When I visited the Netherlands, I saw a windmill on the canal and a pasture below the windmill, so I stood down to see it and was shocked. The pasture was in a low-lying area, far below the water level of the canal, with some cows grazing on the green grass. At first glance it looked like a rural scene, but a closer look revealed something else: the grass was raised in the center and surrounded by shallow ditches; the whole ground was slightly undulating like corrugated iron, and the depressions met the ditches, which led to deep ditches, which in turn led to channels. All the channels lead to the windmill. In this way, even if it rains heavily, there will be no standing water on the pasture. The water all flows into the ditches and waits for the windmill to pump it to the canal. Without such an elaborate drainage system, there would be no pastures in this place, only swamps. Standing by the canal, as far as the eye can see, there are such well-organized pastures everywhere. Of course, these lands are not born like this, it is the result of man’s careful creation. If such fields were created by the hands of modern engineers, that would be all right. In fact, the canals, windmills, and pastures are all the work of the Dutch in the 17th century. I’ve been in the countryside since I was 17, in both the north and the south, but I’ve never seen land like this.
I have never seen such a land. I have been in the team in my hometown in Shandong for two years, and I have done all kinds of work. In the spring and summer of 1974, before dawn, I was woken up by the sound of a wailing cable radio. This wah-wah sound reminded us that we were now in the electronic age. Then I tightened the waistband of my pants, pushed up the unicycle and delivered manure to the field. The unicycle hardly calls to mind that this is the electronic age. As the saying goes, farming without manure is the same as fooling around; we in the old country recognize this. The good thing about the unicycle is that it can go on all kinds of bad roads, bypassing all kinds of potholes and rocks; the bad thing is that it is extremely difficult to maneuver, and it is easy to roll over with the car. People in our old country spared no effort in improving their carting skills to the level of acrobatics. For example, someone can push the car over the threshold, and someone can push it up the steps. But no matter how high the skill, still inevitably fall, and always resulting in the consequences of a bruised nose. Now I think, instead of working hard on car skills, we should fix the roads – I was in Europe, I found that the countryside roads are extremely beautiful – but this thing is not done. Not to mention the roads in the fields, even the village roads are so bad that you can’t tell if they are roads or potholes.
Those fields in our old house are on the mountain. When I went to the countryside, I brought a few pairs of cloth shoes, all worn out when delivering manure. The whole pair of shoes were like new, except that the heel was open. My foot neck often cramped up, and now I dream of pushing manure up the mountain, and I still have cramps. And the manure is also just a beautiful name for manure, but the reality is that some of the soil to pad the pig pen, to learn from the Dazhai to make up the reported figures, often just pad on the dig out, the pigs are too late to defecate on it …… I went to start the pen, the pigs always look at me in surprise. If it will talk, it must ask me: what’s crazy about smoking? Sometimes I feel embarrassed and beat it up. It is unbearable to be looked at as a fool by a pig.
Frankly, I could never push a load of manure up the hill by myself – the slope is too steep and I’m a bit out of breath to walk empty-handed. In fact there was someone on the side of the hill to take over: when the cart was pushed up the ramp, there was someone to lasso it with a rope and pull it in front, and the strength of two people to get it up the hill. This saves me the effort, but from another point of view is even dumber. The reasoning is this: this carload of manure has a hundred kilograms, I and the cart together, there are almost a hundred kilograms, in order to send a hundred kilograms of manure, spare me this hundred kilograms is already very stupid, and now there is another person, it is more than a hundred kilograms. The effective work is just to send up some soil, the composition of the fertilizer is nebulous …… good thing that these stupid things pigs can not see; if you see, I do not know what it will think: as long as the soil contains a trace of his old man’s feces and urine, people should be sent to the mountains at all costs – it will become arrogant. -He will become arrogant and even raise the question of who should eat who ……
In any sense, such work as sending manure is never more valuable than carrying water from the lowlands. This kind of work should have been left to the wind, not to use precious human biological energy. I always thought that if there were some 17th century Dutch people living in my hometown, there would be cable cars and ropeways all over the mountain – that’s what they were: engineers, economists, skilled craftsmen. As for the folks in my hometown, they are all hard-working and simple people who lack a heart. That the former kind of people are more comfortable in life is indisputable.
Now I can say what kind of person I am. When I was in my hometown, I looked more hardworking and simple and less scheming compared to my folks. What I thought back then was: I had to act like I could suffer so that the poor peasants in the village would think I was a good person and recommend me to go to college and jump out of this fire pit …… By the way, I did not succeed despite this despicable idea. The university is still my own entrance exam. Since they did not recommend me, I can say a few frank words, not considered to take advantage of and sell good. The work in the village, making a person’s back ache for a while, a while leg pain, especially the wheat plucking, plucking hand pain, it is no different from torture – ten fingers are connected to the heart, why use them to do such a sinful thing? Back then, I pretended to be very useful, saying that the body is suffering, but the mind has become better, it is all nonsense. To speak from the conscience is: the body is suffering, the mind is also worse, become more sinister, more treacherous …… when I was in the old home team, a total of two options: a simple idea is to suffer in the village, the future to become a respectable patriarch; a cunning idea is to mix from the village out, not their own patriarch, in turn The cunning idea is to go out from the village, not to be a patriarch, but to praise the patriarchs. This kind of glorification, although beautiful, but more or less hypocritical …… stand in front of the Dutch ranch, I found that there is a third choice. For individuals, this choice does not exist, but for a nation, it not only exists, but also the right way.
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