From January 1969 to December 1972, I settled in Liujiawan Village, Taixiangsi Brigade, Guanzhuang Commune, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, and worked as a farmer for four years.
- Crying and leaving Beijing
January 13, 1969, was an important day in my life.
On December 21, 1968, Mao Zedong issued the highest instruction: “It is necessary for intellectual youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor peasants”, and the climax of going to the mountains and going to the countryside was set off in Beijing. In my junior high school class 641, there were about ten people who went to Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Shanxi, joined the army and stayed in Beijing.
Being a farmer was not my original intention, I was only 17 years old and in my second year of junior high school, but under the tide of the times, individuals had no choice. During the first two years of the Cultural Revolution, we went to the countryside to work in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing and met with the youths who had gone to the countryside before the Cultural Revolution, and as soon as we entered the house where they lived, a cloud of flies flew up from the stove. I hadn’t clearly thought about what I wanted to do in my life, but I definitely wanted to go to college, otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen the university secondary school when I applied for the secondary school.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, my classmates followed the example of Qin Shi Huang and burned all my middle school textbooks in the dormitory. Looking at the ashes still smoking in the basin, I was gloomy and thought it was an ominous sign, but I still had illusions that the bad luck of not going to school would not really come to me, so I did not sign up for the first few groups of people who went to Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and Shanxi to join the rural areas. However, now, with the instruction of the Great Leader “the latest and the highest”, in the era of “loyalty depends on action”, what other choice do you have?
Before I left, around December 1968, I rode my bike to see my father (Uncle Wu Lei, a geologist, joined the “January 29” movement at Peking University in 1935 and joined the People’s Pioneers and the Communist Party; in 1943, he and Nan Yanzong discovered uranium for the first time in China; in the 1950s and 1960s, he directed the geological team of Guangdong Province to discover the largest uranium mine in China at that time. (the largest uranium deposit in China at that time, 211 Very Large Uranium), resigned from him. He was still locked up in the cowshed at that time.
During the Cultural Revolution, my father was greatly affected. I remember most clearly that he was asked to write an account, and he wrote out a draft and we transcribed it for him. He wrote drafts and we transcribed them for him. He wrote endlessly, endlessly, draft after draft. He was asked to write out the events of 30 years ago by year, by month and even by day, and if he forgot a little, and the rebels heard a clue or two from others, they said he was not honest and asked him to rewrite. When I think back to this, I close my eyes and I see him sitting in front of a dim desk lamp, frowning and remembering.
When I transcribed his account material, I was repeatedly amazed at how he had such a good memory and could actually recall things from more than 30 years ago by day. I didn’t know how much that was destroying his mind and spirit! At that time, the rebels gave him several big hats such as “reactionary academic authority of the bourgeoisie” and “filial son of the landlord class”, raided his home, suspended his salary, and put him in a cattle shed (during the Cultural Revolution, such people were called “cow ghosts and snake gods” and lived in a cattle shed). (During the Cultural Revolution, people like them were called “cattle, ghosts, snakes and gods”, and the place where they lived was called “cattle shed” for short).
On the day I went there, it was snowing lightly and the sky was gloomy, so was my heart. His cowshed was the original library reading room, and the big table where people used to read books was now a bed for cows and ghosts, and there was a small table next to the bed, on which my father was lying to write an account of the material. There is a pack of cigarettes on the table, he has quit smoking for a long time, but now he is smoking again. The ancients said, “The water is more flowing when you cut off the knife, and the sorrow is more sorrowful when you drink.
I think, through the smoke to drive away sorrow is no better. Moreover, what kind of cigarettes are they, 9 cents a pack of “sheep”! Inside all the hard stems, smoke two mouthfuls to extinguish. The poor quality smoke permeated the dimly lit barn, making people almost suffocate. Dad was happy to see me, perhaps the only bright spot in his dead life. He asked me to sit down, asked me about my family, when I was leaving, whether I had enough clothes with me, and said that it was very cold in northern Shaanxi, and asked me to bring his leather coat. I didn’t take it. Dad is nearly 55 years old, I don’t know how much longer he will live in the cowshed, and I don’t know how much longer he will continue to live in this situation of being worse than a pig or a dog, so I should leave the leather coat to him.
