Li Huinan hugged the orange cat and slept soundly.

I slept for a long time, and it was more than five o'clock all of a sudden.

When Li Huinan got up, the meals in the living room were ready.

Li Huinan was not very embarrassed, she had a feeling of being served, as if Yang Fan was at that time, she seemed to be back to before, she felt that she had missed a good marriage, it was a pity, and she didn't know how Yang Fan was doing now, it should be very good, after all, his wife could see that she loved him very much.

"I'm sorry I overslept."

"It's okay girl, come and eat, I make all vegetarian dishes, you can taste it and it will suit your stomach."

"Of course Auntie's cooking is delicious."

"As long as you two are good, I will be happy."

Li Huinan thought to herself, the emotion is to treat herself as a daughter-in-law, but whether the old man knows her own affairs or not, can she accept it.

After the meal, Li Huinan talked to Ou Fan about his father's article on his daughter's marriage, and the content of the article "My Four Imaginary Enemies" in Yu Guangzhong was:

The second daughter, Youshan, took the joint examination for overseas Chinese students in Hong Kong and distributed her first choice to the Department of Foreign Languages of National Taiwan University. When I heard the news, I breathed a sigh of relief, and I didn't have to worry about all four daughters marrying Cantonese boys.

Of course, I have no prejudice against Cantonese boys, and in my six years in Hong Kong, there are many cute Cantonese teenagers in my class, who are quite pleasing to the teacher, but I am reluctant to let all my four daughters be taken captive by those "beautiful boys" and "lak boys". However, who the daughter wants to marry, to put it more freely, it is their free will, to put it more mysteriously, it is karma, why should the father suffer from gains and losses? What's more, in this matter, mothers are often in the key positions, and naturally become their daughter's close advisers, and even close comrades-in-arms, and the object of the fight is not her boyfriend, but her father. By the time the father woke up, he had already suffered from the enemy on his back, and it was difficult to reverse the situation.

In the eyes of the father, the cutest time for a daughter is before the age of ten, because then she belongs completely to herself. In the eyes of her boyfriend, she was the cutest when she was seventeen years old, because at this time she was like a graduating student, and she was already focused on outward. Father and boyfriend have congenital contradictions. There is nothing more perfect in the world for a father than a young daughter, and the only drawback is that she will grow up, unless you hide her for a long time with a freeze, which is probably against the law, and sooner or later her boyfriend will come on a horse or a motorbike and kiss her awake.

I didn't use the cryohyptonic technique of the space capsule, I was forced by time, the sun and the moon turned, and when I rubbed my eyes again, how could the four daughters have grown up in turn, and the door of the fairy tale of the past slammed shut, and I can't go back. The four daughters are Shanshan, Youshan, Peishan, and Ji Shan. It's literally lined up as a coral reef. When Shanshan was twelve years old, Pei Shan, who was not yet nine years old, suddenly said to a visitor, "Hey, let me tell you, my sister is a young girl!" All the adults in the room laughed.

Once upon a time, the laughing Pei Shan herself, and even the most naïve Ji Shan, were transformed into "girls" under the magic wand of time. In the dark, there are four "young boys" who are sneaking in, and although they are tiptoeing and holding their breath, I feel that there are four pairs of eyes behind me, like all bad boys, with burning eyes and bad intentions, and when the time comes, they will stand in the light, pretend to be a hypocritical smile, and call me father-in-law. Of course I wouldn't answer him. How can it be so easy! I am like a fruit tree, which has been standing here for many years, wind, frost, rain and dew, everything has a share, in exchange for a lot of fruits, overwhelmed. And you, the occasional boy passing by, actually stretched out your hand to pick the fruit, and deserved to trip you over the roots of the tree!

But the most annoying thing is that the fruit on the tree has the appearance of automatically falling into the hands of pedestrians. The tree monster pedestrian should not have come to pick the fruit without permission, but the pedestrian said that the fruit had just fallen and gave it to him. This kind of thing is always successful when the inside and the outside are combined. When I got married myself, wasn't there a girl who opened the door and stole it? "Fortresses are easiest to attack from within", is a good saying. But at that time, at this time. The same person hates cars when crossing the street, but hates pedestrians when driving. Now it's my turn to drive.

For years, I've gotten used to being around five women, the smell of soap and perfume in the bathroom, the bags and hair rolls scattered on the sofa, and the no one at the table arguing with me for drinks. It has been a long time since I jokingly called Wulu a "girls' dormitory". As the housekeeper of the "girls' dormitory", he naturally does not welcome strange male guests, especially those with ulterior motives. But the girls under my control, especially the first three, have the phenomenon of "instability", which reminds me of a poem by Ye Ci:

Everything has collapsed and lost its center of gravity.

