Hu Shi s mother married a 47 year old husband at the age of 17, was widowed at the age of 23, and cu

1889 was an unusual year for the Feng Jinzao family, a poor family in Jixi County, Anhui Province, whose fate would be changed by a marriage.

One afternoon on a certain day in a certain month of this year, when Feng Jinzao was working as a tailor in Zhangjiadian, three miles away from home, he was found by the wife of a local gentleman, Xing Wu's sister-in-law. She came this time because she came to match her widowed brother, Mr. Hu Legend.

As soon as they met, Xing's fifth sister-in-law said straight to the point: "I'm looking for you, I want to ask you for your brother's eight characters, my third brother is 47 years old this year, and he has been working as an official outside but has no family members after losing his wife, which is really inconvenient, so I asked us to tell him a matchmaker." We've fallen in love with your brother. ”

The "Shun brother" in the mouth of Xing Wu's sister-in-law is Feng Shundi, the biological mother of the later great writer Hu Shi, and the "third brother" in Xing Wu's sister-in-law is Hu Chuan, Hu Shi's biological father.

When Feng Jinzao heard this, he immediately waved his hand and said: "How can the daughter of our farming family be worthy of being an official wife, this matter is not to be mentioned." Although Jin Zao said so, what he thought in his heart was: Hu Chuan is not only old, but has already married two wives, and has many children in the family, which is really wronged by his daughter.

Xing Wu's sister-in-law is also an understanding person, and she naturally understands the meaning behind Jin Zao's resignation. So, she began to show her three-inch incorruptible tongue, and "beat" Jin Zao with affection and reason, and after saying it, Jin Zao finally realized: Her daughter is old, and the chance of finding Ruyi Langjun is not great, and she should consider making a decision.

So, that night, Jin Zao told his wife all about Xing's fifth sister-in-law's matchmaking. After hearing this, his wife immediately jumped up and objected: "Brother Shun is only 17 years old, you let her enter the door to be the late mother of so many people, and our family is from a village, what do you have to be bullied into?" I don't open the eight characters. ”

After listening to this, Jin Zao said slowly: "Brother Shun is 17 years old this year, and it is not easy for the Xu family, Mr. San is a good person-".

Jin Zao didn't expect that as soon as he said this, his wife was furious. After getting angry, his wife said: "If Brother Shun really doesn't want it, I will raise her for the rest of my life." Seeing his wife's reaction like this, Jin Zao, who had been convinced, couldn't say anything more, and the two decided to ask Brother Shun what he meant.

After the Jin Zao couple told Brother Shun about the matter, Brother Shun lowered his head and thought about it while doing needlework. She has always wanted to find an opportunity to repay her parents, and for this reason, she even dreamed countless times in her dreams that she had become a big official and glorified the lintel of the Feng family. Feng Shundi's careful thoughts, her parents naturally did not notice.

In the few minutes when she looked down and pondered, Feng Shundi thought of not herself, but all her parents, she felt: You can ask for more gifts to do the continuation of the string, Mr. Three is an official, and the dowry should be better. Maybe I can help my parents more in the future, and my father has always dreamed of building a new house to succeed.

Quickly, Feng Shundi's thoughts flew to Mr. San, who was a well-known celebrity with almost no knowledge in the local area, and she had seen him in person at the Prince's Club when she was 14 years old. She also knew that because Mr. Three was so respected, every time he returned, the local casino was forced to close. Such a person must be a good person.

Thinking of this, Feng Shundi raised his eyes and looked at his parents and said, "A man's family is 47 years old, which is not too old, as long as you two think that Mr. Three is a good person, please call the shots." ”

As soon as Feng Shundi's words fell, her mother jumped up angrily, and she said angrily: "Okay, you want to be an official's wife, okay!" Listen to your will! ”

When Brother Shun heard this, she was immediately ashamed and angry, her tears rolled down, and then, feeling aggrieved, she took the upper of her shoes into the back room. She didn't say anything, her character has always been like this, and she never easily defended herself. Most of the time, she would rather be wronged than hurt anyone.

In the final analysis, the dispute of the Feng family is because everyone is kind: the parents are too considerate of their daughter, and the daughter is too considerate of their parents.

In the end, the marriage was finalized.

A few months later, Feng Shundi and Hu Chuan held a wedding. After the wedding, Feng Shundi learned that the reason why Mr. San insisted on marrying a farmer girl was because his second wife was weak and died of tuberculosis. Mr. Three married a farmer's daughter in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Hu Chuan's second wife has given birth to children for him, before Feng Shundi entered the door, Hu Chuan already had three sons and four daughters, among them, his eldest daughter is 7 years older than Feng Shundi, the eldest son is 2 years younger than her, and the twins are only 4 years younger than her. Therefore, as soon as she got married, she faced the burden of managing a large family.

