In April 1969, the “Ninth Congress” of the Communist Party of China was held.
At this time, we had been working as youths in the countryside for nearly six months. The morning after the closing communiqué of the “Ninth Congress” was published, a huge celebration parade was held in the county. The peasants, youths and cadres and workers from the eight villages in the county held up red flags, placards with quotations, the statue of Chairman Mao and the “Red Book”, chanting revolutionary slogans and marching majestically through the narrow streets. The small county seemed to have become a “red ocean” again, with the revolutionary song “The Yangtze River rolls to the east, sunflower to the sun ……” repeatedly broadcast over the tannoy.
After a lively day in the county, it was almost dusk when I returned to the village.
The meeting did not work in the field also earn work points, which makes everyone excited. The moon has risen in the sky. The moon was hanging in the sky like a silver disk, and the small mountain village was covered in the gauzy moonlight, which seemed very quiet and mysterious. Since the inner bed was too small for five boys to sleep on, I spread the bedding on the big board in the outer kitchen and fell down on my back, looking at the bright moonlight through the windowpane and listening to the news bulletin of the “9th National Congress” broadcasted over and over again by the small speaker on the door frame.
At midnight, the moon was in the sky and all was silent. I was awakened by a burst of “clattering” outside the window, opened my eyes in a haze, and the scene in front of me was creepy: the white paper of the window next to the case board, through the white moonlight, reflected the black shadow of a hand shaking! Groping! I was suddenly shocked, my heart “thumping” wildly, the hair seemed to stand up. Who is this? What’s going on?
I quickly judged, afraid to scare other sleeping students, so I quietly got up, grabbed a large kitchen knife stuck in the side of the case, and crouched by the window with a tight grip, ready to fight! The black hand shadow on the window paper turned into a figure, seemingly looking for something, stepping on the corn stalks stacked outside the window “clattering”, and then heard sluggish footsteps fading away.
My nervous heart was slightly calmer, but I didn’t dare to open the door rashly. After all, I’ve only been here for six months, I’m not familiar with the place, it was the time to “clean up the class ranks”, who knows what complications this is? Outside the window, the production team piled up the corn stalks assigned to us for cooking and burning, and we used cages, baskets, rope, hoes, shovels, water stretchers and other agricultural tools are thrown at the root of the window, even if someone took it and how much money? I breathed a sigh of relief and went back to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep at all. The white moonlight shone through the window paper, making the room white and gloomy, and when I closed my eyes, I saw the black shadow shaking on the window pane.
I was so confused until dawn, when I heard a girl scream outside the house. A girl’s scream, followed by the “bang” sound of a basin falling to the ground. I jumped off the case, pulled open the door, only to see a girl sitting on the floor in front of the door, washbasin, toothpaste rolled down to the ground, full of panic, pointing to the edge of the cliff. I looked down and saw a man hanging straight from the acacia tree at the edge of the cliff! The other four boys had rushed to the tree, a few members of the community also arrived, I heard someone shouting “there is a cure his second uncle! People put down the hanged man from the tree, but he was already dead. It turned out to be one of the village’s pseudo-bailiffs, who had hanged himself with the rope we had placed outside the window!
I remember that when we first entered the village, we had to educate the youth about “recognizing doors, people, and class”, and we met his second uncle: a skinny little old man wearing a white armband, who spoke slowly and quietly when he met people, and was said to have been a bailiff for a few days a few years before the liberation, and was not guilty of anything. We, the young people who went to the countryside, had already seen the madness and cruelty of the armed struggle and the bloody corpses, and compared with the scenes of the criticism of the so-called “cow devils and snake gods”: wearing high hats, painting black faces, standing on high platforms, shaving Yin Yang head, sitting on the jet, the criticism meeting in the village seemed “gentle and frugal “It was just a few people appointed by the brigade revolutionary committee to read out a thousand speeches and shout a few slogans of “never forget the class struggle”, a veritable cultural fight, just to cope.
So why did his second uncle want to go to the end of the road? At that time, we didn’t quite understand it, but now we realize more and more clearly that a small person under such harsh social pressure can have a nervous breakdown! I wonder how many such tragedies there were during the Cultural Revolution.
At dinner that day, I described the scene in the middle of the night in graphic detail to everyone. A few female students were too scared to go back to their dormitories on the other side of the ditch. I repeatedly reassured everyone not to be nervous, not to be afraid, this is the result of social and political pressure, we have nothing to do with the youth. At the same time, we set some “rules and regulations” for ourselves, asking everyone to stay calm about the clan, sectarian and class struggles in the village, and not to intervene rashly.
A few days later, there was a funeral for the family, the village of Zhao, Lei two large surnames have participated in helping. The morning of the burial day, no matter how the village, we did not go out, the so-called “clear class boundaries” only. But the small bun spilled on the grave, but picked up a lot, as usual, eaten with great pleasure.
Years have passed, whenever I think of this incident, I always recall the moonlight of that night, always flashing back to the pair of black hands trembling and groping in the miserable white moonlight! There is always a heavy feeling weighing on the heart, for a long time can not be dispersed.
Recent Comments