Sooner or later, my four imaginary enemies, tall or short, fat or thin, studying medicine or literature, would sooner or later emerge from the fog of my doubts, and one by one they would come forward, or in a roundabout way, or in a detour, or go straight to the point, and be ashamed to say that in short, they would take his lover, that is, my daughter, sorry, and take him away from here. The invisible enemy is the most terrifying, not to mention that I am in the light, he is in the dark, and there is my family's "traitor" to respond, it is really impossible to prevent it. It's just that the four daughters were not refrigerated in time, so that time could not be abducted, and the society could not be polluted. Now that they're all older, there's no going back. My four imaginary enemies, the four sneaky underground workers, are all plummeted, and no amount of power can stop them. The first strike is stronger, and this matter should be solved while the four imaginary enemies are still infants. At least the American poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971) advised us to do so. In a wonderful poem, "Song to Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children," he said that after giving birth to his daughter Jill, he felt that a baby boy was growing up somewhere, and although he was still muddy and foaming at the mouth, he was destined to steal Jill from him in the future. So every time the father saw the baby boy in the stroller in the park, he couldn't help but change his expression and secretly thought, "Could it be this guy?" Thinking about it, he "My dream, I fear, are infanticidle", so he untied the pins from the baby boy, sprinkled pepper into his talcum powder, sprinkled salt into his bottle, sprinkled sand with his spinach juice, and threw the crocodile into his stroller to play with him, forcing him to struggle in the misery and marry someone else's daughter. It shows that the poet has a precedent for taking his future son-in-law as an imaginary enemy.

But it was too late. It was a big mistake not to take extraordinary measures at the moment, as Nash says. Today's situation, to paraphrase a common phrase in history books, is already "Kou into the depths!" "Under the glass cushions of my daughter's wall and desk, the old posters and newspaper clippings are still the images of Shawl, Baith, and David Casey, and now they have all changed to boyfriends. At the very least, the beachhead had been occupied by the invading army, and the battle was a sure loser. I remember when we were young, this kind of photo was still classified as a confidential element, either hidden in a pillowcase, pasted with a dream, or sandwiched in the depths of a stack of books, occasionally turned out to be fascinated, how could there be such a 24-hour enshrinement in front of us?

It is impossible to determine in what year and month this group of imaginary enemies with suspicious deeds began to invade the Yu Mansion on Xiamen Street. I only remember that after moving to Hong Kong six years ago, the military forces besieging the city were replaced by a group of Cantonese-speaking teenagers to take over. As for the details of the battle, I have to ask the female generals who are nominally defending the city, and I, the "faint king", can no longer figure it out. I only know that the enemy's artillery fire, at first aimed at my mailbox, those crooked handwriting, after a long time, I can guess seven points; Then it was concentrated on my phone, the "drop point" was behind my desk, and my literary garden was their battlefield, and overnight, there were always a dozen concussions. There were as many as nine tones in those Cantonese tones, which also made it difficult for me to judge the enemy's situation. Now I took Youshan back to Xiamen Street, and it was my wife's turn to resist the Guangdong troops at the other end, and I was here, as long as I kept an eye on the Taiwanese athletes, the task would be much easier.

The mailbox was attacked, just like a silent film of war, and it didn't matter. In fact, I would rather be an amorous teenager who writes love letters diligently, so that at least I can practice composition, so as not to waste Chinese in the era of audio-visual education. What is terrible is that the phone was shot, and the string of warning ringtones expanded the battlefield from the mailbox outside the door to the hinterland of the study, and the silent film turned into the sound of the experience, and the imaginary enemy was firing live ammunition. What is even more terrifying is that the imaginary enemy has really broken into the city and become a real enemy of flesh and blood, and it is no longer imaginary and fun, just like a military exercise in the middle of a real fight. The real enemy is visible. At the request of a certain daughter, he occupied a corner of the sofa, and from then on the two whispered and talked secretly, even when the pulses were opposite, the atmosphere was so thick that the whole family could not breathe. At this time, the sisters had already avoided it, and anyone could see that the situation was different. If the enemy stayed to eat, the air was even more tense, as if in a pose for a camera. At the usual duck pond-like table, the four sisters seemed to be acting in a pantomime at this time, and even the chopsticks and spoons seemed to have gotten the news, and they suddenly became cautious. knows that this arrogant kid may not be the real son-in-law, (who knows how many changes the baby daughter is now in the eighteen?) But a faint hostility involuntarily rose in his heart. also knows that her daughter is like a ripe melon, and one day she will fall away, but she hopes that she will not follow the conceited kid in front of her.

