這兒有一座全國獨一無二的‘解放軍廟’，廟裡供奉著28軍27名烈士。1949年9月17日，中國人民解放軍第10兵團司令員葉飛率領的28軍84師 251團的官兵分乘6艘木帆船從福建省平潭來到崇武鎮的西沙灣，准備參加解放金門的戰役。這是當年一位被28軍官兵從敵機轟炸下救出的小姑娘所立。當時住在她家的27名解放軍戰士以後全部戰死在金門。姑娘如今已是67歲的老嫗。我和她一同攀上山崗，遠眺金門。
這個小女孩當時只有13歲，名叫曾恨。在此之前她叫曾阿興，她的母親叫李面。李面與丈夫僑居新加坡，生有三子一女。女孩起名曾阿興，是希望小女孩能為家族帶來興旺。然而，老天無眼，曾恨的兄弟在日寇侵占新加坡時全死了，這對李面一家來說是一個極大的打擊。她為女兒曾阿興改名曾恨以示對戰爭的憎。
母親為了躲避戰爭，決定帶著12歲的曾恨返回故鄉崇武。李面認為故鄉雖窮，但故鄉人情卻是溫暖。來到崇武後，李面再次為曾恨改名，仍叫曾阿興。她希望這次真的不再有怨恨，家族從此興旺發達。在依然硝煙彌漫的西沙灣，李面再又一次為女兒改名，她說：“囡仔，今天起，你仍叫曾恨。”說完，母女兩人抱頭痛哭。 當地的群眾按當地的風俗在沙塚邊蓋了一間12平方米的小屋子，屋子裡安放著烈士的牌位，上書“廿七君靈位”。崇武民風古樸，素有奉祀為民捐軀的英雄的習俗。明朝時，戚繼光曾率部在泉州海域與倭寇激戰，眾多將士陣亡。一部分陣亡的將士也葬在西沙灣的海灘旁，村民建了一座面向大海的“和寮宮”，以祭奠奉祀些英靈。供奉“廿七君靈位”的小屋子便建在“和寮宮”附近。
第二天早上，李面便帶著曾恨來上香。後來便是曾恨帶著子女、孫子來。除了分娩坐月子，哪怕刮風下雨，曾恨堅持天天祭拜恩人，年年香火不斷。每年除夕，曾恨都要和母親到西沙灣為這些死難烈士守歲。 曾恨總覺得那方小小的“廿七君靈位”無法滿足她對解放軍的懷念。她把母親給她的梳妝盒改成一個小小的神龕；她用泥土塑了一尊解放軍像，用筆給泥像畫上五官和紅五星、領章；她用寫著“中國人民解放軍”的紙條貼在泥像的胸前。曾恨對解放軍的懷念、對死難烈士的哀思有了一個真實的形像寄托。不知從哪天起，祭奠奉祀“廿七君”的人漸漸多了起來。除夕夜守在此處的也不止曾恨一家人。
崇武鎮12個村都有人到“廿七君靈位”前燒香上供品。曾恨許下心願，建一座像“和寮宮”一樣的廟，她要把27位烈士供起來讓人們瞻仰。 文革期間，“和寮宮”和“廿七君靈位”以及曾恨捏的解放軍泥像與“四舊”一起，被掃除一空。曾恨也被告知：不得再去墳上燒香上供品了，因為解放軍是不信神、不信迷信的。但是曾恨仍舊我行我素，只是時間上稍作調整，把祭奉時間改在不易被人覺察的凌晨或深夜。
“文革”過後，曾恨又可以公開地祭奉解放軍烈士了。燒香點燭焚紙錢時，海風把紙灰吹得到處飄揚。曾恨要為死難烈士建廟的決心更堅定了。在她心中，這些不知姓名和住址的解放軍戰士就像神一樣，是她生命中的支柱。
幾十年過去了，為了建廟做小本生意的曾恨省吃儉用地積攢了四五萬元。有了錢後，她到鎮上的有關部門詢問有關建廟事宜。在得到允許後，她丟下生意不做了。她把母親生前留下的金鏈、金手鐲賣掉，把房契抵押掉，四處寫欠條借錢，但還只是杯水車薪。她對村支書說：“解放軍是共產黨的軍隊，為了解放我們受苦的人，解放軍犧牲了，現在我要按這裡的風俗像建“和寮宮”一樣建成一座廟。你們是共產黨員，帶頭捐一點吧。只用了半年多的時間，曾恨在只有6萬人口的崇武鎮募到60多萬元的捐款。
1993年，解放軍廟緊挨著“和寮宮”動工了，
1996年秋天，廟建成了，無和尚、沒尼姑，無佛無神，在通常用來擺放神明的地方端端正正地擺放著27尊解放軍塑像以及當年他們所乘的木帆船的模型。曾恨住在廟裡，她每天早早地起床，在供桌前擺上清茶、供品，然後燒一柱香，默禱“國泰民安，風調雨順”。 曾恨常呆在廟細細地擦拭雕像、香案。她總是一邊忙著一邊與這些雕像說話，她總覺得這些解放軍烈士會聽到自己的聲音。曾恨為他們准備了很多東西，如：小汽車、摩托車、飛機、艦艇和手提電話等紙扎祭品和玩具，曾恨說，她要讓這些解放軍生前沒享用過的現在都能享用。
1997年，崇武人民又捐資建了烈士紀念碑。老將軍葉飛聽女兒葉藝華講述老百姓自發修建解放軍廟的消息後，激動不已，當即揮毫題寫碑銘：“為了人民，死得光榮”。紀念碑於1997年11月完工。
1998年初，崇武鎮又開始擴建烈士紀念館，完成解放軍廟的配套工程。
27位烈士所在部隊已改了番號，1997年，時任團長來到這裡悼念先烈，代表部隊為解放軍廟贈送匾額，上書“戰士英烈，惠女虔誠？？天下第一廟”。1999年，老戰士侯茂森也來此懷念戰友。附近的駐軍官兵和中小學校的師生更是經常到這裡接受先烈事跡的熏陶和愛國主義教育。 占地400多平方米的解放軍廟香火不斷，廟前的楹聯：“丹心照日月，碧血寫春秋”、“官兵勇戰壯成仁，同志於今稱大人。塑像奉香豈迷信，翻身群眾敬功臣。”廟宇上空回蕩的總是《我是一個兵》、《說句心裡話》等和《我的老班長》等軍隊歌曲.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
China Shakes the World
China Shakes the World
Jack Belden
I emerged from the guerrila ares of Anyang in a disturbed and confused frame of mind.Many of the things that I had and seen in that dark medieval world just would not fit into the usual Westerner's conception of war, revolution or even life itself.The fact that a woman should laugh just after her husband hand been murdered on a lonely hillside somehow seemed inexplicable.
Was there a connection between that woman's laugh and the Chinese revolution?I soon came to think so.
