On the morning of January 17, 1969, Jing Wen left home to join the army in northern Shaanxi. My mother got up early and cooked a delicious meal, but Jing Wen had no appetite at all and ate hastily before carrying his bag out.
Father pushed his bicycle to take Jingwen to the North University Annex and got into the big car. Jing Wen did not want to face the scene of the car driving and family and friends to say goodbye, let his father go back first.
Looking at the back of his father pushing his bicycle away in the cold wind, Jing Wen sighed inwardly, his father’s image was really downbeat. Father wearing a patched old cotton jacket, pushed a bald, wearing a pair of big-headed shoes, pushing the car bowed hunchback pushed in the cold wind and go alone, is a standard old worker’s appearance.
Now my father has long stopped doing scientific research, he is facing the political censorship to clean up the class ranks, now every day in the Institute of labor reform team wielding shovels, picks digging, moving bricks, pulling the cart, back home, daily writing checks until late at night.
The good thing is that every day my father can still come home from work, while Uncle Liu next door, was isolated censorship, living in the Institute’s toilet, daily labor reform can not come home.
Several of Jing Wen’s classmates home is also a depression. Cheng Weiping brother came, is one person to school, no one to send. His father went to Peking University’s cadre school in Jiangxi Carp, and his mother, an old intellectual with a graduate degree in the Republic of China, was now sent to burn boilers in Tsinghua’s boiler room. His mother made fried dumplings for him in the morning, but he ate only a few and had no appetite. The mother stood at the door and watched Brother Cheng Weiping walk out of the small courtyard of his house and decided to go back to the house and close the door.
Xu Chongping also came, his father is the Republic of China era graduate of the old intellectuals, the early 50s to stay in the Soviet Union, the Cultural Revolution before the deputy director of a research institute, now beaten into capitalists into the cowshed can not come to see him off. Zhang Qijiang’s parents were both university professors who had returned from studying abroad, but they were sent to a cadre school, so no one sent them.
Jing Wen is the last batch of the class to go to the brigade, has repeatedly to the Beijing station to send a group of students to the rural brigade, see many students in the car window before the drive and everyone smiling and shaking hands to say goodbye, but in the train started the moment, suddenly smile face into a crying face, tears can not restrain rolling down, each send-off is a car under the car cry shocked people. Jing Wen made up his mind that this time he would leave Beijing to join the brigade, and from then on he would be an independent man, and he would never shed tears and do a child’s attitude when he was about to leave.
When the train started, the car under the car regardless of men and women crying, Jing Wen as if a bystander, watching the car under a grieving face faster and faster to the rear, listening to the car heartbreaking cries and cries, Jing Wen is proud to find himself no sadness nor joy.
An inserted friend recalled the situation and said: the most vivid memory is that time in the train is almost open, because the seat next to the window, the body was squeezed by many students can not lift the head, the neck is net tears, snot, was pressed almost passed out of breath. Really suffer I alone, we all cry enough! Fortunately, Jing Wen did not sit next to the window.
The train pulled out of Beijing station, the relatives were no longer visible, and everyone went back to their seats. Almost a moment, the carriage like an explosion of a smoke bomb, filled with smoke, choking people uncomfortable. Jing Wen was surprised to see that almost all the male students around him had picked up a cigarette, spitting clouds. Before he left home, Jing thought that only hooligans and hardened criminals smoked among high school students, but now, just after the train left Beijing Station, had everyone become hooligans? Many of his classmates, who used to be perceived as honest, were also smoking.
A soldier from the military propaganda team, known as Little Li Zi, came into the carriage and shouted, “No smoking! No smoking! The students who were smoking glanced at him coldly, turned their heads and continued smoking, no one paid attention to him. Little Li Zi Liberation Army usually in the students say one thing, prohibit, is very powerful, at this time in the carriage of young people’s cold eyes in a dumb fire, had to leave unhappy.
