The recent Silicon Valley wife murder case that shocked the world, no matter what the final trial result is, the lives of such an outstanding young couple came to an end. We can't help but ask, what is marriage? What is the use of a partner?
Another Chinese couple in the United States gave a good answer.
Marriage is a relationship of mutual running-in, mutual achievement, and co-existence, and both husband and wife need to constantly adapt and adjust themselves to maintain the stability and happiness of the marriage. Partners are both intimate competitors. Everyone can lick each other's wounds and give each other fireworks. may also viciously bucket knives at the other party and pull out the ugliest chicken feathers in marriage.
The couple is Chen Lang and Xu Xiaohong. Chen Lang holds a bachelor's degree from Peking University, a Ph.D. from Yale's Department of Religious Studies, and a master's degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is also the daughter of the famous writer Chen Jiangong. In 2019, she resigned from her teaching position in Hong Kong and went to Michigan with Xu Xiaohong, but soon encountered the epidemic and lost her long-term job. In the fall of 2021, he decided to change his career to become a psychological counselor, and in the spring of 2022, he received admission to the Master of Clinical Social Work program at the University of Michigan, and at the same time received Xiaohong's cancer diagnosis.
Her husband, Xu Xiaohong, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He was also a gifted scholar in the fields of historical sociology, political sociology, cultural sociology, and China studies, and passed away on December 12, 2023, due to cancer in the United States.
Their marriage is a marriage that belongs to Chen Lang's "next marriage", Chen Lang's father Chen Jiangong is the former vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, Chen Lang himself is also very good, once taught at the University of Hong Kong in order to follow her husband gave up his career and went to the United States. Xu Xiaohong is a typical "phoenix man", born in a small mountain village in Zhejiang, and was admitted to Peking University in the nineties. The difference in the door did not prevent the two from being harmonious and becoming a couple.
Chen Lang wrote a eulogy to her husband, please redo the drunken song, the feelings between the lines are sincere, their life is not a wind and snow, but also the firewood, rice, oil and salt of ordinary couples, chicken feathers. Chen Lang's words also have a lot of unwillingness and forbearance, she wrote in her eulogy: "I remember when my child was at home because of the new crown, I was exhausted at home, and he scolded Fang Xuan on the Internet. In order to support her husband's career, Chen Lang later retreated into the background, which was naturally a helpless move of love and reality.
But we can still see from Chen Lang's text that despite the trials and tribulations of life, they have not forgotten their original intentions and are still a couple who love each other, but unfortunately God arranged a farewell for them.
At the end of the eulogy, "Am I better off in the future or return to *** mountains and rivers?" Maybe that way, I can love you better. I can't help but cry, this should be the best love.
The following is Chen Lang's eulogy to her husband Xu Xiaohong.
The author of this commemorative article is Dr. Chen Lang (Mrs. Xiaohong).
Please redo the drunken song line.
The title is derived from: "Linjiang Immortal" (Song Ye Mengde).
Singing through Yangguan separately, the beauty has empty tears. Please do the drunken song again. I have to drink bitterly and look back on my life.
But it's strange that the flavor of the old man has decreased, and it is easy to wake up when he is half drunk. Because of the flowers, it is more leisurely. The sideburns are now ear, and the old Yuanming is smiling.
If there is a soul, Xiaohong will definitely be surprised by the love and high opinion of his friends. I was also surprised and proud of him at the same time. I sent it to Moments, thanking the author, ** to my parents, hoping that they finally know thoroughly that their daughter's willfulness twenty years ago was not used in the wrong place. My gut told me that he would love to see me do it, and he wanted more people, the world, to know what kind of person he was, how hard he worked to be a perfect person, and prove that the legendary "Phoenix Man" was not what they thought he was. Did this effort to "prove himself" run through his life? It's heart-wrenching.
However, I also know that I am deeply aware of the "unclear consciousness" in my heart. Friends communicating with his soul make me jealous. How much I used to love philosophy and theory. If we don't get married, can I appreciate his thoughts and actions better? I remembered when my child was at home with a COVID shutdown and I was exhausted at home, and he scolded Fang Zhao online. What does the state, the revolution, and modernity have to do with me? When he talked to his friends about feminism, I sneered in my heart.
I once told my psychiatrist how you can be happy when you marry someone you like. You want the same thing, but you have to have someone to take care of the kids, file taxes, manage your finances, and cook the food, so it's a zero-sum game. The more successful he is, the more painful you are. I said that now I understand that if you want to get married, you should marry someone who has different hobbies from your own, for example, if you love ethereal and metaphysical things, it is best to marry someone who loves to take care of children, file taxes, manage money, and cook from the bottom of your heart. Mixing in a capitalist society requires efficiency, and efficiency requires the division of labor.