For it was a curious fact that as I began to mull over in my mind all that I had learned during the land reform and the people's war, I discovered that the Communists' drive for power was touched at almost every point by women, by the feelings, by their relationship to men, by their scoial status, by their symbol as an object of property, religion and sex.Because of this discovery, I decided that I would make use of the fiest available opportunity to talk with a Chinese farm woman about her life, her innermost thoughts, her secret feelings.
This I knew would be difficult, for Chinese farm women will not usually talk alone with men, especially foreigners, yet an opportunity of this kind was offered me sooner than I expected.Having said goo-by to Mr. Chen and Liu Ming-chi, I made my wary back across the North China Plain and after several days' journey come to Li- Chia-Chuang, a small village of about three hundred people in central Hopei. (河北)
Here I found my farther progress halted by the flood waters of the Grand Canal which KouMinTang troops had broken open to block the advance of Communist armies in the area. Not wishing to wander out across the flood waters and offer myself as a target for potshots from either side, I decided to sit down in the village for the moment and await developments.During this period, I tried to persuade several farm women to talk to me about themsevles, but they were never willing.After some difficulty, I managed to win the confidence of a peasant girl name Kin Hua, whose husband was away in Chiang Kai Shek's areas, and gradually I persuaded her to tell me the story of her life.
I found it so interesting that I postponed my departure from the villagea another week and talked with her every day for eight, nine and ten hours a day.I will try to tell her story here just as she told it to me in a flood of bitter tears, angry imprecations and emotional outbursts of despair, frustration and hope.
I am condending her words but nevertheless I shall tell her story at some length because I think it reveals more clearly than a dozen speeches by Mao Tze Tung just what are some of the techniques of the Chinese Communist party and why they were able to win so many people to their cause.
At the time I mei Kin Hua - which translates into English as Gold Flower - she had just turned twenty-one.She was a rather attractive girl, with a pleasant face, embellished by a tiny mouth, an upturned nose and a pair of somber brown eyses.Thin and wiry, she appeared more dainty than the average North China farm woman.She had the slender wrists and ankles that Frenchmen so much admire.