For a 17-year-old woman, this is obviously extremely difficult. But fortunately, Hu Chuan will teach her about it as long as she is free. After marriage, although Hu Chuan was busy with official business, he always found time to accompany his wife. He even started teaching her to read and write.

On December 17, 1891, Hu Shi was born. When Hu Shi was born less than 100 days ago, Hu Chuan was transferred to Taiwan to take up a post. A year later, Shundi's mother and son were taken to Taiwan to reunite with him. During this period, Hu Chuanfeng served as the "** Taitung Zhili Prefecture Governor" and the commander of the "Zhenhai Houjun Battalion", during which he vigorously swept away opium in the army and strengthened the defense of the back mountain.

During this period in Taiwan, Feng Shundi had the best and happiest time in his life, during which Hu Chuan would teach Hu Shi to read and write every day, and she would always be a teaching assistant every time her husband taught his son. The son recognizes new words, and she learns from the past.

Feng Shundi has an indescribable love for this husband, who is 30 years older than him, and her character, knowledge, and demeanor make her extremely admired. During that time in Taiwan, she even felt that she was the happiest woman in the world.

But happiness is always short-lived, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Hu Chuan hurriedly asked someone to send his beloved wife and son back to his hometown, while he was sick and ran in the war.

On August 22, 1895, Hu Chuan died in Xiamen at the age of 55 due to overwork and illness.

At this time, Feng Shundi was only 23 years old, and their son Hu Shi was only three years and eight years old.

On the day the bad news came, Feng Shundi sat on the chair at the door of the front hall of the old house, and when she heard the letter reader read the passage where her husband had died, she suddenly trembled with horror, and then leaned back suddenly, and even the chair and the person fell on the threshold, and the whole hall echoed with a heart-rending cry.

At that moment, Feng Shundi felt that the entire sky above his head had collapsed.

Since then, Feng Shundi, a young woman, has become the head of the Hu family. She knew that at this juncture, she could only sort out her emotions as soon as possible and take care of everything.

The Hu family's home is not easy to do, Hu Chuan's eldest son is a well-known loser, he smokes opium, gambles almost everything, and after he owes gambling debts, he will naturally flock to the Hu family to collect debts. At such times, it is Feng Shundi, the housewife, who deals with everything.

In Hu Shi's recollections, almost every year during the Chinese New Year, the eldest brother would hide out, and then there would be a group of debt collectors sitting in the hall to collect debts. Feng Shundi saw these creditors but did not care, but if no one else cooked the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, thanked the god of the stove, and prepared to press the New Year's money.

In the middle of the night, if the creditors had not left, she had to ask a nearby relative of her family to give each creditor some money, begging them to take a moment's time. When Hu Shi recalled these pasts, he said: "For seven or eight years in my family, every Chinese New Year was like this. ”

The sons of the Hu family are like this, and the daughters-in-law are not worried, they often lose their temper and turn the family upside down. In the face of such a "son and daughter-in-law", Feng Shundi was not annoyed, she only endured it silently. It really didn't work, so she secretly cried in her room, every time she cried Hu Shi's father, she cried that he left her early, crying that she couldn't manage this big family.

Every time Feng Shundi finished crying, the family could always be safe and sound for a long time, which even Hu Shi was surprised.

After knowing that his stepchildren were unreliable, Feng Shundi spent all his efforts on his son Hu Shi. She has always remembered the will left to her by her husband on his deathbed: "Sui'er (Hu Shi's nickname) is smart and should be allowed to study."

In order to let his son read well, after the death of his husband, he woke up his son every day at dawn to give him a lecture, which was nothing more than "You have to be a perfect person like your father, I only know such a perfect person in my life, you must study hard, and you must not fall into his stock (lose face)." ”

Feng Shundi regarded her husband's will as her life's ambition, because she wanted Hu Shi to study, she sent her son to study in a private school opened by his fourth uncle when he was only four or five years old.

Because he was too young, every time he studied, Hu Shi needed the teacher to pick him up and down from the high stool.

But even though Hu Shi is the youngest in the private school, he is always the first to enter the school, and sometimes, he has to get the key from the teacher to open the door on ** days in January.

During the class, the teacher always took special care of Hu Shi. For each part of the lecture, the teacher will give Hu Shi a detailed explanation. It wasn't until later that Hu Shi learned that he got this preferential treatment because of the high tuition fee given by his mother.

