In September 1969, with a thunderclap, Vice Commander Lin Biao issued “General Order No. 1” on war preparation, which shook the whole country from top to bottom.
Large units in Beijing had to be evacuated to remote areas, and colleges and universities could not escape this disaster. The College of Forestry was evacuated to Dali in Yunnan, the College of Petroleum to Daqing, the College of Mining and Metallurgy to Jiangsu, the College of Geology to Hubei, the College of Railways to Sichuan, and the College of Agriculture to ……. Among the eight colleges, only the College of Iron and Steel was fortunate enough to have its equipment and instruments boxed and ready for shipment. Miraculously stayed.
The first thing you need to do is to get rid of the problem. What he got was a severe criticism.
Tsinghua University was the stronghold of the “Gang of Four” henchmen, so of course it had to be evacuated. The first step was to evacuate the radio department to Mianyang, Sichuan, and the water conservancy department to Sanmenxia, Henan.
When the labor propaganda team gave the order, we immediately prepared to leave for Sanmenxia. As students, our luggage was extremely simple, just a bunk roll, a quilt bag and we were ready to go. Other items were lost long ago during the Tsinghua wudu, and we did it lightly in advance.
The train carried us away from Beijing, and the young people did not feel bad about it, but were grateful for the rare opportunity to go out on a bus at public expense, and laughed all the way on the train.
When we arrived at Sanmenxia, the local authorities arranged for us to be stationed on the hill to the south of the dam, near the place called “Jiao Gu Cave”. Nearly 100 meters downstream of the left bank of the dam is the exit of the drainage cave, where the yellow water gushing out roars all day long, soaring several stories high and then falling into the Yellow River, forming a yellow fog around. The yellow fog floats with the wind, turning the trees, weeds and buildings on both sides of the river into an earthy yellow color.
Our place is a temporary shed built in the 1950s when the dam was constructed, the walls are tree branches or reeds woven foil paste a layer of mud, the roof is linoleum on the pressure of a layer of mud. After more than ten years of rain and wind, the unused shed has long been in disrepair, with many leaks and many holes dug by rats in the walls. We uninvited guests unceremoniously encroached on the Home of the rats.
Leaving the big city, the natural conditions were hard and some students felt uncomfortable. For me, a student who grew up in the ravine, I feel that the conditions here are not bad, and I can survive with shelter and Food. The weather will soon be cold, in order to overwinter, they built a fire wall in the shed, and the masonry skills they learned as children to make a living came in handy.
Every day, I had to go to the site down the hill to work with the team. I was assigned to the excavation team, using the wind drill to drill holes in the reinforced concrete so that the gun crew could load and discharge the gun. After the dam was cut off and impounded, the three inflow bottom holes at the bottom of the dam against the north bank were blocked with reinforced concrete. After several years of impoundment, it was found that the sediment accumulation upstream of the dam was serious, making the Yellow River bed much higher and causing the Wei water to back up, threatening the 800-mile Qin River. The purpose of this excavation was to open the bottom hole of the diversion and release water to flush the sand. My class was responsible for the most southern bottom hole No. 1, and each of the three classes dug a bottom hole and started a labor competition to see which class would progress faster.
The bottom hole was more than ten meters high and four to five meters wide. Every morning, when they went to work, they first built a scaffolding with cedar, put wooden planks on the high altitude to make several layers of workbenches, and then climbed onto the planks to play the wind drill. After a hard day of drilling holes of several centimeters in diameter in the reinforced concrete, the scaffolding had to be dismantled before the end of the day to prevent the scaffolding materials from being blown up when the cannon was released. After the gun team loaded the gun, the cleanup team took away the slag from the blast. The next day we build a new scaffolding and repeat the previous day’s action on the new palm surface.
The wind drill weighed 63 pounds and had to be pushed and pressed hard to get in, which was a heavy work. When the wind source was turned on, the drill vibrated the body like sieve chaff, and it felt like the bones were going to fall apart. In order to suppress the drilling dust and prevent silicosis, we injected water into the holes while drilling, and we were often covered with mud and water after a day’s work.
With a good strength, I felt that I could adapt to such heavy physical labor, but the quantity of meals increased greatly and I often felt hungry. Every day after the work, I put my socks soaked with sweat and mud on the fire wall to dry, and the smell of smelly socks filled my place.
I was afraid of hitting the dumb gun when I was drilling. In the past, there were cases where the wind drillers were blown up and their bones were left incomplete.
Take my master named Zhang Wei Xia, a strong man called a woman’s name, the hat is always worn diagonally, a hat wing towards the front, a hat wing towards the back, looks very comical. He is very competent, to play the wind drill excavation is very insider, build scaffolding, drilling, handling rebar card drill, machine maintenance are a good hand, and love brain, listen to the sound to know whether the wind drill is good, what is the fault, a few months to him to learn a lot of experience. I just don’t know why he called himself a counter-revolutionary. Although he was not the squad leader, he was the technical backbone of the squad and the actual commander. Six months later I heard that he was injured by a blast while continuing to excavate bottom hole No. 1.
