Scholars (1): prodigal Wu

In Wu Jia, Quanjiao, a boy was born. The Wu family is a big family. Wu Lin, who has a middle-aged son, is very happy. He chose two words for the child from Xiaoya, "Visangzi must be respectful", thinking that the child can stick to his ancestral teachings and honor his family, and named the child Jingzi. Many wishes in life are good, but few can be realized in the end. Wu is a special case. Although he didn't achieve his father's wish, many years later, he made a name for the Quanjiao Wu family in another way.

The Wu family of Quanjiao is a famous family. His great-grandfather has five brothers and four scholars. His great-grandfather Wu Guodun is the top three in Tanhua High School. Jingzi's grandfather, Wu Dan, gave Zhou Tongzhi a quiz. His two brothers, one ranked second in high school and the other was a scholar. The Wu family produced six scholars in three generations and entered the first three and middle generations. This family is full of talented people, and Mu Di Feng Didi.

Family style is very powerful for a person's motivation. In my hometown, there is a family with three children. The boss was admitted to the university, and the second said he would take one, and he was admitted. The third said that he did better than his two brothers, and the third really did better than his two brothers. Have the Wu Jia brothers of Quanjiao ever encouraged each other like this? I think the answer is yes.

Jingzi has been very clever since she was a child. She never forgets anything. His father is the director of education in Ganyu County, Jiangsu Province. When Jingzi was thirteen, his mother died, so he followed his father to study.

One day, Jingzi followed his father to a celebrity party in the county, where everyone recited poems. Jingzi also made a song on the spot: "The mighty sky is infinite, and the tide rises and falls." Peng Yuliu has a long domain and a mirage is used as a balcony. Qilu has no gold mud, while Gankun has jade blossoms. The teenager was in high spirits, sitting on the shelf with a cup. When Amethyst's poems were sung, the room was full of surprises, and everyone praised the young student for his quick thinking and extraordinary bearing. Wu juvenile was famous for Ganyu for some time.

There was a big earthquake in Ganyu. Many local school buildings collapsed, and the Confucian Temple and the Zunjing Pavilion were destroyed, but nobody took care of them. After taking office, Wu Lin saw that the teaching house was dying and collapsed. He first donated 40 Liang of his annual salary, then sold 3,000 mu of ancestral fertile land, sold ancestral pawn shops, cloth villages and silver houses in Wuhe, Tianchang, Hanshan and Hezhou, and raised nearly 20,000 yuan, built a ruined temple, revered classics pavilion and built a new "revered righteousness pavilion".

In fact, the realm of ancient literati in China is very high. This matter has a great influence on Jing Zi. Many years later, in his "The Scholars", he described the elegance of Nanjing celebrities who donated money to build Taibo Temple. Perhaps this narrative also has memories of his father.

Wu, upright and upright, is an honest official. I didn't like to please my boss, so I offended him and got fired. At that time, Jingzi was still a teenager, which deeply influenced him later, so that many years later, he lived in extreme poverty and refused to be an official. He hates the flattery of officialdom. Jingzi's father had a great influence on Jing Zi, which directly affected his outlook on life and values.

1722, Wu 2 1 year old, died as a scholar.

Although a young man is married, his parents have passed away. It should be said that a bright light guiding his life has also gone out.

Wu, who lost his sense of direction, became a spendthrift.

Feng Menglong, a novelist in the Ming Dynasty, had the same situation as Wu, only to wake up later, study hard, and the prodigal son turned back.

Later, Wu may have seen the broken world, did not look back, and took another road.

In The Scholars, there are two brothers Du and Du, both of whom are first-rate scholars. In unofficial history, Shen Qing introduced Shao Qing and said, "The grandfather in the seventh room won the first prize. Later, a grandfather was the magistrate of Ganzhou Prefecture in Jiangxi Province. This is my uncle. The son of Ganzhou satrap is my 25th brother. His name is Zuo Yi, and his nickname is Shao Qing. He is only two years younger than me and a scholar. My uncle is an honest official, and his family is still some fields left by his ancestors. After his uncle died, he didn't want 10 thousand silver furniture. He is a fool, just like thousands of people. He can't even recognize the tattoo in 1997. It's better to be an old official. When he heard someone say something mean to him, he held it up for others to use. "

Personally, I think that what Du Fu wrote in The Scholars may be Wu's personal prototype.

Wu's father left a huge legacy of 22,000 silver to Wu, but Wu was generous and poor in management, and lived a prodigal life of "spending money like water and getting drunk". A few years later, his land was sold and his slaves escaped. The villagers accused him of being a black sheep because he squandered all his property. Finally, he moved to Nanjing in a rage.

The same is true of Du Fu in unofficial history, who ran out of money and moved to Nanjing.

The book specifically talks about a detail of Du's mismanagement. We can also get a glimpse of Wu's life.

