Massive and persistent hunger has not been too long for our generation of city dwellers, more than three years. The level of hunger we feel is not comparable to that of rural people, after all, we have a basic food supply. Even in the same city, there are differences in the degree of hunger due to regional differences. It is only because I was young that I have a deep impression of this period of history.
When I was young and full
When I was young, I lived a good life and never felt hungry.
In the fall of 1957, my mother was transferred from Chongqing Normal School in Beibei District to Chongqing 41 Middle School (now Bashu Middle School) in the central district of the city (now Yuzhong District). I was more than three years old at the time, and I had a somewhat vague impression of life.
Shopping was convenient in the central part of the city, and my mother knew the high nutritional value of butter, so every morning when we ate steamed buns, she would cut a thin slice of butter and sandwich it between the buns before handing it to us. At first, we felt that butter buns were rare and fragrant, and we ate them with great vigor. But soon, we suffered from the problem of “mountain pigs don’t like to eat fine bran” and found the butter greasy, so we broke the butter buns into small pieces and secretly threw them down the hill. These bad deeds, of course, must be behind the back of the mother. If she found out, lightly let the brothers and sisters recite “hoeing day when noon, sweat drops under the earth”, “spring planting a grain of corn, the autumn harvest of ten thousand seeds”, heavy the next morning can only drink white rice. And this treatment, mother according to the family economic reality, soon canceled. But our “full man does not know hungry man hunger” days show that the food supply at that time, or quite adequate.
The older brother knew how to behave. If he saw the steamed buns we threw away, he would silently pick them up, tear off the skin, and eat them himself. When he entered junior high school, before the famine year, every day before school, he had to empty the urine jar, go to the canteen to buy food, two trips down, often too late to finish breakfast. He had to grab a steamed bun with sesame sauce in one hand and carry his school bag in the other, running towards the classroom. The school had strict discipline and did not allow food to be brought into the classroom. The buns had to be eaten, and classroom discipline had to be observed, so the elder brother had to put the buns into his pants pocket, and when he sat down in the classroom, he quietly pulled them out and stuffed them into his desk, and when the teacher turned his head back to write the blackboard, he picked a small piece and stuffed it into his mouth. The teacher found that his mouth did not dare to move, but only with the tongue to mobilize the saliva in the mouth, slowly “the lips”, a meal is most of the class, although there is a “thief” feeling of weakness, but can not bear the tempting sesame fragrance. Over time, big brother is quite used to this way of eating. But if it comes to language, history, geography and other courses, the teacher’s interest in writing the blackboard turned to the mouth, he will be a big head. At the moment he is anxious, not how not to be found by the teacher, but from the hunger of the long sigh, how not to be heard by the table.
Soon after, I entered Renhe Street Kindergarten. Since it was a residential school, I could not go home until Saturday afternoon. I felt warm with my family, so I was extremely reluctant and helpless when my elder sister sent me to the kindergarten every Monday morning. One day, I found a crack in the normally locked door of the school, and I was so homesick! I slipped out of the door while the caregiver was busy distributing the food for dinner. When my family first moved to 41, we lived in the old house at the top of the slope on the east hill. That day, I went up and down the slope along the way home, a few times, and finally arrived home when it was dark! My mother, who was eating dinner, was so surprised that she dropped her chopsticks when I suddenly appeared in front of the house. After dinner, I was playing with my brother and sister when there was a knock at the door. When she saw me, she grabbed my arm and cried, “Finally, I found you!” I looked at my mother pitifully and was allowed to stay at home for one night, and the next morning, I was “admitted” again.
In fact, at that time, the kindergarten food was very good, breakfast had buns, buns, rolls and rice, and often had milk, eggs and meat loaf. At lunchtime and evening, meatballs, roast pork, radish stew …… many children in the class, by the way, ate into the apple face. I’m not a picky eater, but I didn’t cherish this precious time, never “mang up swelling” (eat hard), so later to the famine year, every time I think about it, my intestines are regretful.
In September 1960, I enrolled in Basho Primary School and was a day student. Every day when I came home for lunch, I had to pass through a trench. I could have taken the path at the side of the trench and went around to the main road leading home to the stone staircase. Out of greed, also for the shortcut, I always let the big road not go, but to climb the steep slope. When I came to the edge of the ditch, a few friends formed a line, grabbed a thin pipe in the middle of the trench, one by one, hunched over and climbed up. When they arrived home, they washed their hands and put their rice bowls directly, not caring about their hot and sweaty faces.
Despite this, I envied the students in my class, not because they were free from parental control, but because they could eat in the cafeteria every day. Whenever I went home and waited in line to climb the hose, I would imagine that I was running to the cafeteria with my classmates laughing and laughing, pushing and shoving me, chattering and shouting in line to buy food, sitting around the dining table desperately trying to pinch the food and shave the rice, and scraping the rice bowl with the antimony spoon to “kill the chicken and the duck” ……
I didn’t expect that my dream would soon come true. But, it is not the imagination of the wonderful.
The big pot rice
In 1960, the country had entered a difficult period, my mind’s memory of hunger began when the city forced people to eat the collective canteen “big pot rice”. At that time, the government decided the amount of food rations for residents according to their rank and age. The food ration for primary school students ranged from 16 to 21 pounds per month.
Within a few weeks of starting school, the class teacher solemnly announced that from today onwards, all students would have to eat in the collective cafeteria! Finally, we were able to enjoy the “meal” (a form of gathering) together with the resident students. Most of the students in our class were 6 to 7 years old, still at the age of enlightenment, and from our teachers’ descriptions, we thought that eating communist pot-luck meals was like climbing up a ladder to see a steep mountain, and that “the view was unique”.
At mealtime, each class was divided into five tables of eight people, with the class cadres designated by the class teacher as table leaders. When eating, the table leader called on two students, first to the window to bring back the food, and then distributed to the students in the bowl. The hundreds of students in the school, suddenly gathered together to eat, this can be busy kitchen master, scooping dishes to serve rice in several windows, table leaders’ heads like mushrooms in the forest after the rain, brushed out. When eating, the canteen does not have enough tables and stools, it does not matter, we will form a circle, squatting to eat, the younger students simply sit on the floor.
When we first started eating “pot rice”, it was a good time. For breakfast, each person had a bowl of thin rice, a steamed bun, and a small spoonful of pickles. For lunch or dinner, each person a bowl of rice, two spoons of vegetables. So many people gathered together, we feel fresh, laughing and joking, comparable to the sparrow quarrel, the roof is about to be overturned. The good times lasted for a few days, and the buns for breakfast were gone, leaving only a large pot of thin rice. The dry goods sank to the bottom, and when the rice was distributed, everyone’s eyes were fixed on the table’s long rice spoon, and the situation was like the rice pot could be fished out of the eyes, and everyone hoped that the last spoonful would be poured into their own bowl. At noon and in the evening, the red pota replaces the rice, and the dishes are often omitted. At this time, the belly of the group’s bulging and deflated, depending on the rice spoon in the hands of the table leader.
