I wrote this title with a shiver down my spine.
The reason is that not long ago I saw an article on the Internet, the author with angry emotions, fierce words, condescending, quoting scripture, refuting a popular social argument: “pot rice to raise lazy people”. Imagine, others just production team members as “lazy people”, and still received such a counterattack; I here will be production team members as “thieves”, is not sitting waiting to be bricked?
In fact, the title phrase is by no means my invention.
It was in the mid-1970s when I graduated from high school and returned to the countryside to work. One day in the field cutting sweet potato vines, in front of many members of the community, our production leader and a male member of the community quarrel. It was common at that time for production team cadres and members to quarrel and even scold each other. During the quarrel, the captain disclosed and accused the member of having stolen the collective property. The member felt justified, but still did not show weakness, argued: “Theft, so what, which member of the production team is not a thief?”
This, I heard a breath of cold air.
According to this logic, the production team members are “thieves”, I am also a member of the community, am I not also a “thief”?
I grew up in the countryside, and around the age of ten, I used my holidays to participate in the collective work that I could do. For example, in the summer to collect wheat ears, and in the autumn to pick cotton, in order to be able to earn a little work points, to help parents to relieve their worries. When comparing these two types of farming jobs, collecting wheat ears under the scorching sun, dry mouth and unbearable heat; picking cotton in the autumn, which is high and orderly, requires only small hand dexterity and is relatively easy. In addition, to do these two kinds of farm work, according to each person to pick up and pick the catties to record the work points, the more you do the number of more work to get more. “Work points, the life root of the community members”, since childhood, there is a personal experience and a deep imprint.
My hometown, rural Jinan, is known as the township of grain and cotton in Shanxi Province. The summer wheat harvest, called “dragon mouth to take food”. The superiors stressed the need to “take the grain as the platform” and “return the grain to the warehouse”, but after the wheat was cut down, there were many ears of wheat scattered in the fields, so some members of the community would pick them up privately and secretly take them home. When I was in elementary school, there were a few wheat holidays, not to pick up wheat ears, but to participate in the brigade and school to organize the “red sentry” team. The selection of the “red sentry” requires high ideological awareness, good moral character, good academic performance, love of the community and so on.
The task of the “red sentry” is to divide three or four students into groups, the whole day to guard the village in the south or north of a village entrance, home in the middle to eat and take turns to replace, responsible for supervising and checking the return of the community members to the field, they are not allowed to take an ear of wheat home. The brigade gave us work points according to the number of days of attendance. Why do we let schoolchildren do this kind of thing? Because elementary school students are naive and obedient, and do things seriously and without emotion.
We are just like the children’s group members who stood guard to check the road stripes in the base area during the war, and guarded the village entrance every day, staring with a pair of vigilant eyes, keeping an eye on the grass-cutting baskets carried behind the community members going to the land. Once they found suspicious, they immediately went up to stop them and ordered them to put down their baskets and accept inspection. Knowing that there are “red sentry” guards at the entrance of the village, individual members still have a fluke, hidden under the baskets to pick up the ears of wheat, covered with a layer of grass camouflage, trying to muddle through.
Whenever the “Western-style scene” was uncovered on the spot, we sent the seized “spoils” to the nearby production team’s wheat field. And those who picked up the wheat ears of the community, not ashamed, some laugh, some quite unconvinced, mouth cursing, carrying empty baskets away. The onlookers were accustomed to this, and did not condemn indignantly, everyone watched the fun, laughing and dispersed. You say, which private pick up the collective wheat ears of the community members, is considered a “thief” it?
During the day, each village entrance are “red sentinels” guarded. At night, there is a brigade security unit assigned to the security guards patrol. These guards are responsible for the security work of the village, one of the tasks is to “protect the green”, that is, to look after the collective ripe crops. Every spring, we school children after school, carrying baskets to the field for the pigs and sheep to cut grass, often secretly pick the young sprouting alfalfa, take home mixed vegetables to eat. One is to try a fresh, the second can be wild vegetables instead of food. The alfalfa is planted by the production team to feed the livestock, after sprouting by the community members again and again savage picking, can not grow normally, will inevitably affect the livestock feeding.