I don't know how many women scream in the most pain when their brilliant partners are at their most triumphant. And how many women finally convinced themselves with "love", counteracted, forgot the screams in their hearts, and remained silent.
But Xiaohong did not want or expect such silence. When he hears my inner scream, he never thinks it can be ignored or offset by his accomplishments. This is a man who wants to be a feminist within a patriarchal structure – and that's an awkward position. This position is too demanding of him, unrealistically high. The patriarchal structure wants him to be—and I'm afraid I want him subconsciously—to have a successful career, to provide for his family, to scold Fang Xuan, to make friends with heroes, to care about national affairs and world affairs, and it even tells him not to go to the doctor when he is in pain. But at the same time, he also felt and borne my pain, but he couldn't do anything about it. He may not have thought about it well, but most of the academic masters in history may have either a solid family background behind them, or women who are willing to serve them and dedicate their lives to them. Maybe in his heart, he himself will always be the child who jumped from a mountain village in Zhejiang to Peking University and then to Yale, thinking that he is free, thinking that with a smart brain, hard work, and kindness, everything is possible.
Less than a month before his death, Xiaohong was baptized and became a disciple. When he made this decision, he mentioned guilt many times, and guilt for me seemed to be an important part of that. I couldn't quite understand and asked him: if this problem is between people, why not solve it through the way of people and people? Of course, the very fact that you have cancer is enough to convert you, but what does it have to do with God? He didn't give me an answer. Now that I think about it, maybe he is tired, or maybe "what happens between us" is indeed beyond the level of man and man, and is essentially a confrontation and contradiction between the individual and the patriarchal structure and the capitalist academic mode of production.
At this point, I seem to see him smile at me and say, "Makes sense, you seem to be more sociological than I am—and then throw out the names of a couple of theorists for my reference.
Why didn't you think of it when you were alive? Don't you sociologists like to blame "structure" for everything? Could it be that you are confused by "love" in this matter?
I don't know when it started, what he felt was important, I no longer felt important. I admire his dedication to big issues, but I also secretly hope that he can publish some articles, publish books as soon as possible, and be rated as tenured professors as soon as possible, so that his life can become more calm and stable. In October 2022, he needed to undergo a major operation called the "mother of surgery" for more than ten hours, which simply means opening his stomach, cutting out the tumor that can be found, and then spraying chemotherapy in the abdominal cavity, leaving it for a few hours, and then cleaning and stitching. Three or four days before the operation, his most painstaking article was rejected by the journal, and by the same reviewer after he had revised it according to the reviewer's opinion. He assumed that the reviewer who rejected him knew about his cancer. * I accompanied him to a nearby park for a walk, the weather was hazy and cold, and there were almost no people around. Xiaohong began to cry on the hillside. It was the howl of a beast. He said, "Why, why I'm publishing this study at any conference, everybody thinks it's very interesting, but they just don't give it to me." I was at a loss, and there was only one voice in my heart: I hated academics. There was another time when the article was rejected, which happened on the day he finished chemotherapy, when his body was at its weakest.
Our generation of academics has always been told to be tough: "You don't have to compare who publishes more articles, you need to compare who receives more rejections." "But sometimes, the pain is so cruel that it makes one wonder if it's necessary.
A few weeks before his death, he made an unprecedented statement of his weariness with academics, saying that the rest of the time, he would write something for his daughter. But none of us expected that the "time left" would be less than any of us had estimated. So far, I have not found any text or video that he left for his daughter.
On Dec. 9, his friends came to visit him from all over the United States and said they had a list of questions. I asked him who I was that morning and he said he didn't know. I gave my name and he understood. Before his friends arrived, ** told me not to tire him too much. I asked him: Is your academic matter almost the same as Luo Yi (a colleague in his department), and have all the questions of this team been answered, so there is no need to say it again, right? He shook his head and said that these were different questions. I had to think to myself, let's be benevolent. Of course, when his friends saw his state, they didn't bear to come up with a list of questions. His gaze has gradually drifted away for a few days, and there is an old man's innocence in his eyes. He looked at the friends around him and said that you are Zhang Yang, you are Long Yan, and you are Yukun ......Then he looked at me and said, "You, I don't know you anymore." Then there was a sly and innocent laugh, and everyone laughed. He may have laughed at himself about the morning.