Her feet were not bound and her hair was bobbed.We sat and talked in her home - a clay-hut afffair of four rooms running in a square around a court-yard - and this is the story she told me.
She had been born in a village ten miles away where conditions were primitive, food scarce, comforts unknown, and she had worked hard ever since she could remember.When she was fifteen, during the middle of the Japanese invasion, she fell in love with a boy named Li Pao, the primary schoolmate of her elder brother.
He was, to hear her tell it, a distinctly good-looking boy of seventeen years, with a slender, trim body, odd, restful eyes, and a queer deep voice that had the ring of an old bell. It was the voice that got under Gold Flower;s reserve: it was so different from the coarse peasant tones to which she was accustomed. Whenever he came to see her brother, Gold Flower would drop whatever she was doing and go and listern to their conversation.
As she heard Lipao talking, his eyes earnest with youthful enthusiasum, his whole body bent forward intent on what he was saying, talking of such grand and to her, unheared of things as freedom, democracy and the future of China, her heart yearned over hime.He was so noble! She wanted to tell him so, but her brother was always present and she never had the opportunity. So she just sat near him, sent him secret smiles and followed his every movement with her eyes.
He soon became aware of her interest, and noce, when her brother left the room for a moment, he leaned over close to Gold Flower and said: "I have learned something from your eyes. I know you heart."
Ashamed, ye delighted, Gold Flower was so excited she could make no reply. Later, she longed to have a secret conversation with him. But how?It is necessary for a North China village girl to give the appearance, if not of disdain for men, at least of disinterest in them, since decorum and dignity rank abve love as the virtues most highly prized in China, and girls stay behind the wall of their homes until they were married and ever after that.
Although there are thousands of authentic instances of Chinese men selling their women into wifery, concubinage or whoredom, there is scarcely any record of a girl indulging a romance with a boy with the consent and knowledge of her parents; and the descent for a girl breaking this rule is very swift, since anyone finding her alone with a boy could accuse her of selling her maidenhood.
So hypocritial is Chinese society that while farmers may commit adultery with their tenant's wives without fear of punishment and while every village has and tolerates at least one "BROKEN SHOE", a young boy and girl, no mater how innocent their intentions, may neither talk alone together, hold hands nor much less kiss.
Under these circumstances, it must be accounted an act of courage, infatuation, or insanity that Gold Flower, another time, when her brother left the room for a moment, leaned over and whipered in Li Pao's ear:" My family will be away tomorrow, will you come?"The next day, he obtained leave from school, and by nine o'clock was at her gate.
She blushed as he entered, and she gave a little affected laugh to keep herself in countenance.Then - so a stray visitor or her family returning would think no one was at time - she led hime to her room and immediately closed and bolted the door.Gold Flower had thought only to have a secret talk with a boy whose intellectual attainments she admired.But her companion mistook her unconventional behavior and the bolted door for an invitation of another sort, and he tried to make love to her.At first shocked, then excited, the frightened, Gold Flower, rebuffed him, half-succumbed to him, the angrily told him to leave.
But when he rose to go, Gold Flower's heart was thrown into turmoil. At one moment she was afraid of not being loved, at another thought that Li Pao wanter her virginity as a kind of medal of conquest tortured her. Had she been sure of his affections, or had she ever had another experience with a man, perhaps she would have let him go, but to lose friendship of such a boy seemed to her at the moment the worst possible disaster.
Her passion carried her to the point of falling at Li Pao's feet and throwing her arms around his knees. She pleaded with him not to try to make love to her - for she would be tetrothed to another man - while at the same time she begged him not to desert her for she was lonely."Be my friend, my elder brother, my lover - in everything but that be my lover," she had cried. Moved by her word and her attitude of humility, the boy overcame his annoyance at being thwarted and agreed to her conditions.In this way, a romance - childish, but forbidden by Chinese village code - had begun. And so it continued, for when her family returned Gold Flower still contrived wasy to meet her lover.
Every night when the others were in bed - her three brothers, father and mother, all together on one KANG - Gold Flower would tiptoe out her dooe and softly let back the latch on the front gate. Soon there would be a creaking at the gate and then a shadowy form would flit swiftly across the courtyard and Gold Flower's door would open and then shut again.
During these nightly meeting in Gold Flower's room, the couple poured out much talk from their hearts, but they did not make love, never kissed, only held hands, looked deeply into one another's eyes and swore eternal friendship.
