Before going down to the cadre school on September 29, 1969, the company gathered and walked to Tiananmen Square to take the oath. There were more than 100 people in one company in our publishing house. I sat next to Wei Junyi when we got on the train. She was wooden and dull, and Xuefeng and others were on the same train.
After getting off at Xianning, Feng Xuefeng picked his own luggage barefoot. The ground was very muddy, and I asked Xue Feng if he could do it. He said, “Yes, yes,” he said he was used to walking muddy roads since childhood. Feng Xuefeng grew up in the countryside, walking very steadily. Later, he was watching the water pump at a pond, watering the vegetable patch, and I was picking manure and watering the vegetable patch every day. I saw Xue Feng in front of the pump house, sad, tough and upright, like half a tree that had been split in half, and my short poem “Half a Tree” written in 1972 was about my feelings at that Time.
In Wangjiawan (the first production team of the Red Flag Brigade), we lived in the former landlord’s house, two floors, with a pond in front of the door. Xuefeng was on that side of the pond. One person one bed, several people a room. Later, we prepared to build a house by ourselves, and moved to the dry barricade house we built. Gao Junqian, the former editor of the Foreign Languages Department, who died recently in the United States, was known as “Gao Jianzi,” because he was the builder of the house. I worked with the mud, stripped the bricks, and did the heaviest work. I was very active and did not hesitate to work. The house that was built was a quadrangle, and several hundred people lived there for two or three years. Outside the quadrangle, there were two rows of cottages where several people from the China Writers’ Association lived, including Zhang Tianyi and Hou Jinjing.
Then the lake was surrounded to make fields. There were many leeches in the swamp, and many people were bitten.
Due to the construction of fields around the lake, by the summer of 1970, Xiangyang Lake had become a lake without water, like a hot pot that had burned dry. The bottom of the lake was as hot as more than 50 degrees Celsius during the day, and the indoor temperature reached more than 42 degrees Celsius. During the hottest period, I did heavy work in the water fields in the “lake”: picking rice seedlings and delivering Food. At least once a week, I also went to Xianning County to pull vegetables with a flatbed truck. I was like an animal, hands on the handlebar driving yoke, there are two similar (five types of molecules) to pull the piggyback, each car weight of no less than a thousand pounds. The sun was blazing, bowed his bare back, but also had to raise his head to see the road. Encounter pouring rain also have to pull. Pull a trip to the road and back alone will have to trek six hours.
There was a revolutionary mass who was in charge of food procurement, and he (I don’t want to show his name) was a real hands-off master, escorting us with empty hands, never helping to support us, which was the “class relationship” that was deeply rooted in people’s hearts at that time, and was never blurred. But the suffering made me also understand the hypocrisy and subtlety. The grandfather who was holding us was bored and wanted to talk to us because he was always walking alone. I would never talk to him. Once, he unreasonably reprimanded us, I almost swung my fist and hit him. But pulling vegetables also has an advantage, when going to an empty car, you can watch the mountains and look at the scenery, sometimes deliberately slowed down the pace, the return can be close to dusk, the weather is cooler. After all, people have a little more brains than livestock.
One afternoon, pulling meat from the city back to the company dormitory, I heard that the classical literature editorial office of the society Liu Minru died. That morning, I ran into him while playing breakfast, he was carrying a porcelain pot of porridge. I saw his two eyes were bloodshot and red, and told him, “You have to go to the infirmary, don’t be careless.”
He said, “My eyes used to bleed all the time, it’s not a problem.” He was panting as he spoke, and I thought he was very sick. But he kept going, not daring to ask for leave. I remember that he was assigned to work in the vegetable field, on the hillside to open up the land, the work is not easy, need to go to the water pond under the hillside to pick water up and down, I did a few days. Liu Minru had a cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed in the vegetable field. His eyes, nose and mouth were bleeding.