Before going to the countryside, Dad’s salary stopped, only 14 yuan a month to live, Mom did not have money to prepare my luggage for the countryside, sold the only remaining wedding gold ring robbery, at the time, only sold a few dozen dollars. After I left, my sister and sisters went to the countryside one after another and had to prepare their luggage, but there was no more money to sell, so my mother had to sell the bicycle I rode when I was in middle school.
On January 3, 1969, I suddenly felt sick and had a fever and headache, probably because I had a cold, so I went to the Beijing People’s Hospital to see a doctor, which was still in the old hospital in Baita Temple. I remember that I was in the first consultation room at the right-hand corner of the entrance, and there were dozens of people waiting at the entrance to see the doctor, and when I was waiting in line, the people in front of me heard that I would have to go to Shanbei in two days to jump the queue, and they said, “You see it first, you see it first.” They let me go to the front of the line. The doctor was a female doctor, and she kindly advised me to take precautions when I saw her, which warmed my heart and made me feel that there was still warmth in the world. A few days ago, I had a medical checkup before going to the countryside, and it was at Haidian Hospital. Even those with curved spines and missing ribs passed.
I rode a borrowed tricycle with my luggage on the way to school and was proud of myself for riding so well on my first ride. However, I was so happy that I bumped into a bicyclist near Wei Gong Village and bent the beam of his bike, so I had to pay 50 cents to fix his bike.
I had to pay him 50 cents to fix his bike. I said I would leave on January 5, but for some reason I postponed it to January 13.
On January 13, 1969, I left Beijing and took a train to Tongchuan. My father was still in the cowshed, and my mother and sister went to see me off. We departed from Beijing Station, and the station was crowded with people.
Once I got on the train and settled in, I stood at the window and listened to my mother’s instructions. When the whistle blew and the train started to move, there was a sudden outburst of cries from both sides of the car that rang through the clouds. The parents and siblings under the train chased after the slow-moving train, pulling the hands of their relatives on board, unwilling to let go for a long time, as if they were separated from each other and would never see each other again.
My mother also cried and ran after the train, as if she wanted to say something to me again, to look at me again, to pull my hand again. The people under the train tried desperately to run forward, and the people on the train tried desperately to hold the hands of their loved ones under the train, but the train went faster and faster, finally separating the tightly held hands.
The great poet Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty described the scene of soldiers going to war and their loved ones seeing them off in “The weeping of those who are holding their clothes and feet on the road is straight up to the dry clouds”, but that was during the war period. But that was during the time of war and chaos. Now it is a time of peace, but why does it make people feel as if they are in a world of chaos and confusion, and that they will never return home and see their parents? This scene gave me a great shock, I have only seen it once in my life, but it is deeply and permanently engraved in my brain.
At that time, my young heart, to shed tears in front of people for shame, think that is very humiliating, after the car started, in order to show the manly man for the family, I also laugh with the students, but deep inside, but also secretly grew inexplicable fear and anxiety. Later, whenever I recalled this scene, I always thought of my mother, and I could not help but tear up, or even cry in pain. My mother is now far away from me, my son wants to raise his parents, and it is no longer possible to be filial. Life, life, why so much helplessness!
- From Beijing to Liujiawan
On January 13, 1969, we left Beijing by train. The train was a special train for young people, and more than 1,000 people on board were all young people. Perhaps the young people’s hearts can’t hold sorrow, soon after driving, many people have got rid of from the sadness of leaving their relatives and saying goodbye to their hometown, and started to talk and laugh again, and from time to time, I also played the small accordion I brought with me. As for the future, I didn’t really think much about it. I didn’t know where to go to the countryside and who to be with, but I thought it was arranged by the school or the Yanchuan County where I was going.
But soon, people started to combine freely. Some female students came to me and asked, “Wu Naihua, come with us.” Upon inquiring, there were a few sophomores who went with them. They were three years older than me, knew more than us, and were more sophisticated than us, so if we were with them, wouldn’t they be in charge of us everywhere? I didn’t want to control others, and I didn’t want to be controlled, so I didn’t agree.
Finally, the arrangement in Liujiawan was probably left after others combined, a total of 13 people, 8 of whom were the same classmates of the junior 641 class: Liu Yuandong, Duan He, Wu Naihua, Yin Qingping, Xu Ling, Jiang Wenjia, Xiong Xueling, Zhang Pujing, and Xu Ling’s brother Xu Quan, Zhang Pujing’s sister Zhang Puzhen, junior 642 classmates Yue Lin, and two girls from the Railway Annex, Fan Ping and Li Luping.
