unbearable. The sentimental daughter was caught in the middle. She sympathized with her mother's angry whisper, but also loved her father, knowing that he loved her. His second family also admitted that she was still his favorite child.
A new and very important chapter in Yin Hui's life began when she was 15 years old. Lin Changmin and Liang Qichao became good friends. They all spent some time in Japan and served as senior officials in the Beijing government after the Revolution of 1911. Not surprisingly, they want to further connect the two families through the marriage between Qi Chao's son Sicheng and Chang Min's daughter Yin Hui. 19 19 formally introduced two young people. This obviously deviates from the traditional marriage custom, that is, two complete strangers must meet for the first time on the wedding day at the choice of the matchmaker. According to traditional customs, it is normal for them to get married at an early age, but the old Liang Qichao made it very clear to them that although both fathers agreed to this marriage, the final decision had to be made by themselves. Four years passed before this decision was made, and many things happened to both of them.
In the summer of 1920, Yin Hui left Beijing and followed his father halfway around the world to London. When the League of Nations was established at the end of the First World War, as elsewhere, the League of Nations Association was established in China. Lin Changmin was one of the founders and became the director-general of the association. He stayed in London to deal with the affairs of the League of Nations and took his daughter with him. Yin Hui studies English in schools in Shanghai and Beijing, which makes her not only a pleasant companion, but also a useful assistant. She resumed her studies at St. Mary's Women's College in London and soon learned English.
After the hostilities, people from all over the world gathered in London. As the hostess of her father, Yin Hui met many guests from China and other countries who came to pay tribute to her father. Obviously, her social activities are as important to her as formal education.
One of the most important visitors is Xu Zhimo, who is one of the young disciples introduced by Liang Qichao. He is the son of a famous banker in Zhejiang, and studied China classical literature in his early years. 19 15 got married and had a son. He left his wife and children with his parents to take care of them, graduated from Peking University, and 19 18 went to the United States for further study. What to learn always seems to be a problem. In his first year, he studied economics and sociology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The following year, he transferred to new york Columbia University to study political science. In the third year, when the European War ended, he went to England by boat and started over. This time, he should study with his new idol Bertrand Russell at Cambridge University. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in London on June 1920, only to be told that Russell had not returned from China. To make matters worse, he had been expelled from Cambridge University several years ago. No wonder Xu Zhimo was "very upset and had to find another way".
However, under his repression, those personality traits that attracted Liang Qichao were still obvious. This is his discrimination, his charm, his explosive power, his humor, his creative enthusiasm and his dramatic performance. The most important thing that makes him famous is his incredible ability. He can find and attract people of the same kind, inspire new ideas, new ambitions and, of course, establish new friendships among people around him.
Lin Changmin and Xu Zhimo belong to the same kind of people. They must have fallen in love at first sight. Xu Zhimo has become a frequent visitor to this family. Lin Changmin was moved by Xu Zhimo's friendship and finally trusted him completely. He also told him some of his own past events, including the story of puppy love with a Japanese girl when he was studying in Japan. This may have awakened Xu Zhimo's own romantic pursuit. The two took pleasure in exchanging "love letters" and expressed their feelings in words. Xu Zhimo pretends to be a married woman and Lin Changmin pretends to be a married man.
Xu Zhimo is almost ten years older than Lin. As an "old man", his original preference lies in his father rather than his daughter, which both of them understand. Some people even said that she called him "Uncle Xu" at first. Her slim beauty caught his attention at once. Her artistic temperament is exactly the same as her father's, and her lively and keen insight and literary hobbies fascinate Xu Zhimo. He's in love.
After listening to her talk about Xu Zhimo many years later, I noticed that her memory is always associated with literary masters-Shelley, Keats, Byron, Katherine Manthfield, Virginia wolf, and so on. In my opinion, in his love, he may assume the role of teacher and mentor, and introduce her into the world of English poetry and drama, as well as the new beauty, new ideals and new feelings that fascinate him at the same time. In this way, he may be happy for her sensitive reaction to his favorite books and his favorite dreams. He may weave some fantasies.
