(I) The college entrance exams of my brothers and sisters
It’s been more than half a century since I finally resolved to finish my college entrance examination memories.
I first learned about the college entrance examination in the summer of 1955, when I had just finished my first grade. I remember that year I felt very strange that my elder brother and elder sister, who were studying in Qinghua Middle School in Chongqing, came Home with big bags of luggage, as if they were moving. In previous years, this was not the case, they came home from vacation, usually carrying only a small bag, a few changes of clothes, in addition to some of the books I could not read.
What’s even stranger is that after they come home for a while, they seem to be a little fidgety waiting for something to happen. I later learned that they had graduated from high school and were taking the college entrance exam, and were anxiously awaiting notification.
At that Time, the scale of the college entrance examination was much smaller than now, and its influence in society was far less than now, and I didn’t even know that there was a proper noun for college entrance examinations called “gaokao”. I didn’t even know that there was a proper name for university entrance exams called “college entrance exams” until I graduated from junior high school.
My elder sister didn’t have to wait long to get an acceptance letter from the Beijing Institute of Geology (the predecessor of the current China University of Geosciences).
We all rejoiced when my sister got into a university in Beijing. In fact, I did not understand my sister’s feelings at that time, and our joy was mainly transmitted from my mother, although I did not understand the far-reaching and complicated meaning of this joy.
Back then, the traffic was very closed, and when my sister’s notice arrived at the town where my Family lived, it was already a short time before she reported to school. This was definitely a long journey at that time, and definitely a costly one.
The tight schedule made my Parents happy and nervous at the same time. My mother was busy with various procedures for my daughter’s account transfer, and my father was busy raising money for the journey. In a desperate situation, they found our uncle far away in the stream of people, and her classmates chased after him while shouting “Chen Yongqing’s (my elder sister’s) uncle! Chen Yongqing’s uncle!” Finally, she called out to her uncle. Knowing his niece’s predicament, he gave her ten yuan out of his pocket, so that she could report to school at the required time.
Big sister left, big brother into the impatient wait, in his always gentle patience is almost exhausted, Sichuan University’s acceptance letter arrived. The parents were again busy with all kinds of procedures and financing for him, and in a tone of rejoicing for the whole family, they were exhausted and finally sent their eldest son and daughter away. The father said, “What school and major to take, you did not even discuss with us, all filled in such a distant school.” Yes, for them to leave, the family was overturned, and sold almost all of the father’s book collection, including the first edition of Lu Xun’s Complete Works that he bought with two taels of Gold.
The fact that a pair of sons and daughters were admitted to two famous universities in Beijing and Chengdu at the same time in one year caused quite a shock in our town of less than 10,000 people at that time (although it was a county town). People who knew and didn’t know each other congratulated their parents, and even envied them for having such a pair of “striving” sons and daughters. I’m not kidding when I say that many people were jealous. The fact that my elder brother and sister, and later my second sister, were also admitted to university did bring some fame to my family, but it also laid a crisis. Especially in those years when the class struggle was in full swing, and especially during the storm of the Cultural Revolution.
At that time, the fact that there were three college students, three high school students and four junior high school students among my family’s ten sons and daughters became ironclad evidence that the bourgeoisie had dictated the politics of the proletariat. Of course, the most crucial thing was that there were three college students. This incident was even written into the county’s “Minutes on Education Work” during the Cultural Revolution, and my family became even more notorious for it. All of this had a profound impact on us, the younger siblings, and made our fate even more difficult and eventful.
The college entrance exams of my brothers and sisters did change their Destiny, and they have since left the town where their parents’ factory was located to live in a larger city for the rest of their lives. There, capitalists like our father, who ran a small factory with more than 100 employees, were not even in the queue, let alone away from their parents, so the influence of family origin was relatively much less. Their grades in college were excellent, and after graduation they worked in universities, research institutes and high schools, so they basically lived a more stable Life. Unlike us, they have not been through the trials and tribulations.
The success of our brothers and sisters in the college entrance exams not only changed their fate, but also profoundly affected the lives of our whole family. In addition to the aforementioned negative effects.