The Du family has an old housekeeper, Lou Laobo, who has been managing the family business for the Du family. Du said that the old man in this building said, "Since my late husband went to Ganzhou, all the old accounts of the fields and real estate he left behind have been given to him. Every time money goes in and out, it's the decision of the building, and my late husband never asks. Uncle Lou never touches a penny except for a year in 420 yuan. Every time I collect rent, I go to the tenant's house in the village in person. The tenant prepares two dishes for the elderly, and the elderly only eat the same when they return. When his son and grandson came to see him, they were only allowed to stay for two days and then sent back. Apart from the travel expenses, many of them don't have any money, and they have to be searched before leaving, for fear that the housekeeper will send more money. Just the interest on renting rice. When he left his poor relatives and friends behind, Lou Laobo tried his best to help him. Someone owed money to the late king, and Uncle Lou burned the borrowed coupons when he couldn't pay it. You know, don't ask. Up to now, his two sons and four grandchildren are still poor at home. I asked someone to bring his son and grandson here to deliver medicine. "

After Lou Laobo's death, the Du family's property was sold because no one managed it. The other housekeeper of Du family is Wang Hu, a good wine and a bad slave. People who ask Du for money everywhere buy wine and some Wang Hu, but Du still believes in this Wang Hu. Later, Du sold all his industries and moved to Nanjing, and Wang ran away with twenty taels of silver. This story may be Wu's own story.

Today, when we talk about the selection, employment and management, the first thing that comes to mind is: character comes first, and people like Lou Laobo are the benchmark of a good person. But when it comes to management, it is against the rules and wrong for Lou Laobo to give money to unprincipled friends and burn the borrowed coupons. Of course, the moral education in ancient China can't be mentioned in the same breath as today's moral education, but if there is morality, we must abide by the rules.

When Wu was in Nanjing, he lived in poverty and was hungry and cold. Make a living by selling articles and helping friends. It is often the case that "it rained for three days in front of the White House and there was no money in the kitchen". When describing his livelihood, his friend Cheng Jinfang wrote: "There is no money to keep, the abdomen is as dry as thunder, the clothes are bare, and the stove is smokeless." The winter night is bitterly cold. In order to drive away the cold, Wu often goes around the city for dozens of miles to "warm his feet".

Cheng Jinfang described in "Biography of Mr. Wenmu": "Going out of the south gate of the city and going around the city for dozens of miles, singing and whistling, getting along with each other day and night, catching Ming, entering the west gate of the water, and laughing separately, so every night is called warm feet." "More than a lifetime to make friends, don't be poor. When I visited Yu in Huaihai, I checked and found no pen and inkstone. Yu Yue: We live on it. Can we leave it for a while? Min Xuan said with a smile, I have my own pen and ink in my chest, so I don't bother. Its charm is enough to hide it for a while. Squeezing his bow and broadening his knowledge, the sky is in Min Xuan, and the meaning is different and unpredictable. " Min Xuan is synonymous with amethyst.

Wu's poverty is not ordinary, but he is still as broad-minded, persistent and happy as the ancients of the Six Dynasties.

Zhao, the governor of Anhui Province, recommended him to take the erudite examination in Beijing. He refused to take it in the name of calling in sick. Every day, I make friends with people all over the world, entertain myself with wine, and be praised as the leader of Wulin by everyone. When the "old man's bitter words" interfered with his freedom, he "crossed his hands and thanked the old man, with an eyebrow like a tiger." His "stupidity", "stupidity" and "concealment" remain unchanged throughout his life.

Everyone laughed at him for being stupid, and he laughed at everyone being drunk. In such years, he experienced and contacted all kinds of characters, and accumulated rich materials for his personal creation. It took him nearly twenty years to record these worldly affairs and wrote his masterpiece The Scholars. Those lives, those characters, those stories, those spirits, those moods, those attitudes, those talents are all displayed in the novel. Like Ji Kang, he "holds five strings and watches them return to the flood", maintaining a posture and standing proudly in poverty, but he is tireless.

In A.D. 1754, when Wu was 54 years old, he went to Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province to visit relatives and friends and drank too much. He was drunk and repeatedly recited a poem "A Tour of Huainan" by Zhang Hu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. He and Wang, who came down from Beijing, drank a lot of wine on the boat to cool down. After coming back, he died instantly because of drunkenness and heat, phlegm and shortness of breath. Like those writers who died of drunkenness, his ending was full of poetry and sadness.

We often say that a writer's personal misfortune made the public overjoyed, and he left a great work "The Scholars" to future generations. Zhang Dacao, a writer, believes that the colloquial writing of this work is the peak of China's classical literature oral writing.

Lu Xun said: "Wu's" The Scholars "was published because it insisted that public interest is above everything else and criticized the shortcomings of the times, which is the direction of the machine, especially in the scholars; His writing is harmonious, gentle and ironic; So I said there was a satirical book in the Ministry. "

"The Scholars" wrote at the beginning: "Life is rich and famous, and things are external; But when the world saw fame, they risked their lives to ask him for it, and it tasted like chewing wax. Since ancient times and today, which one is broken! " Perhaps with his extraordinary eyes, he saw through the world.

Wu is a prodigal son, a freak and a freak. As The Scholars said, "In addition to romantic talents, there are more strange people, and there are many affairs besides sex." That man, that thing, is him and them.