In fact, this is very civilized. Haidian District, a middle school leader of the propaganda team, usually in the school has always been ultra-left, the use of high pressure policy on students, the students to come or not on the counter-revolutionary hat swung over to the power to pressure people. He also came to Peking University High School to give a report on the mobilization to the countryside, Jing Wen also went to listen to the report, this man in the report like a prisoner, like the training of the table, shouting, aggressive, arrogant. I heard that this man to the train station to send students to the queue and take up the frame to reprimand students, not knowing that at this time the students are full of grievances are nowhere to vent, a swarm, will be beaten up, for many students to relieve anger.
After a while, the carriage end of a clamor. Jing Wen squeezed over to see the hustle and bustle, saw everyone around a young man, the young man looks a little familiar, must be living in Zhongguancun, Jing Wen saw him in the Zhongguancun area. The young man sat by the car window, pounding his fist on the small table, tears, with a sobbing voice said, I brought 60 novels, packed a box, when leaving, all let my father confiscated ……. The next person said, he was drunk.
The youth train took a day and a night to reach the railway station in Fuping County, Shaanxi Province. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public.
Jing Wen and a few students on the ground bunk packing bags, see a young man from the side of the bag took out a harmonica, blow up, the tune is cheerful and lively, sitting next to a dozen students with the cheerful harmonica tune sang: “You budding flowers, you are not a good thing.
You budding flowers, once blooming more beautiful, you budding flowers, blooming more beautiful, only in my garden to find you, only in my garden to find you. Come on, come on ah, my rose you ah come on ah!
The girls are jealous of you, only because you are too beautiful, the girls are jealous of you, only because you are too beautiful, now I want to love you, they are not happy, now I want to love you, they are not happy. Come on, come on ah, my rose you ah come on ah!
Brother Xu Chongping told Jingwen that this is an Albanian folk song from “200 Foreign Folk Songs”. In a small county in Shaanxi province, a group of Beijing youths sang a foreign love song in a loud voice, which was really unique.
Jing Wen later learned that in 1968, singing love songs from the 200 Foreign Folk Songs had become a fashion among the upper class of Beijing high school students. Beijing high school students’ high society refers to the sons of cadres.
Jing Wen, who was not a cadre’s son, did not know the love songs in “200 Foreign Folk Songs” and did not even know that singing “200 Foreign Folk Songs” was a fashion among Beijing high school students. In those days, the most fashionable fad among intellectuals’ children was to enjoy European classical music. The brothers Zhang Qijiang and Zhang Qiying had an electric gramophone brought back from the United States and a large number of classical music records, and their house was often full of people who knew, semi-know, and cornered students who tried to come to his house to listen to music. Jing Wen and Zhang Qijiang students light, many times in his home to enjoy the European classical music.
As for what the peasants and workers did during that time, Jing Wen does not know. Jing Wen once had a big tandem with a classmate, Old Donkey (nickname), who lived at the edge of Peking University. The old donkey lived in a small hutong on Chengfu Street outside the east gate of Peking University.
At the beginning of 1967, when the rebels of Peking University were writing large-character posters and making a crazy revolution, Old Donkey and his brother entered the area where the large-character posters were posted on the campus of Peking University every morning at four o’clock in the dark, one person rolling a big bag.
In the pre-dawn darkness, the sound of snorting, snorting, snorting resounded in the area where the large-character posters were posted, and two dark shadows were busy. The two brothers in tearing posted more than three days of large print, tearing off the large print stuffed into sacks, before dawn, one person carrying a sack full of old large print triumphant return, carrying the sack to the scrap yard in the morning to sell waste paper to subsidize the family. Really should be the model opera in the Red Lantern’s singing words. The poor man’s children become a family early.