Our table manager came from a cadre family. She just entered school, because of the root of the red, love to help classmates, loved by teachers, students, and became class president. But in those special times, “power” is really difficult for the seven-year-old class president. I remember that day, the red pottery for dinner, she was embarrassed: a fair distribution, it is a student living in the evening, once the stomach revolution, unlike the students, can be from the kimchi jar, fishing a piece of ginger chewing, and then, can also drink a bowl of plain water; “power for personal gain”, it is bad image, how will the students look at themselves? This class president, still when not to continue? Of course, this is only my subjective speculation now, at that time, she was afraid that she could not think of these. But in any case, the big red pota in her hands, grabbed and put down, put down and grabbed again, enough to show her ambivalence. This was repeated several times, and it tickled our eyes. When I think of playing “pass the flowers around”, I was afraid that the flowers would fall in front of me, but right now, I was hoping that the class president’s hand would let go of the red campion just in front of me. My little heart couldn’t take it! In the end, the leader’s face was not able to resist her stomach, and the two sturdy red pots unexpectedly fell into her bowl. I was very impressed by this because of the strong hunger. In today’s world, the ancient Western theory of “cutting the cake” separates the right to manipulate the knife from the right to choose, and unites human consciousness with the constraints of the rules, which is quite fair and sensible.
During meals, the canteen provides several large buckets of pickle soup. There is no limit to the amount of pickle soup, so feel free to drink it. The younger students were small and could not take advantage of the “soup grabbing”. So, every time before the cafeteria closed, there were always a few small, skinny students circling around the big barrels, standing on their tiptoes, reaching into the tall barrels with their hands and constantly fishing for the remaining pickle leaves with iron spoons. The barrel is high and deep, the little students fishing extra strenuous, in order to be able to fish, the child’s thin arms, the small half are soaked in the soup.
In the camp of fishing pickles, my second brother was not missing. He was already eight years old, but his head is not much higher than a seven-year-old child. Therefore, his “fishing posture” is more unique: feet off the ground, half of his body hanging over the edge of the barrel, like a barricade on the waist, ready to practice cartwheels. Once, a young student fished around, suddenly felt the iron spoon heavier than usual, he thought he had found the “shaved wealth” (rich), so excited that he shouted “I fished the head of the vegetable! Lifting the spoon, he saw that it was a dead rat! A stunned second brother, from then on no longer patronize the pickle soup.
The stinky pickles were drying in the playground dam, and the hungry young students were always sweeping their eyes over them. I wanted to reach out, but I was afraid of being caught, not only to be “stabbed” by the teacher, but also to be accused by fellow students as “stealing children”. After all, they are children, and in a few days, during recess, you can always see a few hungry little students, regardless of grabbing the stalks of vegetables, they will be stuffed into the mouth, individual little students are also stuffed with more, in the playground, vomiting. At this moment, the moral awareness in front of the “hunger and cold to steal the heart”, hanging their heads very low.
At that time, my second sister was in the fifth grade, and my second brother and I were in the first and second grades. Second sister has always been strict self-imposed requirements, and I, may not be the second brother love to “turn the tendons” (good movement), physical exertion less, so although I feel hungry, but drink two mouthfuls of tap water, barely tolerable. The second brother, although hungry wilted, but his “Aoxi Lami” (noble to face) personality, decided that even if he was starving, will not touch the playground pickles.
The New Year’s Day was approaching. That day’s lunch, the canteen in addition to the ration, but also boiled a few large buckets of red pota rice. The unlimited amount of red pota rice greatly satisfied everyone’s appetite. Soon, the canteen will see a group of students after a group of students, holding a watermelon belly, with eight steps, playing “horizontal hammer” (with sleeves to wipe the nose and mouth on the rice gaba), fish out. But the second brother, completely ignoring the capacity of the belly, bowl after bowl to pour. Finally, the bulge into the sail general belly, so he could not straighten up, bend down, can not lie on the ground. He had to half kneel, more than half an hour later, before moving home step by step.
The most memorable thing is that a young boy in the class, probably because he ate too much noodles at home, then ran to the classroom in one breath. After arriving at the classroom, with a full burp, the noodles in his stomach, vomited out at once. Then, he quickly picked up the broken noodles on the desk, a brain to the mouth.
At that time, the elder brother was in junior high school, and the elder sister was in her first year, and the two of them, together with their mother, ate a large pot of rice in the high school cafeteria.
Every morning, the elder brothers and sisters picked up their respective lunch boxes and went to the canteen to buy thin rice. The rice boiled in the canteen looked “sticky” (thick), but in fact it was sprinkled with alkali. The two of them held the lunch box in their hands and ate while walking. The fragrant thin rice, tilting the neck to drink is painful, but the mouth is not enjoyable. So, little by little, with the antimony spoon into the mouth, one by one, with the tongue to taste, until the rice in the role of salivary enzymes, sweet taste, then slowly swallowed. When the rice was finished, the antimony spoon was used to scrape the walls of the box with an ear-piercing “squeak” sound, and then the tongue was stretched out as far as possible to lick the remaining rice juice. At that time, my elder brother was in a stage of rapid physical development, and he was hungry after the first class, and had to carry on for the next three classes.
At noon and in the evening, the three bought back from the canteen rice or red pota, a bowl of fried vegetables with little oil and no meat. Although the rice was three taels per person, it felt inadequate, and the red pota was surprisingly slim. Once, when my mother looked at six red potaus that were slightly thicker than carrots, she was so angry that she went straight to the canteen and said, “Look at it yourselves, how can we share it with a few people? How can we eat it?” The canteen master knew that he was wrong and had to make up three roots. As for the dishes, they were not available when they went late. So, from time to time, there were cases of salted vegetables under the rice or just gnawing on the red pota.
When the three of us came home from the elementary school cafeteria, we could always catch our mother and big brother and sister with their rice bowls. The greedy second brother couldn’t help but “patrol” around the table, and when he saw a grain of rice accidentally dropped on the table by his brother and sister, he picked it up and put it in his mouth as fast as lightning. When he saw a grain of rice accidentally dropped on the table, he would pick it up and put it in his mouth. On this occasion, my mother would pluck a bit of rice from her bowl or break off a piece of red pota and hand it to him. At first, he would say, “No, no, no”. But he couldn’t resist the temptation of rice and his mother’s urging, and within half a minute, he grabbed his chopsticks.
In those days, the spirit became material, the stomach can be poor, the spirit must prosper. So, the school’s autumn tour went on as usual. To see the mountain scenery and tread on the shallow grass of the river bank, you cannot have an empty stomach. The school then temporarily delegated the “cauldron distribution right”, allowing parents to prepare their own children to fill their bellies.
This is easy for those families who are financially well-off and have money to buy high-priced food; it is not difficult for those families whose parents are not in a position to run a canteen and have to open their own meals. The hard part is for those families who eat canteen meals, have many children and low parental wages. How to let the children go to the pleasure, not due to belly protest and defeat? When the parents have their own tricks. They try to borrow a small amount of flour, and vegetable leaves, mixed into a paste, poured into the pot, spread out a salt and no oil, shapeless pastry. I remember that I brought my mother’s battered pancake. The pancake was so soft that my mother made sure to pack it in a lunch box. However, individual students in the class went empty-handed.
Finally, the open, we chase crazy run, do not feel hungry, just to the meal, only to feel the front of the back of the chest. At this point, the teacher instructed the students who had brought food to share some with the students who were watching, and the students responded positively, and the traditional virtue of “kinship to friendship” was inadvertently revived.