After the elder brothers and sisters went to college, they started not coming home because of the long distance and expensive travel expenses, and they did not come back when their father died of cerebral hemorrhage more than two years later. The father’s death made the family’s already modest finances very difficult all of a sudden, and only with the great help of some relatives was the family barely able to maintain the most basic living, and the stubborn mother insisted that each of the children continue their studies at school.
The difficulties were obvious, and when the family could not afford to pay the tuition fees at the beginning of the school year, we often saw the mother who could not sleep all night at the table alone, weeping silently. But she still persisted, because there was still hope. My mother’s hope is that her elder brother and sister, who are studying at university, will be better off after they graduate and join the workforce.
The older brother and sister did not disappoint their mother’s hope, and after they graduated, they both took the initiative to share the burden of the family for their mother, as did the second sister after she graduated from college. In this way, the family finally passed through the darkest years. Then the Cultural Revolution began, and soon after that, five of my children went to the countryside, and I stayed home without a job because my eyes were too nearsighted. The family was struggling financially and my brothers and sisters continued to fulfill their obligations quietly. Their financial support for the family continued until the end of the Cultural Revolution.
(II) Competition in the college entrance examinations of our time
In 1966, our senior class of 66 entered the graduation season, which meant that the college entrance examination was less than six months away, and it should have been the final sprint before the college entrance examination.
In fact, the competition for the college entrance examination began when we entered high school.
When you go to high school, anyone who says they don’t want to go to college must be lying, especially in our time. In those days, there was a world of difference between the future and the fate of those who did not get into college.
The college entrance exam is basically a future without worries. If your household registration is in the countryside, you will obtain the status of urban resident and enjoy all the benefits of urban residents, especially the state will supply you with monthly Food that is not much but can basically fill your stomach, in addition to all kinds of necessities of life. You will also have a fairly stable and generally good job, with a salary that is not very high but not low either, and should be able to support a family of three quite well, and there is hope that it will increase. You will also have considerable medical coverage and will not generally be poor due to illness. You will also be assigned a home by your organization that will at least provide shelter and protection from the elements. Your future sons and daughters will also be town residents, and they can get a better education and can grow up relatively healthy ……
If you can’t take the test, it’s hard to get everything mentioned above. The first thing is that it is very difficult for you to find a suitable job, and if you are a rural resident, it is even more difficult to say. You will be working at sunrise and sunset, struggling to make a living on the land, but also hoping for the favor of the Lord of Heaven. In those days, there was no place for you to work. Even if you have a good eye and a good network, it is difficult to find any work in the city. Even if you find something, or find your own way to start your own business, you may be cut off as a capitalist tail, or even be criticized, and may lose your freedom.
Such a huge gap, coupled with the fact that the size of our colleges and universities was far below what people wanted back then, so the competition in the college entrance exams back then was quite intense and even brutal, far more than now.
So from the time they entered high school, students began to compete fiercely on the one-way bridge of the college entrance examination. At that time, the criteria for selecting talents for the college entrance examination was the so-called red and professional. “Red” is the so-called good political performance, “special” is good study (mainly by the college entrance examination results to determine).
Studying hard and achieving excellent results is, of course, what every student wants. But this is a process that requires long-term hard work and cannot be achieved by speculation, and talent is also an extremely important factor. So many people focused on the “red” road, and the then increasingly left-leaning and formalistic political environment, so that the entrance examination admissions more than a year to “red” tilt, so that some people spy this is a shortcut, so the entrance examination competition and political capital Competition on a front.
Some students, especially those with poor foundation, hope to gain more leverage in the “red” aspect. They try to get as much political capital as possible, which is called fighting for political progress. This competition, especially in the matter of joining the Communist Youth League, because joining the Communist Youth League marked a big step in political progress, and thus an important reference criterion for admission to the college entrance examination.
Therefore, joining the Communist Youth League was a very important event in the life of high school students in those days, and it was not an easy task. For those of us who came from so-called exploiting class families, joining the league was even harder than the sky. In the year of our graduation, the school had started to develop members of the Communist Party among the students. In our year of graduation, the school had started to develop CPC members among students. We had developed four in one grade and two classes, and my class had three student members.
What one of the party members, Y, said to me privately focused on the motivation of these members to join the party. He told me, “If he was approved to join the Party this time, he was going to fill in for Beijing Law School of Politics (now the predecessor of China University of Political Science and Law), otherwise he would fill in for Southwest Law School of Politics (now the predecessor of Southwest University of Political Science and Law).”