Because her actions were so contrary to village morality, Gold Flower when she first paused to think about her conduct, felt stunned with remorse. But one day when her girl friends gathered in her room to sew flowered shoes she began to feel differently.
The girls played the game: "what kind of a man would like to marry?" and Glod Flower, her cheeks faintly red, relied:" I should like to marry someone like my neighbor Li Pao; he is so handsome and tender."
Then teased to distraction by her friends, and in terror lest her secret be dicovered, she shrugged her shoulders and said with an air of worldly wisdom:" What is the use of talking about what kind of a man we would like to marry, when we have no choice in the matter?' "Yes," her friends had answered. "How stupid it all this! Our parents arrange everything for us. Like us not we'll get an ugly husband."The girls wished they had been born in England, France or America, where they heard women married men they loved.
They had vague feelings the they are living in a "black society", and since in their hearts they were rebels against this scoiety, every one of them thought it all right to have a secret lover.
These conversations gave Gold Flower pleasure, for they clothed her affair with Li Pao in a moral garment of which it had hitherto been barren. She even began to revel in her defiance of scoiety and sought proofs that her adventure was making a better woman of her. Sometimes she would take her small mirror from under her pillow and look happily at her own face. Never had it seemed more beautiful. " I have a lover! a lover!" she would say, delighting in the idea like a child with a new toy.
The days following passed with new sweetness. The first time Li Pao told her he love her she nearly feel fainting in his arms with ecstasy. Then, because he asked for nothing in exchange for his love, she began to think generosity, nobility of soul and humanity existed only in this young student.
Li Pao taught her how to write a few simple characters. Thenceforth, when she wanted to see him, she wrote the character "come" on a scrap of paper and put it in the hollow of a tree by the village pond.Li Pao came to find it and put there another note saying "yes" or "no," or "tonight" or "tomorrow" or "my room" or "your room" for these were nearly all the characters she could read.Brief as were these note, Gold Flower guarded them like a treasure, hiding them in a corner of her KANG beneath the reed matting, and taking them out every once in a while and tracing the characters Li Pao had written over again with her finger.In fact, the whole art of writing seemed to Gold Flower some powerful black magic.
The word "come" often had for her semblance of a holy and potent incantation, for she only had to write and suddenly - proof! - in answer to her sorcery, Li Pao would be in her room.In other ways, too, the whole horizon of her thoughts and life lifted/ Entirley absorbed, before Li Pao's coming, with that mass of work which is the lot of Chinese farm girl, Gold Flower had never thought about passion and love affairs, save in relation to the gossip she had heard in the mouths of other women.
But now these stories began to seem almost as real to her as her own life, and she began to adopt the tricks of every romance of which she had ever heard.
Because it was traditional with the heroines of her remembered stories to sew garments for their lovers, Gold Flower began to make Li Pao a jacket. Her month notice this and became suspicious. Gold Flower put her off saying:"His mother has no time to sew, I'll just throw this together carelessly and help her out."
To herself, however, she said:"I must show my love through my work," and she began to make a jacket of which any big city tailor might well have been proud.
Instead of the usual five buttonholes, she made thirteen, and around each hole she embroidered a flower. Such buttonholes are known to young boys and girls in this part of China as "the thirteen precious jewels." and Gold Flower was very happy in her work, believing she was having a romance in the best tradition.
Because she had grown very sentimental, she ran with the jacket to Li Pao and insisted that he try it on.All the while she danced around him crying: " Do you like it? Oh, tell me, do you like it?"Her enthusiasm was so captivating and her sentiment so infectious that Li Pao had answered just as her heart had wished."I love it because it was made by my own true love's hands."
As was the custom, he tried to give Gold Flower money to buy thread to make herself a pair of flowered shoes. At first, she refused, saying, "I don't want anything from you, but your love." But when her refusal saddened him, she took the money, but she never bought anything for herself and spent every dollar to buy cloth, thread and needles to make garments for Li Pao.Gold Flower often thought this was the happiest time of her life - a honeymoon she might have called it had she known the word or been aware of the custom.
She would have liked to shout her love for Li Pao to the whole village, and though this was impossible, she longed for some friend in whom she could confide. But not only was this denied her, but she had to redouble her caution to prevent the affair from becoming known.By degrees a vague uneasiness took possession of her. She was no longer, as formerly, completely carefree. She began to wonder if she ought not to yield to Li Pao, or whether, since she could not completely satisfy his love, cease to see him any more.Her refusal to give herself to him had at first proceeded from strength, but now she found herself wondering if it was not weakness that prevented her from fully consummating their love.
