I. Flowing backwards to the city
In 1966, on the eve of my graduation from high school, the Cultural Revolution suddenly fell from the sky, and after experiencing the “big buzz” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, I had no choice but to go to the wide world, just like the other “Old Three”.
In the fall of 1969, in a remote mountain village near the border between China and Myanmar, I suffered an eye injury and after a period of treatment at the local county hospital, the doctor could do nothing for my blind right eye and suggested that I be transferred to Kunming for medical treatment. I was recommended to be transferred to Kunming for medical treatment.
Although the doctor issued a certificate for the transfer, it was still unknown whether it would be approved by the above. Since Yingjiang, where I was located, was one of the “five counties outside” (i.e. the five counties in southwest Yunnan near the national border), I had to get a pass issued by the Human Security Unit (a three-in-one agency of the public, the prosecution and the law during the Cultural Revolution) to get in and out of the area. Without this paper, you could not buy a ticket; even if you had the ability to mix with the car, when you crossed the bridge over the Lancang and Nujiang rivers, the bridge guards would check your documents one by one and you would be stopped.
When I took the hospital certificate to the Youth Affairs Office of the County Revolutionary Committee, the clerk pushed me to the military representative office, and only after a lot of trouble did I get a month’s leave from the Youth Affairs Office of the County Revolutionary Committee. Then I borrowed 30 yuan from the society to pay for my travel expenses, and hurriedly set out on my way Home.
At that Time, there was no direct bus from Yingjiang to Kunming, but from the village to the county, and then through Tengchong, Baoshan, Shimonoseki and other places all the way to transfer. Sometimes I took a bus, sometimes I took a truck, and I stayed in a small hotel with two triangles at night. The simplicity and dirtiness of the hotel and all the scenes reminded me of Mr. Ai Wu’s “Southbound”. The whole journey was basically a big mountain, and it took almost a day to go over the Gaoligong Mountain alone, and the car was constantly going up and down on the mountain road, next to the deep valley. I remember the section from Baoshan to Shimonoseki, it was raining all the time, I sat in the cab (truck) and saw eight cars overturned along the way. The driver, a Sichuanese, complained, “Driving in Yunnan is like putting your head on the waistband of your pants.” In the evening, the rain turned into a thick fog, visibility is only about twenty meters, the road is slippery, usually talk a lot of drivers no longer talk, both eyes on the front to drive carefully, my heart also hung in the air. God willing, we finally arrived safely in Yangbi when it was almost dark (originally planned to Shimonoseki) ……
I was so bouncy and bumpy all the way back to Kunming that a quarter of my vacation had passed. After that, I began to seek medical help everywhere.
Every morning, I went out with hope, and every day I returned with disappointment and frustration, running from hospital to hospital, finding one doctor to another, all to no avail.
I had thought about dying many times, and when I was hospitalized in Yingjiang County Hospital, this thought repeatedly haunted me. Not far from the county hospital there is a river, a big beautiful river to merge into the Irrawaddy River to flow to the Indian Ocean. Many a dusk, I sat alone by the river, blindfolded my left eye with my hand again and again, hoping that my right eye would suddenly see the light, but nothing could be seen! Silently shedding tears, I used my one remaining heel to look out over the blood-red river dyed by the setting sun, thinking of my Parents locked up in the “cowshed” far away and my sister crippled by the “Red Terror”, I really wanted to jump in and let the river take my pain and Life away together. ……
The month-long vacation was soon to be over, and my eyes were still not improving, there was no light! No miracle!
At this time, Kunming started to catch the “backward flow of youth”. The human security team, the labor propaganda team, the militia pickets and other relevant departments went out in the middle of the night to search people’s homes, and the captured “refluxers” were gathered at the 23rd Middle School in Kunming, where the parents were required to write an undertaking (guaranteeing that their children would be sent to the countryside within a certain period of time) and have their units stamp the undertaking before they could take their children home.
I was afraid to involve my parents, but also unwilling to return to Yingjiang – I was still struggling in despair, and stubbornly refused to accept the fact that I was “blind”. I was only in my twenties, how could I not have eyes?
In order to “cover my eyes and ears”, I had to crawl out of the broken hole in the wall of the college (dug during the armed struggle) every day at dawn to hide, wander around outside for a day, and then crawl in through the broken hole after dark. At the same time, he tried to find a way to renew his leave.
However, in those days when everyone was in danger, who would easily give a sick leave certificate to a youth who had “returned to the city”?