Before going to the cadre school, Liu Minru was the secretary of the classical department of the People’s Literature Publishing House. His brush writing was very regular. I heard that he had been an elementary school principal in the Jidong Liberation Area and, later, went to the National Unification Area. During the Cultural Revolution, he was falsely accused of being a two-faced village chief. This historical baggage seriously affected his mental state. He was not in the same platoon with me in the cadre school and did not work together. He had a fat physique, and his face was white and red, so he really looked like a blessed “old village headman”.
In the dry school, he was far less happy than the old ghost Meng Chao. Meng Chao, deputy editor-in-chief of the Humanities Society, although lean and thin, but all day long grin, smiling, holding a cigarette, the corners of the mouth trailing a long drool, both pathetic, but also ridiculous. The military propaganda team said he was lazy in his work, urinating and defecating three or five times an hour. Meng Chao said he was sick, wetting his pants every day! “If you don’t believe me, come and feel the crotch of your pants!” He crossed his legs, “Who’s going to touch it?” I’ve seen him perform this a few times. I really went and touched it and said to the military propaganda team, “It’s wet doo-doo.” Meng Chao later thanked me for testifying on his behalf. Liu Minru certainly worked seriously and never dared to cheat, he was far less of a ghost than Meng Chao. In those days, the weather was very hot, the body could not stay long and had to be buried quickly. The company rushed to make a coffin for him. At that time when building a house with scaffolding planks, some are shipped from the Forbidden City in Beijing, the board is thick and heavy, is the cover of the Palace of the King used. It is said that Liu Minru’s meditation blessing is not shallow, Life wood specifications can be really high. After lunch, even the leadership assigned me and Ding Yukun a few people to dig the grave.
The feng shui of the grave site is very good: a quiet hill nest, five or six pine trees like a pavilion, but also facing a quiet pond. Ding Yukun in the Imperial Palace to do something, than intellectuals know a little bit, said must be the old Liu’s underground palace to dig more sophisticated, how deep how long how wide are the rules, digging at least two or three hours. Before Liu Minru, there has been a “May 7 soldiers” in the burial here. The deceased, not the usual junior, his name is Shi Baochang, is a senior editor of the publication mouth, the early years of the Republic of China, in the Russian Language Institute in Beijing and Qu Qubai classmates. Coincidentally, he and Liu Minru are both from Jidong. Before we dug the hole, we repaired the grave of the old man Shi and filled in a few holes. Old Ding said, “Filled also can not be, nestled inside.”
After dinner, we were ordered to carry the coffin for Liu Minru’s burial. Most of the people in the company sent off for Liu in silence. Before covering the coffin, everyone said goodbye to Liu, someone was sobbing, remember Pan Yi. Liu Minru’s face was full of blood, I used a handkerchief to wipe it off for him, the blood had not yet solidified. His nearsighted glasses fell under his body, I picked them up and put them on properly for him. Underneath his body was a green wool army felt, which belonged to Zhu Shuhe, who had worked in the youth army in the editorial office of contemporary literature in the society. I said to Zhu: “A piece of buried?” Old Zhu nodded and said, “Let old Liu be warm underground.” The voice was very sad. Old Zhu may also be one of the coffin-bearers, I can not remember, he was also a rebel faction to seize alive what a molecule. Cover the coffin, we will lift up on the road, very heavy and heavy. There are many people who follow the funeral. Liu Minru and Shi Baochang were buried together side by side.
This is the only time in my life to carry the coffin for the dead burial. That heavy feeling, not only on the shoulders, but also heavy in the heart.
I never complained about any kind of labor, including heavy labor, and I could do all kinds of work. At least we had to go to the county twice a week to pull vegetables, meat, oil and other necessities. Also to four or five miles away from the commune’s grain depot to pull the grain, always I drive regulators. When doing heavy work I went to the county to eat a dumpling. On one occasion, Xiao Qian went with me. He was too old and frail to walk. When you go to the empty car, you can walk slowly, but back to the car full of things, very heavy, a thousand pounds. In winter, the sweater was soaked through.