In May 1968, Jing Wen met his old donkey classmate, who said he had signed up for 853 farms in the Northern Wilderness, saying that he could earn 28 yuan a month there, 8 yuan a month for meals, and two uniforms for winter and summer, and it didn’t cost him anything to wear clothes, so he couldn’t spend 15 yuan a month and could save a lot to send home. He said this with a heavy expression, to go to the Northern Wilderness, although you can earn some money, but too far, sign up to go thousands of miles from home to the distant northern border, the heart is still very heavy after all. The old donkey student is really a good boy who became a family early, really realistic.
Now whether it is singing “200 Foreign Folk Songs” of the “upper class” of the red class, or listening to classical music of the gray class, or selling scrap paper to subsidize the household of the needy, as long as they are not yet gone, they are all by the authorities a big broom, a dustpan rubbed up, scattered to the desolate and broken land of northern Shaanxi. It is true that the highest instruction “the dust will not run away by itself until the broom is broommed”.
When dinner was served, all the youths received two large steamed buns and a large bowl of oily soup with fatty white meat and green vegetables. It seems that the reception unit is responsible for the best efforts, in this small place, so many people eat, so that everyone can eat big fat meat, in that material scarcity, most people are in a state of semi-starvation in the years is not easy.
But the vast majority of the youth were ungrateful. We all came from Beijing, a big place, there is no shortage of oil and water in the stomach, the youth at home a few days before leaving parents have made a lot of good food, on the train everyone has brought a lot of good food, at this time there is no appetite. Jing Wen barely ate a steamed bun, looking at the bowl of fatty meat, a bite do not want to eat, that greasy vegetable soup to drink a few mouthfuls were greasy, and then drink to vomit. What about the rest of the vegetable soup? Not eaten buns can be returned, drink a small half of the vegetable soup can not be returned. People of my generation have experienced the 3-year famine in 1960 and cherish food very much. Jing Wen would never do the wasteful act of dumping leftover food.
At this time, I heard from brother Wang Berlin that there was a brother over there who had a large amount of food and could give him what he could not eat. Jing Wen quickly picked up the bowl and walked over, Cheng Weiping and Xu Chongping also rushed to follow with the bowl. Jing Wen walked to the man, the man is squatting on the ground to eat a big mouthful of steamed buns, sucking to eat vegetables, eat very sweet. Because he wears a hat and lowers his head to eat and drink can not see what he looks like.
Jing Wen cautiously asked him, we can not eat the food, do you want?
The man buried his head to eat, not lifting his head, the mouth issued a mumble, muffled sound: put it here, put it here.
Jing Wen three people put down three bowls of greasy and greasy dishes to leave, walk away a little bit several people can not help but burst out laughing, laugh at this buddy really can eat, laugh at this buddy muffled “put it here, put it here,” the tone. Behind the scenes, the man called the stupid hat, Jing Wen is really a little worried, so greasy dishes, this stupid hat buddy do not eat bad stomach.
The next day there was a large pot of millet porridge for breakfast, feel free to drink. Jing Wen never drank millet porridge before, drink it feels really good, and even drank three bowls.
At 7:30 a.m., nearly 2,000 youths were loaded onto dozens of large canvas trucks, and the convoy drove to Yichuan County, 600 miles away, in a huge, dusty convoy.
Jing Wen and Xu Chongping sat inside the truck car, with their backs against the cab, facing the rear. The truck compartment was covered with a tarp, and the compartment was dark. Xu Chongping brother stabbed Jing Wen whispered to Jing Wen: look at that yesterday drank our three bowls of greasy vegetable soup stupid hat, that boy is a sex (pronounced shai, three voices) stick, wolf. Look at his eyes dead on the girls.
Jing Wen looked up, that stupid hat buddy bent over, shrinking neck, standing against the car gang, a pair of eyes shining, like two small lanterns in the dark, the buddy’s expression serious and frozen unchanged, like a statue of a fierce god, and like a vicious wolf, people dare not look at each other, very creepy.
