In life, there are things like museum collections that are not easily shown. But when it comes to the right opportunity to exhibit, it will not be so calm. This is the case with me. Although it has been far away from me for nearly 40 years, those past events that made me feel so much emotion, with the passage of time, have long been like a dull shadow in a broken glass plate. It was the cry of my dear friend that awakened the dormant drips and drops in my heart.
I. Motivation
My motivation for the college entrance examination originated from my childhood.
I was only 17 days old in my mother’s womb when my father died in a car accident. Therefore, I did not have the concept of “father” in my mind when I was young. When I was a little older, I would hear my neighbor’s children calling out “Dad”, and occasionally the question “Where is my dad? Where is he?” The thought crossed my mind. When I was about 5 years old, I learned from my father’s students who came to visit me that my father had been a “senior student of Southwest United University” (actually they were wrong, my father graduated from Zhejiang University in 1942 with a degree in mechanical engineering).
When these older brothers and sisters talked about my father, their reverent and deplorable expressions began to burn a “father” mark in my heart, and made me draw an equivalence between my father and the university. From this moment on, my faint thoughts about my father turned into the very ignorant idea of “going to university”. This was the original motivation for me to take the college entrance exam.
When I was 10 years old, my elder brother was admitted to Tsinghua University. I remember that it was a summer afternoon, when the letter carrier shouted downstairs “get the admission notice”, my mother, who was overjoyed, stood in the corridor and said loudly “the first table first volunteer first professional”, afraid that the neighbors could not hear.
After my father’s death, my mother took up the burden of raising the five of us alone. Mother’s hard work and economic difficulties at home can be imagined! However, she made a new dress for each of us four younger siblings when she was shopping for our elder brother’s clothes for the capital. The night before my brother’s departure, my mother asked us to put on the new clothes to take pictures.
I curiously asked my mother, “Mom, it’s not the New Year yet, why do you need new clothes?” My mother said, “My brother got into college!” Oh, it turns out that you can wear new clothes to college, you can take pictures, and you can celebrate New Year twice a year. If only my brothers and sisters had gone to college, I would have been able to spend more years.
Soon after my brother arrived in Beijing, he sent a photo to my family. The photo showed seven people in front of the Tiananmen backdrop, all in patched clothes and pants, all grinning. The next winter break, my elder brother came home for New Year’s Eve, and when I saw the school badge pinned on his clothes, I thought how decent it would be to wear it.
One day, my mother asked me to deliver a letter to the street, and I quietly took off my brother’s school badge and pinned it to my cotton jacket and left the house. On the way, to meet the suspicious eyes of the adults, I chest high, smiling at them silly. I pestered my older brother to tell me about “college” and asked, “What do your classmates’ moms and dads do in the picture?” . Brother said: one is a worker, two are farmers, one is a pig killer, one shaves his head, and the other is a teacher like his mother.
He described Tsinghua Park to us, learning from President Jiang Nanxiang’s opening speech, telling us that John Ma, a 70-year-old physical education teacher, could do dozens of push-ups in one breath, saying that the school’s slogan was “50 years of healthy work for the motherland”, so students went to the playground every afternoon to exercise.
The older brother’s story evoked fond memories of her mother, who graduated from the chemistry department of Jinling Women’s University, of her own university life: the palace-like school building, her friend Shen Pu, who moved very slowly but sought to do everything well, the foreign professor who asked questions in class to inspire students to think, and the principal Wu Yifang, who was determined to “save the country through education” and was alone for life. …… All this made me feel both close to the university and fascinated by it.
In February 1969, in response to the great leader’s great call, the 66-68 junior and senior high school students (commonly known as the old class) left their hometowns and went to the wide world to “do something big”. The new class filled the campus at the right time, and was able to sit in the classroom and read a few books while performing a new round of “resumption of classes and revolution” scenarios.
My two youngest children were also in the new class. Every morning, watching them pick up their school bags and run to the classroom with laughter, my heart was not only envious, but also depressed. My mother understood my feelings, and as an English teacher, she found the English textbook “Xu Guozhang” and taught me from ABCD, and assigned me homework, requiring me to complete several exercises every day.
Because my family lived in the school, when the Cultural Revolution came, my mother was the target of criticism, and it was inevitable that the family would be copied, and the burning revolutionary flames burned my brother and sister’s high school textbooks to the ground. My mother had to take me to her friend’s house, where I went under the bed and picked out a bundle of junior and senior high school textbooks, including language, history and geography. All of this more or less satisfied my desire to learn, and also paved the way for my future college entrance exams.
Three years after my brother and sister went to the countryside, I joined a flour mill. Every day early in the morning and late at night, there is not much time to read and study. But I was not willing to spend my life without books, so I carried a bag with books and exercise books every day, using the way to and from work or lunch break to recite words and do exercises.
Later, the factory had also issued a recommendation of “workers and peasants” college students, and mobilized everyone to apply. Unaware and blindly excited, I quickly handed in an application to the factory leaders and expressed my wishes.