One summer, my chest and back were baked skin burst by the hot sun. A clever do-gooder from my back itchy to tear off a large piece of dead skin, there are five inches square, red red color, every day by the sweat-soaked pores visible, held up in the sun, but also clearly see a few dark streaks, that is pulling the flatbed truck was strangled by the rope traces. I took this skin, which smelled of sweat and blood, and stuck it in my beloved “Lorca’s Poems”. The book of poems was too small for Lorca and his poems to fit into my skin, which broke within a few days. If my skin could go up and down and still be there later, I would have written a poem on it, put it in a frame and hung it on the wall of my living room. It was indeed a real flesh-and-blood image of fate.
In the second half of 1970, a group of old and sick people, including Feng Xuefeng, Jinren, Lin Chen and so on, with 20 to 30 Family members, went to Danjiangkou. Jinren was still reluctant to leave and wept, even though there was less labor there.
Life was easier than in Beijing. Everyone’s heart has thoughts, but do not communicate. Shou Xiaohe, a cadre of the People’s Daily, was sent to Tibet because of my involvement. (During the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Daily rebels made him a target of censorship.) I wrote Shou Xiaoxue’s material twice. The first time was harsher, and the second time was more peaceful. I testified that he helped me in Xi’an in the winter of 1944, that he was also one of the founders of the Truth Guard, and that I introduced him to the Party in Kaifeng in July 1946.
We were next to the company of the Fifth Company of the Chinese Writers’ Association. When I built the house, Zhang Tianyi asked me to buy milk powder and other things when I pulled the cart into the city. Once I saw him standing outside the house to eat, tall, thin, his wife had a bad relationship with him. Look at him with a bitter face, very poor. I don’t know why he was standing outside in the mud to eat. He also bought things for three or four other people, quietly, not to be seen.
Hou Jinjing of the Fifth Company (Chinese Writers’ Association) died of exhaustion from feeding pigs with his bare arms! Lying in a small coffin, put in a private room in Zhujiawan for a day. I usually did not speak to him, but I went to say goodbye to him and bowed deeply. I heard someone singing a song from the war years, sung by Hou Jinjing’s wife, which was tragic to the heart to hear. Later I quietly wrote a poem: “The Place Where I Went”. There are two lines in the poem: “The place where I go / There are people singing the songs of the war era under the starlight.”
There were still more than 100 people in the company, more than ten in each class. It was around the early 1970s when Wen Jieruo and Xiao Qian went to Mount Lu for a week. Her cat was so hungry that it meowed, and I took pity on it and went to feed it a pot of food every day. When Wen Jieruo came back, she thanked me and gave me half a spoonful of meat pine at breakfast.
In the dry school, I had a dog named Xiaobai. In those years, I could say that the friendship between me and Xiao Bai, who was a living creature, was better than human. Its mother, whom we called “Lao Bai”, was secretly killed by an old cadre of our company, not for meat, but for a dog skin. The dead old dog left a litter of pups, and I picked one to raise. I raised it as a child and named it “Xiao Bai”. Later, the company was abolished, we “a handful” of elements concentrated to 452 heights, I took the little white. It has grown up, very strong, with snowy white fur. It plays everywhere during the day and must return to me at night, lying at the door.
Every time I went to Wuhan to visit my family, Xiao Bai would send me all the way to the West River ferry. I got on the ferry, it quietly crouched on the other side of the river, watching me go away. The first time I came back late at night, I saw my figure and roared to meet it. How did it know I was coming back at that exact time? It’s a mystery. One time I sleepwalked and went away in the middle of the night, walking around the lake until dawn, and Bai stayed with me.
One day, I came back from the city to pick fish, and someone told me: “Hurry up to save your little white.” I asked, “What’s wrong?” He said, “Mao’s father is slaughtering it.” I was furious and rushed to save Xiao Bai. Mao Mao was a young man from another company. His father was a Chinese who returned from Southeast Asia in the early 1950s and was very sincere, so I couldn’t understand how he could dare to do this. When I found Xiaobai, Mao Mao’s father was pouring water into Xiaobai’s nose. Kill the dog, the blood flowed out, the meat will not be tender. In this instant, I arrived, yelling: “Stop!”
