(Yang Zhenning's father, Yang Wuzhi, was a scholar engaged in the teaching and research of modern number theory and algebra in early China. As early as the early 1920s, he took the lead in introducing modern number theory to China. As a famous artist, Yang Wuzhi gave his son a comprehensive and systematic education. Yang Zhenning said that his father has been practicing the words "loyalty" and "generosity" all his life. This, together with the homesickness of a generation, deeply influenced Yang Zhenning. )
When I was a child, my father taught me to sing "China Men …"
1922 When I was born in Hefei, Anhui, my father was a teacher in a middle school in Anqing. Anqing was also called Huaining at that time. My father named me "Zhenning", in which the word "Zhen" is Yang's name and the word "Ning" means Huaining. When I was less than one year old, my father passed the public expense of studying in the United States in Anhui. Before going abroad, our family of three took a photo in the corner of the old house in Hefei. Father stood upright in his robe and jacket. I don't think he wore a suit before that. Two years later, a photo he sent to his mother from America was taken at the University of Chicago. His clothes and expressions have entered the 20th century.
1928 In the summer, my father returned to China by boat after receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago, and my mother and I went to Shanghai to meet him. When I saw him this time, I actually saw a complete stranger. A few days later, the three of us and Sister Wang, a servant from Hefei, went to Xiamen by boat, because my father was going to be hired as a math professor at Xiamen University.
I remember that I was very happy in Xiamen that year, and I learned a lot from my father. A year ago, my mother taught me about 3,000 words in Hefei. I learned to recite Long Wen Bian Ying in a private school, but I didn't have a chance to get in touch with new education. My father liked singing Beijing opera when he was a teenager. In Xiamen that year, he sometimes sang "I am like a caged bird, but I can't spread my wings ..." But he didn't teach me to sing Peking Opera, but only taught me to sing some songs in the early years of the Republic of China, such as "Up and Down for a Thousand Years, One Pulse Extends" and "China Men, China Men ..."
Father's play is very good. He taught me to play Go that year. I remember when he asked me to have sixteen sons, and gradually retired to nine sons after many years, but I never got the "true biography" from my father. It was not until Geneva 1962 that we met again and left. He also wanted me to play the seven sons.
After teaching at Xiamen University for one year, my father was hired as Professor Tsinghua University in Beiping. 1in the autumn of 929, our family of three moved into the west campus of Tsinghua campus 19, which is a quadrangle in the northeast corner of the west campus.
When I was eight or nine years old, my father knew that I was capable of learning mathematics. By the time I entered junior high school at the age of eleven, my ability in this field had been more fully demonstrated. Looking back now, if he had taught me analytic geometry and calculus, I would have learned it quickly, which would have made him very happy. But he didn't do it: during my summer vacation between grade one and grade two in junior high school, my father asked Professor Lei Haizong to introduce a history student to me about Mencius. Teacher Lei introduced his favorite student Ding Zeliang. Mr. Ding is rich in knowledge. He not only taught me Mencius, but also told me a lot of ancient history. The following summer vacation, he taught me the other half of Mencius, so that I could recite the full text of Mencius in middle school.
Leaving home for America, my father's anxiety made me cry.
1937 at the beginning of the anti-Japanese war, our family moved back to Hefei first. Later, after the Japanese army entered Nanjing, we passed through Hankou, Hong Kong, Haiphong and Hanoi and arrived in Kunming on March 1938. I studied in Kunming Kunhua Middle School for half a year, but I didn't study in senior three. 1In the autumn of 938, I was admitted to Southwest Associated University with the qualification of "equivalent academic ability".
From 1938 to 1939, my father introduced me to the spirit of modern mathematics. In the autumn of 194 1, I went to see Professor Wu Dayou in order to write my bachelor's thesis. He gave me a review of modern physics. Because it is very concise and there is no nonsense, the "representation theory" in group theory is explained beautifully and completely in 20 pages. I learned the beauty of group theory and its in-depth application in physics, which had a decisive impact on my later work. This field is called symmetry principle.
Remember the details that I left home on August 28th 1945 to fly to India for connecting flight to the United States:
Early in the morning, my father accompanied me to take a rickshaw from the northwest corner of Kunming to Tuodong Road in the southeast suburb to wait for the bus to Wujiaba Airport. When I left home, my four siblings were reluctant to go, but my mother was very calm and remembered that she didn't cry. When I arrived at Tuodong Road, my father said something encouraging, and both of them were very calm. After saying goodbye, I got on a crowded bus. At first, I could see my father waving to me from the window. A few minutes later, he was pushed into the distance by the crowd. There are many students going to America on the bus. When I spoke, my attention shifted to issues such as flight routes and climate change. After waiting for more than an hour, the car never started. Suddenly, an American next to me motioned me to look out of the window: suddenly I found my father still waiting there! He is thin, wearing a robe, and his hair on his forehead has turned gray. Seeing his anxious face, I couldn't help crying all morning.
After three trips to Geneva, my father took on the mission of persuading me to return to China.
1946 At the beginning, I registered as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. I chose the University of Chicago, not because it is my father's alma mater, but because Professor Fermi, whom I have admired for a long time, studied at the University of Chicago.
At that time, the physics, chemistry and mathematics departments of the University of Chicago were all first-class. I have been in school for three and a half years. I was a graduate student for the first two and a half years. After getting my doctorate, I stayed in school as a teacher for a year. /kloc-in the summer of 0/949, I transferred to Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. Of course, my father was very happy with my excellent academic performance at the University of Chicago. I am even happier that I will go to the famous Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, but what he was most concerned about at that time was not these, but my marriage.