Then she asked herself what would become of her - if her parents would betroth her, and to whom? But Li Pao's face always rose before her and she could not picture any other hushand. Yet there always rang in her mind that thought: "If you should be betrothed! If youshould be betrothed!" At night she could not sleep; she tossed and turned and beat her pillow. Thinking that, after all, it would be worse to give herself to someone she did not know than to Li Pao, whom she loved, she promised herself to throw herself in Li Pao's arms the next time he came, but when he did come, she could not do it and remained silent.I the autumn of 1942, Gold Flower was betrothed to a man named Chang,……………….
Jack Belden
I emerged from the guerrila ares of Anyang in a disturbed and confused frame of mind.Many of the things that I had and seen in that dark medieval world just would not fit into the usual Westerner's conception of war, revolution or even life itself.The fact that a woman should laugh just after her husband hand been murdered on a lonely hillside somehow seemed inexplicable.
Was there a connection between that woman's laugh and the Chinese revolution?I soon came to think so.
For it was a curious fact that as I began to mull over in my mind all that I had learned during the land reform and the people's war, I discovered that the Communists' drive for power was touched at almost every point by women, by the feelings, by their relationship to men, by their scoial status, by their symbol as an object of property, religion and sex.Because of this discovery, I decided that I would make use of the fiest available opportunity to talk with a Chinese farm woman about her life, her innermost thoughts, her secret feelings.
This I knew would be difficult, for Chinese farm women will not usually talk alone with men, especially foreigners, yet an opportunity of this kind was offered me sooner than I expected.Having said goo-by to Mr. Chen and Liu Ming-chi, I made my wary back across the North China Plain and after several days' journey come to Li- Chia-Chuang, a small village of about three hundred people in central Hopei. (河北)
Here I found my farther progress halted by the flood waters of the Grand Canal which KouMinTang troops had broken open to block the advance of Communist armies in the area. Not wishing to wander out across the flood waters and offer myself as a target for potshots from either side, I decided to sit down in the village for the moment and await developments.During this period, I tried to persuade several farm women to talk to me about themsevles, but they were never willing.After some difficulty, I managed to win the confidence of a peasant girl name Kin Hua, whose husband was away in Chiang Kai Shek's areas, and gradually I persuaded her to tell me the story of her life.
I found it so interesting that I postponed my departure from the villagea another week and talked with her every day for eight, nine and ten hours a day.I will try to tell her story here just as she told it to me in a flood of bitter tears, angry imprecations and emotional outbursts of despair, frustration and hope.
I am condending her words but nevertheless I shall tell her story at some length because I think it reveals more clearly than a dozen speeches by Mao Tze Tung just what are some of the techniques of the Chinese Communist party and why they were able to win so many people to their cause.
At the time I mei Kin Hua - which translates into English as Gold Flower - she had just turned twenty-one.She was a rather attractive girl, with a pleasant face, embellished by a tiny mouth, an upturned nose and a pair of somber brown eyses.Thin and wiry, she appeared more dainty than the average North China farm woman.She had the slender wrists and ankles that Frenchmen so much admire.
Her feet were not bound and her hair was bobbed.We sat and talked in her home - a clay-hut afffair of four rooms running in a square around a court-yard - and this is the story she told me.
She had been born in a village ten miles away where conditions were primitive, food scarce, comforts unknown, and she had worked hard ever since she could remember.When she was fifteen, during the middle of the Japanese invasion, she fell in love with a boy named Li Pao, the primary schoolmate of her elder brother.
He was, to hear her tell it, a distinctly good-looking boy of seventeen years, with a slender, trim body, odd, restful eyes, and a queer deep voice that had the ring of an old bell. It was the voice that got under Gold Flower;s reserve: it was so different from the coarse peasant tones to which she was accustomed. Whenever he came to see her brother, Gold Flower would drop whatever she was doing and go and listern to their conversation.
As she heard Lipao talking, his eyes earnest with youthful enthusiasum, his whole body bent forward intent on what he was saying, talking of such grand and to her, unheared of things as freedom, democracy and the future of China, her heart yearned over hime.He was so noble! She wanted to tell him so, but her brother was always present and she never had the opportunity. So she just sat near him, sent him secret smiles and followed his every movement with her eyes.
He soon became aware of her interest, and noce, when her brother left the room for a moment, he leaned over close to Gold Flower and said: "I have learned something from your eyes. I know you heart."