I didn’t think that in that social atmosphere where intellectuals are “stinky old men” and have to behave with their tails between their legs, small ants like me, born in a family that is “knocked over and put one foot in the ground”, should not have the luxury of hope and are not qualified or entitled to express their demands.
Not willing to be lonely but also not self-respecting, the results are naturally predictable, and so on. What makes people depressed is the ensuing sarcasm, sarcasm, taunting, bad language. Whoops! My dream of college, it seems that this life is always a dream.
II. Preparing for the exam
The 1978 college entrance examination was the best opportunity of my life. I am glad that I grabbed this life-saving straw.
At the end of 1977, when I learned of the resumption of the college entrance examination, I was so eager for college that I could not find a moment of peace in my heart. At that time, I was participating in the performance of the propaganda team of the grain company in the city, and I had no time to pick up my books because of the daily “grassroots” work. I was anxiously waiting for the propaganda team to be disbanded as soon as possible. The good thing is that in the Spring Festival of 1978, two months later, I finally returned to my unit and had a limited but relatively stable environment and time to study for the exam.
I started elementary school in 1960 at the age of 6 and a half, and entered junior high school in 1965 at the age of 11 and a half. 1966 saw the Cultural Revolution sweeping the country, which first began in schools. Chongqing 41 Middle School (now Bashu Middle School) was a school for the children of cadres. The little green fruits in my class always had a strong revolutionary momentum because of their strong roots. But because of their young age, the only rebellious trick they could come up with in the surging revolutionary current was to accuse the school leaders of “training us as the seedlings of revisionism” and to strongly demand “to break out of the cage and go to the countryside to experience the world”.
So, in early June of that year, we went to live in the suburbs for nearly a month. In this way, my knowledge of secondary school was not enough for a full year. With a weak knowledge base and a defective knowledge structure, it was difficult for me to cross the five-year systematic learning ladder and reach the threshold of university. The good thing is that I usually use some time to accumulate some knowledge, which gives me some strength to prepare for the examination.
When my mother learned that I was preparing to review for the exam, her first internal reaction was that there was no possibility for me to pass the exam. Nevertheless, she did not say anything discouraging to me, but always said, “As long as you try your best, you will be fine” every day. My mother knew that I could not apply for science and technology but only for arts, so she tried to help me find two volumes of high school language textbooks of the old three years.
Not only that, she also came back from Zigong, where my elder brother was, to provide logistical support for me and my second brother’s preparation: two boiled eggs for one person every morning (she said this was the most scientific way to eat, as the oval fat in the egg yolk could enhance memory), and one meat and two vegetables every night (my mother told us from her own experience that preparing for the exam was also physical work). My mother’s strong support boosted my confidence to take the exam.
I picked up my books, which I always read, and began my intense revision for the exam. The biggest roadblock was math. Although my mother told me: math needs to be studied systematically, it is difficult to make up for it in a short period of time. I thought of my brother in 1977 to take the college entrance examination, although the total score far beyond the admission mark, because of mathematics ate duck eggs and failed to return, my heart is very frightened, afraid that I repeat the mistake of my brother. So, at the beginning of the preparation for the exam, I poured all my heart and soul into mathematics.
The first sister is a math teacher, I rushed to her house every day after work to tutor. However, my math is still “a poor man’s arsenal”, nearly three months of tutoring, still even the most basic mathematical axioms are not very good. When my brother saw my anxiety, he said, “We have less than three months left, so we have to focus on other arts subjects, as long as the math score is not zero, otherwise the loss will not be worth it.” Thanks to my brother’s timely advice! The strategic global adjustment stopped me from hitting my head against the south wall.
The factory I worked in specialized in flour production. Although the factory was small and old, it was about the people’s rice bowls. Especially in the era of planned economy, the status of the big brother of the unified purchase and sale of grain made the flour mill “three shifts, the shift to see the leader” almost become the work norm. The frequent overtime work gave me extremely limited time to study for the exam.
Fortunately, my master understood me better, and she never interfered with me to pick up the books during the time when I was preparing for the exam. Nevertheless, time was still poor for me, so I had to get up almost every day when the chicken crows. There was only one room in the house, separated by a bunk bed, and the whole family would be awakened by one person’s cough.
I was afraid of disturbing my family’s sleep, so the communal kitchen became the best place for me to read in the morning. As the weather got warmer day by day and the neighbors’ morning shift got up earlier, the kitchen was no longer my preserve, so I switched to the public toilet on the same floor, where the smell aggravated my nose, but because ammonia absorbs heat, the toilet was much cooler than the kitchen. Psychologically, I felt that my mind was clearer and my revision was more effective.
On my way home from work every day, it was the perfect time for me to memorize my books, not only was my mind open while walking, but I was also in a happy mood. So, the journey that only took 45 minutes to get home became a marathon walk, an hour, two hours, or even three hours ……
The result was often that I was still holding a book at midnight and was repeatedly urged to go to bed by my mother. “I felt that I had a sense of grandeur, in addition to the hard work of hanging a beam and stabbing my head.
Third, the examination
Finally came the time to “finish the work in one”.