On January 14, 1969, the train arrived in Tongchuan via Xi’an, where we lived in what appeared to be a school, and at dinner, the uncle who served the food urged us, while serving the food, “Have one more white bun, one more white bun, further on, there will be nothing left to eat.” I didn’t believe it at the time, thinking he was exaggerating. After 1962, we no longer ate food substitutes in Beijing; when we were supporting the peasant labor near the school at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, we had enough steamed buns; when we were in the big cohort, we were able to eat rice and steamed buns everywhere. Now, will I go to Shaanbei and go hungry again like during the Three Years’ Difficulties? There was a big question mark in my heart. But from the serious tone of the cafeteria chef, I felt that I was not telling a joke, so I could not help but feel a slight chill in my heart.
After dinner, I was walking around the campus and heard the sound of a piano coming from somewhere, so I followed the sound and came to a classroom where a boy named Ma Xun was playing the piano in the same grade. I grew up envying people who could play the piano, and when I was a teenager, my parents saw that we liked music and bought us accordions, violins, flutes, xiao, harmonica and other instruments to learn, but I never made up my mind to buy a piano. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, I went shopping at the commission store in Caishikou and saw old German pianos for sale for 150 yuan and newer pianos for 250 yuan. I don’t know if they were the stuff of those who copied the materials and swept away the family, or if they sold them on their own initiative for fear of the notoriety of feudal capitalism.
On January 15, 1969, we took a one-day bus ride from Tongchuan to Yan’an. At that time, there were no concrete or tarmac roads, only dirt roads, and one car after another traveled on the loess plateau of northern Shaanxi, raising a sky of yellow dust. We rode in a big truck with a canopy, but the back of the truck was open, and as we walked, the yellow dust rolled over and poured into the car.
On January 16, 1969, we took a bus from Yan’an to Yanchuan, and the mountains we saw along the way were another sight, neither the rocky hills I had seen in Beijing or in the south when I was in tandem, nor the open “loess” on top that I saw on the road from Tongchuan to Yan’an, but hills like one big yellow steamed bun, but the edges of the bun were not The edges of the buns are not smooth, but like a giant’s hand grasping out a thousand ravines.
I ate lunch in Jiajiaping, and was given two cakes each, but no food. I took the cakes and wondered, whether in the school cafeteria or to the big crosstown, everywhere there is a meal and food, how to arrive in Yanchuan and not give food to eat? In fact, there were no dishes, but rather, there were no dishes for lunch in the Beijing sense, and there were only sauerkraut, which was placed in a big pot at the entrance of the kiln for people to take at will, but it seemed that not many people went to eat it. In my concept, only stir-fried and boiled vegetables are called dishes, while sauerkraut can only be classified as a savory dish, eaten with thin porridge at breakfast, while stir-fried or boiled vegetables must be eaten at lunch or dinner.
After lunch, the brigade walked from Jiajiaping to Guanzhuang commune by taking a small road over the mountain. I may not be too comfortable with the noon meal, stomach discomfort, take care of me with the luggage by car to go to Guanzhuang commune location Guanjiazhuang. In fact, there is a road to Guanzhuang, but there are no cars, I later heard that there were less than 10 cars in the whole county (I do not know if I remember wrong, now writing here, I still think this number is absurd), on the way, I lay on the luggage pile, viewing the scenery along the road, several places have pine and cypress branches built into the colorful door to welcome the youth.
At night we stayed in the village where the commune was located. I took out the semiconductor radio I had made and tried it out, and was happy to find that I could receive the stations.
On January 17, 1969, we walked from Guanzhuang eastward along the Qingping River to Liujiawan Village of the Taixiangsi Brigade, a 25-mile journey. I thought that even if the team did not have a tractor, they would drive a wagon to pull our luggage. I didn’t expect that the team was so poor that they couldn’t even send a donkey cart, but sent someone to pick us up from Guanzhuang with a frame cart, loading the luggage in the car, and people going with the cart.
After the team cadres gave their speeches, I also said a few words, just parroting the words that it was necessary for intellectual youth to receive re-education from the poor peasants.