At that time, the tuition fee of other children was 2 yuan a year, but Feng Shundi paid 6 yuan in the first year in order to let his son study more, and then increased every year, and it was increased to 12 yuan in the last year. When the family is in financial distress, only Feng Shundi can do this.

Because of Feng Shundi's special care, the teacher was more attentive to Hu Shi, and in his hometown for 9 years, Hu Shi successively read "The Book of Filial Piety", "Primary School", "Analects", "Mencius", "University", "The Mean", "The Book of Songs", "The Book of Books", "The Book of Changes", "The Book of Rites" and other classics. The teacher explained these books to him individually.

In Hu Shi's later words, the teacher at that time treated him as follows: explain every sentence he reads.

Because of this kind of "good reading and seeking understanding", Hu Shi soon became a leader in private school, and when he was 9 years old, he was able to watch "Water Margin". By the age of 11, he was already able to read the "General Guide to Governance". He also created an ingenious book, in order to facilitate the memory of the imperial years of the past dynasties, he created a book of "Songs of the Imperial Names of the Past Dynasties".

After the local prefect knew about this song, he ordered hundreds of copies to be engraved and distributed, and Hu Shi was given the title of "little prodigy" and was famous within a radius of several miles.

But these obviously did not satisfy Feng Shundi, her ideal is to train her son to be a "complete person" like her husband. And to be "complete", he must be extremely knowledgeable, and his virtue must be quite outstanding.

In order to cultivate his son's virtue, Feng Shundi would lecture his son every morning and evening, and the content of the lecture was to summarize what was good and bad in the day. Whenever her son did not listen, she would move out of his father and reprimand him.

Once, Hu Shi's aunt came to the house as a guest and saw that Hu Shi was only wearing a single vest, so she took a small shirt and told him to put it on, Hu Shi refused, so her aunt said: "Put it on, it's cold." Hu Shi thought her pronunciation was funny, so he joked: "Mother, Lao Tzu is not Lao Tzu!" ”

Feng Shundi, who happened to pass by, was very angry when she heard it, but she didn't reprimand him in public, in order to protect her son's dignity, she always closed the door when she reprimanded her son. Before going to bed at night, Feng Shundi scolded Hu Shi fiercely.

Many years later, Hu Shi still clearly remembers that this time, he made his mother miserable, and she reprimanded him while crying: "You are so proud of Lao Tzu that you are gone, so you can use it to talk." Hu Shi saw that his mother was trembling with anger and kept crying, because he kept wiping tears with the back of his hand when crying, and he was infected with eye pannus.

Although Feng Shundi is extremely strict with her son, she is also a loving mother, and she can always give her son care in a timely manner. Take this time Hu Shi was infected with eye puff disease after being trained, she once listened to the home remedies of the Jianghu warlock in order to cure her son's eye disease: lick her son's eyes with her tongue.

Feng Shundi was able to switch freely between a strict mother and a loving mother because she had a deep love for her son. After her husband's death, she more or less pinned her feelings for her husband on this son, who was very similar to her husband in all aspects, and she devoted all her efforts to train her son to become a "perfect person" like her husband.

In order to accomplish this goal, this illiterate woman let her son go to Shanghai to study when he was more than 12 years old (14 years old).

Before leaving, Feng Shundi made a pillowcase for his son, and two lines of words were embroidered on the pillowcase with purple thread: "The boy is determined to go out of the countryside, and he will not return if he can't read it." ”

The night before sending his son on a long trip, Feng Shundi didn't sleep all night, this was the first time his son was away from him, could he take care of himself when he was studying in a foreign land? Will he be able to succeed in his studies? Without her supervision, can he study hard? A series of doubts disturbed her mind.

But when she saw off her son the next day, she tried to pretend to be happy. She knew that if she showed reluctance, her son would hesitate to leave.

Many years later, Hu Shi still clearly remembers the scene when he left his mother for the first time, and of course he knew that his mother deliberately pretended to be relaxed in order to let him go on the road with peace of mind. He said:

"So I went out and sought my own education and life in the unknowable sea of men—a lonely little child, all the art of self-defense was only a motherly love, a little habit of hard work, and a little inclination to doubt. ”

Teenage years were a time of rebellion, and Hu Shi during this period was indeed as her mother feared: she had fallen.

According to Hu Shi's "Diary of the Tibetan Hui Room", Hu Shi met a group of fox friends during this period, and he played cards, drank, ate and had fun with them every day, and he often watched ...... plays under their influence

According to the statistical results of "Zanghui Room Diary", Hu Shi played cards 16 times, drank 14 times, and entered the theater and played 19 times in 59 days.