Of course, the four daughters also have their own misbehaves, and in an angry mood, I can't wait for the four imaginary enemies to appear quickly and take them all away. But when that day comes, I will regret it again. I can imagine the two major lonelinesss in life, one is the day of retirement, and the other is after the youngest child finally gets married. Song Qi said to me one day: "I really envy your daughters all by your side!" "Really? At least for now, I don't think I have anything to envy. Maybe it really won't be until the youngest Ji Shan also goes on his honeymoon with the imaginary enemy that he will sit with me on the empty couch, flipping through their hourly photo albums, reminiscing about the grand occasion of the long-distance grand tour of six people in a car, or the bright lights at the dinner table, steaming hot, and shared by everyone. There are many things in life, just like the ripples behind the boat, which always feel beautiful after the end. Thinking about it this way, I hope that the four imaginary enemies, the four clumsy young men, will eat a few more bites and appear slowly.

Yuan Mei wrote a poem and described her daughter as "a deputy car in doubt", this bookbag fell very interestingly, but it also revealed the feudal consciousness of patriarchy. According to Yuan Mei's statement, I hit the deputy car four times in a row, and the hit rate is high enough. The four little girls in Yu Mansion have now become four little women, and if they ask me what the conditions for choosing a son-in-law are, I am afraid that I will not be able to answer for a while, surrounded by imaginary enemies. After pondering for a long time, I may say: "This matter, there is the marriage spectrum of the old man under the moon, and no one can tamper with it, including Wei Gu, and there are two lovers who swear by the sea and the mountain, 'the two of them are of the same heart, and their profits are broken', why should I go against the sky and stalk in the middle?" What's more, the major events of life are mysterious and unpredictable, and they cannot be reasoned in advance or regretted afterwards, even if they are handed over to the computers of the 21st century, I am afraid that there is no probability of probability. It's better to show generosity, pretend to be relaxed, and have the reputation of an enlightened father, and then bring a private seal and be the main marriage. ”

The person who asked laughed, pointed at me and said, "What do you mean by 'pretending to be easy'?" It can be seen that your heart is not easy. ”

Of course I wasn't very easy, otherwise I wouldn't be their father. The question of race, for example, is very troubling. What if my daughter goes crazy and falls in love with a little weirdo who shrugs her shoulders and chews gum non-stop? Rationally, I am willing to "have a son-in-law without class" and be a generous global citizen. But emotionally, not generous enough to let a young man with ape-like arms carry my daughter over the threshold.

Of course, this is no longer the time of "strict summer defense", but it is not necessary to expand a simple family into a small United Nations. The person who asked laughed again, and asked me if I had ever heard that half-breeds were more intelligent than ordinary people. I said, "Yes, but I don't want to hold a genius 'half-blood' grandson." I don't want a genius kid to call me Grandpa, I want him to call me Grandpa. The person who asked refused to stop: "What about the provincial nationality?" ”

"Provincial citizenship doesn't matter," I said. "I'm the result of Su Min's marriage, isn't it bad? When my mother wrote back to Wujin from Fujian, she said that someone in the area had proposed to her. The mother-in-law made a fuss and said, 'So far!' How can you marry Nanban! Later, the mother's family found out that in addition to the language barrier, there was nothing suspicious about this Minnan aunt. In the past few years, the Guangdong boy has persevered and put a lot of pressure on my family, and I will not be surprised that one day Fujian and Guangdong will form Qin and Jin. If there is a Taiwanese teenager who particularly scolds me, and his ambition is not to talk to me about literature and poetry, I will not embarrass him much. As for the other provinces, from Heilongjiang to Yunnan, teenagers who speak various dialects, as long as my daughter does not dislike him, I naturally welcome them. ”

"What about learning?"

"You can learn anything. They don't have to be scholars, and scholars are often not good sons-in-law, let alone good husbands. There is only one thing: Chinese must be proficient. If you don't understand Chinese, you will be in trouble! ”

Ke laughed again. "Is it important to look good?" He asked again.

"You're so big!" This time it was my turn to laugh. "This kind of thing, my daughter will pay attention to herself, why do you want me to worry about it?"

The stupid guy was about to ask, but suddenly the doorbell rang. I got up to open the gate, and found that the long hair was in disarray, and another imaginary enemy had come to plunder the house.

Taipei, September 1980