Of course, those who could join the Party were only a handful, and the main competition was to join the regiment. In order to join the league, some people, in addition to desperately earning performance in political studies and labor, also do their best to flatter and flatter the cadres and members of the Communist Youth League in order to achieve the purpose of joining the league.
The saddest and most ironic thing is that every applicant for membership in the league, in the application form, in the branch meeting to discuss membership, vowed that the purpose of their hard study and strive to join the league is definitely not for the purpose of further education, nor for the promotion of officials and wealth (which many people may not think or dare to think about for the time being), but for better progress under the education of the league organization, and so on. In fact, their purpose is “Sima Zhao’s heart”, only no one dares to point out that The Emperor has no clothes like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
Of course, to say that their motivation for joining the group is purely for the college entrance exams may be a gross generalization, but at least the purpose is never as pure as they say. And I don’t think there were necessarily not a few idealists among them, and I don’t doubt the nobility of their motives for joining the league. But I can say with certainty that political duplicity was a national disease in those days, and I don’t think it has been cured yet.
Another venue of competition was the competition to become cadres, especially in the school student council and the Communist Youth League school committee. History has shown that the entrance exam is also skewed towards student cadres, especially those at the school level. According to well-informed sources, the speculation, rivalry and rivalry in this has been so intense that it has even reached the point of incompatibility. So much so that it developed into a rival organization that later became a warring faction during the Cultural Revolution. This is, of course, an afterthought.
Here’s a little bit about myself.
For some reason, before or during all the previous entrance exams I have taken, I have had an ominous feeling or some unexpected event that gave me a tragic premonition.
Let’s start with the exams for the junior high school. At that time, there were no pre-printed test papers for the junior high school exams, but the invigilator wrote the questions on the blackboard before the exam. I couldn’t see the board because of my nearsightedness, so I copied the questions onto the test paper while the teacher was reading them, before the bell had rung for the pen to be put down. My behavior was almost immediately noticed by the female invigilator, who stopped me in a stern voice and came over and marked the corner of my test paper with a pen and told me that this was a record of the disciplinary action I had just taken.
I was dumbfounded and rushed to explain to her why I had done that. But she ignored me. I was terrified and thought, “This is the end. I finished the exam with a lot of trepidation. I thought, “Can I still pass the exam? I probably wouldn’t make it. I was very depressed for many days, but I didn’t feel relieved until I saw my name on the admissions list at school.
Although I thought I had done well in the entrance exam for junior high school, I still had doubts that I would be able to get in because before that, I was not even eligible for the school’s lab class. But it turned out that I was worrying again.
I was even less confident when I entered high school, because by then the string of class struggle was getting tighter and tighter, and the influence of family origin on a person was already playing a pivotal role. My family came from a capitalist background, and I already felt the discrimination in school. Didn’t I? The school even refused to lend me mosquito nets, will let me go up to high school? But my feelings were wrong again, my class teacher saved me, he was the force of argument, let me go to high school. However, he was later blamed for this during the “Four Cleanups” campaign and wrote a written review.
As for the upcoming college entrance examination, I no longer have any ominous premonition or feeling, but I know for sure that I am not going to make it. Although I am sure that my test scores will not be a problem. In the past three years, I have not worked too hard on my textbook knowledge, my test scores have always been among the best in the whole year, and I almost never get frazzled before the test, let alone drive at night, but feel more relaxed than usual.
But all this is useless to me, because the previous year’s college entrance examination, our school where all the candidates from the so-called exploiting class families, without exception, none of them failed, although many of them are very good at their studies, even the top of the class, all aspects of performance is very good and outstanding. My third sister, Young-soon, was also in this grade, and her grades were also considered superior, but not only did she not pass the exam, she still doesn’t even have a job. On the contrary, some of the grades are very poor, almost failed in the normal examination, but the family comes from a good family, and is a student leader, also got into the examination. For example, a class of league secretary W.
As for me, in addition to my family’s capitalist background, my “political performance” was “bad”, probably the main crimes were.
In my sophomore year of high school, I was bored with trigonometry one day, so I wrote down these words in the side of a book on cubic geometry.
