The flood came from the right side of the three forks, and the river canal was a sea of water as far as the eye could see.
The sultry dryness of the early autumn season, with a strong fragrance of grass, mixed with the scent of earth, so familiar, awakened memories that had been sleeping in the depths of my heart. Those things that I had not dared to touch for a long time kept surfacing before my eyes, pulling my mind back to the distant 1977, that eventful autumn.
(I)
In the early autumn of 1977, I entered my fourth year in the countryside. I stood every day on the hillside in front of the youth house and gazed at the distant mountains, which were hidden in the mist and often disappeared in the thick clouds. How I wanted to fly over the mountains, to the world I longed for, to realize my ideal of a better life. Year after year, the day I left this village seemed more and more distant from me.
I was the first youth in the village of Factory Khan, according to policy after two years in the countryside will be eligible to participate in the recruitment of enrollment, but I did not get the opportunity. By 1977, the whole team had more than 60 young people, all eligible to be drawn, in addition to young people returning to the countryside. When would it be my turn to go back to the city?
Life in the barren loess mountains was so hard that my body could not adapt and I was getting thinner and thinner. There were a dozen other youths in the village who were in a similar situation to me, living in the same crude youth house. Apart from the rations provided by the state for the youth, they had nothing. The youths had no future in sight for years, and their spirits were extremely miserable and stressed. Nearly every youth was venting his or her frustration according to his or her own characteristics.
In this very dull autumn, a series of shocking events happened one after another. After many years, the scenes and people of that time often appear before my eyes and replay in my dreams. When I think about it today, it is still fresh in my mind and heart. After this eventful fall, I have a heartfelt experience and sense of survival. Looking back on this short three-month journey, I can’t help but feel the unpredictability of life, the ups and downs of fate, it is saddening.
One day in late August, the ravine was still filled with the summer heat. I walked a long distance to the commune to do some work. I met an acquaintance who asked me: “A while ago, the commune recommended recruiting. Male youths went to Baotou Iron and Steel Factory and female youths went to Baotou Textile Factory, each with five places. How come you didn’t go.” I was dumbfounded, how come I hadn’t heard anything about it!
My factory is the most remote area of the commune, 36 miles away from the commune, 72 miles round trip, most of the ravine in the river canal road. Along the way, we had to go over the mountains and down the slopes, and generally walked on foot, even riding a bicycle was bumpy, and we had to push the car down the slopes, which was even more strenuous. The post office of the commune delivered letters once every ten days and a half months, and sometimes they simply asked people to bring them to the village and put them at the supply and marketing office at the entrance of the village, so they went to get them themselves. So it was very closed, and many important news were heard only afterwards.
In the mid-1970s, when the country was in recession, local enterprises had very few opportunities to recruit workers, and each year there were only a few recommended targets for universities and junior colleges, called workers, peasants and soldiers. However, every year, students graduated from high school continuously went to the countryside and returned to the countryside, and a large number of young people who knew and returned to the countryside were generally hoarded in the countryside.
As for how to get the quota for recruitment and enrollment, the accepted way to go through the back door is that the superiors send them down in a targeted manner according to their real names. The parents of the youth have a relationship with the superiors, the target will be directly to the brigade where the youth, no one can take away. But no one can tell who has the right to issue the index, whether it is the recruitment and enrollment unit, or the county, or the commune? It is very complicated.
But one thing is for sure: each level must make connections and link these relationships into a strong, complex network to ensure that the youth is securely sent to a factory or school. No wonder it is mysterious every time I hear examples of recruitment or enrollment through the back door. Occasionally, under extremely special circumstances, individual targets were put down to the brigade, and the brigade party branch discussed and recommended the youths as a symbolic and normal draw. In 1977, the backdoor was so serious that there were no more normal transfers.
When I heard this news, I was very anxious. Since I had already gone to the commune, I simply went to the deputy secretary of the commune who was in charge of the youth recruitment to ask for it. The deputy secretary is a middle-aged Mongolian cadre, who is also the minister of the commune’s armed forces, with real power in hand.
Before I could finish a few words, the deputy secretary rudely interrupted me. He said coldly with a stern face: No way. Your family origin is problematic. As soon as I heard the word “problematic family background”, which would make me feel scared at any time, my head buzzed. Almost without thinking, I retorted: “Isn’t it the party’s policy to focus on performance? My performance is no worse than theirs.
