I joined the Communist Youth League just before I graduated from high school in 1976. Back in junior high school, I submitted an application for membership to my school’s league organization. The head of the league organization said that your active political demand for progress was welcome and the league organization welcomed it. However, because of your father’s historical problems, you belong to the five categories of black children who can be educated well, so you should be prepared to accept the long-term test of the league organization, and the door of the league organization is always open to you.
When I was in high school in Yanjing Middle School, I submitted the application for joining the league to the school league organization many times, and I also need to accept the long-term test. In addition to my study, I actively participated in various activities of the school, writing a big criticism, participating in the school work outside the school, learning from Lei Feng and doing good deeds, arriving early to clean the dormitory before the start of the holidays and so on, winning the recognition of teachers and classmates.
One Time, I had a cold and was resting alone in the dormitory. The class teacher, Mr. Jia Hua, said in the class meeting: Although Feng Yinpu is not yet a member of the Communist Youth League, he has performed very well in all aspects and has fully met the standards of a member of the Communist Youth League. After my classmates told me, I was secretly happy. On the eve of graduation, I was approved to join the league after two years of testing by the school league committee.
After graduating from high school, I returned to my village and participated in production work as usual. At that time, there was a policy that the poor peasants would recommend me for admission to secondary schools and universities, and one of the conditions for the recommendation was to have more than two years of labor experience. I still held the dream of going to school one day, even if it was a junior college.
Some of the former high school graduates returned to the village, some became private teachers, some went into the county to do temporary work, some in the brigade enterprises as electricians, driving machines. And I, very eager to be a private teacher, then, can teach, while taking time to do some literary creation. However, influenced by my father’s problems, I could not go anywhere but to be a farmer honestly. I had to work as a farmer, picking dung, cutting wheat, repairing the cottage fields, and doing all kinds of dirty and heavy work.
The good thing is that I have grown a few years older and stronger, so I can withstand these strong physical labor. During that time, my Yanjing middle school class teacher Jia Hua and Wang Quanjun, who taught language, came to our village to investigate the situation of high school graduates returning to work in the village. In the face of the brigade cadres and the production team of the poor association group leader, the two teachers said: Feng Yin spectrum students in school performance in all aspects are good, his essay writing is good, I hope the brigade cadres can give him a private teacher or other jobs, play his strengths, do not bury the talent.
However, the two teachers of the painstaking efforts and no one to pay attention to. Think about it, which brigade cadres are willing to take the risk of taking care of me, a child of the Black Five, and fall into the crime of not drawing political boundaries with the class enemy?
In Yanjing High School, due to the influence of Jia Hua, Wang Quanjun, Qu Diankui, Wang Zengyi and several other teachers, I developed the ideal of becoming a journalist and Writer in the future, and actively exercised my writing skills, and constantly submitted articles to newspapers and magazines. After I returned to the village, I used rainy days and nights to learn to write by subscribing to newspapers at my own expense, and again and again I received letters of withdrawal from newspapers and magazines, discouraged; again and again I continued to submit articles to newspapers and magazines, full of desire. My classmates who graduated with me got married and started families, but I stubbornly refused to be persuaded and urged by my Parents and others, holding on to my ideal belief with little hope.
In the late autumn of 1977, I was transferred by the brigade cadres to the construction site of the Dazhai Pond to carry out measurement and design work, on the site, I heard the information about the resumption of the college entrance examination system. At first I heard that I was admitted according to the examination results, my heart was happy; then discouraged, thinking of my father’s problems, worried about not passing the political examination. “Before the Cultural Revolution, my sister applied for university and was not admitted because she failed the political examination. At this time, Yanjing Middle School began to hold the college entrance examination repeating class, many students in the village have gone to repeat, ready to participate in the college entrance examination.
After a fierce ideological struggle, driven by curiosity, I also went to Yanjing Middle School to look at the repeating class and found that there were really a lot of repeating students, thus strengthening the determination to apply for the examination. However, afraid of delaying earning work credits, I did not leave the labor, but only picked up the abandoned high school textbooks for nearly two years, grasping every night to review homework to meet the college entrance examination.
The 1977 college entrance examination was before the Spring Festival, and that year Wanrong County was divided into two examination sites, one in the new county town of Xiedian and one in the old county town of Ronghe, and I was assigned to the examination site in Ronghe town, 60 miles from my village. Before the examination, the General Assembly announced the examination notes, the accumulation of ten years of high school students, junior high school students, black pressed stood all over the playground, age varied, identity also varies, which taught me in junior high school private teachers also came to participate in the college entrance examination.
Seeing this scene, my heart was cold: Oh my God, how can I, a farmer for two years, get into college? However, there is no turning back, on the examination room, I took the arts, language test questions are not difficult, in addition to basic knowledge, an essay question is “praise the wise leader Chairman Hua”, essay is my strength, waving a pen, write all the empty words, but the feeling is not bad. The political questions, history and geography questions were also okay, and I answered everything I could. However, when it came to math, I was blinded. I didn’t know how to answer the questions, but I couldn’t even read them. I blame myself, I only focused on language during high school and neglected math. The two days of the test, even the heart was baked.