He dared to claim that he was so poor that he couldn’t even afford to buy a pen (which had fallen out), that the food was not good, and that he jokingly said that “if you can’t eat enough, you can drink light Soup” (which is undoubtedly a smear against our socialist system); he also dared to call Mendeleev, the bourgeois academic authority and discoverer of the periodic law of the elements, his spiritual father. (Back then I loved chemistry and especially admired and adored Mendeleev)
However, unfortunately, these words were discovered by JF, a classmate who specializes in peeking at classmates’ diaries and notebooks, and he immediately submitted them to the school and published them anonymously on the blackboard at the back of the classroom under the title “What is the essence of “if you don’t have enough to eat, you drink light soup”? I was criticized without naming me, and some of the gossip and jokes we had been talking about in private were added to the story, and the head was cut off and exposed, and the outline was unlimited. In this way, my reactionary thinking was confirmed.
Another thing is that I dared to defend the student council president’s opinion and described the student council president’s educational help as “oil beating”, thus describing Mao Zedong Thought as “oil beating”, which of course is also treacherous.
As for what crimes people weave behind my back, I’m not sure, anyway, it is said that there are many. But there are two certainties, that is, “the typical path of the White Specialists” and the other is “the filial son of the bourgeoisie”.
Obviously, I couldn’t have been accepted for just one of the above.
But the only thing that puzzled me was that, with so many charges against me, there was never a single school leader, relevant teachers or student cadres to talk to me or exchange opinions on these issues. It was only when the school finally notified a few of us students to go home for labor that the school principal told me (us) that I was ideologically reactionary. For me, the principal didn’t list specific charges either.
As the date of the college entrance exam approached, students were in full preparation for the exam. The classrooms were always full, and all that could be heard was the sound of flipping books, the rustling of pencils, though the small mumbling of some students reciting could also be heard, a kind of tense silence.
This tension was often interrupted on some days when someone whispered to some students to go to the school office without saying why. These students soon came back quietly, with a secret seriousness on their faces, and some with hard-covered excitement and unconscious smiles at the corners of their mouths. Soon there are well-informed people revealed that these students were called to volunteer guidance, guidance they can fill in which key schools and key professional, many of which are the state key confidential professional. So called to the so-called “root red seedling strong” students, that is, family origin workers, poor peasants or revolutionary cadres. Other students could only envy their luck. The greatest luck was that our school was given the opportunity to send two students to study in the Soviet Union, and this luck fell on my classmates KJ and YL.
The organization of the college entrance exams went according to plan, and the registration, medical exams and volunteer applications were completed on time. Many students who thought they had high hopes could not hold back the bright future that was coming, and they privately asked each other about the volunteer applications, hoping and longing for ……
I still enrolled, took the medical examination, and filled out various forms and volunteering extremely carefully. Due to high myopia, almost all the science and technology majors closed their doors to me, and all my volunteers only filled in the math. I remember that there were Fudan University, Sichuan University and Southwest Normal College. Despite knowing that I was hopeless, I studied very hard, even though I knew it was futile. I still fantasized about a miracle.
However, while we were actively preparing for the college entrance examination, the intensifying Cultural Revolution was whipping up a storm in waves, hitting everything, mercilessly engulfing everything, and finally it broke down the most solemn line of defense of education – the college entrance examination.
On June 13, 1966, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued a notice on the postponement of enrollment in higher education for six months. The students were all dumbfounded, but chose to be silent, and soon announced their support. Half a year is half a year, it’s not too long.
However, some people couldn’t help it, my classmate DZ openly opposed in private, he said: postpone half a year, postpone one day I also oppose! He also said: What bourgeoisie dictated the proletariat’s politics, the children of workers and poor peasants in the past few years, there are still fewer university freshmen? At least 90 percent!
The next day, a large poster exposing his treacherous “counter-revolutionary behavior” was posted on the wall of the water room, the most conspicuous place in the university. He soon joined me as one of the five reactionary students in the school and was expelled from school and sent home to work. But the school was merciful and reserved our right to take the college entrance exam six months later.
However, the college entrance examination was suspended for eleven years, until 1977.
The postponement of the college entrance examination and the subsequent stoppage, reason told me that this is nonsense, but I have some gloating inside: toss it toss it, the pot is broken everyone can not do.