After more than 1 month in the countryside, we realized that this dude is not a wolf, he is really a fool, he is a retarded person, the so-called serious and frozen expression is better described as dull expression, but his shining eyes do have characteristics.
His parents have died and he lives with his brother and sister-in-law in Beijing. This time, taking advantage of the implementation of Chairman Mao’s latest instructions, his sister-in-law enrolled him in the countryside and sent him to the countryside, shaking off a burden for the family.
He probably didn’t have enough to eat in Beijing, no wonder he could eat several large bowls of greasy dishes in one sitting in Fuping. The man left Beijing with more than 40 yuan of the neighborhood committee subsidy, and when he left home, it was said that the money was still on him, but when he arrived in Yichuan, he didn’t have any money, and I don’t know who got it away from him halfway. The man’s surname is Yu, and it seems that his nickname is Yu Demou.
Yu buddy was assigned to the camel plateau village, to the team soon after, the villagers found that the buddy all day not to work, also do not say, always from the more than one person high bank along the children down to jump, so the villagers only found Well dog child is a simpleton. So the village rushed to the commune to drive the well dog child. The commune let him help cook on the commune stove, while reflecting the situation upwards. Jing Wen saw him when he sent a letter to the commune, this simpleton in the commune stove dry two months people also fat a lot, it seems that he was in the pot mouth than Beijing also rip slip.
Three months later, this simpleton buddy was returned to Beijing. At that time, we heard that he returned to Beijing, we were a little envious, hate to be a simpleton.
The car drove out less than half an hour, Jing Wen felt the three bowls of millet porridge for breakfast gradually down the line, gradually in the small belly pressure.
Jing Wen to northern Shaanxi a year later when sheep herding only to hear the old folks said, millet is cool, corn is hot. Summer to drink millet rice soup (Yichuan people call thin millet porridge for rice soup), if you drink a bowl of rice soup for breakfast, a day will not be thirsty, if you drink corn paste, a morning less than people will have to thirst. Jing Wen tried according to the old folks, drink millet rice soup in the morning, to the hillside to herd sheep, can really stick to a day without water.
In Fuping, just out of Jing Wen where know millet rice soup is cool diuretic reasoning, before getting on the car drank three big bowls, the car did not take long to drive out, the morning drink the three bowls of rice soup, and quickly down the line.
Divided to the village of Pingzuo Xu Guoqing and other students in another truck, later arrived in the county when they met them, they told Jing Wen that the journey was a nightmare journey. They sat in a car with a group of hooligans, and this group of hooligan students took out knives to open their teeth and claws and gestured around in front of their faces to scare them, making them feel extremely insulted, but they did not dare to move. Another vicious act of the hooligans, they said, was to stand at the back of the car, lift the tarp and urinate directly on the outside while the car was in motion.
Jing Wen asked Guoqing, there are girls in the car? Guoqing said no.
Jing Wen is really willing to go to his car to have nightmares. No matter how frightened by the hooligans, but also better than the living let the urine suffocated. Jing Wen’s car has both boys and girls, Jing Wen side sitting on the girls.
The car traveled on the long road, sitting in the car can not see the outside scenery, but also do not know the length of time. The winter season, the world is cold, people do not sweat a drop, all the moisture in the body can only go down.
The car on the mountain road slowly, Jing Wen only feel the pressure in the small of the abdomen is getting bigger and bigger, gradually to the point of unbearable. What’s worse, the mountain road is uneven, the car is bumpy, each bump is a pressure on the bladder of the unbearable shock, and the shock is not once or twice, but thousands of times for hours and hours.
It was really the longest journey of my life, the road was endless and the time was like years. At that time or young, good health, Jing Wen gritted his teeth and endured 3, 4 hours, finally endured to the car arrived in Huanglong County stop to rest.
And that silly hat buddy, standing against the car gang, a few hours, not moving, eyes like a torch dead on the opposite side, like a frozen statue, no joy, no sadness, no desire. Against the opposite side of the car gang happened to sit a few girls, and I wonder if they are afraid?
