A heartfelt experience

In the summer of 1963, less than a year before the college entrance exam, it was Time to refuel, but in time for the once-in-a-century extraordinarily heavy rainfall and flooding in Hebei Province ……

Pouring rain continued non-stop, according to the data, in just a few days, Fuping, a small county in the mountainous region of western Hebei, the average rainfall of 608 mm, the upper reaches of the Rouge River more than 700 mm, causing flash floods, the river surged. The peak flow of the Dasha River was as high as 3,380 cubic meters per second, and the Rouge River was 1,914 cubic meters per second. The county drowned 15 people, injured more than 200 people, and collapsed 19,000 houses.

My Home village is located at the confluence of the Dasha River and the Rouge River, shaped like a peninsula. More than twenty miles downstream, the dam of the Wangquai Reservoir has been completed and has not yet stored water. This small village belongs to the reservoir area and must be relocated. All the other households in the village have been moved away and there are broken walls everywhere. My Family had no laborers and could not afford to move, so we became the only family left in the village, with a small, isolated earth house standing in ruins. Every night, the whole village was dark, no chickens and dogs were crowing, and there were no human voices, and it was as silent as death.

The rain poured down, and the roar of the Dasha River could be heard not far away. The roof was leaking, and several tile pots were used to catch the water, which clanked and rattled. Trapped in an isolated room for nine days, barely surviving by catching rainwater, as long as there was some Food, people could live.

Late at night on August 10, 1963, I was bent over the edge of my bed under a kerosene lamp, practicing chemistry problems. Chemistry was my weakness and I needed to work on it, otherwise I would lose out in the college entrance examination.

When I came back from a difficult problem, I suddenly felt that there was something strange about the sound of rain outside. I was surprised to find a few straw sticks and light a fire to look outside the house, only to see water all around, soon to be diffused into the house. According to the design plan of the reservoir, it would flood here only in 1964, and I had planned to wait until after the college entrance exams before proceeding with the relocation, but I never thought that the water would come early and unexpectedly, without any prior notice or news. Afterwards, we learned that in order to protect the downstream of the reservoir and preserve the Haihe River and Tianjin, the Wang Fast Reservoir was stored in advance, and it reached the highest water level of 205 meters overnight.

The great disaster, the first escape, wake up already sleeping little brother, braving the rain and wading through the water to run to the nearby high slope.

As the saying goes, a broken home is worth a million dollars. In my broken house, I had only a few tattered necessities, which were not worth a few Guan, but were essential for living, and a little bit of poor food, which was also a source of calories to sustain Life. I quickly found the folks who had moved to the higher part of the mountain slope and begged them to grab some living supplies.

Someone shouted over and over again in the rain: “The XX family is flooded! Come and save us!” The mournful cries cut through the night sky, through the rain and fog, and echoed in the mountains.

The simple, kind and poor folks braved the rain and struggled to grab a few major items, and when they saw the water level rising rapidly, they immediately proceeded to demolish the house and grab the house logs. These house wood, is my family’s main property, if the water floats away, then no longer have the ability to build a house. It was a heartbreaking experience to dismantle the house that we depend on for survival by ourselves.

At dawn, the water had flooded half of the walls, and the adobe walls were softened by the water, and collapsed with a few loud noises.

At dawn, the rain stopped. When I was carrying a house log, enduring the pain of my lacerated feet, I trudged up the hill, and when I looked back, I saw a sea of water, the house was gone, and the home where I was born and raised was gone. How can I live my future life? How can I live if I want to live?

Looking back on my life, I have never done anything wrong, never wronged anyone, but I don’t know why God gave me such a punishment, and I ended up without a tile, without a place to stand. It has been 10 years since my father died, 5 years since my mother died, and the two rooms I depended on for survival are gone. At that moment, I had the heart to die.

On second thought, if I had slept an hour earlier, or if the water had come an hour later, I would have been asleep and the consequences would have been unthinkable. Since I escaped a life out of the water, said tomorrow not to destroy me, I should live. Looking at my little brother’s dependent eyes, I should live even more. Although only 17 years old, I have realized that I am the pillar of the family and cannot fall down.

To live, you have to cook and eat every day. There was no cooking stove, no way to cook. Bringing three stones to support a broken pot, can also make up for the meal.

To survive, you need to sleep every day. With no room and no bed, there was no place to sleep. The good thing is that the sky is not cold, the earth is the bed and the sky is the quilt, so we can also sleep. When it is windy and rainy, donkey pens and sheep pens can be sheltered from the wind and rain.

The first need of man is to survive, cats and dogs have a nest, people need a nest. In a few months, the weather will be cold and it will be difficult to survive without a nest. To survive, we must first build a house and a nest, and school became a dream that I did not dare to hope for, so I dropped out of school for the second time (the first time was in the third grade).

I had to save myself because there was no government official to ask about this disaster, let alone any relief.

More than ten days later, the water receded, and the original house was left with a pile of mud and short, broken walls. Picking up the mud, digging out a few pieces of daily utensils that were not destroyed, cleaning it can still be used. After more than half a month, with a small brother to dig the foundation of the house, the foundation stones dug out, used as the foundation of the house again stone.

The east wall of the house foundation was dug into a deep groove, I and my little brother bent at the bottom of the deep groove, buried his head to pry a large stone, suddenly saw the groove wall of sand and soil silently slipped, pulling up my little brother rush to escape, just out of the deep groove, the sides collapsed to fill the deep groove. Thank God, not buried in it.