(C) My 1977 college entrance examination
After the abortion of the college entrance examination in 1966, the enrollment of higher education was actually stopped, and the total chaos caused by the Cultural Revolution also made it impossible to enroll in colleges and universities. In fact, I had already known that my dream of going to university had been shattered after the informer JF reported my “faint words” written on the side of my book in the second year of high school.
Since then, I have chosen my own path again: to go to my own university. I also made a private wish that I would make those who did not study and got into college by speculation, after they graduated from college, only deserve to be my students at most. I began to choose the direction of study. I liked chemistry the most, and then Einstein and Infeld’s “Evolution of Physics” got me hooked on Einstein’s theory of relativity. So I chose the direction of physics and chemistry.
From the second half of my sophomore year, I started to study physics and chemistry on my own for my senior year. My self-study went very well during this period, and in less than two months I finished all the contents of physics and chemistry for my senior year and performed all the exercises in the book.
During this period, I also helped Ye××, a senior student, to study physics and chemistry for the entrance exams (he got into the Department of Mechanics of Chongqing University). At the same time, I borrowed the book “Composition of Chemical Equations” published by the Higher Education Press from the library for self-study, and copied almost all of it.
Next I decided to start studying physics and chemistry on my own, but the problem came immediately. I was overwhelmed by the amount of mathematical symbols, formulas and reasoning that I did not know, so I started to study math on my own. But what to learn first, and then what to learn, I didn’t know. There was nowhere to ask if I wanted to.
If I asked my teachers, I was afraid that they would scold me for being too ambitious, and I was even more afraid that they would think I was really taking the so-called “white professional” path. In fact, I was even more afraid of their blank stares. I don’t know when the teachers mostly ignored me, and I even heard that some of them even took me as a bad example to warn their children, including my physics teacher at that time, R.
At this point I remembered my sister-in-law, who studied mathematics and was a math teacher at a famous university in Chongqing, so I tried to ask her for help. As a result, she wrote to me not only to reject me straightforwardly, but also to educate me severely, asking me to care about politics, seriously reform my mind, and actively ask for progress and so on. I had no choice but to figure it out on my own.
The next thing is the difficulty of learning itself, those dazzling symbols, highly abstract, difficult and complex concepts, strict and meticulous logical reasoning, so that I suffered a lot. When I basically figured out a way out, it was already the late 1960s. By this time, I no longer had the ideal of being a scientist, but wanted to become a popularizer of science with extensive knowledge, especially to help those who were climbing the path of self-education. Later on, I also wanted to become a teacher, which was almost an unattainable luxury for me at that time, to be a ferryman for young people in the ocean of knowledge and a ladder for climbing to the peak of science.
Therefore, I tried to learn as much as I could about all kinds of knowledge, both natural sciences and humanities. Of course, in the intellectual desert created by the Cultural Revolution, I studied more natural sciences and mathematics, especially mathematics, and it is no exaggeration to say that I have finished teaching myself almost all the courses of the university mathematics major, and also studied many subjects that are not required by the general university mathematics bachelor’s degree, and also taught myself almost all the basic courses of the university physics and chemistry major.
In 1973, with the help of my friends, I became a private teacher, mainly in high school physics and chemistry (sometimes also called “industrial fundamentals” and “agricultural fundamentals”). I cherished this hard-won job opportunity very much. Under pressure, I tried to teach my students as much as I could, and was generally well received by them.
However, in those absurd times when “I would rather have the grass of socialism than the seedlings of capitalism” and “the more knowledge the more reactionary”, what I did was obviously “treacherous”. In addition to my poor family background, I began to be blamed and criticized. Under great mental pressure and because of my own physical weakness, I began to fall ill frequently and even became paraplegic due to my illness, which was diagnosed by the doctor as cerebral artery thrombosis.
Probably because of my youth, timely treatment and attention to exercise, I was fortunate to gradually heal after more than six months. But even though I was sick and even paralyzed, some people at school did not leave me alone. My doctor once told me privately that the school had visited the hospital more than once to inquire about my condition and to suggest to the doctor that I was faking my illness. The doctor was very angry and somewhat contemptuous, saying, “People are so sick, and they still can’t forget to fix people, it’s really heartless.” Of course it turned out that they couldn’t fix people. But what I didn’t expect was that these people still used this to bite me at a critical time.