One of my classmates told me that he knew a registered person in a hospital who was his elementary school classmate. He accompanied me to that hospital.
The “elementary school classmate” took us to a female doctor in her forties. The female doctor’s name was Tang. After the routine examination, treatment and prescription, I squeaked out the matter of a leave slip. In order to avoid the identity of the “refluxed youth”, I lied that I was a worker in a factory and explained, “Actually, there is nothing to do in the factory, I just need a procedure.” The female doctor gave me a week’s leave without question.
“Although the doctor might not be able to cure my eye disease, I had a ray of light in my heart. The second week was another “success” and we were so pleased that we almost forgot the adversity we were in. But the third week was a bust, and the woman said, “This is not a short-term cure, so since you have nothing to do at work, go to work first.”
I walked out of the clinic in frustration and tramped around the entrance of the hospital not knowing where to go, my heart fell into a boundless darkness again.
When my classmate saw this, he decided to “do the right thing” and secretly tore a blank leave slip from the doctor’s desk when the clinic was empty, copying the female doctor’s handwriting and giving me a sick leave.
Unexpectedly, the person in charge of stamping took the certificate, examined it, and then shouted a rebuke: “Your certificate is false.”
It was already too late to escape, and people gathered around, like a caught thief ……
I didn’t expect to be escorted to “confess” on the way, I ran into the female doctor, I was still calm, I was ashamed to be embarrassed. At this point, the female doctor had taken off her work clothes and seemed to be off duty.
After listening to the “escort’s” account, she took the fake certificate and calmly said, “Let me handle this.”
I followed the female doctor into the consultation room, feeling ashamed to face her, and could not say anything anymore. To my great surprise, the doctor didn’t say anything, but sat down at the table and reissued me a sick leave certificate.
That winter night seemed extraordinarily warm, and the bitter north wind became softer. As usual, I used my hand to blindfold my left eye to examine my right eye, my right eye still can not see the moon and stars, but my heart really felt the light, that is many ordinary people, with their sincerity, kindness and love, built into the warmth and light ……
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. Soon after the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, my father was taken out and criticized for being a “rightist with his hat off” and a “bourgeois reactionary academic authority”. At that time, the Cultural Revolution had been going on for three years, and the issue of “rightists with their hats off” was already considered a “dead tiger”, and “reactionary academic authorities” no longer seemed to be the focus of the campaign, but rather The “old, sick and disabled” body became a drag on the unit’s “war evacuation”. So, my father’s unit told him to find his own place to “evacuate”. My mother was “decentralized,” and I had no idea where I would go. The Family was once again separated, so we decided to take a family photo.
On the day of the photo shoot, the whole family did not dare to go out together for fear of getting into trouble, but divided into three groups of four and went out through the front and back doors of the school, and then went to the photo studio to gather. After the photos came out, my mother distributed one to each person, saying, “Keep one, in case you get separated or find it.”
Now that my parents are in the ground, I can’t help but think about this past when I find this family photo again. Everyone in the photo is forcing a smile, who would have thought of the heaviness and bitterness behind it – in those days of wind and rain like a plate, human life is like a grain of straw, at any time may be crushed into pieces, not to mention which wind will be blown to where ……
In this winter, we sold our family goods to pay for the road, only with the books and the most necessary supplies that my father could not throw away, the family migrated from Kunming to northern Jiangsu. And, just like the photo shoot, the four of us went in three groups, the reason and process of which is difficult to explain.
On December 31, 1969, an old classmate helped me transport my luggage to the train station with a tricycle, and I boarded the eastbound train alone with fourteen bags (including two violins and a basket of records). The train was leaving just as the sun was setting, and in a few hours it would be New Year’s Day, the beginning of 1970. I didn’t know what the new year would bring me, the future was just a blur ……
II. Desperate
At that time, my requirements were very low, I just wanted to be a farmer in the land of China and be able to support myself.
When I went from Kunming to Yingjiang, I was given a grain purchase certificate for the collective households of the youth once I settled down. Although the certificate was clearly stamped with the seal of “loan”, no one came to us to ask for the household registration and grain transfer certificate, which means that my household and grain relations were still in my hands. In the first year, before the autumn harvest, the collective households bought Food from the grain station with the settlement money provided by the state to the youth, so there was no problem to eat. Once I left Yingjiang, I had no source of food and had to rely on my family for support. In the days when I first returned to Kunming, I always picked the time when I was about to eat to send the letters that my classmates brought to others, so that I could “rub” a meal. But this is not a permanent solution, to go once, no shame to go a second time. Moreover, in those days of material scarcity, the food ration of each family was limited.