There are also exceptions to the rule of “eating Foxy” (eating for free). Once, the second sister’s class organized a field trip, because the class of a classmate’s father is the director of public security, the group will follow the glory, not only on a rare enjoy a large car (generally sit open truck), and each person issued a large bun of kraft vegetables. When crossing the river, a student was extremely happy and sad, the bun fell down the river. A quick leap, he a fish leap, into the water to pick up the foaming bun, three times, eat not left bun crumbs.
A few months later, the potluck dinner at Basho Elementary School was cancelled, and the three of us were transferred to the cafeteria of our mother’s middle school for food relations. We were happy to be able to eat with our mother and brother and sister. Only, the units continued to stipulate that employees eat collective meals, so our pot-luck meals were nothing more than a change of venue.
At the beginning of the famine, food was still available in coarse and fine combinations. Fine food was rice and noodles, and coarse food was red potato. But the good times did not last long, coarse grains soon became the main protagonists, with red campo and cereal noodles.
When we ate the red potaus, my mother always distributed them roughly according to their respective rations and appetite sizes. I grew up listening to my mother talk about “Confucius Rong let the pear”, understand a little “brother and brother respect” reasoning. Once, I looked at my own red pota, and then looked at my elder brother’s, and then took one out and returned it to my mother, saying: “I can’t eat so much, this is for my elder brother”. For this reason, my mother praised me many times in front of my brothers and sisters, and often mentioned it to outsiders, just like a modern version of modesty.
When I first ate the cereal soup, I couldn’t wait to take a big sip. I didn’t expect it to be very hot, so I immediately wanted to spit it out, but I didn’t want to, so I had to hold it in my mouth, breathe heavily, and let it cool in my mouth. As a result, the heavenly plate (upper jaw) was scalded with a few pimples that looked like bubbles. The consequences were serious, and the lesson was painful, from which I learned a lesson: suffering makes people smart. After I finished the soup, I stuck my tongue out and licked along the side of the bowl (so much so that now I have the urge to stick my tongue out whenever I uncork the yogurt bottle), and then swished the bowl with boiling water to clean up the residue. After suffering the pain of being scalded, we soon summed up the “drinking jelly”: put a bowl of bao gu jelly in half a basin of cold water, wait for the edge of the bowl to become cold, first slowly drink an opening, full bowl of jelly jelly, then a cliff-like separation from the bowl rim, automatically collapsed into the mouth. A bowl of drinking, bowl like water washing, smooth and clean.
There was a time when the food supply was particularly tight, coarse grains have become scarce. So, coarse grains take a back seat, “melon vegetable generation” on the scene.
The “melon” is ground into the powder of Tu Fu Ling (dried root of sarsaparilla), the elegant name of the “generation of food”, soon became the protagonist. Steamed buns are mixed with a lot of Poria powder, date red, eaten in the mouth like chewing fine wood chips, a little cut throat, but this is not a matter of hunger than the stomach, at all. Although the red buns are not as durable as the white mud (Guanyin soil), but at least a little bit of nutrition; although it can cause bloating and stuffiness, but not like the white mud, completely indigestible, until the person is propped up alive. Therefore, compared to the rural people eat all the grass roots and bark, and then to swallow the white mud, the city people can have red buns fruit, considered “lucky”.
The main dish is white stemmed kraft. The canteen pot, cooked every day, everyone’s rice bowl, every day was patronized. I heard that the rotten cowrie, eat more will be poisoned, but this is only “heard”, we around the people have not been hit. After all, then want to eat a sea of cowhide dishes, can only be a luxury.
After the release of the movie “Honghu Red Guard”, every mealtime, students will knock the rice bowls clanking, singing “Honghu water ah long and long, the hearts of the people towards the dining hall, pick up the bowl to play three two ah, there is a bowl of cabbage soup”, flocked into the large dining hall. The speed of eating is comparable to those “dry rice people” who are only passionate about food nowadays: with the vigor of finishing a pot in one breath, the bottom of the bowl will be seen in a moment.
The snacks were taken from the campus.
There are several large acacia trees on campus, and when spring arrives, the white flowers are all over the branches, and the fragrance is overwhelming. The heart of the fresh acacia flowers contains a little sweet water. We were hungry and often did not wait for the acacia flowers to fall to the ground, so we climbed up the tree, picked a bunch of acacia flowers, shuttle down the tree, pointed up the mouth and sucked. I heard that acacia flowers mixed with flour pancakes are delicious, but at this time, each family’s right to use flour and oil, control in the hands of the pot of rice. So, even if the flowers fall on the ground, we can’t get interested in picking them up.
The slope is full of flourishing trees, which used to be the umbrella of the sun, but now the fruit of the belly. The leaves of the tree, hairy and thick, beyond the tolerance of the esophagus, are generally used to feed the pigs. The flowers of the tree are not pretty, but they are edible. In spring, the male tree, dangling light green “long mulberry”. We picked it up, passed it over in boiling water, kneaded it into the flour and steamed it into baba, which was soft and sticky and quite good, but that was after the big pot of rice was cancelled. In the summer, the female tree is covered with small red lanterns, which attract people’s mouths. Because the tree is high and not easy to pick, I only fracture like a neck, and so it became a free fall, and fell rotten and dirty, as the tofu fell into the ash jar. But as long as it didn’t embrace the dirt wholeheartedly, I would pick it up and stuff the clean side into my mouth. The sweet sap, not filling the stomach, but can temporarily quench hunger and thirst.
The seeds of the sycamore tree (commonly known as tung wool pea) can also fill the hunger. The hairy pea is pocket-sized, with the shell and core, only the size of a pea, rather than the thick branches and leaves on which it rests. Peel off the shell, its core is only green beans big. Because of the oil content, hairy peas are quite fragrant when fried. It’s just that frying these mini beans takes firewood and coal. And it does not bear much, to get enough to fry a pot, need patience, so the family rarely fry once. I heard that raw food is poisonous, but I still pick up a handful when I have time, put it in my pocket, peel a few, and stuff my mouth.
There is also a small grass that grows close to the ground, the stalks are purplish red, looks like sugar cane, chewed with a slight sweet taste. When I was hungry and dizzy, I would quietly pull a few of these “miniature sugar canes”, wash them and put them in my mouth.
Walking the black market
The potluck meal ate about half a year, the decadence is showing, can not continue. Finally, in the superior revocation order and people’s complaints, the end.
The rice bowls of the people returned to their families, and in the face of the limited supply of food and oil, the various “food shaving” measures and ideas in the minds of ordinary people were stimulated as never before, and the eight immortals crossed the sea to show their talents.
The free trade (then called black market), which was absolutely forbidden in the past, sprang up from all corners of the city, and the government turned a blind eye to it. Affluent people, finally found a place to pass the extra money, have flocked to the black market, to buy food several times or even more than ten times the price of the ticket limit. Because the market is called “capital”, sesame officials or general party members are afraid that if they are discovered, they will be accused of “not taking a firm stand and promoting speculation”. Therefore, they go there, a bit like “ghosts into the village”, sneaking around.