The deputy secretary was indifferent, still coldly replied, anyway, the political examination can not pass, will also be returned. These places have been recruited, the medical examination and political examination have long been over. He stared sternly at me, as if he saw through my sinful nature. I choked, dumbfounded, no longer arguing. I was afraid to hear that shuddering word come out of his mouth again, and I left his office in anger.
Who doesn’t know about the political trial? Who is not afraid of political trials? Ever since my father was wronged in the anti-rightist movement, my family origin was like an invisible wire chain wrapped tightly around my neck, and the slightest tug would suffocate me and make me powerless to break free.
It was only then that I woke up to the fact that no matter how hard I tried, in the eyes of the commune leaders I was still a youth with a problematic family background. Even though I had been awarded “excellent” and “advanced” for several years, it didn’t help. The real label on my body would always be “bad birth”. I immediately felt a sense of indignation after being fooled.
My emotions fell to the ground and I almost collapsed, my legs were so weak that I didn’t know how I was going to get out of the commune compound. I was rejected by the deputy secretary of the commune in charge of recruiting, in other words, the door of recruiting was closed tightly to me. If recruitment is not recommended, there is no hope for enrollment. There were more than 600 young people in the whole commune, when would my turn come? For a youth with a bad family background and no connections, this meant a death sentence for my future in life.
Walking back to the village along the River Cao Road, I was so confused and exhausted. I took several breaks along the way, sometimes sitting on the high hillside, sometimes sitting dumbly on the rocks by the river canal road, pondering for a long time. Although such injustice has been commonplace in my lifetime, this time was completely different. The hope of several years was crushed in a flash like a balloon being pinched. A sense of foreboding, like a cold air attack. In the dry heat of the ravine, I couldn’t help but shiver all over, foreseeing more ups and downs in my fate, while knowing clearly that I couldn’t avoid it. When a person is not able to control their own destiny, it is a kind of despair and sadness that can not be described in words!
Perhaps it was my stubborn nature that helped me, the more unjust the blow, the more it would provoke my determination to fight. The night I returned to the village, I silently lit a small oil lamp, sitting cross-legged in front of a small wooden box, lay a piece of paper, with a fly-head small print copy of this paragraph: “The sky will come down to a great task so that people also, must first suffer their hearts and minds, labor their muscles and bones, starve their bodies, empty their bodies, line whisking its doings, so move the heart to endure the nature, had benefited from what it can not.” Since I went to the countryside, whenever I was depressed, I repeatedly copied this passage and stuck it on the wall and in my notebook to motivate myself at any time. It seems to be my spiritual salvation, reminding myself at all times that no matter what happens, I cannot stop myself from striving for my future and pursuing my dreams.
I was well aware of my ill-fated fate and that I had to work harder than others to achieve the same goals as others. As I concentrated on copying, the small oil lamp was flickering and a thin wisp of black smoke, curved and twisted, rose to the roof beam. The walls were smoked out in a long black line.
(II)
Shortly after this, an unexpected event occurred, when a female youth, Xiao Li, from the same team, suffered a mental disorder due to excessive shock.
That autumn, the youth often work together individually, the team sent a small team of cadres to lead the team. That day, the team was led by Erzhu, a small factory captain, who was tall, in his twenties, and loved to joke around, and got to know the youth very well. He took us to work on the slope of Houyi Liang, which is a little farther away from the village. When he shouted to call it a day, it was already too late.
After autumn, the days are significantly shorter. Especially in these mountains, dusk is very short, and when the sun sets, it falls behind the mountains at once. The surrounding hills immediately turn into a block of black shadows, the rolling hillsides are covered with shadows, and the sky immediately becomes dark. We had to walk down the slope from the back of the Eeyang, and then go around the ditch and climb up another slope before we could walk back to the village. The trail was very narrow, so we had to follow one by one. On such a high slope, the sky overhead was gray, and the hillside and the wilderness gradually blurred in the twilight. Silence all around, occasionally see a cluster of bushes along the road, or a lonely grave, a little chilly.
Not long after, along the roadside not far from two or three mounds of graves. At this point we are a little tense up, we coincidentally stopped talking. I felt my scalp tingling, head down and pretend not to see, quietly holding back a force, the steps kept following the people in front. Just walk past the mound, to go downhill, next to the grass suddenly flew up a night bird, that is by our footsteps startled fly. Someone asked fearfully, “What is that?” The leader of the two columns walking in front, he casually joked that “is a ghost!”