1950 On August 26th, Du Zhili and I got married in Princeton. 1957, I went to Geneva with Du Zhili and our only child, Guangnuo (then six years old). I wrote to ask my father to meet us in Geneva. With the permission of the United Front Work Department, he went all the way through Beijing, Moscow and Prague to the hospital and flew to Geneva in early July. The doctor checked for several days and thought he could leave the hospital, but he had to check his blood sugar and take insulin every day.
That summer, we rented an apartment, and every morning Guangnuo always watched his grandfather check his blood sugar with an alcohol lamp with great interest. When I wake up, he will come and say, "Today is not good, it is brown." (Today is not good, brown) or "Today is fine, it is blue." It's a nice day, Blue. After a few weeks, my father gradually recovered and was able to take his little grandson for a walk in the park. They found a "secret passage" among the trees on one side of the park. Every time I see them ready to go out, I feel infinitely satisfied.
My father introduced many new things in New China to Li and me. He admires Chairman Mao very much, and especially likes Mao Zedong's poems, such as "pointing out the mountains and rivers/inspiring words/polluting Wan Huhou", "Qin Huang Hanwu/slightly losing his literary talent/Tang Zongsongzu/slightly coquettish/a generation of tianjiao/Genghis Khan/only knowing how to shoot an eagle with a bow/connecting the past with the future/counting romantic figures/looking at the present" and so on.
My father came to Geneva three times, especially the last two times. With a sense of mission, he felt that I should be advised to return to China. This is of course the suggestion of the United Front Work Department, but on the one hand, it is also the wish of my father's own soul. But he is ambivalent: on the one hand, he has this desire, on the other hand, he thinks that I should stay in the United States and strive for an academic career.
Seeing my parents three times in Geneva had a great influence on me. At that time, the United States knew little about the actual situation in China. These three meetings made me realize my father and mother's views on the new China.
I remember one night in 1962, my father said that the new China really made China people stand up: in the past, even a needle could not be made, but today cars and planes can be made (at that time, the atomic bomb was not made, and my father didn't know that China was developing an atomic bomb). There used to be floods and droughts, and millions of people could die at any time. Today, not anymore. In the past, illiteracy was everywhere, but today at least all the children in the city can go to school. Once upon a time ... today ... he was chatting happily when his mother interrupted him and said, "Don't focus on these things. I stood in line for three hours in the dark to buy tofu, and I could only buy two irregular pieces. What are the benefits? " The father was very angry and said that she held him back and gave his son the wrong impression. He was so angry that he went into the bedroom and slammed the door.
The blood of China culture circulates in my body.
197 1 in the summer, I returned to my motherland after 26 years' absence. On that day, when Multiplication flew eastward from Myanmar and entered Yunnan, the pilot said, "We have entered China's airspace!" My excitement at that time was beyond description.
Arrive in Shanghai in the evening. My mother and brothers and sisters met me at the airport. We went to Huashan Hospital to visit our father. Father has been in hospital for half a year. The last time we met was in Hong Kong at the end of 1964, when he was 68 years old and in good health. In the intervening six and a half years, I have been subjected to some isolation review. I am old and have lost a lot of weight, and I can't walk on my own. Of course I'm excited to see me.
1in the summer of 972, I went back to China to visit my relatives for the second time. Father is still in the hospital, and his body is even weaker. My father died in the early morning of May of the following year 12 at the age of 77. /kloc-In May of 0/5, at the memorial service held in Shanghai for my father, my eulogy consisted of two paragraphs: my father's health has been declining in the past two years. He himself realized this and thought a lot about all our thoughts and behaviors. I visited him in Shanghai 197 1 and 1972. He and I talked a lot. At the end of the day, he repeatedly told me to look farther and see the trend of historical evolution clearly. This lesson has had a great influence on me these two years.
Father died in May 1973. In the 77 years of his life, history has undergone earth-shaking evolution. After my father died, my primary school classmate and best friend Xiong Bingming wrote to comfort me, saying that although my father had died, his blood was still circulating in my body. Yes, my father's blood circulates in my body, which is the blood of China culture.
1964 I became an American citizen in the spring. Almost 20 years later, I wrote in my thesis collection: from 1945 to 1964, I lived in America for 19 years, including most of my adult life. However, it is not easy to decide to apply for American citizenship. I guess many immigrants from most countries have similar problems. But for a person who grew up in the traditional culture of China, it is not easy to make such a decision. On the one hand, China's traditional culture has not left China and moved to other countries for a long time. Moving to another country was once considered a complete betrayal. On the other hand, China has a splendid culture. The humiliation and exploitation she suffered in the past 100 years left a deep imprint on the hearts of every China person. No one in China can forget the history of more than one hundred years. My father was a professor of mathematics in Beijing and Shanghai until 1973. He received a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He has been to many places. But I know that until my death, he never forgave me for giving up my hometown in the corner of my heart.
1 July, 9971at 0: 00 in the morning, I was lucky enough to attend the handover ceremony held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. It must be more exciting than me to think that my father can witness this historic ceremony symbolizing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Father is always optimistic that this day will come. However, until his death at 1973, he didn't know that his son would attend the historic ceremony on this day. Otherwise, I'm afraid he will change it to Lu Fangweng's famous sentence: Don't forget to tell Nai Weng about the family sacrifice on the day of celebrating the end of national humiliation.