The 1978 college entrance examination was held from July 20 to 22, the time when the “furnace” was in full swing. Early in the morning, my mother cooked eggs and dumplings for me and my second brother, and made sure we all ate them, saying that we were afraid that our hunger and low blood sugar would affect our performance.
I arrived early at the examination site of the Sixth Middle School (now Seeking Precision Middle School), located across from the Chongqing Municipal Committee. It was still early, so I sat down in the shade of the playground and opened my books, trying to make the most of the time to memorize two more questions, but I couldn’t read them! Since I was in the same examination room as my elder sister, I started to look towards the school gate, hoping to see her sooner. It was almost time to enter the examination room, and when I finally saw her coming late, I felt a lot more secure.
The three days of exams were like a fight with Vulcan, and the tension, panic, and feverishness were the real picture of the time. I don’t remember when my mind calmed down, but I remember that my hands were still shaking when I had almost finished answering the questions. I can’t remember how many handkerchiefs were used in a test, but I remember that the sweat that I couldn’t wipe off fell on the test paper and immediately turned into a flower. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but I remember going home every day after the exam and reviewing with my brother, my mood always ebbs and flows between the peaks and valleys of right and wrong.
I remember particularly well the political exam, where I mistook “the universality of contradiction” for “the particularity of contradiction” and wrote half a page of it, smugly not even missing punctuation; the answer to “the two theoretical sources of Marxist philosophy I can’t remember Hegel, but I vaguely remember a black word, and I had the bright idea to fill in the NATO Allied Commander Hegel. In the history test, I didn’t know the “Battle of Guandu”, so I had to use the “Battle of Interstate Water” to fake it. In the language test, I didn’t know that “destruction” should be paired with “reputation”, so I wrote “destruction” without thinking about it.
For the geography test, I asked what season it was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the spring and Quito, Ecuador, in the fall, and why, using my finger as the sun and a pen as the earth, which baffled the invigilator and gave me five minutes of direct attention.
In the math test, I solved the first problem according to the binary equation, took ten minutes, got it right, and got a limit score of 8. I spent all the rest of the time solving the second trigonometry problem, drew a piece of paper and a half with no answer, and got a score of 6.
The last day in the afternoon of the foreign language test, thinking that the long march of thousands of miles to Shanbei is finally, the mood is quite relaxed. Therefore, the last multiple choice reading question on “apple orchard”, I did not look carefully to understand it and then rushed to answer it, unfortunately, I lost half of the 20 points, otherwise the score should be 59 points. The good thing is that the foreign language test is not included in the overall score, so I was not the least bit frustrated.
During the exam, there was a small incident. A man at the next table was still wearing long clothes and pants on a hot day, and what was even more bizarre was that his sleeves covered his wrists. On the morning of the second day of the exam, there was suddenly a small commotion in the classroom. It turned out that the brother will answer with a ballpoint pen densely written arms, was politely asked by the invigilator out of the examination room. This is the first and last cheat sheet champion I have seen in my exam career.
I don’t know if a baby has to lift a flood of strength to eat milk, but I can be sure that I did put in all my efforts for the college entrance exam. After my tense nerves finally relaxed, I dozed off furiously for three days.
Dreams come true
After the exam, the next thing is to wait, waiting for the announcement of the results, waiting for the admissions line. When the college entrance examination report card was issued, I knew I was only one step away from the dream of the university. Most of the hard work of the “two heads only see the stars and the moon”, instantly transformed into a sword to open the thick clouds and fog in the road ahead of life. At this time, my only hope is to be like my mother, to realize the long-cherished dream of becoming a teacher.
When I filled out the application, I wrote all the teacher training colleges in Sichuan province without thinking: Southwest Normal College (now Southwest University), Chongqing Normal College, Nanchong Normal College. When the staff who received the form reminded me that “the column of key universities can not be left blank”, I asked my brother what to do? Second brother said: write Sichuan University. So, according to the newspaper copied down the Sichuan University. Sichuan University is not a teacher training, write what professional good it? When I was confused, I saw that the Department of Philosophy was listed at the top of the catalog of Sichuan University’s liberal arts, and thought that I could not get into a major university anyway, so I copied down the Department of Philosophy from the newspaper.
I didn’t expect to receive the Letter of Acceptance after only 20 days or so. At that moment, I was loading flour in the workshop. That night, I kept my eyes open until dawn. That year, I was 24 years old. My eldest sister and second brother, who went to college the same year as me.
It was time to put an end to my past and put a dash to my future. When we parted, the factory branch had a farewell party for our two colleagues who had gone to college and took pictures. Good friends, on the other hand, left a historical picture of my master and I working together for five and a half years on top of the old factory building.
In the evening when I stepped on the westbound train, as night fell, I looked out of the window and imagined my future university life, and I was really in the mood of “suddenly the spring breeze came, and a thousand trees bloomed. The college entrance examination gave me a fundamental opportunity to decide my own fate in life. The time when I was led by others all day long and could not do anything about my own destiny was finally over.
Recent Comments