When I was very young, I knew that my grandfather was an old Chinese medicine doctor, calligrapher, and abacus master who was very famous in our local area.
For as long as I can remember, I have seen my "luoguo" grandfather sitting on a large black table and chair to treat patients almost every day.
Grandpa’s medical treatment has a distinctive feature, that is, he only charges the cost of Chinese patent medicines, and never charges a penny more from the patient for anything else.
My grandfather walked up the mountain with a basket on his back to dry many of the medicines. Therefore, many medicinal materials were free of charge.
Because it was cheap and the medicine could cure the disease, there was an endless stream of people who came to see my grandfather every day.
Because there are so many people seeing a doctor, my grandfather writes out the medicine orders with a brush every day. After taking the medicine, he starts to make a clanking sound with his old-fashioned seven-child abacus. Sometimes, for fear of miscalculating the patient, Grandpa would put down his brush and start working on the construction site with his left and right hands at the same time.
Every time when I see the heel of his hands electrifying, and he pulls the ball up and down rapidly, I always curiously peek from behind Grandpa Luo Guo to see how he plays with it.
When I was young, I couldn’t help but want to try anything interesting.
Grandpa is not very strict with his grandsons and granddaughters who love to study and do research and tinkering. So, we rebelliously gathered around my grandpa every time he was not sitting in the hall to diagnose diseases during the holidays, wanting to learn abacus from him and learn how to calculate abacus quickly without making mistakes.
I still vaguely remember that when my grandfather taught me the abacus for the first time, he muttered "one plus one, two plus two, three times five divided by two..." I didn't know what to do at the time. It made sense, but after seeing my Grandpa Luo Guo being very serious and solemn like an old master, shaking his head and forcing us to memorize it, I realized that this was the formula for introductory abacus and mental arithmetic addition.
The conditions at that time were not as good as they are now. Now, as long as you don’t want to do it, you can just say it. But at that time, my grandfather was not only an expert in traditional Chinese medicine, but also the one who taught the most classes and had the most students in the entire university. Freelance teacher.
Grandpa's busyness was respected as "dedication of love, a living Lei Feng in the world..." in that era.
Grandpa taught everything, from calligraphy to ideology and morality, traditional Chinese medicine Taught everything from theory to medicine, etc.
The grandfather who attends classes three times a week is so tired and sweaty every time he comes home after class that he doesn’t want to move. Therefore, our grandchildren’s abacus mental arithmetic learning is just a symbolic wait. When grandpa is not busy, I can ask him for advice. Otherwise, when he is busy, he will not have any time to teach.
This situation lasted until my grandfather fell seriously ill in his later years and his legs and feet became less convenient, so he completely quit his voluntary teaching career.
In my young memory, my grandpa stopped teaching. The principal of the school (the first batch of students my grandpa taught) even came to visit him personally and begged him to teach again. However, because my grandpa was not in good health, he eventually died. Still declined.
Since grandpa fell ill and was in trouble, he has much more free time than before.
Every time at this time, our nine grandchildren of the Tang family would surround him and beg grandpa to tell him the stories of "Three Strikes of Bone Demons", "Havoc in the Heavenly Palace" and "108 Generals of the Water Margin".
Every time I listen to my grandfather telling a story, and he is telling it with great enthusiasm, he will stop telling it. When we beg him to listen to it again, my grandfather will take out the story that has been given to our nine grandchildren. He plucked the beads on the prepared abacus and said, "After adding all 666, and hitting them all correctly, I will continue, otherwise... haha!!"
Every time I hear Grandpa "Otherwise" After the "haha", we knew that the task of the abacus had come, and the only chance to continue listening to the story was to learn the abacus obediently.
Every time grandpa asks us to make a call, there are a lot of problems.
For example: Let your cousin Futian go to his pharmacy to get different medicinal materials, and then let us compete to calculate how much money we get in the fastest way based on the different quotes of the medicinal materials. Those who calculate correctly and quickly will be rewarded with fennel beans by grandpa. Those who calculate incorrectly and calculate slowly will not get fennel beans. Not only do they also have to do housework, help grandpa clean all the sanitation in the medicine hall.
Due to the limited conditions at that time, there were no black and white TV sets, no mobile phones, and no electric lights. Therefore, we could only sit around my grandfather every night and use his "Gashi Lantern" (a kind of stone lamp that my grandfather used to make). The lamp made is one that does not require any oil and can still shine. I still remember that its name is Ga Shi, but I can’t remember what it is specifically.) Nine people were crackling the old-fashioned seven-child abacus. Let’s count the arithmetic problems with the names of traditional Chinese medicines given by grandpa casually.
Under the influence of my grandfather, a few years later, I was fortunate enough to become a teacher teaching abacus mental arithmetic to children.
When I teach abacus mental arithmetic to students, the old-fashioned seven-digit abacus has long been changed to the five-digit abacus. Not only that, the old-fashioned formula has also been replaced by the new-style "add three, five, minus two." "Add four, five, minus one", but the time when my grandfather taught me abacus mental arithmetic when I was young will always remain in my memory before I was seven years old, and I will never forget it.