Ashamed, ye delighted, Gold Flower was so excited she could make no reply. Later, she longed to have a secret conversation with him. But how?It is necessary for a North China village girl to give the appearance, if not of disdain for men, at least of disinterest in them, since decorum and dignity rank abve love as the virtues most highly prized in China, and girls stay behind the wall of their homes until they were married and ever after that.
Although there are thousands of authentic instances of Chinese men selling their women into wifery, concubinage or whoredom, there is scarcely any record of a girl indulging a romance with a boy with the consent and knowledge of her parents; and the descent for a girl breaking this rule is very swift, since anyone finding her alone with a boy could accuse her of selling her maidenhood.
So hypocritial is Chinese society that while farmers may commit adultery with their tenant's wives without fear of punishment and while every village has and tolerates at least one "BROKEN SHOE", a young boy and girl, no mater how innocent their intentions, may neither talk alone together, hold hands nor much less kiss.
Under these circumstances, it must be accounted an act of courage, infatuation, or insanity that Gold Flower, another time, when her brother left the room for a moment, leaned over and whipered in Li Pao's ear:" My family will be away tomorrow, will you come?"The next day, he obtained leave from school, and by nine o'clock was at her gate.
She blushed as he entered, and she gave a little affected laugh to keep herself in countenance.Then - so a stray visitor or her family returning would think no one was at time - she led hime to her room and immediately closed and bolted the door.Gold Flower had thought only to have a secret talk with a boy whose intellectual attainments she admired.But her companion mistook her unconventional behavior and the bolted door for an invitation of another sort, and he tried to make love to her.At first shocked, then excited, the frightened, Gold Flower, rebuffed him, half-succumbed to him, the angrily told him to leave.
But when he rose to go, Gold Flower's heart was thrown into turmoil. At one moment she was afraid of not being loved, at another thought that Li Pao wanter her virginity as a kind of medal of conquest tortured her. Had she been sure of his affections, or had she ever had another experience with a man, perhaps she would have let him go, but to lose friendship of such a boy seemed to her at the moment the worst possible disaster.
Her passion carried her to the point of falling at Li Pao's feet and throwing her arms around his knees. She pleaded with him not to try to make love to her - for she would be tetrothed to another man - while at the same time she begged him not to desert her for she was lonely."Be my friend, my elder brother, my lover - in everything but that be my lover," she had cried. Moved by her word and her attitude of humility, the boy overcame his annoyance at being thwarted and agreed to her conditions.In this way, a romance - childish, but forbidden by Chinese village code - had begun. And so it continued, for when her family returned Gold Flower still contrived wasy to meet her lover.
Every night when the others were in bed - her three brothers, father and mother, all together on one KANG - Gold Flower would tiptoe out her dooe and softly let back the latch on the front gate. Soon there would be a creaking at the gate and then a shadowy form would flit swiftly across the courtyard and Gold Flower's door would open and then shut again.
During these nightly meeting in Gold Flower's room, the couple poured out much talk from their hearts, but they did not make love, never kissed, only held hands, looked deeply into one another's eyes and swore eternal friendship.
Because her actions were so contrary to village morality, Gold Flower when she first paused to think about her conduct, felt stunned with remorse. But one day when her girl friends gathered in her room to sew flowered shoes she began to feel differently.
The girls played the game: "what kind of a man would like to marry?" and Glod Flower, her cheeks faintly red, relied:" I should like to marry someone like my neighbor Li Pao; he is so handsome and tender."
Then teased to distraction by her friends, and in terror lest her secret be dicovered, she shrugged her shoulders and said with an air of worldly wisdom:" What is the use of talking about what kind of a man we would like to marry, when we have no choice in the matter?' "Yes," her friends had answered. "How stupid it all this! Our parents arrange everything for us. Like us not we'll get an ugly husband."The girls wished they had been born in England, France or America, where they heard women married men they loved.
They had vague feelings the they are living in a "black society", and since in their hearts they were rebels against this scoiety, every one of them thought it all right to have a secret lover.
These conversations gave Gold Flower pleasure, for they clothed her affair with Li Pao in a moral garment of which it had hitherto been barren. She even began to revel in her defiance of scoiety and sought proofs that her adventure was making a better woman of her. Sometimes she would take her small mirror from under her pillow and look happily at her own face. Never had it seemed more beautiful. " I have a lover! a lover!" she would say, delighting in the idea like a child with a new toy.