The convoy arrived at Yichuan County in the evening.
In the evening of January 19, 1969, nearly 2,000 Beijing youths arrived in Yichuan County. The only street in Yichuan County was less than 500 meters in length, and nearly 100 cars drove slowly into the county like a long dragon. The residents all crowded onto the street, not so much to welcome the youths as to see what the foreign students in Beijing looked like and what clothes they were wearing.
The caravan had just entered the county when the tragedy occurred. The staff lit up a long string of firecrackers, and the firecrackers were fired in unison, 100 times more lively than the New Year. Many of the firecrackers that did not explode were crashed into the middle of the road and under the cars. A small child went under the car to pick up firecrackers, the rear wheels of the car from the head, killed on the spot. Many people went around to see, Cheng Weiping brother also squeezed in to see, came back to say that the head are flattened, disgusting, see after the meal can not eat. It seems not a good omen, the youth off the beginning of the encounter with the star of death, the future days can not be better.
Jing Wen and classmates in the county party school after settling down to the streets. Jing Wen found that this Yichuan County really does not have any place that can bring up their interest, the whole county seems to have even a 2-story building are not. Instead, the streets are full of young people who are a bit frightened.
The street is a dozen, dozens of people in a group, wearing large dog skin hat, shaking bladder, whistling. There are many people, leather hat also inserted a colorful brocade chicken plume, walking head shake a shake, plume shake three shake, full of like a mountain eagle three master’s team down the mountain.
It turns out that the county bazaar to sell brocade chicken plume, 50 cents a piece, it is said that the original sale to the old folks is 20 cents a piece, a youth to buy to the hat a plug, feel very powerful. So we all rush to buy. The price soon rose to 1 yuan a, but soon sold out. So there are vicious people directly in other people’s hats to grab the brocade chicken plume, and caused a fight and even a group fight.
This one evening, also do not know how many fights. I am afraid that the local government did not expect this kind of chaotic scene. It is said that when the second group of young people arrived, the scale of the fight was even greater, and the scene was even more chaotic, so the militia had to be mobilized for emergency suppression.
Jing Wen saw those arrogant people were hiding. Jing Wen saw the car in the eyes like a torch dead on the opposite girls of the pervert (in fact, the expression is dull Bean) and two boys from the opposite side of the car, they are sitting in the Hukou commune car, looks plainly dressed, people are also honest, so say hello, a question is indeed the Hukou commune. So we talked.
One of the older brothers said they were originally in Beijing to do temporary work of social youth, for many years, this time Chairman Mao’s latest instructions, because they are not official workers, but also ordered to go to the countryside to insert. The man said he was 24 years old and his name was Lv Huanan. The man said, this time the village does not know whether it is poor or rich, and a few years after a large number of wives and children, and do not know how to support it.
In the end, Lv Huanan has been in the community for several years, talking about the insertion, immediately thought of supporting his wife and children. When Jing Wen went to the countryside, he did not even think about the problem of supporting his wife and children. Lv Huanan was later assigned to the village of Camel Plateau, 25 miles from the commune. More than 30 years later, Jing Wen saw the picture of Lv Huanan in the album “Walking Through Youth”. In 1972, he was assigned to the Zanjiashan highway class in Hukou Commune as a road maintenance worker, and now he is still working in the Yichuan County highway section and has settled in the county.
The number of people who went to Inner Mongolia to join the brigade was small, and they all signed up voluntarily, especially those who went to the herding areas were mostly hot-blooded youths. But purely because of the revolutionary passion and blood boiling, I’m afraid is one in a thousand, most people are due to the impact of family reasons make Beijing can not stay and a gnash of teeth, a hot-headed, revolutionary passion, heroic feelings rose, righteousness and go.
When they went to Shanxi to join the troops, there were many of them, most of them out of helplessness.