In the evening, we ate our first meal after arriving in the village, eating noodles (helao), helping us cook is Qixing (a young man in the village) of the big (second voice, meaning father), pouring soup is yam shame. The so-called noodles are just a kind of noodles, nothing new, but the interesting thing is the way to do it: the big iron pot on the kang is boiling water, and there is something like a guillotine on the iron pot, but the guillotine is not grass but dough, and Qixing Da grabs a piece of kneaded dough and stuffs it into the hole on the guillotine bed, then drops the guillotine down and covers the hole with the wooden block on the guillotine handle, and then sits on the guillotine handle with his buttocks and wrenches his hands on the lower edge of the guillotine bed. Up and down with force, a strong pressure, a noodle from the guillotine bed under the hole leaked out and rolled down to the pot. The role of the buttocks occurred so sublimely that I was simply amazed and dumbfounded, simply overturning all my previous notions. Here, for the first time, I knew that in addition to hands, the butt could also cook.
- From student to farmer
Going from Beijing to northern Shaanxi was a big change in my life. To change from a student to a farmer, there were several hurdles to overcome in life: chopping wood, cooking, carrying food, buying coal, picking water, and drinking water, all of which were not missing.
Cutting firewood: Liujiawan village, where I went to the countryside, is located in Yanchuan County, north of Yan’an, which is mountainous, but neither trees nor grass can be seen on the mountains. In the sunset, this piece of red and yellow steamed bun mountain, as a landscape, the color is strange, the mountains are bleak and silent, indeed unique. But for the people surviving here, it’s not so poetic.
To live, people have to eat, and to cook the rice, you need fuel. In the local area at that time, the fuel could only be firewood or coal. The coal mine in Yongping, a hundred miles away, not just want to go, you have to have a car and livestock, the team went to the commune to pick us up are people as livestock, is the desire to have it? The only reality is firewood. Firewood is also divided into two kinds, one is the straw of crops, one is the firewood cut in the mountains. Straw has been divided in the first autumn, to cook can only rely on the firewood on the mountain. So, within a few days of going to the countryside, we four boys were ordered to go to the mountains to cut firewood.
It was a cloudy day, and the team sent a young man named Liu De to lead us to the mountain with a small stiff, a sickle, and a rope. When we climbed up the mountain, there was yellow land where the crops had been harvested, so where could we find firewood? After walking for seven or eight miles, we found some thin, soft yellow grass on a hill that had been abandoned for years, “This is it!” With Liu De’s greeting, we understand that this is the work of today.
This kind of firewood can be burned? Why not cut firewood? Although there are doubts, the work still has to be done. So bend down, even plucking with cutting, busy most of the day, each cut grass is only about twenty pounds, and the sun has been west, it is time to go home. We walked home with our first harvest of firewood on our backs, a little excited and a little confused: four people will have this much for one day, how many days will it take to burn?
This thin and soft yellow grass really does not burn, the days after, we went to the steeper slopes to cut firewood, cut the thorny Oh (date palm), lemon, in the rainy season, the lack of dry firewood, in order to do cooked rice, I even sorghum straw woven pot cover, lemon woven baskets, loaded grain mat tube split as firewood. But until the purchase of coal, the problem of burning firewood was basically solved.
Cooking: When we first went to the countryside, the team sent up Xingda to help us cook for a few days, considered to take us, and then, we cooked our own food. What to eat? We ate millet rice, millet porridge, bean noodles, corn cakes, steamed buns, pancakes, dumplings, buns, black beans and rice, yellow rice cakes, and so on. How do you do it? Rotating, 5 days each.
I’ve cooked in Beijing, but in northern Shaanxi, it’s not the same thing. You have to pick your own water, push the mill, pull the bellows, and pack your own firewood. The team sent people to the mountains every day to send food to the mountains, and when the food was collected, the person who sent the food stood in the middle of the village and shouted loudly, each family rushed to send the food, usually with a spoon or basin with water, millet soup and other drinks, and a cloth bag with dry food.
Water is poured in a large bucket, dry food in the basket. The person delivering the food picks it up the mountain with a stretcher. Thus, when working in the mountains, you can always see and taste the dried food of each family. The family is well-off, eating pure grain to do the dry food, that is, not mixed with bran, bran or grain leaves grain (fortunately, not yet eat corn cob meal like the three years of hardship). But most people, dry food always mixed with some chaff, bran or grain leaves, etc., even if the family is well-off people often eat this way, which is seen as a sign of living.