The words just fell, only to hear Xiao Li shouted in fear, rushed out of the trail, desperately dashed down the slope. We saw a bad, also followed the rush to run down. The front of the youth first to catch up to the slope, Li has been running and rolling paralyzed on the ground, fainted. Now we are anxious, desperately shouting Xiao Li, shaking her shoulders. But she did not respond at all. In the ditch at the bottom of the slope, it was already dark, so Wei Keyan, who was tall, and I carried Xiaoli back to the youth room, dragging her on our backs.
We put Xiao Li in my room and let her lie on the bed. I tried my best to squeeze her middle, and someone took a cold towel to her forehead. The barefoot doctor came and gave her a few stitches. After a while, Xiao Li woke up with two fearful eyes and a mouth full of fear, huddled in the corner of the bed with her arms clasped together. He pointed to the dark window and kept shouting “what is that”, and then drifted off to sleep.
The brigade’s secretary Guo came to hear the letter, bored smoking cigarettes, helpless. Deputy Secretary Kang also came, and Erzhu stood outside with his head hanging in despair. It was late in the night, and they talked and discussed something. A little later, the door was opened by a local village god who could dance. The clerk’s face was serious and I was told: “Don’t say anything, Xiao Li is possessed by a ghost, we have to ask the gods to surrender the ghosts and drive away the spirits. I immediately understood, hiding in the corner of the house. Doors and windows are closed, the gods of the people dancing mumbling and haunting for a long time before leaving. The second half of the night before everyone went home to bed. I also went to sleep in a daze.
The next morning, the sun came up. Little Li is still the same, a little drowsy, a little fussy. I intended to open the windows and doors to let Li look at the sunshine, blue sky and white clouds outside, forgetting the memory of last night’s darkness. But Xiao Li’s panic-stricken eyes stared deathly at the sunny threshing floor outside the window. Everyone is very nervous, how to report to the commune and the youth office? How to explain to parents? The youths took turns to guard Xiao Li, and I stood at the window watching Yao Shengmei and Wang Guilan taking care of Xiao Li’s life and taking care of her, feeling very painful and anxious. The youths were silent, not talking, not even discussing, all with a heavy heart. Two or three days later, the team and the commune youth office sent someone to escort Xiao Li back home to Baotou.
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. She was still the same, sitting in the corner of her kang, with blank, unseeing eyes, never recognizing us. For more than 40 years, I have often thought of this young woman who used to be a youthful, smiling and talkative girl. I don’t know what happened to her.
The matter seemed to settle down quickly, but it cast a deep shadow in my heart again, feeling that at any moment bad luck would fall on us. My anxiety increased dramatically, I became more reticent, and my long-time longing was nothing but a hopeless dream. As time went by, the longing gradually turned into an inner anxiety that was tormenting me at times, and I was in a state of despair as my emotions hit rock bottom.
What did the youths really do? When will I get out of it? Every day I thought, “What is the meaning of life if I live like this? Am I really going to live like this for the rest of my life? The answer I gave myself in my heart was always a stubborn “No!”
Most of the day, I insisted on working in the field. Sometimes, the indescribable pain haunted me like a ghost at any time, unable to shake off, unable to hide, bringing me another layer of fear. I tried to get rid of the pain and often climbed to the top of the mountain. Lying on a slope with dry grass and resting my head on a rock. Put a book or a straw hat over my face, let the sun shine on me, and drift off to sleep.
I don’t know how long it took, but when I opened my eyes and looked at the sky and the empty depression around me, I felt I was floating and wandering between the boundless sky and the earth. This gave me a feeling of floating and being far away from the world. In a trance, I felt that I had melted into the light blue world. Only at this time, I feel a sense of relief in my heart, quietly breathing in the fragrance of the earth.
In the evening, I often sat in front of the youth house, facing the hazy mountains and the wilderness at dusk and played the piano to relieve the depression in my heart. The youths often sat around me. When I first came to the countryside, I brought a xiao with me, and the tone was thick and beautiful. The tune they often played was “Fishermen’s Light”: the morning sun dawns on the sea, the small fishing boats drift, and the fishermen’s women talk about their endless suffering. I sang the song “Song of the Wanderer”, which was sung by my mother during the war in exile, on thin oil-printed paper with stained handwriting. The sound of the xiao whimpered, desolately looking forward to returning to the hometown. These are very suitable for the state of mind of our youth.
