作       者：龚如仲（美国）

海外头条总编审   王 在 军     （中国）

海外头条副编审 Wendyh温迪（英国）

海 外 头 条总 编   火 凤  凰     （海外）

图片选自百度

第一章：懵懂少年

第三部分：命运的十字路口

文/龚如仲（美国）

      正如我一再强调的，我家当时的家境并不富裕，而生性仗义疏财的父亲动不动就把家里吃饭穿衣的钱拿出来救济一些从江苏老家来上海  ﹁哭穷﹂的村上人，所以家中的日子有时特别难熬。即使在这种艰难的情况下，大字不识的父母咬着牙、勒紧裤腰带，省下钱来供我上学读书。无论是小学还是中学，我都是在家中﹁寅吃卯粮﹂的情况下完成学业的。

     可是，就在我初中即将毕业的那一年，有一天从老家来了个中年人。听父亲说，他是乡下出了名的好郎中，不但医术高明，且医德颇佳。这郎中来上海的目的是为了配几味乡下无法寻觅的好药。为了节省食宿费，他到了上海后自然就﹁下榻﹂于我的家中。经与我接触了几天后，郎中突然对我发生了兴趣。于是他主动劝我父亲让我这个﹁颇具慧根﹂的“好苗子”放弃学业，随他到乡下学医，将来可以﹁体体面面地当郎中，丰衣足食地过日子﹂。父亲一听，怦然心动，于是他就和母亲商议此事。可母亲一听不干了，她坚决反对让还是一个孩子的我，这么小就离开父母“到乡下去吃苦”。父母争执不下，决定去学校找我的班主任喻老师作一决断。

     在我父母那一辈人的心目中，老师是他们值得信任的有学问的人，老师的权威是毋庸置疑的。好在喻老师眼光长远，听罢我父母的诉说后，她认为：虽然我是个读书不大用功、生性相当顽皮的小男孩，但我中文上的潜质还是有的。“小小年纪，就放弃学业去乡下当郎中，实在太可惜”。父亲自然心悦诚服地听从了老师的劝说，放弃了让我回乡学医的打算。就这样，又过了两年，到了我即将高中毕业的时侯，我又一次走到了命运的十字路口。

       那是一个礼拜天的下午，父亲休息在家。恰巧同住一个里弄的邻居、一位名叫刘博诚的老先生突然来我家拜访。父母见是刘先生光临，显得相当意外，但又十分高兴。原来刘先生不仅是个极有学问的旧大学毕业的“秀才”，而且还是上海滩上曲艺界的名人。这位专攻扬州评话的刘先生，一部【大明英烈传】在喜欢听评书的广大人群中久负盛名。虽说刘先生平日里见到左邻右舍总是客客气气、彬彬有礼，但对我家之造访还是头一回。父母自然对刘先生端茶递烟、恭敬有加。

     双方坐定之后，刘先生开了腔。他说他昨天偶过“张瞎子”家大门口，看到门上有副对联写得不错，一打听原来对联是龚家的“小把戏”写的，他有点好奇，所以特意前来证实一下。“小把戏”在我们江苏老家是指小孩子（刘先生也是江苏扬州人）。父亲一听马上把我叫来询问此事。

       原来我家一近邻张先生是一个在街道工厂糊纸盒子的盲人。春节来临前，张先生请我胡乱给他家写副对联，说是“贴在门上给人家看看也可图个热闹”。我当时也是一时兴起，编了副对联交差。我记得上联是“朝持明杖闭门去”，下联是“暮携浊酒踏月归”，横批是“苦中有乐”。想不到我这副闹着玩儿的对子能入刘先生的法眼。

      得知对联果然是我所写，刘先生点头微笑。接着他又和我聊了一些关于中国古典小说的话题。好在我从小爱看书，除了熟读“水浒”、“三国”、“红楼”、“西游”等名著外，尤其喜欢读诸如【封神榜】、【四游记】（分东游、南游、西游、北游四个神鬼故事）、【搜神记】、【大八义】【小五义】之类的神鬼、侠义小说，老少二人谈得相当投机。

