After Sir Fu talked with the two scientists from the Aerospace Academy, he walked to his usual resting room on crutches. When he was young, he suffered too much. After entering the Academy, he worked all day and all night. Now he was so old and sick that he even had to use crutches at home.
Li Jinnian was closing his eyes and resting. He opened his eyes quickly when he heard the sound of the sliding door and got up quickly.
“Slow down.” He whispered, helping the old gentleman to enter the room, and then sat down firmly with his gray-haired grandfather, who was still busy as ever. “You are getting older. It is better to worry less about the Aerospace Academy. Don’t work too hard; you don’t want to overwork yourself.”
Facing his only grandson, Sir Fu patted the back of his hand and said kindly, “I wasn’t worried about it. I was just chatting with them occasionally. As a human being, if we are idle for too long, our brain will rust, and it won’t work well, so it’s better to take advantage of it now and move it a little.”
The old man who sat down on the chair saw the photo album placed on the short table at a glance. The corners of the photo album were all yellow, being kept for so long. His eyes, although old, were full of wisdom as they fell on the album, and his thin hands trembled. He stroked the cover of the album loftily; his face with brown age spots had a faint but unresolved sadness.
“Since your grandmother passed away, I have rarely looked at it.” The old gentleman sighed lightly. There were memories of his life in the album, as well as his sorrows that couldn’t be erased.
He was born into a wealthy family and even had a housekeeper and two servants by his side when he stayed in the United States later. But in order to return to serve his motherland and relieve his wife from her sufferings, he almost died under the bullets several times.
When they finally returned to China, they had not had time to show their talents, and they were forced to leave the Aerospace Academy to lead an inhuman life. Between the ages of 28 and 35, he and his wife gave birth to three sons and one daughter, but they died, savoring the misery of the world.
Old ancestor Fu enjoyed too much and paid all the retribution from his ancestors to his children. Several times, he and his old wife wanted to tie a rope to a tree and hang themselves, just to have peace.
But when they thought of their motherland in a deep and fierce state, without aerospace, missiles, or satellites, such backwardness of a big country made them feel so unbearable to leave. So they held their heads and cried so much, but they wiped their tears clean after crying. The couple continued to draw all kinds of drawings silently by themselves, living in the basement and completing the simplest experiments with the simplest materials.
The old man who opened the album turned his attention to the photo of his wife, who was smiling, frozen in time. He smiled and said to Li Jinnian, “When your grandmother was young, she was a beauty that radiates sunshine from ten miles. People who wanted to propose to her could easily queue up all the way to the gate of Yangzhou City. Her incomparable cool temperament made her have countless pursuers abroad.”
Reminiscing about his wife, the old man’s smile was very soft, and his wise eyes were moist, “Your mother’s appearance followed your grandmother, and you have also followed your grandmother.”
“Incomparable temperament? Grandfather, are you teasing me?” Li Jinnian was afraid of making the elderly too sad, so he purposely joked, “If I can’t be like her, then you will be worried. I’m afraid it’s best that I become a monk.”
The old man laughed, “You are not much different from the monk now; you have a cold face for a man of your young age. Don’t you think any girl who sees you will be afraid of you?”
“Your mother used to tell me when she was alive that being too mature at a young age is not a good thing because she was afraid that your temper is too cold and you will easily suffer. Your grandmother and I were also worried, but later, when we saw your cleverness, we knew that those thoughts were unnecessary worries.”