In addition to their own daily hard work, to build a house, you must also hire carpenters, masons, stripping, carrying house wood and stone also need labor. I was 17 years old and often felt that my brain was not enough.

The compensation for the relocation of reservoir migrants was pitifully small: 120 yuan per room, 60 yuan per mu of land (to the production team), 15 yuan per mill (to the production team), and 1 yuan per large tree and 20 cents per small tree in front of the house. These poor relocation fees are not issued in a timely manner, relying on the relocation fees to rebuild their homes, far from enough, can only be simple, how much money to do how many things. The things that can be done by themselves, try to do their own efforts, the process of building a house also learned some carpentry and masonry skills.

I spent 17 cents to buy a packet of anti-inflammatory powder and sprinkled it on the affected area to cure it quickly. This was all the medical expenses I had spent before I turned 18.

I was too busy every day to worry about school. Nearly four months later, a simple adobe house rose from the ground not far away, although it still leaked everywhere, but it was sheltered from the rain and could be home again. With a house and a home, the idea of going to school sprang up again. The first semester of my senior year was nearing the end, so I might be able to catch up with it if I put in some gas. I thought: Go to school!

The home arrangement, let the old blind grandma look after the little brother, for them to grind the noodles prepared firewood pick water, in a snowy winter day, resolutely on the road back to school, the heart swept a bit of bleak.

In the winter of 1963, because of the huge floods and reservoir storage in advance, the grass bridge was not built, so we had to take a detour south to walk six or seven miles, through Nijiawa, Cuijiazhuang and then over a mountain, from the county’s west bridge across the Dasha River, in order to return to school.

After walking through the village of North Orchard, I walked westward for a while and thought it was time to go up the mountain, but the sky and earth were white, I couldn’t see the road and couldn’t find anyone, so I looked around and could only see my footprints in the snow (that scene is still vivid in my mind). Because I was not familiar with the road, I was confused about where to go up the mountain. The good thing is that from the trend of the mountain, can still identify the direction, decided that as long as the right hand over this mountain, you can reach the Dasha River, you can find the county. With a number in mind, I resolutely went up the mountain, without worry or sorrow, knowing only to go forward step by step. After crossing the ridge, I saw the Dasha River in the distance, and a stone fell to the ground as I saw a brightness in my heart.

When I returned to school and class, the kind eyes and greetings of my teachers and classmates warmed my lonely heart. Although I had to go hungry every day, this group was also a family. As long as I can live, I should live well; as long as I have the opportunity to study, I should study hard.

The classes that were delayed, fought to catch up with the self-study, and acted out all the homework with broken paper. Except for the essay, my teacher never asked me to turn in my homework, which was the practice for 3 years in high school, because I couldn’t afford to buy workbooks and had to do the exercises on torn paper. Because of my outstanding test scores in my high school years and winning first place in two math competitions, my teachers were extraordinarily kind to me as a special student. My physics and chemistry teachers also arranged for me to do separate make-up experiments.

On one occasion, I was left alone in the lab after my physics teacher, Li Wise, explained the requirements of the experiment and asked me not to forget to lock the door after the experiment. I finished the experiment very smoothly and saw that the 220V AC power supply came from a voltage regulator, so I had a sudden thought: what would happen if I lowered the voltage? Regulating the voltage should not occur any adverse consequences. Hand holding the regulator handle to the low end of a regulation, a big deal, just listen to the “pop” sound, all the lights and lights are out, anywhere can not measure the voltage. I knew I was in trouble, I don’t know what burned something.

I was scared, I could not afford to pay for the burned equipment or devices. After locking the door, I warily handed the key back to Mr. Lee without telling him what had happened. This was a major dishonesty in my life.

For several days, I was afraid to see Mr. Li. But Mr. Lee didn’t bother me, it was as if nothing had happened. At that time, in addition to teaching physics, Ms. Li was also the deputy head of our class, and I knew that she liked me because I was good at school. Guess Ms. Li was covering for me.

It was a long time before I figured out why I was in trouble. At that time, the power supply in the mountains was very unstable, and in most cases, the voltage was too low. In order to be able to experiment properly, Mr. Lee reversed the regulator, that is, the input and output side to switch, in order to raise the voltage to 220 volts. My operation of lowering the voltage, which was actually boosting, resulted in blowing the fuse.

On New Year’s Day 1964, my high school class 11 held a party in Fuping High School, where the students sang or danced or made fun, and performed various programs. It was great to be in a group.

Seven months later came the college entrance exam, which would determine the fate of my life. After another month, on August 24, 1964, I took the calculating ruler and mathematics manual given to me by my teacher, and with bruises all over my body, I picked up a simple luggage roll, took a bus for the first time, saw a train for the first time and took it to Beijing to Tsinghua Park, saw a building for the first time and lived in it (Building 1), and started my study and life in university, just like a carp jumping into the Dragon Gate.

Although I still did not have enough to eat, I was able to buy textbooks and other school supplies, and occasionally I could eat meat and save money for the trip home during the holidays. I started to learn to speak Mandarin, and also learned to look like city people, and started to brush my teeth, take a bath and get a haircut (classmates cut each other’s hair), ending the history of shaving my head, not brushing my teeth and not taking a bath. This may be the criticism of “one year of dirt, two years of foreign” in the later Cultural Revolution, but “three years of not recognizing my father and mother” could not be criticized because I had no father and mother to recognize.

The experience of coming back from the dead, a difficult time, was engraved in my heart. Looking back decades later, there are still a few sorrows in my heart.