    谈到这个火候，刘先生突然郑重地对我父母说道，他在曲艺界火了多年，如今年事已高，一直想找个能把他的评书艺术传承下去的弟子。找了许久，今天才发现我是个“可造之材”。他的意思是，可否让我放弃考大学，到他所在的曲艺团当他的徒弟。

     要知道，那时侯的中国刚刚度过极为严重的自然灾害，平常老百姓的一日三餐都难以保证，生活十分艰辛。父亲的每月工资也是勉强支撑着家用。而刘先生说上一天的评书，其收入足可抵我父亲一周的薪水。“艺人多金”的吸引力无疑是巨大的。为了让我早日学会说书、“挣大钱养家”，父母这一回双双动了心，而懵懂的我自然也是蠢蠢欲动。

      不是我我就在这个关键时刻，我高中的班主任叶老师把我从“说书人之路”上拉了回来，奇迹般地改变了我今后的命运。

叶老师不仅是中学语文老师，而且还是上海一位小有名气的小说家。他的一部小说还被编成“小人书”（即“连环画”）。由于我在中学时偏爱文科，语文、外语在班上名列前茅（数、理、化只求及格），所以叶老师对我另眼相看。当叶老师得知我要放弃高考、去当一名“说书先生”时，他大声责备我是“胡闹”。于是他亲自来到我家，以一位老师的权威性说服力，打消了我父母让我去当评话艺人的念头。正是由于叶老师的及时斡旋，我在命运的十字路口选择了继续读书。于是，一年后我成了一名大学生。

***本文选自拙作【岁月如重---兼谈华国锋】之第一章“懵懂少年”

Chapter 3: Destiny’s Crossroads

Posted by Ralph Gong

As a young student, I needed financial support badly. But my family was not rich. Besides, my father was such a generous man that he was always ready to give the money away to the needy people, even if the sum was set aside for our family’s necessary daily spending. He would give the money to those “poor village folks” who came to Shanghai, aiming only at asking my father for financial aid. As a consequence, we experienced very difficult days.

Despite all the hardship, my parents, who were themselves illiterate, insisted on supporting me going to school. They understood that only education could enable me to become a useful person in future. They believe, too, that after graduation, I would get a decent job. Thus, our family living standard would also be greatly improved. The reason why I could actually finish both my elementary and high-school education was all due to my parents’ pinching and saving, to tell the truth.

During my school years, something unusual happened when I was still a junior. The incident almost changed the course of my destiny.

One day in the afternoon, a middle-aged man came to my house. My father introduced that gentleman to me, saying that he was a country doctor in our home village. The doctor came to Shanghai to buy several kinds of traditional Chinese medicine which could not be purchased in rural areas. My father continued to tell me that the doctor was very good at both professional experience and moral integrity. The reason why he chose to stay at my home was yet very obvious: he wanted to save money on both boarding and lodging.

After a few days of staying with us, the doctor seemed to show a lot of interest in me. Finally, he made a suggestion to my father that I should quit my school and follow him to our hometown to be his apprentice. He promised to my father that after a few years of training in medical skills with him, I would become a promising country doctor who could earn a decent life for himself and his family. Upon hearing the suggestion of the doctor, my father’s heart went pit-a-pat. To have a decent life for the family was his long-time burning desire. But he knew that before making a decision, he must get my mother’s consent. He pulled my mother aside and started to discuss this matter with her. To his surprise, my mother did not agree. She did not feel comfortable on letting me, still a teenage boy, go and become a doctor’s apprentice, settling down in the countryside.

Since neither of them could convince the other, my parents decided to visit Teacher Yu, who was my class advisor.

In those days, people had high respect for teachers because they were all well-educated, noble and wise. After listening to my father and mother, Teacher Yu gave them a piece of advice for them to see things on the long run. Teacher Yu told them that even though I was somewhat naughty and not making enough efforts for studying, I had great potentials in Chinese literature. It would be a great pity if I quit school immediately and go to the countryside for the sake of learning the traditional Chinese medicine.

Doubtlessly, my father was convinced by Teacher Yu and agreed to let me continue my schooling. Several months later, I smoothly completed my junior school and was promoted as a senior school student.