My family of six, all rely on my mother’s salary as a high school teacher to support, no money left over to the black market, but there are three exceptions.
The first time, my mother took me to the black market near the Dayanggou vegetable market with ten yuan she had managed to save, to buy boiled salted duck eggs. My mother picked six eggs and gave them to the lady who sold them. Fearing the scourge of the “grasping spirit” (hungry pickpockets), she put the eggs together and covered them with a piece of cloth. My mother counted the money and was about to hand it to her. Suddenly, a dirty hand in and out of the cloth sheet, such as the wind and lightning, a salted duck egg in seconds no shadow. The mother has not yet regained consciousness, the mother and a hand grabbed the mother’s hands of money. Because the salted egg is put by the hands of the mother, the mother of the heartache then and the mother theory. But that ama has been through the business, not to mention, she depends on this for a living, can not afford to lose, necessarily every cent. So, she turned up an octave and her mouth was raining. As an intellectual mother, not good at arguing with people, which is her opponent! After a few rounds, the strength and weakness of the situation became clear. Mother had to admit her bad luck, put away the five duck eggs, dragged me by the hand and left in a huff.
The second time, my mother took us to Xiaoshizi to eat the famous “Jiuyuan” buns. During the famine, all food outside the rationed supply of tickets was overpriced. The “Nine Gardens” buns were 0.6 yuan each and the bone soup was 0.5 yuan a bowl. 0.6 yuan sounds cheap today, but before the famine years, meat buns were 0.08 yuan each and 0.6 yuan could buy a big pumpkin. Small buns and large pumpkins, the volume is like a small rabbit and an elephant, the gap is huge. But at the moment, the little buns in my eyes, is simply a cute doll. My mother bought us each one (buns and soup), so that we can only watch the rich people go in and out, more or less satisfy our stomachs. We couldn’t stop staring at the fragrant buns and couldn’t let go of them. Until my mother said “it’s not good if it’s cold”, we broke off a small piece with our hands, carefully put it in our mouths, and then solemnly swallowed it after the bun crust turned pure sweetness under the effect of saliva.
Although the “Jiu Yuan” buns are more elegant than ordinary buns, but unlike the latter, a small bite off a small half, but still missing the core. The meat filling enough buns, after the stomach, from the mouth to the stomach, meat fragrance lingering back, exhale, burp, can let the people near the smell of meat aroma. We couldn’t drink the bone broth, which was as white as jade, but at first, we dipped it in our chopsticks and licked it in our mouths, and only later, we used small spoons and sent it to our mouths little by little. That was the happiest day of our lives. For a long time after that, my second brother and I were immersed in a long reminiscence of that meal.
The third time, my mother led my older brother to run an errand, and by the afternoon, the two of them hadn’t eaten lunch. The first time, my mother bought a high-priced bun for my brother. Brother just put the bun in his mouth and took a bite, and then a whirlwind blew by. When he came back to his senses, the bun in his hand has no trace, fixing his eyes on a look, only a short distance away “to catch the essence of” the flying back. The good thing is that he still has the strength to shout, “Hey, my bun! My bun!” His voice, deplorable and frustrated, echoed across the street, drawing sympathetic glances from two or three passers-by who were used to seeing him.
Candy and pastries were also available in the state-run food stores, but they were all ticketed, and money was no object.
The cakes were two taels per person per month. A family’s pastry ticket can buy one catty and two taels a month. The candy cakes bought with the tickets, two a month, it feels like the heart is flowing honey. At that time, my mother rarely took us to the street, but whenever we went to the candy store, we would look through the glass window, gulping our mouths and peeking in, and the peach cakes and honey twists inside were “poetry and faraway places”.
One day, my mother took me to buy sweets and cakes that were available with tickets. After leaving the store, my mother broke half a sugar cake and handed it to me. I counted the sesame seeds on the surface of the cake and unconsciously took a few steps away from my mother. I was about to open my mouth to chew on the cake when suddenly, “Give me some to eat” came from behind me, a small and deep voice. I was startled and turned around to see a middle-aged man in work clothes and white hair standing behind me, staring hungrily at the cake in my hand. I instinctively covered the biscuits with my hands and quickly followed my mother. That scene left an indelible impression in my mind. For decades, every time I remembered the pleading eyes and hoarse voice, my heart ached vaguely.
Candy was one tael per person per month. Every time my mother bought hard candy, she put it in a jar on the table and on Saturday night, each of us would share two of them. We were too conscious to steal them. Once, we unfolded the candy paper and found the surface of the candy wet and naked. It turned out that the second brother did not control his own mouth, the last few remaining candies peeled off the candy paper, secretly lips, and then returned to the owner intact. A few days later, we found that the bottom of the small candy jar a few “light dongdong sugar” (unrefined imported Cuban sugar, brown. After the candy, not wrapped in sugar paper, wrapped in a layer of coarse granular white sugar), like being washed, almost sticky as one. In the face of our puzzled eyes, the second brother is painful, straightforward, “my lips”. At this time, the second brother, as long as the sugar can touch the lips, regardless of whether he is embarrassed. We know the character of the second brother, as a last resort, will not be so “open and honest”. When we all asked our mother to forgive him, she did not reprimand him and spat out with a sullen face: “There must not be a next time!”
My mother usually went to the Huashangyu candy store not far from home to buy candy and confectionery with tickets, but once she went to the Guan Sheng Yuan in Jiefang Bei. She heard that when the Huashangyu candy store opened in the morning, a man was found lying on the ground, eyes wide open, dead. By his side, there were some scattered cookies, the cardboard box containing cookies, the cookies were missing a lot. This hungry and panicked man must have gotten into the store in the middle of the night, ate a lot of cookies and didn’t drink any water, and as the cookies slowly swelled up in his stomach, it burst him alive. “Poor thing! He died without knowing how hard it was”, my mother said while sighing.
Hunger was like magic, and soon we were so thin that we lost our faces, especially me and my second brother: our faces were like knives, the corners of our mouths seemed to reach the roots of our necks when we smiled, our arms were like chicken legs, and our bodies seemed to have only flesh and skin left except for our bones. In class, my eyes would glance out the window, and when I saw a yellow leaf floating down, I would think: if the floating down was a piece of bao baba, I would be at ease; when doing homework, my hands would tremble slightly, and the words I wrote were more like ghosts drawing peach charms; when walking, my feet were like stepping on cotton, one foot high and one foot low. The most uncomfortable thing is the stomach, “goo goo” constantly screaming, a rare time to drink a little more cereal soup, a sour burp, but do not want to spit out the sour water, swallowed, accidentally choke themselves again. Later, the stomach began to cramp like the stomach of the leg, a burst of pain, so that people can not slow down for a while. And intestines, when hungry, feel like there are small worms crawling inside, itchy.
My older brother is the only “strong man” in the family, taking care of all the heavy work. My family lives on the second floor, and the water and kitchen are downstairs. The family’s daily water, basically by the older brother to carry a twenty-odd pounds of water buckets, from more than twenty meters away from home to carry back. In summer, the family’s bath water, need to run back and forth five or six times. There was no downpipe in the room, so he poured the bath water by using a large wooden basin to carry it downstairs. During the famine, he was so hungry all day that his hands trembled when he carried the bucket and his legs shook when he carried the wooden basin. It was the age of eating long meals, nutrition can not keep up, less than a year, his eyesight declined sharply, sitting in the back row of class, completely unable to read the words on the blackboard, had to be equipped with glasses.