Jing Wen’s sister in May 68 in the school to write a big letter to vote firmly requested to go to the Northern Wilderness, came home to reveal the truth, their junior assignment to the factory, but also to the Northern Wilderness, she felt that she was not good, to go to the factory hopeless, heard that after all the places in the queue, she did not want to go to the queue, afraid that even the Northern Wilderness farms can not go, so she had to write a big letter to vote firmly requested to go to the Northern Wilderness, the results of a go to the Northern Wilderness The result is that once you go to the Northern Wilderness, you can go for 10 years.
And to Shaanxi team, almost all do not want to team up to later forced to come to the situation, the three religions and nine streams of all kinds of heroes. There are young people like Lv Huanan, and just released from the bureau, there are criminal offenders, but also political offenders. Hu Bo, who is a brigade member with Jing Wen, is an anti-Central Cultural Revolution offender.
There are also work-study schools, Jingwen saw a famous Liu G of Peking University High School in the car.
In 1965, the second semester, Beida Secondary School held a school-wide radio conference, the party branch secretary Comrade Jia Shiqi to everyone on the ideological quality of education, the content of the junior Liu G and Guo ZY students of bad behavior and sent to work-study school lessons. This buddy turned around and turned to a piece with the students of the North University Annex to intervene.
There are even the cross-border offenders. Two years later, when Jing Wen was participating in the county games, someone pointed out to Jing Wen a county high school physical education teacher and a female youth. The gym teacher was a college student at the Beijing Institute of Physical Education. It is said that the lovers watched a North Korean movie and envied the good life in North Korea, so they tried to sneak across the border to North Korea to find work at the end of 1968 and were caught at the border. Fortunately, they were caught, otherwise they would be living in the depths of the Kim family dynasty now.
After being caught, the woman was sent to Yichuan County to join the army, but the man asked to be assigned to Yichuan County High School as a physical education teacher and reunited with the woman, a true love and loyalty is very rare.
In those days, there was a popular jingle among the youth: Inner Mongolia, Western Shanxi, Shaanxi are all big rascals. The mountain western youth is not foreign? I don’t know. Shaanxi are all big rascals this saying even we ourselves are quite recognized, when the countryside, it is really too chaotic, at least just arrived in Yichuan that evening, Jingwen in Yichuan County streets, feeling is everywhere hooligans, scared.
After dinner, the county revolutionary committee performed a program in the auditorium to welcome the youth. The stage in the auditorium was dimly lit, and the curtain was worn and patched. At the beginning of the show, two boys did a few heels on the stage, but people felt that there was some real kung fu. Then an actress in her 30s came out and almost fell down when she tripped accidentally. The actress sang a song to welcome the Beijing youth in a low-flow opera, and Jing Wen still remembered the lyrics and tune
Greetings, Beijing students, you have worked hard on your way
I salute you with a revolutionary salute and say hello to the revolution!
Say hello to the revolution!
The performance ended in a blaze of applause and confusion.
Back at the residence, we met our parent officer, Comrade Cui Zhou Yuan, the director of the Hukou Commune Revolutionary Committee, who looked over 40 years old, tall and with two furry cold-proof ear protectors on his ears, the youths found him both rustic and funny.
Director Cui Zhouyuan announced where everyone was going.
In Beida High School, it was already known that a village wanted 12 young people, and Jing Wen and Xu Chongping and 6 boys and 6 girls made up a group of 12 people. Now we know that the village is Taoqu Village, 2 miles from the commune and 90 miles from the county.
And in the school did not form a group of classmates, the official randomly pinched together. Wang, a female classmate of Jing Wen’s class, was surprisingly assigned to a village with Liu G and several other work study school students. Hearing this assignment plan, it was a bolt from the blue, and Wang was instantly enraged to have a theory with the commune director.