Moreover, my “pocket account” is not only no food to eat, no oil, meat, cloth stamps and all the planned supply of things, but also have to be on guard all day long to check the account, catch the “blind” (black account) and other sudden actions. Therefore, I desperately wanted to find a place to settle down, to have a ration, and to earn work credits to support myself.
My cousin, who was a high school teacher in Maanshan, Anhui Province, asked his students for connections and found a production captain across the Yangtze River in Louqiao, He County, to identify his relatives so that I could come to Anhui Province as a “family friend” to join the team. My cousin said that Hesian mainly grows cash crops such as cotton and peanuts, and the income is higher than the average rural area, so I can basically support myself. Thus, soon after I arrived in Yangzhou, I hurriedly went to my cousin’s house in Maanshan.
That winter was particularly cold, several snowfall years ago, the ice on the edge of the house is more than a foot long. The snow stopped as soon as the Spring Festival was over, and I stepped on the remnants of the firecrackers all over the place and set off for the road to Wuqiao in He County.
The small fireboat from Maanshan to Wuqiao was crowded with people, mostly visiting friends and relatives, people were still immersed in the festivities of the New Year, excitedly smoking cigarettes, knocking peanuts and melon seeds, chatting about family matters, only I was huddled in the corner of the cabin, anxiously imagining the prospects of my trip.
“Did not go home for the New Year?” A cadre-like man next to me took the initiative to talk to me, saw my puzzled gaze, and said, “You’re not going back to Shanghai?” It turned out that he thought I was a Shanghai youth (there are many Shanghai youths in Anhui). I smiled bitterly at him, not knowing how to answer, the word “Zhiqing” seemed to be written on my face, people could recognize it at once.
The steam whistle sounded long, the small fireboat docked, I followed the crowd of people disembarking the ship up the embankment. I asked the cadre-like man for directions, and the village I was going to was about 30 miles from the river. In fact, my cousin also told me that I just need to follow the embankment all the way forward.
With the bitter north wind, I stepped deeply and shallowly on the muddy embankment, which could not be seen. The sky is not clear, thick clouds pressed in the head, only to feel the world everywhere gray and white, as if it is going to snow. There were some pedestrians on the road at first, but then I was the only one left. There was no one to ask for directions, so I had to run down the embankment to the village whenever I saw a village next to me.
The shoes on my feet were already soaked with ice water, the bag on my back felt heavier and heavier, and my stomach was hungry, in fact, I had sweets and pastries in my backpack, but I couldn’t eat them, they were “gifts” for people.
The sky is getting darker, there are faint lights in the distance, the four fields are silent, only the cold wind in the wilderness mournfully roar, I began to be afraid, stopping to look around, I do not know the distant flashing lights, which one is my home tonight?
However, I had to go ahead even though I was afraid. In order to be brave, I softly sang a song: “We are walking on the road, the spirit is high ……” “There is a young girl, send soldiers to war … …” “Just when the pear blossom blooms all over the sky cliff ……” or is the song brought luck, when I once again ran down the dike to the village to ask, the destination arrived.
Although the production captain, the family’s condition is still very poor, almost home. They had already eaten dinner, and my arrival made the captain busy for a while. He specially took down the salted meat and salted fish hanging on the beam of the house, cut a few slices on the rice steamed for me to eat (the beam of these hanging salted meat and salted fish is very much the envy of the city people), and then let the children go to the sister’s house to call back the old mother.
This night, I slept with my mother in a bed, my mother took out a new quilt from the box to cover me, I was moved to tears. It was as if all the fatigue, all the pain, all the aggression, all melted in this warm hut – goodbye, “blind” career, I finally found a place to land.
The next day, my mother took me to visit my relatives. This is a large village, a lot of people with relatives, and the Spring Festival period, many people who work outside also came back. Every time I went to a family, people looked at me from head to toe, complimented me, said my heart warm, I secretly resolved: “No matter how hard it is, I must also do well here ……”.
After dinner, the family sat around the kerosene lamp, the elder mother solemnly said to me: “see you do not look like the city’s delicate young lady, I will be relieved ……” did not wait for the elder mother finished, I hastily state: “I can suffer ……” Who knows what happened next was unexpected.