The black market trading of various commodities was a buffer for the city’s tight supply of goods, and the prerequisite for having them was having enough money in your pocket. At that time, the average monthly living expenses of ordinary families were more than ten yuan per person, and poor families even only a few yuan, want to buy these high-priced food, counting with their fingers, but also understand enough. Those who are relatively well-off, even for the mouth to spend money, but the money can not catch up with the “black market” price increases. Later, it is the bottom of the box with a few rich families, but also gradually feel shy in the pocket.
As long as there is still a breath of air, “fight hunger” will have to use their brains. Not enough to eat, and no money to shop in the black market, people in distress, embarked on the road to self-reliance.
Digging wild vegetables
The initial road to self-reliance was to dig wild vegetables in the suburban countryside.
Every star day, the three brothers and sisters each carried a backpack with five buns of cereal flour and went to the river in Daxigou to take a river boat to the north bank of the Jialing River. After crossing the river, they would walk a few miles to the Wulidian area for “treasure hunting”. Because of the thin rice in the morning, the three just crossed the river, the stomach will be empty. Thinking that the steamed buns will be eaten sooner or later anyway, eat early and enjoy, so not waiting to start work, brother and sister will be when the lunch steamed buns chewed up, the result from noon to night, are hungry.
The three of them came to the roadside of the field, the bottom of the ditch on the slope, holding small knives in their hands, eyes wide open, searching all the way, picking out the wild vegetables one by one from the soil, one pocket by one pocket, uprooted.
The ground lettuce (shepherd’s purse) shape as its name. It grows close to the ground and bursts into the ground. The leaves are small and dark, it is fragrant and slightly fresh, which is the best wild vegetable. When you see the ground lettuce, brother and sister will be overjoyed, quickly go forward, carefully pick out with a knife with the roots. A trip to dig up enough ground vegetables would mean a meal of vegetarian buns for the week.
The clear-cut vegetables are attractive. Its white body seems to be favored by the rain and mist. It tastes good with flour and pancakes. But, each person only two two vegetable oil per month, Qingming vegetable and extra “eat oil”, so, pancakes can not be its turn. But it and flour steamed into pancakes, sheepish but become chewy.
Empty-headed vegetables also as its name. From the main stem to the branch stem, all hollow. The light green leaves are stretched out vividly, and the white flowers on top are like small parachutes that open. It is big and attracts people’s attention, and is often dug up by those who arrive first. It is not bitter, sour or fresh.
Amaranth is fleshy all over. The stalks are purple-red and the leaves are green, which makes it attractive. It is very popular among mothers because of its ability to clear heat and detoxify the body and its medicinal value in one dish. It tastes sour and has to be blanched with water before it can be eaten. We ate it as if we were chewing hawthorn, but we also enjoyed it.
Wild amaranth has an organic look. The light green stalks and leaves are so nutritious that you can guess at first glance. It grows fast and does not let the treasure hunter pluck the effort. Its taste is not comparable to that of ground vegetables, but it is also pleasant to the mouth.
The wild parsnip has a unique shape. The light head is white and round, and the green leaves are long and thin, typical of a developed mind and simple limbs. It is a good idea to mix it in the dishes to enhance the taste, or directly sprinkle salt on the rice, are pungent and fragrant. Whenever my sister came back from digging for wild vegetables, as long as there was a handful of wild onions in her backpack, we had the feeling that the fruits of happiness were falling from the sky.
Brother and sister “treasure hunt”, can follow the teachings of the masses not to take a needle and thread, but also occasionally make small mistakes. Once, when he saw a small lotus at the edge of the pond, he thought it was the remnants of a missed harvest, so he reached out and plucked it, thinking he had found a great deal today. Who knows, the root just pulled out of the water, a farmer came out of nowhere and caught him red-handed. It turned out that this was the root that the production team had just planted, and the members of the community had already set up a net here to guard against it. When he was taken to the production team headquarters, he saw a room full of people in a meeting, and his heart was fuming and his legs were shaking. The production captain asked him to write an examination, he truthfully stated the facts, but also dug deep into the root of his thoughts, said “resolutely corrected, never repeat the crime”, and in the review, wrote that he was a student in a class of junior high school 41. The first thing you need to do is to sign your name.
The elder sister could not find the elder brother, followed the path, while looking for shouting. I came to an old house, but I didn’t expect it to be the team headquarters of the production team. She guarded the gate, and kept calling “brother”. The production captain saw that big brother does not look like a thief, “confession” attitude sincere, and is a teenage child, he did not want to plunder the gods for such a trivial matter, and let big brother go. Out of the door, the elder brother forced calm, waiting outside the door of the elder sister, although I do not know what happened, but is already the legs playing flash.
Although the elder brother was released, but the heart is still hanging, afraid that the review sent to the school and affect the examination, if so, the cost of the road to self-reliance is also too high point. Anxious for more than a month, finally did not see movement, only to breathe a sigh of relief. He was already timid, and after this disaster, he was so scared that for many years afterwards, he took a detour when he saw the pond root.
The torment of hunger inspired my brother and sister’s obsession with digging more wild vegetables, and they spent a whole day in the countryside. The heat and the long hours made the three older children, who were less than 14 years old on average, weak in the arms and legs and yawning all the time. So they combined work and rest, sitting on the edge of the ridge, lying on the hillside, listening to the stream and watching the countryside.
Once, when my brother and sister were sitting at the edge of a small river ditch, they suddenly saw a small snake crawling up the rocks along the river. Then look, a small bird pestle there, not moving. “Cauliflower snake bites down on the lack of pieces (small earthy frogs) to create sin”, the tragedy is right in front of you. But the bird is pretending to sleep, see the situation is not good, “fluttering” to escape.
Under the warm sun, my brother and sister lay down and went into dreamland, and not much later, they were all crispy and itchy. “Leechji leechji ants, invite your father-in-law to come and eat gaga”. It turned out that the ants had gathered seven aunts and eight uncles to treat my brother and sister as gaga (meat), and they were gnawing on it happily. Previously, I had only heard of “overrate shaking trees”, but I did not expect that the ants were also hungry and daring to gnaw on human flesh in the year of calamity.
When they were tired and rested, my brother and sister would play the game of “lawsuit”. We pull a handful of lawsuit grass, take one of the strongest, each Ò a small ring, and then respectively, their own grass, from each other through the grass circle, each pull their own grass to pull hard. The winner of the lawsuit is determined by whose “lawsuit head” (grass head) is not decapitated (grass head is separated from the grass stem). The winner, the thumb on the tip of the nose, the youngest finger vertical straight, smugly shaking back and forth, a series of “I should buckle! My turn!”. The loser, with the words “I’m the one! The loser, a mouthful of “my grass is too thin, again, again”.
Sometimes, when it was hard to find wild vegetables, my brother and sister would make up a small grass cage with official grass, catch two green grasshoppers or dingding cats (dragonflies) and put them inside, and bring them home for my second brother to play with. Because of the poor technology, they made up the cage, as “deflated sand pot”.