The weather became colder and colder, and in December, the cold wind raged in the river valley. Sometimes on the night shift, the freezing can not stand to find some firewood to bake a fire, feel the “fire baked chest warm, wind blowing behind the cool”. I lost my old cotton pants during the war, and the only two layers of single pants I had were hard to resist the cold, and my knees were frozen to the point of constant soreness. I wanted to buy a pair of fleece pants to protect myself from the cold, but the cheapest ones cost seven or eight yuan, and with a monthly grant of only ten or so yuan, I had to spend seven or eight yuan to go hungry.
A kind teacher told me: “Long-term knee pain is arthritis, and it’s hard to cure. You can endure the cold now, but in the future you will have to endure the torture of arthritis for the rest of your Life, and that will not be pleasant. When I thought of destroying my health and my future because of poverty, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. My teacher suggested that I buy a pair of knee pads for athletes to protect my knee joints, as long as it cost more than two yuan, which would not affect my meals much. However, there were no knee pads in the small store in Damtou.
One day, a master worker told me that there were knee pads for sale in a store in Sanmenxia, more than 50 miles from Damtou. As soon as I got off work, I didn’t have Time to eat and boarded the train to Sanmenxia City without hesitation. This site train is usually used to transport construction materials for the dam and to transport workers who live in Sanmenxia City for free when they go to and from work.
More than half an hour later, the train arrived in Sanmenxia City and the stores had not yet closed. I bought knee pads and immediately put them on both knee joints, feeling much warmer.
It was already dark, and the train to Damtou would not leave until the next morning, so how would I spend the night? Looking at the dilapidated waiting room, many windows were broken, and it was as cold indoors as it was outdoors, so I thought it would be a living hell to stay here all night in the cold, so I might as well open my legs and walk back! As long as you follow the two railway tracks, you will not go the wrong way.
That night there was no moon, only a faint starlight. With the skills developed by walking at night when I was a child, I could barely recognize the road under my feet. The road was first a low slope, and soon entered the deep mountains, and could not see the fingers, and could only follow the train tracks around the mountains. I knew I had taken some wrong roads, but I didn’t dare to leave the train tracks, because if I took the wrong road, I might be in the mountains. The cold winter night, the surrounding silence like dead, even the sound of insects are not, only occasionally hear a night owl mournful cry or two. Suddenly I realized that I was all alone in the mountains, what if I met bad people? What if I meet a wolf? I would not be able to call for help. I wanted to find a stick to defend myself so as not to be killed. I searched for a while in the darkness, but could not find one, and only found a branch that was not thick enough to deal with wolves or people, so I used it as a courageous tool.
There was no panic, no tears, only a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, and all I could think of was to go forward quickly. As we walked, a high mountain crossed in front of us, and the train track was drilled into a tunnel, which seemed to be a bottomless black hole. It was a bit scary to go into the hole, and if you don’t go into the hole, you have to go over the mountain. Looking up by starlight, the mountain was very high, and it took a lot more effort and time to go over the mountain, and it was dangerous to climb the mountain in the dark.
I entered the cave boldly, the surrounding darkness, can only feel the wall slowly forward, stumbling feet, experience the difficulties of the blind. The tunnel was very long, and suddenly I thought what to do when the train came? At night it was the time for trains to deliver sand and gravel materials, and the possibility of encountering trains was high. I heard that fast trains have an attraction to objects close to them, and the narrow cave can only be buried under the wheel of a speeding train, so I couldn’t help but feel a bit creepy.
While thinking about it, I felt that the wall I touched was concave, and I felt that the depth was about a few dozen centimeters, the width was about half a meter, and the height was more than a meter, so I could hide here when I encountered a train. Continue to feel forward, found that every few dozen meters there is such a concave can. The night is very quiet, the sound of the train is very far, I guess to hear the sound of the train and then touch the alcove can be completely in time, a heart relaxed. The next day, the master worker told me that these hollows were specially prepared for the patrollers to take refuge.
It was hard to get out of the tunnel and see the starlight, so I was in a good mood. Walking along the tracks, and I don’t know how long it took, I suddenly found that the two tracks in front of me were broken, and I walked to the broken end and saw that the steep slope was down in front of me, and I looked down by starlight, but I couldn’t see it. Touch a stone to throw down, a long time to hear the sound of landing, know that this is a very deep cliff face. I wondered how the railroad, which clearly connects Damtou to Sanmenxia City, had become a cut-off road.
The railroad cannot be rerouted in a few hours, this must be a fork in the road. So back to the return, walked for a while to find the railroad trigonometry, because it was too dark, the first time I passed here actually did not see there is a fork.
Another hour or two of walking, saw the light, the heart also open up, know this place is called “Daan”, is a workers’ settlement, only 5 miles from the head of the dam.
Maybe it was the blessing of my Parents‘ spirit in heaven, or maybe it was the mercy of God, although we bumped and banged along the way, we were not injured, and we did not encounter wolves or bad guys. I gritted my teeth and walked more than 50 miles until midnight, when I returned to the shed on the hill at the head of the dam and slept warmly, without delaying the next day’s work to play the wind drill.
It was this pair of knee pads that protected both of my legs during those difficult years, and are still tenaciously supporting my unbreakable body to this day.
I still don’t understand what that section of the cut-off railroad switch is for.
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