The “youth protection” guards drove us away, he ran to the north, a group of students in the south began picking again, playing “hide and seek” with each other. In the fall, we would also steal the fruits and vegetables from the group, avoiding the guards. If a child steals from a neighbor’s house, the adults are very strict when they find out; parents usually do not criticize too much for “stealing” collective alfalfa melons, and some even praise their children for their “ability”. When the opportunity arises, the adults will also pick alfalfa and melons. You say, we “steal” alfalfa and melons of the small community members, is considered a “thief”?
At that time, cotton was a national purchase, the collective production of cotton was sold to the state to support the textile industry and national defense construction. At the end of the year, each member of the community only one or two pounds of lint, the whole family spinning and weaving cotton, simply not enough to use. Families have to marry a daughter-in-law married girl, make new bedding new clothes, more need a lot of cotton. Cottonseed oil, but also mainly by the state to buy, each member of the community can only get two or three cottonseed oil a year to eat. Its miserable situation can be seen.
“Before the Cultural Revolution, Wenxi County in southern Jin had a national model of cotton planting labor, named Wu Jichang, once with Dazhai’s model Chen Yonggui, wearing a white sheep’s belly towel on his head, went to Beijing for many meetings, received by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other central leaders. Premier Zhou Enlai once instructed Wu Jichang in person to study the scientific cultivation technology of cotton. Mu Qing, the former president of Xinhua News Agency, wrote a long newsletter to promote Wu Jichang, a model cotton grower, titled “For the sake of Premier Zhou’s instructions”, which was listed as a model news work and had become a sensation.
I later read American history books, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the white plantation owners in the southern states of North America, paid to buy the black people trafficked from Africa to America as slaves, because their estates in large quantities of cotton planting, the urgent need for male and female labor. The abundance of cotton not only filled the pockets of the farmers, but also produced a large amount of cotton shipped across the ocean to England, further promoting the prosperity of the British textile industry, thus promoting the wheels of industrial civilization of capitalist society.
The process of growing and managing cotton was extremely complicated, and the work of skimming old leaves, smearing oil buds, and pinching the tops needed to be undertaken by patient and meticulous women. My mother was tall, strong and handy. Like my father, she was born in Xiangning County, not far from Wanrong County. She learned cotton planting techniques and spinning and weaving skills from local women in her twenties, after she settled in Wanrong County. Because of her dedication, she did better than the local women and was praised and respected by the villagers.
The “pot rice” not only accustomed to some members of the community to eat lazy, and the vice of thievery spread like a contagious disease. In the autumn, male laborers are busy sowing wheat, the task of picking cotton relies mainly on women and schoolchildren on autumn break, just like the women in Henan and Anhui who now travel long distances to pick cotton in Xinjiang. When picking cotton, many female members of the community use leg bands to tie the mouth of the two pant legs, and then carefully select the best cotton, quietly tucked into the crotch of the pants and blouse chest. Each picking a cotton, all over the body bulging, enough to “steal” two or three pounds of seed cotton. When I pick cotton, more than once I saw with my own eyes some female members, touch and feel to stuff cotton inside the clothes.
This phenomenon, leading the picking of cotton production team women captains know, but do not want to offend people, often take a blind eye to close an eye attitude. Sometimes really can’t stand to see, they shouted over and over again: “Everyone pay attention to it, today’s closing time, to search one by one!” This bluff, only to scare the cowardly women, the bold as usual “theft.
On a few occasions, the women’s director took real action. When the women one by one carrying large and small bales of picked cotton, back to the production team warehouse line up to weigh the cotton to record the amount, the women’s captain called on a few female helpers, to drive away our young boys, the female members of the community to search one by one, each time “seized” a lot. However, those women who were searched for cotton, do not think they have done much scandal, only to admit their own bad luck. Others, each other’s heart. The next day on the ground picking, as usual, there are women “sneaky”. You say, those “theft” of cotton female community members, is considered a “thief”?
My mother also with the female members of the community, picking cotton every day, but never did such nasty things. There have been “good people” private advice to her: you can earn a few work points just by picking cotton, quietly fishing for their own points, the accumulation of a small amount of money, private can sell a lot of money. My mother laughed but did not say anything, still I do my own way. She did not “steal” cotton, nor did she ever report others. I think this does not show how high my mother’s political consciousness. Because she knew that my father was wrongly classified as a “historical counter-revolutionary” and was being criticized for being a whole lot of things, and as a wife, she couldn’t be guilty of petty theft and give people the blame, and then bring trouble and disaster to her husband, to her children, and to the family.