In October 1976, those four people were arrested, and a ridiculous era of anger and resentment finally came to an end. 1977, under the personal supervision and insistence of Deng Xiaoping, the college entrance examination, which had been interrupted for eleven years, was announced to be resumed and immediately organized. The age requirement for candidates was no more than 25 years old, but for the so-called “old three” students it was relaxed to no more than 30 years old, when I had just turned 30.
The news of the resumption of college entrance examinations was explosive, bringing hope back to millions of students, especially those who had lost all hope of going to college because of the Cultural Revolution, but at the same time, most of them were regretting it. They had abandoned their studies for many years, and the textbooks they had learned were long gone. Many people have started to review in a frenzied manner, and it is good to hold the Buddha’s feet temporarily; people are looking for pre-Cultural Revolution secondary school textbooks everywhere, and there are long queues in front of bookstores, and a set of pre-Cultural Revolution “Secondary School Self-learning Mathematics, Science and Chemistry Series” published by Shanghai Science and Technology Press has become a hot commodity ……
In the face of this great news, but I have mixed feelings.
The first thing I thought was: Can I get in? I have no doubt that I can get a much better result than the average candidate, although these years I did not deliberately to review the secondary school curriculum, I teach the so-called high school physics, chemistry, but also with the real science, chemistry is far from the so-called “industrial base, agricultural base”, but I am still full of confidence in this, because these things for me already I know all these things well, not to mention that the college entrance examination will also be some questions on the content of university mathematics, science and chemistry, which is not God help me.
On the other hand, I was very worried about my family background and the political identification given to me by the school, even though the propaganda said that there would be a major relaxation in this regard in this exam. Would good luck fall in my lap? I was not confident about my own fate, but I still did not dare to have much illusion about the college entrance examination, so as not to bring more trauma to my soul with the disillusionment of my ideal. This thought can be seen from the volunteer I filled in.
My second brother-in-law was the student office of Sichuan University (at that time, the school did not have an admissions office), and even held considerable power, but I did not dare to fill in the Sichuan University, because I was afraid that he would be difficult, and more afraid that he would make a mistake for me. In addition, I also took into account my age disadvantage, after all, I have reached the age. In order to increase the chances of admission, I first volunteered for the Southwest Normal College, (now the Department of Mathematics of the Southwest Normal University, which at that time in Sichuan can only be considered a very general institution) the second volunteer I filled in the Department of Mathematics of Fudan University, based on the fact that he may be admitted to me because of my excellent results. The third choice I filled in the Suzhou Medical College, because it was my childhood wish to study Medicine. The uninitiated would wonder who would fill out such a strange application. It could only come from my hesitancy and worry at that time.
The time until the exam was actually very short, but it still felt long. I waited anxiously for the exam and hoped that I would perform beyond my expectations.
After the test, I was very dissatisfied with myself because I made a very low-level mistake in the math test: I was so proud of myself that I forgot the factor of two when I used the determinant to calculate the area of a triangle. Thus, I did not get a perfect score in math, even though I correctly completed the questions about the university content that examined the students’ level. I was not too happy with the language essay myself. But compared to the frustrated reactions of many other test takers after the exam, I knew I would still be a step above them.
The number of candidates increased steeply that year, and the scale was much larger than before the Cultural Revolution, so many districts and counties in Chongqing had marking sites. Soon news came from the marking site that one candidate had done very well and had completed the university content questions that tested the student’s level. His exam paper was passed around the marking site in surprise by the marking teacher, even alerting experts and government leaders from the entire Chongqing marking site. I knew it should be me.
Soon the news was confirmed, and I became a celebrity in ST town and even in Jiangbei County, with various real and unreal legends about me circulating in the streets and alleys, friends congratulating me, and people constantly pointing at me when I walk down the street, like I was some kind of monster. In one legend, I was even described as a weak, sickly, skinny monster with a huge head. It is true that I was as thin as a bone at that time, and at a height of nearly one meter seven, I weighed less than fifty kilograms, and it is also true that I had just recovered from hemiplegia caused by cerebral artery thrombosis for just over a year, and it is untrue that my head circumference was relatively small.