The production captain took out a photo, saying that this is his brother, outside as a soldier, if I agree to marry his brother, it will be easy to settle here. Then the family took turns to convince me. They said that the status of military families here was very high, and that they could recommend me to become a barefoot doctor, substitute teacher, etc. Otherwise, they could not help with the household registration.
It was like a pot of cold water pouring down from the head, until then I realized that the reason they accepted me and were so enthusiastic about me was that they wanted me to become his daughter-in-law.
I took the photo and looked at it, it was a full body photo, about two inches in size, the head was not as big as a soybean, but it was indeed wearing a military uniform. Seeing that I was looking at the photo, the elder mother turned to the production captain and said, “You should send a telegram tomorrow and tell Lao Er to come back soon, and if you can make it, do it on the 15th of the first month.”
More surprises! It’s not that I despise the countryside, nor do I have any opinion about the soldier, but it came so suddenly and unprepared that my perceptions and Education made it difficult for me to accept. For a while, I just felt sour in my heart, I wanted to cry but couldn’t. What else could I say about it? In fact, there was no need to say anything else, so I had to say goodbye.
On the third day, the sky cleared up, the bright sun shone on the plain of the Wanjiang River, the snow began to melt, but the wind was more biting, and the road was more muddy. I embarked on my return journey with empty hands, but I felt that the embankment was more difficult to walk than when I came.
I went back to my cousin’s house in Maanshan. My cousin had three children, all of whom were still young, and my cousin’s wife did not have a formal job, so the family was heavily burdened. At that time, not only was the food plan very tight, but also a lot of mixed grains, such as moldy dried yams, old beans with worms, and so on. Almost every meal in the house was dried yam rice, the children did not want to eat dried yam, so I ate what they did not want to eat. Nevertheless, I was very upset about sharing their food rations and adding to their burden.
After staying at my cousin’s house for a few days, the school security officer came to the house and asked, “Where is your cousin working? When will she leave?” I knew that trouble was coming again ……
The first thing I did was to find a relationship with a former colleague of mine who worked at the Baiqiao Supply and Marketing Agency in He County. Cousin deduced that working in the supply and marketing agency may know some people in the upper echelons and may have a way.
So I got back on the overcrowded little fireboat, and stepped on that long dike ……
The White Bridge is further than the Lou Bridge!
I found my cousin’s old colleague in Baiqiao, he received me warmly, and just as my cousin had speculated, he really knew the “higher ups” – a commune deputy secretary! My heart rekindled with hope.
The next day, my cousin’s old colleague took me to visit the deputy secretary of the commune. Coincidentally, the secretary said that the commune was short of a broadcaster and was holding a meeting of the three levels of cadres at the moment, so if I could be qualified, I could be of immediate use.
What a blessing! I quickly weighed myself and, confident of the job, told the secretary that I could take a test or exam, whether I was writing a story or doing a broadcast.
“But,” the secretary then asked, “what is your family composition?” He also said, “Working in a broadcasting station, you will have access to some confidential documents, you must bring your file.”
What is the composition of my family? I really can’t answer. My father was a university professor, so he had nothing to do with “the rich, the poor, the anti, the bad”, but he was a “rightist with his hat off”! Besides, when we left school, the school only issued a “graduation assignment certificate” (I was in the high school class of 66, and did not have an official diploma), and even the household registration and food relations were still in my pocket, so where could I get the files?
Another pot of cold water poured on my head, there is no choice!
Once again, I boarded the small ship back to the city of Ma. I stood on the side of the ship, looking at the sun like blood on the river, woodenly let the knife like the river wind blowing tear, want to cry. I really don’t understand why even such a humble request – to be a self-supporting farmer in my own country – is difficult to achieve. Is there not a path for me in this vast world?
Canal Love
I had to return to Yangzhou from Maanshan. At that time, my whole family had arrived in Yangzhou, but there was still no solution to my “food household problem”, and even when I lived in my own house, I was still “black”. Later, my cousin, who was a nurse in a health center in Yangzhou, found a place willing to accept me in a small village by the canal in northern Jiangsu Province after making a lot of detours. In this way, I settled down in a production team called “Canal” in Ganjiang County in the name of “joining relatives and friends”.
The village is literally close to the canal, and there is a ferry port in the village. In addition to growing rice, wheat and cotton, farmers here also grow mulberry and raise silkworms. In theory, this should be a rich place, but somehow it is very poor, a strong laborer a day’s work is worth only two triangle money.