When we were eating “pot rice”, each of the 12 production teams in our village had four or five breeding rooms, where the collective mules, horses, donkeys and cattle were raised. The candidates for the breeders were all male members with high ideological awareness, good character and knowledge of livestock. In addition to eating grass and hay, there are corn, sorghum, black beans and other staple feed. In order to prevent the feeders to take a pocket of feed back to the feeding room, not all fed to the livestock, “theft” home, for family consumption. So, the team cadres had an original idea and deliberately mixed several kinds of grain together when distributing feed. In this way, even if the feeder steals the feed home, the family can not eat.
However, as the saying goes, “There is a policy at the top, but there is a countermeasure at the bottom”. The feed that was mixed together could not be eaten by people, but could be fed to pigs. At that time, the fat pigs fed by the community members were purchased by the state, and a pig could be sold for dozens of dollars, and a small amount of cloth and grain stamps could be obtained as a reward. Most of the members’ families did not have enough food to eat, which had spare food to raise fat pigs? Most of the pigs were fed with grass and pot water, and it was difficult to feed a big fat pig with soup. In contrast, many feeders of livestock in the production teams can produce a big fat pig every year, the reason for this is self-explanatory. Here to borrow a line from the skit “Kung Fu” Fan Wei: “Prevention is impossible to prevent which! You say, those “theft” of livestock feed to feed the pigs of the breeder, is not a “thief” it?
Our production team has several warehouses, respectively, to store the rations, seeds, feed, fertilizer, agricultural tools, etc.. These warehouses, some are collective houses, some are collective rented houses of the community members, my family’s north room was occupied by the production team for more than ten years. Three big iron locks were hung on the doors of the warehouses, called “three locks”, and the three keys were held by the custodian and the other two “honest” members elected by the masses. Need to open the warehouse for grain distribution and other matters, three people must be present at the same time to open the lock, in order to open the warehouse door. This mutual restraint mechanism, the purpose is to prevent the custodian alone in charge of the key from cheating. You say, this kind of distrust of the custodian’s practice, is not considered to be the prevention of “thieves” it?
“Lazy people”, generally refers to people who do not like to work. “Thief”, an explanation is the person who steals things. Compared to the two, “lazy people” than “thieves” also slightly better. The “pot rice” work big coaxing, not to work, do a good job, do a bad one, seriously dampening the enthusiasm of the members, no doubt caused by “lazy people” pile. So, many members, or can say quite a lot of members, why do “thieves” it?
The reason for this is that one is afraid of hunger, afraid of poverty. “Pot Rice” when a good year production team wheat yield of only about 200 pounds, the harvest of wheat almost all sold to the state, per capita rations of more than 100 pounds, including a portion of corn, sorghum and other returned grain. Members of the community throughout the year need not eat fine grains, coarse grains are not enough to eat, some people see the opportunity to steal the collective food and cotton to meet the urgent needs, with Confucius “the book stealer is not stolen” is probably the same reason.
The second reason, they stole the collective property, the turn to each member’s name, only nine cows a hair, the surface, and others no direct damage and great conflict. In this way, most members will not risk offending people to report and stop, but formed a “brace the bold, starve the timid” situation. The thick-skinned members of the community to steal the hand to take advantage of the thin-skinned have to dry eyes.
Another reason is that the legal system is not sound. Sometimes the “thief” was caught by the brigade guards, brigade cadres to deal with, ordered to carry or pull a flat car of stolen goods, hand knocking a small gong, paraded through the streets. As a result, it is not necessary to “kill the chicken to make an example of the monkey”, even the “thief” himself also feel no big deal, there is no guarantee that the next “theft”.
As the old saying goes, “The granary is real and the manners are known. There is a problem that has always bothered me. If the “pot rice” when the members of the community theft because of a “poor” word, today the rural life is generally affluent, but, when the highway truck overturned, the farmers of nearby villages rushed in droves to grab the scattered goods, there are still people driving The police came and couldn’t stop it. This strange thing should not happen, is not to find the reason from the “selfish and greedy” side of human nature?