The excitement of good news is always short-lived, and soon came the reliable bad news. A school colleague told me that according to very reliable information, Li XX, the secretary and principal of my work school and also the deputy director of the admissions office in ST town, went around threatening that if Chen Yongji could even go to college, our country’s universities would not be proletarian schools. Given the political environment at the time, he did not add more political constructions to my political examination materials, but stuffed in a large number of sick notes from when I was sick and went around loudly proclaiming that I was suffering from sow’s madness (i.e. epilepsy).
I was also told by a colleague that an officer from a higher admissions office would soon be sent to investigate the matter and kindly offered me some ideas. The person who came to investigate was his former high school classmate Duan XX, and you told him that you were not really sick in the past, but pretended to be sick in order to avoid persecution by Li XX. Sure enough, the higher admissions office soon sent Duan XX to investigate the matter. I didn’t say what my colleague advised me to say, but admitted that I had indeed been paraplegic due to illness, but had been well for more than a year, and said that I had just had a medical checkup if I was sick now. If there is still a special need, I am willing to undergo a special physical examination. Duan didn’t say anything more and went back to resume his duties.
Although I have long been prepared to be famous, but this incident still cast a huge shadow on my mind, but I still have a fluke waiting, waiting for a miracle to happen. That year was indeed a year of miracles. The voice of the central government coming out of the tannoy kept bringing good news to the students of the college entrance examination, especially Deng Xiaoping pointed out that attention should be paid to the older candidates of the older three classes, which gave me hope, but the miracle did not happen to me.
The universities started to send out admission notices. The admissions workload that year was huge, so the admissions process took a particularly long time, and therefore my agonizing wait was particularly long.
My high school went on winter break, no notice, no notice during winter break, no notice if there was any hope for spring, and no notice for spring. The spring semester started, and still no notice. Instead, during these days, I kept receiving requests to help my children with their homework in preparation for the 1978 college entrance exam. These included children of neighbors, children of acquaintances, children of acquaintances of acquaintances, and children of my past middle and elementary school teachers. I never refused these requests as long as I was busy with my time and could spare them, but gave them all the help I could, because helping others learn science was a vow I had made. I did refuse once, however, when a friend brought me a message asking me to tutor some of the county’s brainy children during the Spring Festival in preparation for the next year’s college entrance exams, and I refused without a second thought.
The spring semester of 1978 began again, and I still hadn’t been offered admission. This caused me to give up completely and resolve to become a private teacher for the rest of my life. The resumption of college entrance examinations revived the entire education system at that time. Students began to study harder, teachers became more serious about teaching, and I was no longer afraid of being told that I was leading students down the path of the white college. I was determined to do something big with my arms wide open. At this time, the school was informed by the higher authorities that I was seconded to the Jiangbei County Teachers’ Training School as an instructor of the Jiangbei County High School Mathematics Teacher Training Course.
The resumption of the college entrance examinations in 1977 could not be overestimated in terms of the revitalization of China’s education, while the devastating effect of the Cultural Revolution on China’s education could not be overestimated. This huge gap and the urgent demand for education from China’s huge population base led to a situation in which education at the end of the Cultural Revolution was stretched to the limit, the most serious of which was the problem of teachers, both in terms of quantity and quality, who could not meet the requirements of educational development in the new situation. The training course for high school mathematics teachers in Jiangbei County, where I was going, was started under this situation. The day after I received the notice, I rushed to J County Teachers’ Training Center, where the training course was held, and the next day classes started. I was teaching “Trigonometry” and “Fundamentals of Set Theory” for the high school mathematics training course.
Teaching in the training course was intense. I woke up at 6:00 a.m., started class at 6:30 a.m., finished breakfast at 7:30 a.m., started class again at 8:00 a.m., and continued until 12:00 noon: three afternoon classes and two more classes in the evening, with all homework time taken by the students. I was the youngest of the instructors, so I had all the morning classes. To make matters worse, my two cousins were sent to me by their parents to study for the 1978 college entrance exam. I could not resist the request of my elders, so I reluctantly agreed. Therefore, except for meals, I had almost no rest time all day long, and I was in class.