Because of the cooking is not sophisticated, I have also made a joke. One time it was my turn to cook, and Duan and the mountain labor. I do is “cry Lai”, is the lentils cut into sections, mixed with flour in the cage drawer steamed, steamed with chili, salt, sauerkraut juice and other seasonings to eat. The day coincided with the rain, the sky is still gloomy, I burned a fire for a while there is no dry wood, wet firewood into the stove just smoke not fire, simply do not cook rice.
The time is coming to send rice, my rice is not cooked, anxious to go around holding can burn things, the temporary unused sorghum straw woven pot cover burned, rice is not cooked, and pick something lemon woven baskets split open burned, rice is not cooked, and finally loaded with grain mat tube also one by one to remove the burned, the pot only up a steaming hot air.
At this time, the rice delivery man was shouting, so I hurriedly packed a box with rice boxes and delivered it. I took a long breath and felt relieved. But in the evening when Duan and returned from work, the lunch box to the table a drop: “See if you can eat?” I opened the lunch box, “crying” not cooked, can not eat. After a day of heavy physical labor, what is it like to be hungry? I felt sorry for myself. After asking, I learned that it was the old folks who gave some of this and some of that to keep him going.
Drinking water: I was born to drink water, but when I arrived in northern Shaanxi, I couldn’t drink water anymore. Why? Because sometimes you have to drink a large pot of water in one go, all the way to the throat, and sometimes you have to go a day without drinking water. Is it possible to be born with this?
When we first started working in the mountains, the villagers urged us to drink more water before leaving, although I still do not quite understand the reasoning, but before going to the mountains to drink some extra water, however, it is just a few more than usual, and then to drink more, not yet that habit. To the mountain, dry a work, began to sweat, despite the early spring weather, but soon feel the smoke in the throat, especially want to drink water, but the mountains there are loess mountains, the mountain simply no spring, to drink water must go down the mountain.
So in the break, I and the district Yanjia thirst can not stand, rushed down the mountain, ran to the river bank of the spring, a wild dunk, I counted, a total of 39 sips, think really can not fill the mouth to stop. And the district Yanjia said she drank 69 mouthfuls of water, really can do ah! After drinking water, we turned back to climb the mountain. Despite drinking so much water, but halfway up the climb was thirsty again. But immediately to start working, can not run down the mountain again to drink. Water is to drink, but others rest time, but I spent on the way up and down the mountain, always so, naturally feel tired. To be less tired, you have to drink more water before going up the mountain, as the folks taught.
In the days to come, I also learned to drink as much as possible before going up the mountain, how to drink more? It is to drink water up to the throat, and then a sip will spurt out the degree. I gradually became particularly able to drink water, back from cutting wheat, can be a large spoonful of cold water, or half a basin of millet soup. And thirst tolerance skills are getting bigger and bigger, drink enough in the morning, you can not drink water all day. After leaving the countryside, despite the availability of water at any time, but I seem to have become unaccustomed to drinking water regularly. In recent years, when I had a medical checkup, it was always said that I had high blood viscosity, so I don’t know if this habit from my early years had anything to do with it.
Picking water: The village of Liujiawan, where we were stationed, was located on a gentle hillside, and under the hillside was a small river, and there was a spring by the river where water flowed out from a crack in the rock. We take turns cooking, water is also given to the person who cooks, a stretcher, two iron barrels, filled with water has a hundred pounds, just picking water when the shoulder pain, but dry for a long time, the shoulder pressure out of the dead flesh, do not feel the pain. But when it comes to rainy days, especially rainy days, draught is still a big problem.
When it rains, the dirt road to the spring is muddy and slippery, empty body walking are easy to fall, let alone pick up two buckets of water. Once, in the rainy season, our water tank was at the bottom, and we were worried about the lack of water for cooking, when an old man picked a quart of water and brought it to us. This old man is good at drinking a little wine, so people called “old two”, like to Zhiqing’s kiln to string door, but do not talk much, just a simple smile, did not expect to observe so carefully, when we are at a loss, in the rain to send water, to solve our urgent needs.
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