On the night of the 9th, when there were only the two of us left in the room, Xiaohong talked to himself more and more frequently, either giving lectures by himself or hosting speeches by other scholars, lying on the bed with Erlang's legs crossed, speaking English throughout the whole process, confident and chic, and the words that had begun to become vague a few days ago became clear again. I sat on the side and burst into tears. I know that a powerful and unknowable force is taking him from this world. How I wanted to talk to him, even in his last imagination. Lying on the bed, he said clearly and calmly: we can think about how to interpret Weber from a feminist perspective.
Later, Xiaohong even tried to sit up several times, and even stood up. Tell me it's terminal restlessness. He probably wanted to wrestle with the force that was going to take him away.
The next morning, he was finally quiet and fell asleep, but could no longer speak a whole sentence. When he gave him the infusion, he pulled my hand towards him, gently bit my fingertips, I said what are you doing, and he kissed the back of my hand. Say, he is so sweet. I had just come back from the sadness and the exhaustion of a sleepless night: maybe he still knew who I was, and he might have really tried to tell me something.
At the end of August, after the regular chemotherapy failed, he once asked me: Are you afraid? I don't know how to answer this question, because none of the answers seem to be appropriate. After he was baptized in November, when we were told in Texas that there weren't any clinical trials available, it was my turn to ask him: Are you scared? He said firmly: Not afraid. In the ten days between his hospitalization and his death, Xiaohong barely shed a tear, even when he curled up in bed and said to me, "I'm afraid I won't be able to carry it for a few days." On the eve of the day he died, whenever he seemed to have some consciousness, I took his hand and said all the good things. When I said that I would raise the child well**, two tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. It was the only tear he shed in his last days.
On the morning of the twelfth day, the sky that had been overcast for several days cleared for a short time. Xiaohong faces the direction of the window. I think he must have felt the light and warmth and decided to go in that direction.
During the past two years of cancer, he stubbornly stood on his own. I said I could drop everything and take care of him, but he flatly refused. I said I'll help you research clinical trials, and he said that the learning curve is long, so he can do it himself. Unless absolutely necessary, he refused to let me accompany him to out-of-state doctor's appointments, used a wheelchair at the airport, and insisted on driving back to Ann Arbor from the airport on the grounds that it was not painful to sit. I was going to make a little report that day, and I said that it doesn't matter, I don't have to go, I'm going to pick you up at the airport. However, he disagreed. Even when he was facing a drastic pay cut, he didn't want to use up a penny of my parents' retirement savings and wondered how he could keep working and keep some of his income.
I think for the past two years, he wanted to make my new career a race against his cancer. I used to fantasize about my graduation ceremony and make up my mind to nominate myself for a graduation speech with a shy face. I'm going to thank him in front of everybody in this very American, former way that he might have laughed at, to make him proud of me, and to make his sickness not in vain. About a week after his death, I decided to start running again, feeling good because of my "positive attitude towards life". As I ran, it occurred to me that he couldn't see me graduating. I, who had received a lot of seemingly tall diplomas and had little interest in graduation ceremonies, cried on the playground for such a nerdy reason.
In Ann Arbor, my friends and I chose a cemetery for Xiaohong. The tombstone will face east—echoing his name—facing his favorite park, overlooking its verdant little canyon. We used to play frisbee, walk our dogs, fly kites. There will always be young people at Michigan who do the same thing, year after year. Walking through the cemetery, I noticed for the first time how humble the tombstones of Westerners, especially those that are old, are just names, dates of birth and death. Some of the more recent tombstones will read: Father, Grandfather, Husband, etc. Only a few mention the profession of the deceased. Maybe in the face of God or life and death, all this is just vanity. And as superficial as me, I can't wait to engrave a *** on the tablet so that all curious passers-by can read his **.
Many of the tombstones have two names engraved on them, and some have a year missing waiting to be filled. There is a tombstone embedded with a black and white photo of the couple when they were young, and they are really a beautiful couple. Think of how tempting it is to sleep together in the dark. It's as seductive as marriage.
A friend of my father's knew that Xiaohong had passed away and sent WeChat condolences. When the father replied, according to the traditional rhetoric, he himself "thanked Chen Lang and his granddaughter". I saw it and thought about it, and told my father: You can thank you in the future, and you don't need to "rate" us. I seemed to see Xiaohong smiling at me again, and seemed to be full of pride. His former triumph and sickness, his powerlessness and loving gaze made me a badass. He and I both knew that there was no one to "rate" me anymore.
Isn't it better for me to return to *** mountains and rivers in the future? Maybe that way, I can love you better.
Originally drafted on December 27, 2023.
Revised on January 12, 2024.