In 1976, Mao Zedong died, the Gang of Four was arrested, and Hua Guofeng came to power. The central government again convened a national conference on agricultural learning from Dazhai, propagating the need to build several Dazhai counties across the country. However, the more the slogans of Dazhai were shouted, the more agricultural production failed to go up. The members of the village could not get enough to eat and had no money to spend, forcing some of them to take the “evil capitalist path” of “speculation”.
That was when I graduated from high school and worked as a janitor in the production team. A few days in a row, I found several young and strong male members of the team, working in the field, no energy, noon break down against the cliff and sleep. Ask the reason, they are all mysterious. Suddenly, one night, the village “task force” sent from above and the brigade party branch, the Revolutionary Committee held a general meeting of the community, at the meeting publicly named our production team that work “sleeping” male community members, ordered them to stand in front of the theater “show the public”, and then “on the line” to criticize, the charge is “speculation”, “disrupting the socialist cotton market “, “take the capitalist road”.
It turns out that these members of the community to use the night, on bicycles to run to 60 miles away from the rural areas of Linyi County, privately from the hands of the community to buy back cotton, sneakily sold to earn a little difference in price. I do not know which member of the community to the brigade cadres reported the matter, so the east window, the offenders were caught in a net, hidden in the home has not sold the cotton was also confiscated. After the criticism meeting, these several backward cotton trading community members were imprisoned in the brigade held “Mao Zedong Thought Study Class”. Our production team leader was responsible for the leadership of the matter, and was suspended from duty for inspection.
In those years, “Mao Zedong Thought Study Class” was very popular, that is, the cadres and community members who made mistakes were locked up in a room, losing their freedom of movement, three meals a day sent by family members to eat, focusing on time to study the writings of Chairman Mao and newspaper editorials, check their mistakes and improve their ideological awareness. The “study class” was sometimes held for more than a month. The few members of the cotton peddling community, family origin are poor peasants, think that the brigade cadres will not do anything to them, study on the study, just can not participate in labor during the study period to earn points.
The “task force” in the village ordered the production leader who was “suspended for inspection” to write a written inspection. Although he was proficient in farming and commanding and scheduling production, he could not read or write a few words and begged me for help. I spent a day and a night to write out a dozen pages of check for him. The content is nothing more than a newspaper editorial, to scold themselves, what does not actively study the writings of Chairman Mao, do not read the newspaper, only focus on production, do not look at the direction of the line, the mind is not taut class struggle this string, sorry for the organization of their own training and education …… finally to some statement, to change their ways.
The check was submitted to the village “task force” leader to see, asked him: “This check was written by you?” He answered truthfully that he found someone to write it for him. He also asked, “Is this your true ideological understanding?” He answered yes. The “task force” leader said, “Not bad, the understanding is still quite profound, in the future, we must learn from the lessons and grasp the general direction of the revolution and production.” Within a few days, his “suspension” was lifted and he was “reinstated”. The key was that he was not allowed to be the captain of the production team during the busy autumn harvest season, which involved the feeding and clothing of hundreds of people, who would take care of it?
As for the members who attended the “study class”, they were locked up for ten days and released. At that time, in the state unified management of commercial circulation, “speculation” is a not insignificant crime. However, it also depends on who the crime happened to. If the family composition is bad, will be sentenced to imprisonment. These members of the community are all very poor peasants, who can do anything to them?
I wonder, they went to Linyi County to reverse the cotton, from a family member’s home to buy secretly, those members of the family’s cotton from where to get? Could it be the same as I saw the cotton picking women “theft” of cotton? If so, it fully illustrates that the female members of the “crotch hidden cotton”, in the “countryside of grain and cotton” in rural Jinan is a common phenomenon. Production team members which is not a “thief”? It is not an empty cave.
There is a song in praise of the people’s commune: “The commune is an evergreen vine, the members are the melon on the vine.” The evergreen vine first withered and rotted, the melon will still be good?
In the summer of 1978, as soon as I finished taking the college entrance examination, I immediately returned to the production team to participate in labor and earn work credits. It so happened that the production team leader and a watermelon farmer dispute, the old farmer a gambling, leave the melon garden, want to give the captain an embarrassment. Who knows the captain came to a bull temper, not to buy his account, by hand sent me to look after the melon garden.