Such a Hu Shi is not an exaggeration to describe it as "all five poisons".

Later, Hu Shi was also arrested for drunken assault and patrolling, which not only injured him, but also forced him to suspend his school and had to resign from the teaching affairs of Huatong Public School.

After the incident, Hu Shi thought of his mother in extreme depression, and the real growth was always when looking back and summing up. This is the first time Hu Shi has looked back on his life journey in the past 20 years, and this review makes his feelings for his mother completely different. Not long after, Hu Shi wrote a long letter to his mother, in which he told his mother that he would go to the examination for the official scholarship of studying in the United States.

After the letter was sent, Hu Shi really devoted himself to preparing for the exam. During the preparation for the exam, he kept using the schedule that his mother used to take him to school when he was a child. Because of Hu Shi's own profound knowledge and sufficient preparation for the exam, he successfully passed the 1910 entrance examination for the official scholarship of studying in the United States and went to Cornell University in the United States to study.

After her son was admitted, Feng Shundi was very happy, and she even went to the ancestral ancestral hall to worship her ancestors once.

In reply to his son's good news letter, Feng Shundi advised:

"When you arrive in the United States, you should send letters to your home frequently, at least once a month, and you must take two photos a year to send them home, and don't be lazy ......You went abroad this time, which was what you wished for in the past, and once you got your wish, Yu was very happy ...... heartAll expenses come from the state, and the state cultivates you, etc., very deeply. You should work hard to learn, in order to return to China in the future to be useful for the country, so that you can live up to the grace of the country's cultivation and have the expectation of comforting your family. ”

Hu Shi's stay in the United States was the most difficult years of his mother's life. In the year when she sent her son to the United States, her father Jin Zao died of illness, and her two younger sisters and younger brothers also died one after another. Because of the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, the last shop of the Hu family, the wine cup in Hankou, was also gone.

All the blows almost came to Feng Shundi at once. At this time, the son who could have relied on him was far away on the other side of the ocean. In the face of the heavy blow, Feng Shundi fell ill.

During his serious illness, in order not to affect his son's studies, Feng Shundi also took a ** spare. She said to her family

"If I can't afford to be sick, be careful not to tell my son, and still ask someone to write a book on a monthly basis, as if I am here. When my son returns to the country after completing his studies, he will use this shadow to meet him, and my son will see this shadow as if he saw me. ”

After Feng Shundi fell ill, Jiang Dongxiu, who had a feudal arranged marriage with Hu Shiding, came desperately to take care of her future mother-in-law. Under the care of Jiang Dongxiu, Feng Shundi miraculously **.

The appearance of Jiang Dongxiu made Feng Shundi grateful, but also sure that this woman would be the best person to accompany his son for the rest of his life. So, after she recovered from her illness, she began to urge her son to go home and get married in correspondence.

In May 1917, Hu Shi passed the defense of the doctorate of Columbia University and obtained a doctorate. In July, he returned to his hometown in Jixi, Anhui Province.

At this time, more than ten years have passed since Hu Shi last met his mother. More than ten years later, her mother, who was in the prime of life, has grown old, and the young boy has grown into the "sir" in her mind. That day, she held her son's hand and said with tears in her eyes: "It's back, it's good, it's back, it's good!" ”

At the end of this year, Feng Shundi urged his son to marry Jiang Dongxiu. But less than a year after that, 46-year-old Feng Shundi died of illness in his hometown. When she left, Hu Shi and Jiang Dongxiu were not around, and when she died, she still murmured the word "Sui'er".

After the death of Feng Shundi, the grief-stricken Hu Shi wrote "The Journey of the First Mother" on the way to the funeral with his wife: "I can't raise my life, I can't serve when I'm sick, I can't work hard all my life, and I can't tell you the secret of life and death." Life is miserable, why is this! ”

Looking back, Feng Shundi's life could have been different, when she was widowed at the age of 23, the world speculated that she would remarry. But in fact, she didn't, and in the next 23 years, she only guarded the Hu family and her son Hu Shi. As for herself, she never seemed to think about it.

If there was no Feng Shundi, Hu Shi might still be Hu Shi, but the road of his life would definitely not be as smooth as later.

In April 1954, Hu Shi, who missed his mother very much, deliberately ran to take a small portrait on his 63rd birthday. He deliberately took off his glasses during the photoshoot, saying, "I don't have glasses, which makes me feel like my mother is in this photo." ”

In fact, what is the resemblance between Hu Shi and his mother is not just his appearance? His gentle and stoic personality was full of the imprint his mother had given him.