Wang was in the school free association, Jing Wen in order to make up a full 12 people, had sent her an invitation, she did not agree, Jing Wen thought she already had her own group, or whether she did not see these students also do not know. I didn’t expect that she didn’t join any group and ended up in the same village as the work-study school students, which was really pathetic.
Liu G, several work-study school students to the countryside, never cause trouble, are working well, the bitter under the United States of Mrs., performance are very good. Those naughty and mischievous, fighting and robbing heroes and heroines but a work-study school students are not. These work study school students are also our friends.
There are a lot of dissatisfied with the distribution like this, all swarmed with Cui Zhou Yuan director theory, so that Cui director is at a loss. In fact, this director Cui is also a ruthless person, after arriving in the village heard that the Cultural Revolution in this area of rural mass dictatorship, Hukou Commune set up a private public hall, the so-called class enemies arrested a large number, hanging on the beam of the house severe torture, injured countless people, and also killed people, the movement leader is director Cui, the villagers are very afraid of him. The good thing is that Director Cui did not personally participate in the torture, the two deputy directors of the commune at that time, surnamed Gao and Wu, participated in the torture, resulting in death, were later held responsible and sentenced to imprisonment, and this director Cui was demoted shortly after the youth to Hukou Commune.
Although the villagers are afraid of the director of the commune, the youth off the beginning, the director of the commune, such as sesame green beans which put in the eyes, a little dissatisfaction on the fuss, but really the director of the Cui made a mess. But in the end no one was able to change the village.
January 20, 1969, 10:00 a.m., Jingwen and Hukou commune students on a large truck to the village. The car drove 30 miles to the town of Qiu Lin, everyone was driven off the truck was told that further forward no traffic, to walk on their own, to the village of Tao Qu and 60 miles.
In the town of Qiu Lin, I met two young men from Tao Qu village who came to pick up the youths with two donkey-drawn carts, the two young men were He Jianming (a middle peasant) and He Zongwen (a landowner). The two young men were 27 and 8 years old, both beautiful men, smart and capable. Later, I learned that the two are high school graduates, and we are all junior high school students, look at people wearing an old rustic cloth pants, at that time really took people when the old peasants, these junior high school knowledge of youth each cowardly, I really do not know how people look at us in their hearts at that time.
In loading the luggage bundle Jing Wen asked He Jianming, our village is rich?
He Jianming said, rich.
Jing Wen also asked, how much is a worker? He Jianming said, last year a work 28 cents.
Jing Wen heard the heart cry bitterly, 28 cents!
Jing Wen heard in Beijing, Peking University junior high school Kong Tao 68 years to Inner Mongolia A Rong banner interpolation, the team is rich, Kong Tao in the oil workshop work, a work more than 3 yuan, dry more than 3 months, earned more than 300 yuan, than when the workers are also rich much. 68 at the end of the year, we are still preparing to go to the countryside interpolation, Kong Tao buddy already carrying more than 300 yuan of the labor income of the huge money home to visit relatives, let people envy We were envious.
As there were already many students in front of us, Jing Wen knew a little bit about the market of rural poverty and wealth. A team with one work worth more than one dollar is a rich team, one work worth 70 or 80 cents is considered well-off, and one work worth 40 or 50 cents is poor. In this place, the value of one work is only 28 cents, so it is simply destitute. In the years after I arrived at the village, the best year’s work value was only 23 cents, and the worst year was only 10 cents.
From Qiu Lin town to Gan Cao village 30 miles along the county river to take the river road flat road. This road is nothing to Jing Wen’s stream, Jing Wen in the school also often go to the countryside, the summer of 1967 to the countryside labor, from Beida Annex to Sujiatuo said 60 miles is also walking past. Walked 30 miles to the village of Gansu grass is more than 4:00 pm. Along the way, Jing Wen was most impressed by the long ice hangings and ice waterfalls on the rocky cliffs along the road.