Mao Mao father knows my temper, rushed over to explain to me: “I heard that we are going back soon, we left, the locals will certainly have to slaughter it, it is better to be enjoyed by us.” I couldn’t listen to my ears, and hurriedly picked up a sickle and cut the rope. The little white fell to the ground with a thud, it was already dying. I came one step later, it would have been suffocated alive. White opened his eyes and looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t recognize me as a relative. After a few seconds, it came to its senses and did not pounce on me in gratitude, but jumped up in a frenzy and ran away in a huff towards the bottom of the mountain. White learned in a life-or-death situation: you can’t trust people easily.
After Xiao Bai left “452”, he returned to the courtyard, the place where hundreds of people had lived for two or three years after we arrived at the cadre school. One day, when I returned to the courtyard, I suddenly saw a dog pounce on me. It did not jump on me, but crouched in front of me, two front paws scratching the ground vigorously, two eyes staring at me. I immediately recognized it, it is not my two or three years of raising the little white? I shed tears, I really did not expect the little white recognized me at once. I had been worried about its fate, but seeing it was a relief.
In the cadre school, the political criticism activities did not stop. Before the “May 16” incident, one day Feng Xuefeng was criticized, and the time was at night, in the open sky field. Cheng Daixi from the foreign language editorial department of the society was really scary, impassioned, endless and long. I forget exactly what he said, but what I remember is that Xuefeng was sitting in front, and he bellowed: “Stand up! Then Xuefeng stood up.
Shu Wu wrote a big word poster, very long, posted on the courtyard wall, exposing and criticizing Hu Feng. Greenfield wrote a review. I did not write it. I did not write a single big-character poster in the cadre school.
From the spring of 1970, the “May 16” movement became the focus of the campaign. He Qizhi became the target of censorship from being the secretary of the company. He had written “The Road to Shaoshan” (a poem), and I had quietly encouraged him to write a few lines. Now he had to give an account in a company-wide meeting. He was forced to admit that he participated in the so-called “May 16” review, which was nonsense at first hearing. It was all a lie, and we old guys knew it.
Before coming down, during the debate between the two factions of the publishing house, the “Revolutionary Rebel Group” headed by Cheng Daixi said that you (according to He Qiji’s mass organization) were harboring cattle, ghosts and snakes, harboring Niu Han, the “Hu Feng counter-revolutionaries”. Wang Yizhi (Wang Xiangtong) from the editorial office of modern literature in the society said loudly, “There are good ‘Hu Feng elements’, and Niu Han is a good ‘Hu Feng element’.” He was so naive!
From 1972 onwards, universities and other units came to pick people one after another. After 1973, most of the people in the cadre school went back to their original units or were transferred elsewhere, leaving only a “handful” still stranded at 452 Highland – the cadre school headquarters The site.
After the large number of people left, all the people of the Ministry of Culture cadre school were concentrated to the school headquarters – 452 Heights. This would have been the fall and winter of 1973. All the people who stayed in the Ministry of Culture cadre school were only a hundred or so people left. Guo Xiaochuan was forced to come to the cadre school for the second time because of the Lin Biao issue. It was late autumn, and he was still wearing a sloppy shirt, shivering and shivering, with a clear nose, and he looked quite pathetic. I thought to myself, “He deserves it!” We all knew that in the diary of Lin Biao’s wife Ye Qun, there were words in the diary: “Look for Guo Xiaochuan for literary and artistic problems”. We didn’t dare to talk to him.
Guo Xiaochuan worked with me on the same shift, and it was easy to do one hour or so every morning. He was dizzy, because he drank at night and took sleeping pills. When we had group meetings, some people from the “Literature and Art Newspaper” deliberately led him to say some faint words, which made everyone laugh. He often flat outstretched his palm to ask me for tamari leaves, I have a new “Ma green” (green tea produced in Macheng, Hubei). I gradually talked with him closer and closer. He repeatedly said to me: “I do not understand politics!” I understand him, after all these years of lessons, he woke up, to life, to politics, to themselves, a new and more sober understanding.