The days following passed with new sweetness. The first time Li Pao told her he love her she nearly feel fainting in his arms with ecstasy. Then, because he asked for nothing in exchange for his love, she began to think generosity, nobility of soul and humanity existed only in this young student.
Li Pao taught her how to write a few simple characters. Thenceforth, when she wanted to see him, she wrote the character "come" on a scrap of paper and put it in the hollow of a tree by the village pond.Li Pao came to find it and put there another note saying "yes" or "no," or "tonight" or "tomorrow" or "my room" or "your room" for these were nearly all the characters she could read.Brief as were these note, Gold Flower guarded them like a treasure, hiding them in a corner of her KANG beneath the reed matting, and taking them out every once in a while and tracing the characters Li Pao had written over again with her finger.In fact, the whole art of writing seemed to Gold Flower some powerful black magic.
The word "come" often had for her semblance of a holy and potent incantation, for she only had to write and suddenly - proof! - in answer to her sorcery, Li Pao would be in her room.In other ways, too, the whole horizon of her thoughts and life lifted/ Entirley absorbed, before Li Pao's coming, with that mass of work which is the lot of Chinese farm girl, Gold Flower had never thought about passion and love affairs, save in relation to the gossip she had heard in the mouths of other women.
But now these stories began to seem almost as real to her as her own life, and she began to adopt the tricks of every romance of which she had ever heard.
Because it was traditional with the heroines of her remembered stories to sew garments for their lovers, Gold Flower began to make Li Pao a jacket. Her month notice this and became suspicious. Gold Flower put her off saying:"His mother has no time to sew, I'll just throw this together carelessly and help her out."
To herself, however, she said:"I must show my love through my work," and she began to make a jacket of which any big city tailor might well have been proud.
Instead of the usual five buttonholes, she made thirteen, and around each hole she embroidered a flower. Such buttonholes are known to young boys and girls in this part of China as "the thirteen precious jewels." and Gold Flower was very happy in her work, believing she was having a romance in the best tradition.
Because she had grown very sentimental, she ran with the jacket to Li Pao and insisted that he try it on.All the while she danced around him crying: " Do you like it? Oh, tell me, do you like it?"Her enthusiasm was so captivating and her sentiment so infectious that Li Pao had answered just as her heart had wished."I love it because it was made by my own true love's hands."
As was the custom, he tried to give Gold Flower money to buy thread to make herself a pair of flowered shoes. At first, she refused, saying, "I don't want anything from you, but your love." But when her refusal saddened him, she took the money, but she never bought anything for herself and spent every dollar to buy cloth, thread and needles to make garments for Li Pao.Gold Flower often thought this was the happiest time of her life - a honeymoon she might have called it had she known the word or been aware of the custom.
She would have liked to shout her love for Li Pao to the whole village, and though this was impossible, she longed for some friend in whom she could confide. But not only was this denied her, but she had to redouble her caution to prevent the affair from becoming known.By degrees a vague uneasiness took possession of her. She was no longer, as formerly, completely carefree. She began to wonder if she ought not to yield to Li Pao, or whether, since she could not completely satisfy his love, cease to see him any more.Her refusal to give herself to him had at first proceeded from strength, but now she found herself wondering if it was not weakness that prevented her from fully consummating their love.
Then she asked herself what would become of her - if her parents would betroth her, and to whom? But Li Pao's face always rose before her and she could not picture any other hushand. Yet there always rang in her mind that thought: "If you should be betrothed! If youshould be betrothed!" At night she could not sleep; she tossed and turned and beat her pillow. Thinking that, after all, it would be worse to give herself to someone she did not know than to Li Pao, whom she loved, she promised herself to throw herself in Li Pao's arms the next time he came, but when he did come, she could not do it and remained silent.I the autumn of 1942, Gold Flower was betrothed to a man named Chang,……………….