At this time the watermelon is about to ripen, the melon garden and two old farmers, one is a melon grower Feng Da, before liberation in Shaanxi side of the business, can talk; the other is the production team of the poor association leader Wen Da, don’t look at him silent, not amazing, before liberation his family fled from Henan to our village, no piece of tile, no place to stand, had to carry the village landlord long labor. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the market. Master Wen was willing to work hard, no price, and had a high reputation among the masses. The village people discuss, Master Wen suffered from the lack of culture, otherwise, with his qualifications, has long been in the city to do a big official.
A few hundred meters long melon garden a slip set up three melon shed, I and Master Feng, Master Wen each guard a, daytime shift watching melon, night three people are sleeping in the melon garden, to prevent the village and outside the village of young people from the crop into the melon garden theft watermelon. The theft of watermelons is not too important, the most fear is to enter the melon garden trampled many melon vines, endangering the growth of other watermelons. I stayed in the melon garden for more than a month and could pick and choose watermelons to eat every day. On the eve of the watermelon will be all down the garden, Master Wen quietly told me: you pick a few good watermelon, send home in the dark, to the adults at home to eat. Master Feng also advised me so.
The two nights, Master Wen and Master Feng took straw baskets, respectively, to their respective homes to send two trips to the watermelon, they are busy from spring to summer in the melon garden, full total also took seven or eight watermelon only. The family can taste the watermelon, save money to buy watermelon to eat. In the end, or a “poor” word. Wen, Feng two masters have long since passed away, I am here to shake out their embarrassing story, I am sorry, sorry, may the spirit in heaven do not blame. You say, even the bitter old party members, the poor association leader also see the opportunity to “steal” collective watermelon, we can still believe who is not a “thief” it?
I didn’t do what they said at the time, and I didn’t report their behavior. It’s not that I have a high level of awareness. In fact, the idea is very simple, feel good results in the college entrance examination, will soon go to university to say goodbye to the countryside, there is no need to “steal” a few watermelons, a “thief” reputation. Afterwards, Master Wen said to everyone: “Yin spectrum this child really dry!” It means that I had the opportunity to take advantage of the collective, but I did not move.
Practice has proved that the collective “pot-luck” production model, breeding, manufacturing a “thief”; in turn, a “thief” and bite, eating away at the collective results. The “youth protection”, “red sentry”, “three locks”, “parade”, “search”, “search”, “search” and “search”. The “body search”, “study class” a series of practices, are the politicians racked their brains for “thieves” intimidation and discipline. However, without the right remedy, big “thieves” and small “thieves”, male “thieves” and female “thieves”, are still popping up all over the place. The “straw baskets hide the ears of wheat”. The “straw basket hiding ears of wheat” and “crotch hiding cotton”, is not the extreme antipathy and silent confrontation of the production team members to the collectivization system?
“Which member of the production team is not a thief?” The words of the member who quarreled with the production leader, like the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, ruthlessly tore open the gorgeous tablecloth of the “big pot of rice” in the People’s Commune and exposed the “singing and dancing” behind. The “road has frozen bones”. This “pot rice” really can’t eat, when a dozen families in Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province, put down their handprints to set up the contracted land of life and death, the fire of a star soon formed a prairie momentum, destroying the collectivization of the mouth of the “cauldron”, a couple of years. The hard-working and kind-hearted people not only solved the problem of food and clothing, and gradually running towards the road of prosperity.
In the 1990s, the farmers in my hometown restructured their industries and planted apple trees on the yellow land that had been planted with wheat and cotton for generations, and every year, many families in the village earned more than 100,000 yuan and built two-story houses. I looked at the apple grove, and asked my childhood friends: “Are there any ‘youth protection’ guards in the village now? Are there any more ‘thieves’ stealing apples?” They laughed out loud: “Hey! Every family produces tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds of apples every year, and when the harvest season comes, they have to pay people to pick their own apples, so where do they go to steal others’?”
What does the before and after comparison tell us?
August 31, 2016 drafted in Lingkong Book House
Revised on September 2, 2016
Revised again on January 17, 2018
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