Later, my brother and sister found a small river ditch, you can get “ten thousand years 䱗” (a small fish seems to never grow), they made a fishing net with wire and gauze, in the small river ditch downstream, with mud dike, leaving a small opening in the middle of the embankment, the net, waiting for the fish to throw themselves into the net, in tin cans to take home. The more experience my brother and sister had in fishing, the more they had, and every Sunday they dug a trip back to the wilderness and basically had a harvest of about half a pound. My mother used flour and small fish, fried them into poi, and we could not eat them every day on Sundays.
During the famine, people in the city were given monthly food rations, but rural people, who lived entirely on the sky, were not so fortunate. Therefore, wild vegetables are also the farmers’ hope to fill their stomachs. The good thing is that the rural suburbs of Chongqing mainly rely on vegetables to supply the city for a living, so the farmers have not quite reached the point of digging wild vegetables to live. Otherwise, the city people all go to the hustle and bustle, farmers how embarrassed? Even so, the growth rate of wild vegetables can not catch up with the digging speed of the city people. Gradually, the wild vegetables on the north bank of the Jialing River became more and more difficult to dig. Several times, brothers and sisters work all day, each back only a small half of the rattan, into the home, is very lethargic.
Had to, brother and sister turned to the south bank of the Yangtze River. Three people first crossed the river by ferry, and then over the mountains, to the Huangjiaoya area for treasure. But where are the same, there are people looking, digging, most of the day down, brother and sister harvest very little. Once, three people walking back along the river, suddenly found the bean curd factory in the river bank sprouting beans, leaving a very small amount of mung bean sprouts did not sweep away. The three of them bent down and picked them up one by one, and actually picked up half a handful.
The next week, they were ready to cross the river to pick up the bean sprouts again, walking to the Shen Xian Dong Street, a sliding pole one end and two people, carrying a person wrapped in rags half of the body. When the sliding pole passed in front of them, the bystanders said that he was “starving to death”. The first time my brother and sister glimpsed such a thin and bony person up close, fear and uncomfortable, did not swallow the bun at noon.
Later, my brother and sister went out earlier and earlier, often just after dawn. After they left, from the evening, my second brother and I would run to the top of the slope not far away and stand at the intersection to look down the slope. In winter, the sun closes early, about five o’clock, the sky began to darken. After the darkness is over, the moon is hazy, the wind is shaking the branches, and the light of the street lamp, if bright or dark, wavers like a ghost on both of us.
The long hillside road is quiet, and occasionally a wildcat howls piteously. The two of us are clutching at the heart, the longer we stretch our necks, the more round we open our eyes. At the end of the road, finally saw the heads of people, one, two, three, stepped on the stone staircase, is head down and slowly climbing the slope. We both rushed down, reached out to pick up the rattan, not to give, turn around, darted home, “knock knock” upstairs, “Mom, they’re back!” My brother and sister entered the house, hurriedly wash their hands, on the dinner table. My mother was busy serving hot red potato and vegetable soup, and sat close by to admire the trio’s eating.
There was an urgent need for wild vegetables. My brother and sister found out that there were vegetable boats from Dazu, Tongnan, Hechuan and other places along the Daxigou River. After unloading the vegetables, the boatmen would dump the remaining rotten leaves in the bottom of the cabin into the river. The “fight hungry” is alive again. Sunday afternoon, the two sisters went straight to the river, two or three hours after waiting for the rabbit, can pick up most of the back packets of white (cabbage), yellow rice white (cabbage) outside the leaves. Although the leaves are old, and some have rotted, but peel off the rotten part, but still not lose good ingredients. When they are lucky, carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes and taro, which are so small that they can be ignored, will take care of their eyes. But this “raw food way”, soon spread one by one, ten by ten, and gradually, the river was crowded with people. Later, the rotten leaves, even if you charge money, you can not pick up. After several unsuccessful attempts, they both gave up.
Not only digging wild vegetables, we also pick up ready-made wild vegetables.
There are a lot of yellow kudzu trees on campus, they have weathered the storm, thick stem and deep roots, branches and leaves. The yellow kudzu tree is the home of the earth fungus, after the rain, a few days, the trunk of the tree will sprout a fungus. After school, my brother and sister loved to scout under a few trees that were especially good at growing fungus, hoping to get something going, and sometimes they could really pick half a book bag. Today, the fungus is a “regular” in Chongqing people’s hot pot dishes. In famine years, it can be eaten, even if it can not be compared with eating meat, but also counted as half meat and half vegetarian dishes.
The common kitchen in the new third building of the school staff dormitory was supported by several wooden pillars at the bottom, resembling a hammock, and several large tree stumps were hidden downstairs and nearby. One day, my sister found a bunch of wild mushrooms at the root of the tree stump, like a dense, crowded mass, similar to the golden needle mushrooms sold in the vegetable market today. She pulled a handful, took it home, and asked her mother, “Can I eat it?” My mother was not sure, so she added garlic to the wild mushrooms, boiled them once, poured out the first water, boiled them again, and then let us eat them after she was sure they were not poisonous. The wild mushrooms were so delicious that putting them in my mouth was like tasting the phoenix marrow and liver. After that, as long as there is a rainy day, big sister will run to the hammock to check. Fearing that the mushrooms would be “extinct” if she plucked them by hand, she used a small knife to cut them little by little.
And goose grass. The head pointed body round small green leaves, stone cracks, under the foot of the can, next to the toilet, wall nook …… where there is soil which home. The goose grass belongs to the authentic weed family, before it was pure pig feed, but at that time, has long been honored on my family’s dinner table. During the famine, the school kept a feedlot and fed a few pigs to prepare for the New Year to improve the food for teachers and students. The school sent students to the rural suburbs to cut grass for the pigs.
Every time she cut the grass, she worked especially hard, cutting a back full of rattan, and pressed and pressed on it, so the teacher was quite impressed, praising her active and willing work. However, every time she carried the grass to the feedlot, the feeder Zhang old man after weighing, but the weight reported is always lighter than other students. The teacher was puzzled: I saw you cut a large back of grass. Why (how) once the scale is less? It turns out that the big sister directed a “halfway robbery”. Nearly to the feedlot, she took out her schoolbag, secretly stuffed full of a bag, first sent home, and then the remaining grass in the back of the sedan, with the hand picking loose, high up, still looks full when. Later, cynical of stealing like an enemy of the elder sister, laughing and laughing at herself “I also have a shameful history.
The vegetarian to pick up, the meat can not miss. One hot summer afternoon, thunder with a heavy rain, the sky smashed down. My mother hurried back from the teaching room and saw that my elder brother was not at home and asked, “Where did your brother go?” We replied, “He said he went to exercise. My mother was suspicious: “Where did he go to exercise in such heavy rain?” So she shouted several times at the basketball court, but there was no response. Half an hour or so later, the wind stopped raining, and the drenched, panting brother came back with a sparrow in his hand.
Once he arrived home, he excitedly lowered his voice: “Tonight there is meat to eat”. It turns out that he went to the soccer field to run, see a sparrow, about the rainstorm knocked unconscious, can not fly but keep on flying. Big brother chased a gas, the sparrow fluttered for a while, the poor sparrow, but eventually became the palm of the big brother. For this reason, the elder brother received a lecture from his mother: “Do not know that thunderstorm days, people walking in the open, very dangerous? Of course big brother knows. But, in order to let us get some meat, he could not care about this for a while.