After Gancho village, it was time to go uphill and enter the boundary of Hukou Commune. This uphill road, which we call the Gancho slope, is a bare yellow slope that looks as high as the Wanshou Mountain in the Summer Palace, and the dirt slope road is quite steep, with plastic-soled shoes that are slippery.
Have walked 30 miles, quite tired, but the slope does not look high, Jing Wen and a few boys struggled to climb up. Waiting to huff and puff, exhausted to climb to the top of the slope, but found just standing on a small platform, there is a big slope in front of the mountain, there are so high Wanshou Mountain. A few brothers had to fight the spirit to climb up again, climbing to exhaustion finally to the top, but found that it is still a small platform, in front of a higher, longer steep slope.
Although this is the winter season, the brothers are already full of hot sweat, legs are soft, Jing Wen and a few boys had to stop to rest. Looking down the slope, the girls were far behind, some of them cried while climbing the slope. Some said, to the village never go home, the road is too difficult to walk.
After a lot of hard work, Jing Wen and others finally climbed the third big slope, up to the top of the slope to see, finally on the plateau, the top is flat. After walking a few hundred meters, Nie Mengxue (Nie Yuanzhi’s son) and Cao Youxian students waved to everyone and said, “Our village is here, so we left the main road led by the old villagers and walked down the slope. We could see a few rows of kilns and a few rows of trees on the slope 1 mile away, and there was a small village of about a dozen families, and we remembered that the village was named Ha Lou Zi.
After walking for a while, the senior classmates (son of the famous biologist Tong Di Zhou) and a few senior female classmates (Qian Sanqiang, Qian Weichang’s daughter, etc.) also turned the corner and walked towards a small village of a dozen families 2 miles away, which was Shanglouzi village.
In the loess plateau to walk 2, 3 miles of flat road, to a ditch, the students looked at all backwards, but also over a large ditch. A few brothers and sons mustered up the courage to go down the deep ditch first, then climb the slope, to climb the slope and just climb up the slope of licorice have a fight. When climbing to the top of the slope, we can really exhausted.
By now it was completely dark. A few boys on the plateau dragged their tired bodies and walked 5 miles to the village of Pingzuo. They stayed in the village. The girls, down the ditch will no longer have the strength to climb up, there is a small village of nine families at the bottom of the ditch, white home, the girls will be put up there.
When we arrived at Pengzuo village and put down our luggage, the villagers took us to each house to eat pie.
We followed the old folks up and down the slope of the mountain, stumbling left and right into a kiln, one foot deep and one foot shallow.
Behind the oil lamp sat a few old folks whose faces could not be seen clearly, and on the table were a few pieces of food that could not be seen. The old villagers handed over a piece of food, quickly thanked them, took it and opened their mouths, but it tasted sour and smelly, rough and hard to swallow like sawdust.
The good thing is that during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Five were forced to eat the rice of remembrance of hardship, so let’s swallow it as remembrance of hardship. It was hard to swallow this piece and never eat it again, so I quickly said goodbye. I heard that the students who went to another family to eat pie rice took a bite, then did not eat and did not say anything until they left the door, spitting out a piece of stuff and said, “What is this thing ah? It turned out that the man did not swallow at all.
Only afterwards did we know that the hard-to-swallow and sour and smelly food was the millets bun. Millets are known as Jik or millet in the ancient language, is a true crop of the old Chinese ancestors. Millets are drought-resistant and the best food for the nine droughts of the decade in northern Shaanxi is to meet the famine.
The first night to northern Shaanxi, several Beijing youth eating millets nest difficult to swallow, who would have thought that 2 years after the spring drought season, the food ate up, starving season, eating millets nest became a dream.
Later Jing Wen heard that a worker in Pingzuo village can reach 50 or 60 cents, much richer than Taoqu village. But these foreign students from Beijing, for the first time in this dozen miles around the richest village to eat, even a bite can not eat.
The next morning, after walking for 15 miles, the 12 youths finally arrived at the village of Taoqu after 4 and a half days of trekking.
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