Although it is said to be a “family and friends”, in reality there is no “family” and no “friends” here. After giving two cigarettes to the production captain, the captain used an old door to support a store in the home of three old ladies of the five households, which is considered to have housed me, and since then three old ladies have become my relatives.
The wilderness in northern Jiangsu Province is flat, and the Grand Canal flows slowly through the village. The summer sun made the naked riverbank smoky, and the cold winter wind whistled sharply across the wilderness, shaking the window panes of the huts desperately. I mingled among a group of pure farmers every day, working, eating, sleeping, and getting up again to work, eat, and sleep. Day after day, I endured hardship and loneliness, not daring to think about the future.
Only the three old ladies took care of me. Every day when I was still in dreamland, she called out from my bedside, “Xiao Zhu, climb up (i.e. get up).” When I was too tired and wanted to stay in bed for a while, she urged me, “Crawl, you’ll have to deduct work points for being late.” When I came back from work, the three old ladies always cooked a meal for me. At that time, the peasants’ life was very hard, and every family did not have enough rations to eat, so they usually ate only two meals a day, and they were thin barley paste (they called it vegetable porridge). I still had my food account relationship in my pocket and relied entirely on my family members to save to support me. The three old ladies felt sorry for me because I had no food to eat, so they also cooked me thin, thin rice. Even during the double robbery season, when I worked from dawn to midnight, I only had two bowls of rice and two dried radishes. I was so hungry that I couldn’t stand it, and the three old ladies mixed their own coronation bean curd with the rice so that I could eat some.
In those days I was like a lonely goose, no classmates, no friends, no one to talk to, only the canal next to the village could give me a little comfort. I often sat alone by the canal and thought back to my past life. My childhood and teenage ideals, everything was a beautiful fragment, and I was at a loss. I ask myself how long I will stay here, a river I have known since my elementary school geography textbook. Will I stay forever? The canal could not answer me, no one could answer me.
When summer came, I sneaked into the canal to swim. Of course, I did not dare to swim in the river next to the village, but ran to swim far away from my acquaintances. But still let the three old ladies know, she told me all day long about drowning in the river, and begged me “don’t go swimming”. I blamed her for being nosy, but because I couldn’t stand her nagging, I had to go.
After the wheat harvest that year, I got my first share of the ration I had earned with my own labor – thirty pounds of wheat. I carried the wheat to the flour mill to exchange it for flour and carried it home. The three old ladies looked happier than I was, and she said over and over again, “Xiao Zhu has food to eat, Xiao Zhu has food to eat.” And for me, the significance of the thirty pounds of wheat is not just rations, it gave me a struggle to regain confidence and courage in the hardship and helplessness ……
Later, an old classmate wrote to encourage me, he said: “food account in their own hands, in fact, is in control of the great initiative ……” and when the first down Yingjiang, because of the positive action, my account migration certificate on the reason for migration is actually “distribution”. So I sent my household and food migration certificate back to Kunming, and with the help of my friends’ efforts, I was “reassigned” and relocated to Yangzhou instead.
After I settled my household registration, I left there. I felt embarrassed to face the people in the village because I was not officially transferred as a youth. Moreover, I never went to the village by the canal again because I had a household registration and started to look for a job and really didn’t have time.
The job search was also quite complicated. After that, I started as an apprentice with a monthly salary of thirteen yuan and worked in various jobs until the college entrance examination system was restored, and then I had the opportunity to resume my studies and return to school. At that time, I had graduated from high school exactly twelve years ago.
After graduating from college, I became a doctor. Many years later, I met a Yangzhou youth who was stationed in the “Canal” in a different place. He said to me, “The three old ladies have been thinking about you since you left. I’m still wearing the sandals she gave me.”
My eyes burst into tears. Over the years I was busy here and there, just hurrying, almost forgetting the hut that had accepted me and sheltered me during the wasted years. But the third old lady, the kind old man who gave me warmth with love and truth when I was miserable and despondent, still misses the old pair of plastic sandals I left for her when I left ……
I never knew the name and exact age of the three old ladies, if she is still alive, she should probably be more than ninety years old, right? Time flies, the years go by, forty years have passed! Our motherland has long since said goodbye to the winter, and the land in northern Jiangsu has long since changed to a new face, so I don’t know when I will be able to go back again. At this time, I can only send a fragrance from the south end of the canal with a deep regret.
Forgive me, three old ladies; forgive me, the Grand Canal ……
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