In June 1973, we did not have a big labor task, only planting some vegetables, no one cared, several cadres, and Zhang Tianyi wife, Green Plains ……
us, Shu Wu and I, and the 13 or 14-year-old Lu Xiaobing (Lu Min of the People’s Publishing House, daughter of Lu Geng Sheng, former director of the office of the People’s Literature Publishing House) who pestered us to take her away. On a week’s vacation, the three of us, in the name of visiting Shaoshan, actually took the fire from Wuhan all the way to Guilin and swam the Li River for two or three days. The South China Tiger” was drafted in Guilin. To Yangshuo also stayed a day. Back to say Shaoshan good, deeply educated. Nonsense!
Yangshuo reflection is really beautiful. On the Li River boat, Shu Wu chanted an old poem. His explanation was too bookish. I said it was about the reflection of the mountain, of course it would shake.
Shu Wu has a deep family background. He did not go to university. The family is divided into a large family and a small family, and Shu Wu came from the small family. His grandfather, Fang Shoudong, was a very good Writer and served as a county governor in Hebei. When he left his post, he hired a book boy to carry books, a load of books, how can be so heavy? It turned out that the pages of the book were laminated with a piece of Gold leaf. (This story circulated in Tongcheng was told by my old companion Wu Ping, whose children from the Fang family were sent to study in the Wu family’s private school.)
In 1974, a shepherd boy came to me and said, “Those two graves of yours have caved in, hurry up and fix them, otherwise, the coffin boards will be taken away.” This shepherd boy was from Wang Liuzui. Once, he stole to break the corn cobs of our company, so I ran into it, I did not scold him, but only giggled at him. I remembered that when I was young, I don’t know how many times I stole the corn from the rich man’s house.
When I saw him eating it raw, I said, “It smells better when you burn it.” So we both gathered a fire on the ground and roasted it and ate it with a sizzling aroma. I said to him, “Let’s eat only this once.” Later, I developed a relationship with this shepherd boy! He gave me Mandarin fish once, cooked.
I went to repair the grave with Ma Yimin, who was in the same company, carrying a spade at the same time. The graves of Liu Minru and Shi Baochang had indeed been washed away by the rain.
Unfortunately, this year, Wang Liuzui’s shepherd boy, suddenly got an acute illness and passed away. He lived only a teenager and was an orphan in the village. I will never forget this teenager who gave me friendship.
In the later years of the dry school, sometimes I would go to the hot springs. There was indeed a hot spring more than 20 miles from Xianning County. Go by bus and eat there. Lying in the flowing hot springs. In winter, the warm running water, gurgling under the naked body, was a real treat.
At the end of December 1974, I finally finished my career in the cadre school. First, I stayed in Wuhan for two days, then returned to Beijing for five years and three months. Before we left, Guo Xiaochuan was escorted to Tuanbowa, Tianjin. The escorts were Ding Li and Yin Yizhi from Poetry Magazine. Neither of them took care of Guo Xiaochuan. Guo Xiaochuan drank a lot of alcohol and took sleeping pills. His luggage was tied too loosely and it was difficult to get on the road. I re-packed his luggage and helped him carry it on the car. Before leaving, I said, “I’ll see you in Beijing!” He said, “No,” and was escorted to Tuanpohua, and was not allowed to get off the bus after passing through Beijing.
Wu Xue was also the last to go. Now I heard that Wu Xue has Alzheimer’s disease. We used to swim together in the big puddle near the cadre school. The water in the big puddle is very clear, not smelly, not far from the big lake.
Zang Kejia said that Hubei Xiangyang Lake May 7 Cadre School was a small paradise, a holy place. I feel completely different from him.
From “I’m Still Trudging: Niu Han’s Autobiography,” dictated by Niu Han, edited by He Qiji and Li Jinxi, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 1st edition, July 2008.
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