In today’s thinking, big brother a scholar, regardless of decency, dare to sparrow. What kind of spirit is this? The spirit of hunger and cold!
Great production
As it became more and more difficult to dig up wild vegetables outside, people turned to internal digging, and each family launched a mass production campaign.
The three playgrounds of 41 middle schools are all hillsides to the east. The slopes are full of open space, except for the long oleander and the trees. This condition, which is not generally available in the city, gave the families of the staff living in the school a stage for self-reliance. So, it became a popular choice for everyone to grow their own vegetables with a hoe, especially for families with poor economic conditions and a little labor (with children in middle school), and they were attracted to this path of overcoming difficulties together. My family is located halfway up the hill from the first playground (basketball court), and we have many children, so it is natural that we are not left behind in growing vegetables.
In terms of growing vegetables, my brother and sister know a little bit about it. It was in 1954 when my family moved from Datong Road in the central district of Chongqing to Tuanshan Fort in Beibei District with my mother’s teacher training school.
Since the area near the house was a hillside, my mother wanted to save money, to cultivate the labor habits of my brother and sister, and to prevent my elder brother from slipping and falling when he went to the toilet to empty the urine jar and went down the stone staircase. So she used her summer and winter vacations to teach her brother and sister how to grow vegetables. My mother dug an earth pit and put a tile jar in it. Every morning, my elder brother lifted the urine jar and poured the “real gold” accumulated by the family overnight into the jar to compost it. My mother also took my brother and sister to dig out two small plots of land under the slope in front of the house to plant cowpeas and greens, and she also held a rope in front of the window to plant loofahs. My mother was too busy to take care of the vegetable patch, and my brother and sister were less than ten years old and had limited physical strength, so the vegetables planted at that time did not grow well. But my mother’s initiative, not only to let my brother and sister know that planting vegetables can not use fresh organic fertilizer, but also to save the dinner table vegetables on a temporary break in the emergency.
When the famine came, the little experience that my brother and sister had accumulated when they were young came in handy: digging pits, burying tanks, composting; clearing out a few plots of land under the weedy slopes; scattering vegetable seeds, watering every day, fertilizing every other day; using recess to go home to steam “cans of rice” in between, to look around the vegetable patch; asking my mother if I don’t understand, asking rural students in my class …… soon, my family’s vegetable field is lush and green, thriving to give hope. Before lunch or dinner, we carry a basket to the ground, pinch the tip, pick the leaves, break the stalk …… joyful, happy.
The “naive” cowpeople, give some manure will be romantic. The green leaves of the vegetable skin, seemingly oily enough, quite appetizing, but actually contains alkali, very scraping oil and water, half a bowl down, feel consumptive scraping belly. The water used to boil the kraft vegetable can be used to wash clothes, to make up for the lack of soap (each person is supplied with a quarter of a company per month with a ticket). Second sister diligent love of cleanliness, see the kraft vegetable water bubble clothes, without saying grab to the scrubbing board, “brush brush brush” is a burst of vigorous rubbing. Less effort, good growth, can eat can use the kraft vegetable, is always the protagonist of my family vegetable field. Lovely “cowhide”, practical and not blow, famine years of lifesavers! Only, every time we eat cowhide vegetables, we will look forward to: when can eat a bowl of fatty lump of stewed daikon.
Vine vine (hollow cabbage) planted under the slope near the tap and pouring water, because of the abundant water, grow watery. We couldn’t afford soy sauce, so we ate the watered-down vine with a sprinkle of salt. The growth of my vine let some people who did not work for it. Several times, we found the vegetable field like a dog chewed, the young tip to the long vine, no trace. When we saw this, we slapped our hands on our foreheads and said “Oh my God!”
Amaranth is not as anxious as kraft, and grows quite patiently. About because it absorbs the essence of the soil more, the taste is the best of the dishes. Whenever you eat amaranth, the most important thing you can’t throw away is the soup, the red soup with the rice grains, which fills your eyes and moistens your stomach. Every time I eat amaranth, I shave half a bowl of rice with amaranth juice, then I swish the bowl with boiling water and crane my neck to drink it dry. It’s so moist, like drinking red wine now.
And red campion leaves. What used to be pig feed is now a nourishing vegetable. At that time, we used it to stew dry rice, green leaves mixed with white rice grains, like pearls scattered in the pile of emerald, but because of the lack of oil, it tasted earthy. Even so, it was a great pleasure to eat this kind of rice. About the red campion leaves take up the nutrients of the red campion, the leaves are dense, the fruits are sparse, and there is a crooked look. Occasionally, we were happy to find a “big” red campion weighing about two or three taels, as if we had found food stamps.
In addition to growing vegetables, we also planted squash.
Growing pumpkins is a lot less work, as the seeds are scattered and there is basically no need to go through the woo (care). Pumpkin leaves are hairy, but if they are not too old to chew, we will cook them and eat them as vegetables. Pumpkin blossoms have a sultry aroma, so pick them, blanch them, and mix them with flour to make pancakes, which are very tasty. My elder sister taught me to identify the male and female pumpkin flowers, telling me “never pick the female flowers, otherwise you won’t be able to harvest the pumpkin”, and also taught me to pick the male flowers and flick the pollen into the female stamen: “so that the pumpkin grows big”. Every time I pick a pumpkin flower, I will pick while singing “pumpkin vine yellow flowers, yellow flowers, blowing the golden trumpet, who comes to me to pollinate, pollinate, I give it the honey ……”
Planting loofah to build a shelf. Big brother in the slope behind the house, the effort to build a few. One day it rained heavily, the shelves were all washed down, and the seedlings were beaten to pieces. Brother then built a few more, but also see the day to carry a small bucket of manure, up only half a foot wide road, to fertilize the loofah. After a month or so, we finally picked the fruit. Under the careful care of my brother and sister, the loofahs grew more and more vigorously. That summer, water loofah soup every other day on the dinner table.
But no matter what the melon, a little bigger, you have to be careful of someone taking it by the hand. After school, the second brother, like the children’s group members guarding the news tree in the movie “Chicken Little Letter”, took a copy of the “Juvenile Illustrated” or “Young Pioneers” newspaper, climbed up the slope, read the book and newspaper while guarding the melon.
Self-reliance has basically solved the difficulty of eating vegetables. However, the limited food ration still made people hungry and burned their intestines. At that time, to buy food, one had to go to the grain store with the grain book. Because of the matter of the belly, so the adults have developed a fire eye to identify the stars of the scales, and some people even accurate to the extent of being able to identify the missing two taels, missing half a catty.