For some reason, I didn’t feel tired with such a heavy workload, and I didn’t even get sick, as I used to be known as a “sick man”. However, I became even thinner, and my cousins laughed at me, saying that my face was only two fingers wide. Our superiors also paid close attention to the health of our course teachers and did what they could to improve our diet. Not only did they give us subsidies on food, but they also let us have as much meat as possible.
At that time, we really worked hard. The teachers were desperate to teach, afraid that the students would not learn well, and the students were desperate to learn, afraid that they would not learn and would not be able to teach. The feeling of the late 1970s and 1980s may not be experienced by people nowadays. That feeling of being liberated, that feeling of finally being able to do a great job, that feeling of not waiting for the right time, filled everyone’s heart. I can’t help but be moved when I talk about that year today.
Let’s continue with my college entrance exam.
One day, two students of our training course were notified of their acceptance to the senior class of Chongqing First Division and were leaving the course. Their joy rattled that hidden nerve of mine. So I plucked up the courage to use my unit’s phone to dial a long distance to my brother-in-law in Sichuan University. Luckily, the long distance dialed quickly. I told him about my participation in the college entrance examination, my brother-in-law was surprised on the one hand, and blamed me on the other, blaming me for not discussing with him beforehand and not telling him the situation afterwards.
When he heard that I had done well in the exam, with an estimated average of 90 points or more per subject, he said with some confusion that this was impossible, because the provincial recruitment office had a deputy director who personally inquired about the admission of people with an average of 90 points or more per subject, and it seemed that there were only 12 people in the province, but my name was not there, and the provincial recruitment office did not have my file at all. At that time, Chongqing City was still under the control of Sichuan Province. Then he told me he would check again.
Two days later, he called me to tell me the result, and it turned out that Chongqing really had not sent my file to the provincial recruitment office. But now that the university admissions were over, the provincial recruitment office decided to instruct Southwest Normal College to make up for my admissions according to the volunteer I had filled in. Then he was very angry and forced me to ask why I did not fill in Sichuan University as my first choice, if I had filled in Sichuan University, the problem would have been solved immediately. I regretted and had to admit my mistake.
Another day later, the leader of the further education school Xu Zemin called to tell me. He said I said: In the last few days you may have to get the acceptance letter from Southwest Normal College. We will take a long leave for you to finish this session of mathematics training course before going to school can you? I answered yes. So I started waiting again, my heart full of joy.
But after a few more days, I still hadn’t received my acceptance letter from Southwestern University. I got a little anxious and called Sichuan University to find my brother-in-law, who said he would go back and find out more. Soon called back to tell that the university is independent admissions, the provincial recruitment office and Sichuan University are not very good to ask. Then he told me that in order to take care of the older candidates of the third year, decided to Chongqing Third Normal School specifically for the older candidates of the third year enrollment of two middle school classes, if I am willing to decide to admit me.
My brother-in-law further said, first the rice bowl to hold steady before. I did not hesitate to agree, which is at least better than the private teachers. At that time I did not know that in 1978 the old three can apply again, if I knew I would not have agreed. So I began to wait for the acceptance letter of Chongqing three divisions.
Who knew that after two days the director of the county admissions office found me. He said I had been admitted to the third teacher training in Chongqing, but because of the need to work, decided to exchange a place in the secondary teacher training in my county with the third division, transferring me from the third division to the county teacher training, but I do not study at the school, still working in the training school, and after graduation, I will be assigned directly to the teacher training school, and there is no probationary period. Finally he said that if I want, all follow-up work by the recruitment office on behalf of the.
I thought, “What am I going to learn in the third division? I like the work here, it makes me feel fulfilled and relaxed. So I agreed. Thus, I became the 120th freshman in the class of 77 at Jiangbei County Normal School.
Another odd thing to say here is that I was paid for the two years before I graduated from the teacher’s college. Every month I had to go to three units and write a total of four receipts to receive my full salary. The first one is to receive 12 yuan for the teacher training student’s food, the second one is three yuan, the monthly scholarship for teacher training students, and the third one is to receive a living allowance of 14 yuan and 50 cents from the county education department. These three sheets totaled $29.50, which was equal to my salary when I was a private teacher. The fourth receipt was for 6 yuan, which was a travel allowance given to me by the teachers’ training school, 20 cents per day, based on 30 days per month.
My 1977 college entrance examination finally came to an end.
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