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
偽劣民國 夢想台灣
偽劣民國 夢想台灣
馬英九：「我是台灣人，誰說我不是台灣人。」
擔心省籍問題燒到自己，馬英九大聲說自己是台灣人之外，下午又開記者會，出示當天接受採訪的光碟，還發給媒體關鍵對話的文字稿，強調絕對沒說外省人當總統是台灣福氣。
主播沈春華：「台灣2008很難產生，一位非本省籍的總統，您同意嗎？」馬英九：「不同意，不同意，同意的話，我就不用參選了，我們要選的是一個會作事，能夠把台灣帶向幸福，帶向健康的人，而不是，專門在族群問題上作文章，如果台灣有一天，能做到這點，這就是台灣的福氣。」
馬英九自認談話被移花接木，非得說個清楚講個明白！馬英九：「當時我並沒有說，如果台灣有外省籍總統，是台灣人的福氣，我從來沒有這樣說，我是說台灣如果能夠走出族群問題，是台灣的福氣。」
至於立法院長王金平，觸及外省菁英領導本省民眾的族群談話，引發國民黨內反彈，王金平表示，這是善意提醒國民黨要重視的問題。立法院長王金平：「我王金平從小到現在，對族群問題最重視，我絕對沒有歧視，我都一直在想如何來幫助族群融合。」
Saturday, March 17, 2007
435354
聯合國廢除繁體字？馬英九反對 寄給朋友 友善列印 【TVBS新聞 】
(新聞)馬英九，今天在和灣區留學生會面時，刻意用許多輕鬆有趣的故事，來表達理念。會場笑聲不斷。
曾經舉辦華文城市活動的馬英九，為了繁體字的保存請命，從台灣到一路到了美國。
國民黨主席馬英九：「漢朝的歷史，他（劉兆玄）一面看，在那邊念，結果後面站了一對英國夫婦，大驚失色，問他說，你看得懂嗎？他說，這2千多年的東西，你怎麼看得懂呢？劉兆玄說，我們台灣人都看得懂，可是，可是那個大陸導遊他看不懂。」
在笑談中，馬英九強調文化傳承的意義非常重大。此外，對於統獨問題，馬英九舉出2、30年前，兩岸學生在美國的互動經驗，他說兩邊的學生過年吃餃子，融洽的很，一談到統獨就撕破臉，大陸學生只好來上這麼一段。
馬英九：「沒關係，你把你們台灣的地址告訴我們，將來紅軍去的時候，就不要碰你們家，真的事情，真的事。」
文章話題： 可惜 自己不是中國人民 阿台有點無奈
卡馬冰冰
[這篇文章最後由kama8th在 2007/03/17 12:54pm 第 3 次編輯]
阿台說 阿共 比 阿山 好
阿台說 自己不是中國人民 有點可惜
可惜 阿台的國家是台灣 不是中國
###################################################
記得初到大陸時，大約是1988年底，我因工作關係，走訪了大西北、西南，所到之處，各地方都有各自的電視台，除了中央電視臺的聯播節目以外，當然也擁有各自的方言節目，直到現在。
而國民黨口口聲聲的「萬惡的共產黨！」，尚且能容納方言，學何國民黨當時非要趕盡殺絕呢？台灣從南到北，東到西，只要台北擁有的路、街名，保証全國各地都有，這在全世界也是僅有的現象。
我們從小學到大學所讀到的地理、歷史；我在此保証，我們比生活在中國大陸的老百姓還熟悉。
什麼特產、產量、湖泊、江河、鐵路、公路網等等；這些不是我們擁有，永遠也得不到的，更不想去知道的東西，卻非叫我們生活在36,188.035平方公里，2千２百多萬人去接受9，596，960平方公里12億多人口的地理和歷史，實在太沈重了！也請教育當局饒了我下一代吧！(●作者大頭仔，桃園人，台商。
卡馬冰冰
[這篇文章最後由kama8th在 2007/03/17 12:54pm 第 3 次編輯]
阿台說 阿共 比 阿山 好
阿台說 自己不是中國人民 有點可惜
可惜 阿台的國家是台灣 不是中國
###################################################
記得初到大陸時，大約是1988年底，我因工作關係，走訪了大西北、西南，所到之處，各地方都有各自的電視台，除了中央電視臺的聯播節目以外，當然也擁有各自的方言節目，直到現在。
而國民黨口口聲聲的「萬惡的共產黨！」，尚且能容納方言，學何國民黨當時非要趕盡殺絕呢？台灣從南到北，東到西，只要台北擁有的路、街名，保証全國各地都有，這在全世界也是僅有的現象。
我們從小學到大學所讀到的地理、歷史；我在此保証，我們比生活在中國大陸的老百姓還熟悉。
什麼特產、產量、湖泊、江河、鐵路、公路網等等；這些不是我們擁有，永遠也得不到的，更不想去知道的東西，卻非叫我們生活在36,188.035平方公里，2千２百多萬人去接受9，596，960平方公里12億多人口的地理和歷史，實在太沈重了！也請教育當局饒了我下一代吧！(●作者大頭仔，桃園人，台商。
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