Although hungry, people’s workload did not decrease. Mother in addition to almost all day classes, but also tutoring morning and evening self-study, write lesson plans to prepare lessons to listen to, correct homework to give exams, meetings to listen to reports political learning …… she was too busy, it will be the task of food purchase to the elder brother. Once, the big brother bought back 20 pounds of flour, the mother handheld bag of flour, how to weigh feel the weight is not enough. The mother wanted to go to the grain store, honest brother, felt it was his fault, said to his mother “I do not eat for a week, you can make up for the lack of weighing noodles”. But it was a month’s worth of food for the whole family! How could you let your brother go hungry for a week? Mother scolded big brother “too 㞞!” Take your brother straight to the grain store. Luckily, the grain store verified that there was indeed a five pound shortage. Admittedly, make up for it. “The tile leak is not a night rain”, is finally a false alarm.
The family grows the vegetables, from the ground to the mouth, without a ring of cooking smoke. After the sudden death of my father in a car accident, my mother, in view of the sharp decline in family income, led us to internal cutting, external open source. Gradually, half of the fuel for cooking at home came from the coal we bought, and half from the firewood we collected and the coal we spent.
When we lived in Beibei, we used firewood to fry food at home. On Sundays or summer holidays, my three brothers and sisters, who attended Mutual Aid Village Primary School (an elementary school attached to Chongqing Normal School), were led by my elder brother to Jinyun Mountain to shave pine wool and collect pine cones.
After moving to the city, I thought the road to eat the mountains was broken. I didn’t expect that 41 Middle School, located on the Jialing River side of the Yuzhong Peninsula, was located in a mountain depression, and the trees on the slope were dense, so we had a place to pass on our family tradition of collecting firewood. Every Sunday, my brother and sister like to go for a drive in the woods, and when it is windy, they rush out of the house eagerly, pulling broken stems and collecting dead branches.
After my brother and sister went to dig wild vegetables, my second brother took over the firewood collection job. But he did not look at the small branches, but was interested in the old roots, and often went into the woods to look for them. I did not think that the old tree roots are the beard of the land master, the second brother dared to stroke, the land master since not comply. That day, he hollowed out and planed, a lot of work, the old roots pulled out of the soil, he also fell on his back, the back of his head was knocked out of a large blood bag. Fearing his mother’s reproach, he did not dare to squeal when he returned home. It was only when he went to bed at night that his second sister found that his head had become a “kai-san brainshell” (axe-like, i.e. from the forehead to the back of the head is very long) and told his mother.
The small woods, with limited dead branches and leaves, but the “sky is the limit”. 41 middle school is mainly resident students, the canteen, water room, bath hall, feedlot chimney, day by day smoke clouds rise, cinder is also frequent. Whenever my two sisters learned that cinders were coming out of the student cafeteria in the afternoon, they would be waiting for them early. There were many children picking up coal flowers, both inside and outside the school, mainly the children of the school staff, but we were the only family among the children of teachers.
Every time when the cooks came to the cinder pile with their baskets full of cinders, everyone was scrambling to be the first, and the two sisters always rushed to the front, even before the cooks pushed down the baskets, their hands reached into the baskets of still-hot charcoal flowers. For this reason, both of them had their hands burnt with blisters. They were able to carry back two large baskets full of charcoal every time they shaved hard and tried their best to pick it up. Since I was in elementary school, I followed them to fight the cinder pile. Later, picking up coal flowers almost became the main theme of my spare time.
During those starving years, I really have to thank the 41st high school campus for giving us the convenience of picking up and providing us with the conditions to grow vegetables. In those years, my mother worked early and late, while we dug wild vegetables, collected rotten vegetables, planted vegetables, picked up dead branches and shaved coal flowers …… For a mouth to feed, the whole family fought!
Don’t starve
When the Great Famine began, I was just over 5 years old and had not yet felt the taste of hunger. From the age of more than 6 years old to eat collective canteen, hunger in me, as if the storm suddenly came. It was just that, as the days of hunger grew longer, the abnormal life seemed to become normal, and I thought that this was what the days were like. Until one day, my mother asked me to go to the canteen to see if there was meat for sale, and only then I “woke up from my dream” (came back to my senses): there was meat again!
There was no meat in the cafeteria that day, only boiled eggplant and fried vine vegetables. Disappointed, I heard my mother ask me loudly from the slope, “Is there any meat in the pot?” At the risk of being reprimanded by the kitchen chef, I stood on two overlapping halves of a brick and stuck my head into the vegetable window. After being convinced that there was none, I was about to leave when I turned my head and saw a teacher carrying a bowl of boiled eggplant. Like a savior, I ran out of the cafeteria and shouted at my mother, “Mom, there are beads of oil on the eggplant, beads of oil on the eggplant. I stared at the bowl of eggplant and couldn’t move my feet until my mother repeatedly shouted at me “come back, come back, don’t buy, don’t buy ……” before I left the canteen reluctantly. Three years do not know the pattern of oil flowers, at that moment, counted a few oil stars, too attractive to me.
Soon, I heard that some side dishes were openly available and at affordable prices. When my mother heard about this, she quickly led us to the Kuangshengyuan food store on Saturday night and bought two pounds of mixed candies (jingguo and mingguo) in a big way. My mother did not allow us to eat on the road, and she did not allow our mouths to move when we chewed. Moreover, she had a firm grip on the right to distribute the food and tried to be fair and reasonable. On this day, however, she made an exception. When we left the store, my mother opened the paper bag and let us take it ourselves. But people are careful not to be small, we both spread five fingers and grabbed a handful of hard. We laughed at each other “pig’s mouth”, you hooked me a foot, I rewarded you a punch. That night, the stars were particularly bright, the moon was particularly round, my mother was extraordinarily gentle, and we were extraordinarily happy.
Later, one day at dinner, my mother told us that the whole school staff met in the afternoon and listened to the document that the central government had held a meeting (7,000 people) and that life would soon improve and that we would not go hungry in the future. I was not interested in what my mother said, nor did I understand it. The only thing I cared about was whether or not I would be able to eat mixed candies every Saturday night.
Years later, when the family looked at old photos and saw the sharp-tongued face, we said, “The photo studio must have taken a wrong picture!” But my mother said, “‘Taken out of shape? Why didn’t you notice it at that time? That’s how you were then! Especially the two youngest, originally weak, so thin that the skin on the wrist, a tear high, Yishi is eight years old, only 34 pounds, I am worried about feeding can not live.
60 years have passed. We in the city, because of the limited food ration, but still fresh memories of hunger, those who had to do as they wished in the countryside, what kind of hunger suffering? This is the majority of the city people at that time have no way to know, and can not imagine. All I know is that after the large-scale youth migration to the countryside in 1969, both my brother and sister, who were stationed in remote mountainous areas, and my husband, who settled in the rural suburbs of Chongqing, heard a basic fact from the peasants: the production team they were in had starved to death, and some families had even lost their families; the production team held a reminiscence meeting, and the peasants opened their mouths with “three years of Natural disasters” starvation experience …… Therefore, when I am glad that I finally survived those years, but also understand that in those days, there are more people, than we live more difficult, more difficult.
Nowadays, I have long said goodbye to hunger, and when I see the wide variety of food in food stores and supermarkets, I always think: if only I had these things to eat when I was young or even young, how good it would be!
Farewell, holding the long line of food purchase certificate, farewell, digging wild vegetables of the back of the bamboo, farewell, composting dung fertilizer of the earthen tank, farewell, loaded coal flowers of the handpan …… may they, while fading with the smoke of history, to remind future generations from time to time: the horror and abomination of hunger.
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