Two years had elapsed quickly since and graduation was only one year away. At that critical moment, again something unexpected happened. My destiny was once again caught at a crossroads.

It was a Sunday afternoon. My father was at home enjoying his day-off. An old gentleman named Liu Bocheng, our next door neighbor, unexpectedly came to our house. My father and mother were very surprised and also excited to see Mr. Liu visiting them in person. Mr. Liu was a famous figure in and beyond our community. He was not only a knowledgeable man who graduated from a good university in Shanghai, but also a well-known story-teller in Shanghai.

In old China, there were two major styles of story-telling. One was called “Northern Style”, with its artists actively displaying their story-telling talents in North China, Beijing and Northeast China in particular, using standard Mandarin as their language. The other one was called “Southern Style”, with its story-tellers performing mostly in tea-houses in Shanghai and Jiangsu Province. Their language was a dialect from Yangzhou, a historical cultural city in Jiangsu Province. Mr. Liu was a veteran “Southern Style” artist, telling stories in the funny Yangzhoudialect. He could tell a lot of stories, and one of his masterpieces was “Heroes in Early Ming Dynasty” (Ming dynasty: 1368-1644). He could tell the story so vividly and attractively that the teahouse he was working at was always packed with audience at his presence.

Our community residents all knew that Mr. Liu was very polite and gentle. He would send greetings to his neighbors who were about to pass by, but he rarely visited any family around. It was his first visit to our house. Naturally, my parents showed their great respect by politely inviting him to be seated, and offered him with a cigarette and a cup of tea.

After exchanging greetings, Mr. Liu opened his mouth and said to my parents that the other day, he occasionally noticed a pair of Spring Festival couplets on the door of Blind Zhang’s house. Blind Zhang, with the family name Zhang, got this nickname from his uneducated but well-meant neighbors. Mr. Liu was very impressed by the antithetical couplets because “it was written well”. Out of curiosity, Mr. Liu asked Blind Zhang who wrote this pair of couplets for him. Zhang told Liu that it was done by the “little guy of the Gong family”. To try to find out if what Blind Zhang said was true, Mr. Liu decided to visit my home.

Learning the purpose of Liu’s visit, my father immediately asked me to come to meet the guest.

It WAS my writing. Our neighbor Blind Zhang was a paper-box-pasting worker at a local street factory. Even though he was blind, he hoped to have a pair of Chinese Spring Festival couplets be pasted on his house door. “By doing this, it would create some festival happiness atmosphere”, he said to me.

As is well-known, according to the Chinese tradition, almost every household would like to paste antithetical couplets on the house doors on the eve of the Spring Festival. This tradition started in the beginning of Ming Dynasty, about 650 years ago. Blind Zhang asked me to do this for him by adding up: “It could also give my neighbors a chance to share the good luck with me”. The older generation believed that both high spirit and good luck would be brought by the Spring Festival couplets. The Chinese traditional Spring Festival couplets are usually written by a writing brush soaked with black ink on a piece of large-sized red paper. The content is usually to express luck and happiness.

As per his request, I wrote the following antithetical couplets for Blind Zhang:

“Closing the door and going to work with walking stick, what a wonderful morning;

Having the wine and coming back home under moonlight, what a romantic night!”

The horizontal scroll for the antithetical couplets was “Bittersweet”.

I did not expect that the antithetical couplets I presented could draw Mr. Liu’s attention. In my eyes, Mr. Liu was a great scholar at that time, who could hardly notice the writing of a little school boy’s.

Upon hearing the truth that it was me who wrote the couplets, Mr. Liu nodded his head and smiled. He began a long chat on the themes of some Chinese classical and mythical novels with me, which turned out to be an incredible joy for me…

Thank goodness to my deep interest and knowledge, we had a great conversation. I was a person who was obsessed with reading Chinese classical and mythical novels. With such famous novels as “Journey to the West” (the story on how the Monkey King helped Master Monk XuanZhuang get the scripture from the Western Heaven in Tang Dynasty, about 1400 years ago), “Water Margins” (on how 105 heroes and 3 heroines fought against the suppressing Song Dynasty, about 1000 years ago), “the Romance of Three Kingdoms” (on how the warlords of the three kingdoms Wei, Wu and Shu fought against each other, about 1800 years ago), “the Story of Chinese Gods” (novel on how the related generals and ministers battled hard and finally became Gods, based on myths approximately back to the years between 1056 to 1046 BC) and so on and so forth. Mr. Liu was very surprised at and extremely pleased about my knowledge towards those novels. After our long chatting, he was determined to take me as his student who could take up his mantle of story-telling in the future. It was supposed to be a big honor handpicked by a master.