But what I like most is the ancient song Yue Fei’s lyrics “Man Jiang Hong”, the sound of the xiao is deep, sorrowful and angry, telling the unyielding and undying faith of the heart. Whenever I played this song, it would make my blood boil and my passion surged, and strengthened my confidence in my determination to fight. In those difficult days and nights, music accompanied me, giving me great spiritual support and spiritual comfort.
At night, I sat cross-legged in front of a small wooden box and read books until late at night or early in the morning, almost every day. I had a box full of books. Immersing myself in books gave me great pleasure, forgetting my hunger and worries. I think the greatest talent that God has given me is to be unworldly and to look forward to the future. Even in a desperate and dangerous situation, I still persistently hope for a better tomorrow, and I have always believed that there will be miracles in life. Today, I think that perhaps God has blessed me in this unique way to endure my difficult years.
I once made an elaborate pencil sketch of a young Gorky reading, with tears in his eyes as he read. My destiny was so much like his that it was actually a self-portrait of me. I put this picture on the wall. Later I took it home with several other paintings and collected them, which I still haven’t found. Due to the influence of my family, reading had been deeply rooted in my heart for a long time. Even in these hopeless times, I decided that the only thing that could light up my life in the uncertainty of life was reading.
(3)
The days passed quickly, and the weather cooled down as we entered the end of the autumn season. The weather was cooler, but soon after the fall, a rare flood broke out in the mountains, shattering the peace in the mountain villages.
The commune issued a flood control notice, every year in this rainy season there will be flash floods in the ravine. Although the amount of rain is not large, in the mountainous areas with many peaks, there is no outlet waterway. The rain flows down from thousands of hills to the bottom of the depressions, forming torrents that get bigger and bigger all the way to the ravine, and then converge with the flowing water from the numerous depressions into a huge, muddy flood that floods the fields and collapses the hillsides. After the flood waters receded, a river canal appeared. Year after year, the canal was widened and turned into the only traffic and transportation route in the mountains. Horse-drawn carts, trucks and automobiles entered and left the ravine at all times. But during the rainy season, it was important to avoid the canal road. Floods form almost instantaneously.
For several days in a row, the village’s main labor force was concentrated on building a stone dam under the slope at the entrance of the village. The slope behind the stone dam was home to more than a dozen families, as well as the classrooms of the entire Factory Han Elementary and Middle School, the brigade infirmary, and the office. If the flood came from the east direction of the three forks, it would directly impact the bottom of this slope. It would pose a huge threat to the village. The stone dam can hold back the flood water and make it turn and flow down the river canal to Shenshui Ditch. Some years ago, a row of stone dams had been built, and according to the flood forecast at that time, the team decided to build the stone dams higher and thicker.
We youths also participated in building the stone dam. The old villagers drove a wagon to the deep ravine to pull a lot of large pieces of rock. They were unloaded at the entrance of the village. We bent over and carried the rocks to the stone dam, and then several strong male laborers built up the rocks and stacked them into a thick stone dam. Half a day down, back pain can not eat. The angles of the rocks pressed on the spine, painful. Can’t breathe. Old folks taught us to back pad a piece of clothing. After a few days of perseverance, the high and wide stone dam was built. It was thicker than several stacks of fences. I thought it would be safe this time.
Factory Khan area sowed a large field of buckwheat. In August and September, white buckwheat flowers bloomed all over the hillside fields, and a few beekeepers from the south came from outside the mountains. They built a straw hut down the southeast slope along the river canal road and lived in it. They didn’t want to deal with the village people, and they didn’t speak the language. I happened to meet a young woman at the supply house at the entrance of the village who said she was from Zhejiang.
I remember that the day was very cloudy and hot and muggy. In the evening it rained lightly, and it got heavier and heavier. I read until late at night, and the rain continued to fall. When I woke up, it was still light and I heard the sound of brushing rain. I felt a little unusual, and then I fell asleep again. At dawn, I was dazed and heard a thunderous boom on my pillow. The flood was coming! I rushed to the hillside at the head of the village and looked out over the river canal road.