She was fascinated by Xu Zhimo's personality, his pursuit and his warmth towards her. However, she is only sixteen years old and is not a calculating woman as some people think. She is just a schoolgirl who lives in her father's house. Xu Zhimo's enthusiasm for her did not arouse the same reaction in this inexperienced girl. His intrusion into her life was a great adventure. But this did not make her deviate from the future path chosen by her family.
Through Lin Changmin, Xu Zhimo got to know John Galsworthy Louxi Dickinson, a British writer and China lover. He loves Xu Zhimo very much. 192 1 year, he arranged for Xu Zhimo to enter the Royal College of Cambridge University and become a special student. Dickinson is familiar with Cambridge University and the great masters of English pre-and contemporary literature, which opens a new field of understanding for Xu Zhimo. His unremitting pursuit of economics and politics has now given way to his long-term commitment to poetry research and writing. His literary temperament has finally found an expression, in which he will devote all his feelings and talents. The romantic poet Xu Zhimo worships love and beauty, but thinks that freedom is equally important. He found what he dreamed of in Yin Hui. He fantasized that by living with her, he could reach the peak of creativity. Compared with this prospect, his obligations to his wife and children are as light as a feather.
In this way, when he knew that his parents in China would let his wife come to live with him in Britain, his reaction could be imagined. She arrived in the spring of 192 1. They moved into a rented house in Southampton, six miles from Cambridge University. He goes to college by car and to the library every day. He also arranged a letter for Yin Hui in the grocery store in front of a post office in London. He is always eager to find these letters and reply as soon as possible. His wife lived in the summer and got pregnant again. In autumn, he advised her to have an abortion, and then went to London, where he sent word that he wanted a divorce. Shortly thereafter, she went to Germany, where her second child was born, but died soon.
Maybe it was at this time that he told Yin Hui that he wanted a divorce and proposed to her. There is no doubt that she worships him and thanks him for opening her eyes and arousing her new feelings and yearning. But what about marriage? No matter what other troubles this episode caused, Hui has been living with her heartbroken mother for years, which made her very angry and reminded her to divorce. In this divorce, a lovelorn wife was abandoned and she wanted to take her place. Yin Hui's father also loves Zhimo deeply. He obviously thinks it's time to leave here and go home with Yin Hui after living in London for more than a year. They boarded the ship, sailed through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean for a long time, and arrived at their hometown on June 192 1.
After both women left Xu Zhimo, he returned to Cambridge. "Now is the time," he wrote. "I finally got a chance to get close to the real life in Cambridge, and at the same time I slowly' discovered' Cambridge. I never knew there was such great happiness. " His circle of friends includes Dickinson, Emma Foster, Hector Joe Wells, Emma Richards, Bertrand Russell, Roger Foley, Arthur Valle and John Middleton Murray who took him to Katherine Manthfield. The meeting touched him deeply. During this year, he was particularly happy that he could be alone with his friends and his own ideas. Alone with nature. His feelings were clearly expressed in his first poem. He also wrote an affectionate congratulatory message for the university, which began with the following words: "It was Cambridge that opened my eyes, it aroused my curiosity, and it was Cambridge that cultivated my' self' consciousness." The beauty of ancient stone buildings and quiet green fields fascinated him. He became very comfortable in using English. Reading the romantic poems of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Woolsworth and Swanborn intoxicated him. The desire, ideal and romantic fantasy aroused by the great English poet forced him to express it in his own language.
Since his youth, he has been familiar with China's classical poems. Of course, he has used this mother tongue all his life, and few young scholars in China can successfully use it as a means of poetry like him. It is not surprising that he can use poetry as a natural way to express his feelings. His poems, inspired by local resources and Cambridge, will have a particularly great influence in the next century.
I stayed in Cambridge for a whole year and went home. I arrived in Shanghai on June1922+1October1May.