Mr. Liu said to my parents: “I have been in the story-telling business for many years. Now I am a well-known story-telling artist. I’m also getting older and older. I really hope to find a suitable apprentice to pass on my story-telling skills. I have not yet found anyone qualified until today. I have a strong feeling that your son has great potentials to be trained as an excellent story-teller. Please let your son be my student. With me, he will enjoy a bright future! But the precondition of making this happen is that your son has to quit his schooling at once.”

At that time, China had just experienced the most difficult time of three-year-long “Natural Disasters”. People’s life was still very poor. The monthly income of my father could barely maintain our family’s daily expenses. In comparison, what Mr. Liu earned with just one day’s story-telling was equivalent to my father’s weekly salary. The reality of “easy money-making for artists” was for sure very attractive to my parents. And my mother did not say no this time. As there was no different opinion between my dad and mom, I was about to quit school and become Mr. Liu’s student.

Yet just at that critical moment, Teacher Ye, my class advisor, came to my home for a routine visit. After being informed of the plan of my quitting school for the sake of following a story-teller as his apprentice, Teacher Ye was somewhat shocked. But controlling his moods and speaking in a friendly tone, he blamed my parents for being short-sighted.

Another course-changing plan was thus suspended. Using a teacher’s “authoritative persuasion”, Teacher Ye succeeded in convincing my parents to give up their idea. My teacher pulled me back again from a crossroads. One year later, I graduated from my senior high-school, passed my university entrance exam and became a university student.

(END)

About the Author:

Ruzhong Gong (Ralph Gong), born in Shanghai, China, now living in the USA.

Graduated From the English Department of Universityof International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

Before retirement, President of an USA overseas company under China National Light Industrial Products Imp. & Exp. Corp.; President of a joint-venture company in USA, jointly owned by Australia’s Lief Group Company and China National Chemical Products Imp. & Exp. Corp.; President of an American Brach Corp. under China National Foreign Trade Bases Corp.; Chief Representative in Beijing Office under Trade Am, an American Carpets Wholesale Company.

Author of 6 books, including “My Life—Family, Career & VIPs”, “How to Do Business in Mainland of China”, “My Leisure Time”, “My Leisure Time—Poems & Articles” , “Poems and Essays from Leisure Chamber” and “Flowers By My Side”.

Member of the Chinese Poetry Society (CPS), Free Lance Writer for Austrian Sinopress, and Senior Consultant for Taiwan Caiwei Publishing House.

 龚如仲：生于上海，中国对外经济贸易大学英语系毕业，毕业后奔赴非洲任铁道部援建坦赞铁路工作组总部英语翻译，中国国际广播电台英语部英语播音员、记者，外贸部中国轻工业品进出口总公司出口二处业务员、副处长，外贸部轻工业品进出口总公司驻美国公司总裁（处长）。

有关作品：

自2012年至2016年，台湾采薇出版社出版自传【岁月如重】（该书已被香港中文大学图书馆、美国纽约市立图书馆和澳大利亚国家图书馆作为自传体作品正式收藏），【东西南北中国人---细谈如何在大陆做生意】，【悠然时光】和【悠然时光---如仲诗语】。

 2018年4月，中国国际广播出版社出版【悠然斋诗文选】

 2018年9月，中国国际广播出版社出版【花儿在身边开放】

 2019年4月，台湾采薇出版社出版英文书【My Life—Family, Career & VIPs】

作者现为中华诗词学会会员、中国经典文学网特约作家、台湾采薇出版社资深顾问、奥地利英文网Sinopress特聘专栏作家、北美北斗星文学社副社长、副总编辑。