My goodness, a glance to the east, it is simply a flood and the sky together. In the distance, the southeast side of the three forks of the big river canal bay is all a sea, flooding, lifting the waves with mud, such as a thousand elephants running, roaring like thunder, rolling from the village in front of the river canal fast flowing and. We watched as the flood passed beneath our feet. Large rocks tumbled and struggled violently in the flood, but were eventually swept away.
I poked my head down the slope and saw that the stone dams that had just been stacked were gone, along with the buckwheat fields and corn fields to the east, all washed away without a trace. The eastern side of the slope so high, was cut off a large piece, the crop is also gone. Leaving a wall of cliffs and a large area of bare sandy land below the slope.
Forty years later, the youths reunited and we all remembered the frightening flood. The youth Wei Keyan said on WeChat that he brought a flashlight in the middle of the night and followed Captain Shi out to fight the flood, “The rumble of the flood was more frightening than thunder, and the flood gently scraped away the stone dam.” Many old villagers spent the whole night checking sheep pens and observing the flood. After dawn, the men and women of the village stood in rows on the slope, counting which fields had been washed away. I remembered the beekeepers, the old folks said they saw flashlight beams shining in the dark in the direction of the hayloft.
It took most of the day before the flooding weakened and the water slowed down. The yellow muddy water slowly stopped flowing. At a glance, from the three forks, there are miles of river canal road, lying stumps and branches, countless large and small rocks, wreckage, potholes everywhere, completely different from the original appearance.
In those days, the atmosphere in the village was obviously frightened. But the villagers in the remote mountainous areas were used to dealing with all kinds of natural disasters, and I was impressed by their tenacity and resilience to survive. For future livelihood, everyone was busy dealing with the aftermath of the flood. At this time, I noticed that the straw hut under the south slope was missing, and the villagers said that the beekeepers had left. It was so close, I was so relieved for them.
As I stood on the hillside looking at the yellow, murky, rolling flood, my heart seemed to be turning over. The scene of being besieged by the flood on the hillside brought me a great shock. I couldn’t help but feel an inexplicable panic and an unspeakable helplessness.
Years later, I watched a movie in the United States. A group of innocent prisoners were trapped on an island surrounded by the sea. There is a part of the plot: a prisoner tries to escape from the island, but is always caught back by the evil guards. At the end of the film, he ran desperately along the cliff, shouting in despair, the sea drifted away in a small boat, that is the only hope for survival. When I saw this shot, I felt a panic in my heart and suddenly remembered the scene when I stood on the hillside that year, looking at the rolling flood. The extreme despair and panic that I felt years ago was not forgotten and has remained in my subconscious.
The weather soon turned cooler, and there was still no news about the fall enrollment and youth transfer. Another year was about to pass, with no way out and no hope in sight. The floods had caused great damage, the crops were reduced, and life would be even harder. For the first time, I felt that there was an invisible force clutching me, firmly imprisoning me on the hillside, and I felt a sense of despair that I had never felt before.
(IV)
As the old saying goes; there is no way out of heaven. As depicted in the legendary story, when a sailboat is about to capsize in the waves of the vast ocean, the heavens will reach out a hand to gently lift the sailboat and send it to the calm waters.
At this moment of near desperation, no one expected that one late autumn morning, on October 21, 1977, the Central Radio broadcasted the major news of the college entrance examination reform to the whole country. This important decision opened the door for countless young people.
The college entrance examination in late 1977 gave the country and countless young people the hope of changing their destiny, and with it came a radical and historic change.
The youths from the surrounding production teams all went back home to Baotou. I still stood alone every day on the hillside in front of the youth house, gazing at the distant mountains in the haze. Holding the red-stamped college entrance exam pass in my hand, I felt for many days that it was all in a dream.
I didn’t feel excited, I didn’t feel happy that I got something that never belonged to me before. On the contrary, I felt very open. For more than 20 years of my life, it seemed that I had been waiting for this belated first fair chance to finally be given the same right to take the college entrance exam, to be recognized as the successor of my country, and to stand tall in the ranks of all my peers.
Thus, the new era of reform and opening up, marked by the 1977 college entrance examination, ended my sad years as a youth. As the reform continued, the youths from the village of Factory Han left the mountain village one after another in the trend of the national youths returning to the city in 1979.
Briarcliff New York
November 10, 2018
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