I went Home and worked hard and had no more illusions. That year, the High School Entrance Examination was announced, and our place was notified at night by the county’s wired loudspeaker of the students who had reached the line of the high school entrance examination. I listened carefully to the list read out by the loudspeaker at home, and suddenly, my name was read out on the loudspeaker. Ahhh! Could it be that I was hallucinating? I didn’t believe my own ears.
I didn’t think it was true, my college entrance examination results reached the entrance examination score line that year, so I could participate in the application, political examination and medical examination. Because the specific college entrance examination score is confidential, I hold the school on the psychology, respectively, filled in the Shanxi University, Shanxi Normal College, Yanbei Teachers College three schools, professional reported all the Chinese Department.
Wait ah wait, the village of two students received a letter of acceptance, respectively, Beijing Iron and Steel Institute and Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology. The two of them graduated from Yanjing Middle School, in the village seven-year school as a private teacher, respectively, on behalf of the physics and chemistry class, applied for the science subjects, college entrance examination results must be good. I, on the other hand, was accepted like a stone sinking into the sea.
What to do? Should I continue to take the entrance exam? Or give up the entrance examination?
In July 1978, I took the college entrance examination for the second time and ranked second in the county in arts with 387.3 points, and the happy report of the ranking was written on a big red paper and posted on the wall of the county cross street.
In 1977, it was a provincial examination, and candidates who reached the admission line applied for the examination without knowing their scores. 1978, it was a national examination, and candidates applied for the examination according to their scores. I filled out five applications, including Beijing Broadcasting Institute (the predecessor of Communication University of China), Peking University, Nankai University, Fudan University, and Wuhan University, and was fortunate enough to be admitted to the journalism department of Fudan University.
The first in our county failed in language arts and went to Shanxi University; the fourth went to Peking University. It is said that in 1978, the political examination was not as strict as before. When my father heard the news, he was overjoyed and said to everyone: My child was able to go to university thanks to Mr. Deng Xiaoping’s blessing!
Before going to college there was a small incident that must be said.
Our village members learned that I got into college, extraordinarily shocked: one because I was a farmer for two years was able to get into the national key institutions, people did not expect; two because I was a black five children long-suffering, finally had a day.
In accordance with the local custom of celebrating the birth of a boy and other happy events, the people spontaneously gathered at the front door of my house and set off firecrackers for three days in a row, with red cannon chips falling layer after layer, congratulating the members of the community came one after another.
My parents hastily invited everyone into the house, borrowed tables, chairs and benches, set up temporary Food such as cakes, sesame flowers, wine and drinks bought from the supply and marketing agency, and entertained them for three days, with laughter filling the small farmhouse.
Unexpectedly, a certain member of the village with high class consciousness saw this, out of jealousy or for other reasons, he immediately reported to the captain of the task force in our village in the Yuncheng area, saying: “It’s great that the son of a black five-category element got into college, and he celebrated with firecrackers at the entrance of his house, which is not blatant to Is this not a blatant show-off, demonstration, challenge to us poor peasants?
The village task force was supervising the “revolution and production promotion” in the backward village, and the head of the village task force, on hearing this, took it seriously and rushed to my house with great vigor to try to stop it. My father was so scared that he hid. I didn’t expect that, as soon as the team leader opened his mouth, the community members surrounded him and said, even ridiculed: “Hey, other people’s children have gotten into the school.
“Hey, people’s children went to college, this is a happy event for the whole village, you are not happy?”
“We set off firecrackers ourselves to celebrate, what does it have to do with the parents?”
“What era is it now, you still want to engage in class struggle which set?”
The captain saw that the momentum is not right, and felt deficient, in a panic, changed his mouth and said: “I, I did not …… mean anything else, just worried about affecting the autumn harvest production.” The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public.
That day, I happened to go to the county for household registration procedures, not at the scene, the evening back to the folks sued me. If I had been there, what would have happened?
The year after I went to college, my father was wrongly classified as a “historical counter-revolutionary” issue was rehabilitated, which was another big event for our Family. During the summer vacation, I invited my father to Fudan University and borrowed a Seagull 120 camera from my roommate, Chen Huailin (Huailin graduated from university and went to graduate school in the Fudan Department of Journalism, then studied in the U.S. to earn a doctorate in journalism, and now teaches at the University of Macau), and accompanied him on a tour of the famous sites in Shanghai and Nanjing, as well as a trip on a Yangtze River ship, in order to repay my father’s kindness. father’s kindness in raising him, as a way to compensate for the injustice he had suffered for more than a decade.
Drafted in 2013, revised in 2017
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