Guliang Zhuan quotes Xu Miao as saying: the dead are said to be great hunger, the dead are said to be great hunger. It seems that “hunger” is more powerful than “hunger”, so there is a “great famine”.
The first half of my life, or my childhood and adolescence, hunger has been with me, become my permanent memory. Now I am still thin in my old age, apart from genetics, it may be related to the congenital lack of nutrition during the starvation years.
The hunger from 1959 to 1960 was horrible!
Originally 1959 along the Huaihuai area harvest was very good, at least that year the autumn grain harvest, sweet potatoes are very large, after the autumn harvest, you can also just grind out in the ground after the rough harvest left behind large sweet potatoes. But for some reason, before winter, the village canteen is almost out of cooking, occasionally notice to play rice, playing back the sweet potato thin rice or vegetable paste soup is so thin that you can see the shadow of a person, this mouthful of people can not share two bowls. Later learned that this is because Anhui scraping “communist wind”, the phenomenon of misrepresentation and pompous serious.
In those years, the majority of the grain collected by the production team was handed over to the state to complete the task of requisition, so the first level of pressure, the brigade even sent the militia to each household to search for members of the community’s private stash of scattered food to live. I remember clearly, one day the captain with a few militia to this courtyard brother (cousin), sister-in-law hid in the dung heap sealed a small jar of sorghum search away, blind sister-in-law crawling on the ground, crying and pleading voice is heartbreaking! Ten days later, big brother and sister-in-law died of starvation one after another.
The older brother and my father the same age, called my father small answer. My sister-in-law had lost her sight at an early age. The couple had been eating and doing good deeds and chanting scriptures all their lives, and they could not bear to hurt even an ant, but they both died of starvation at home.
Later, the home of the fourth brother (cousin) of the East House was also raided, searched a small bag of food, the fourth brother desperately to protect the food, was a few militia knocked to the ground half a day to get up. Soon after, the fourth sister-in-law and the fourth mother also died of starvation. (According to public materials, the cadres of the brigade were also helpless. If they could not pay the grain according to the regulations, they would be criticized at the commune meeting, and the commune leaders would be criticized by the county if the commune failed to complete its tasks, and so on. ……)
In the early spring of 1960, my brother and sister-in-law (cousins and sisters-in-law), who had adopted me, did not have a single grain in the house, so they could only feed the sweet potato vines and corn cobs to the sheep and grind them into flour and boil them into a thin soup to get by. As for sheep, chickens and other livestock and poultry, have long been killed and eaten. For a while, even sweet potato vine noodles are not available. Can only go outside to peel elm bark (the tree has not sprouted), to the ditch to dig thatch root, back to chopped boiled to eat, even the pillow in the buckwheat bark, sorghum hulls are eaten up. The youngest niece is only two years old, unable to go out to find food, starving skin and bones, lying on the doorstep all day long, unable to stand up. The family thinks she may not survive a few days.
Hungry, really hungry! Hungry all day long!
The adults said, “Man is a plate of grinding, sleep down and you will not be hungry.” But lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep, I was still hungry in my dreams, so hungry that I ate whatever I caught. When I woke up from hunger, I found that my mouth was clenched in the cold corner of the quilt.
At that time, my sister-in-law went to work in the canteen very late after dark every now and then, to make some food for the cadres of the social team who were meeting, and occasionally she could bring back a piece or half a piece of hot sweet potato that she could not eat. Sometimes I slept until midnight and was dreaming of what to eat when suddenly my sister-in-law’s soft call came to my ears: “Wake up, here.”
When I opened my eyes, my sister-in-law shoved a small piece of hot sweet potato into my hand (sometimes just a bite), and of course everyone in the family had a share. It smelled so good! Everywhere I went, I thought sweet potatoes were the best food in the world! Perhaps it was this way every now and then to get a bite of hot sweet potatoes, so that I and several nieces and nephews did not die of hunger, and finally survived the days of extreme hunger in early spring 1960.
Later, when I thought about it, it was fortunate that my father died in the spring of 1959 and left. Otherwise, a seriously ill father dragging a 13-year-old child, no matter how can not survive the 1960 hurdle, but both starve to death. Now that I am alive after the disaster, God still has some mercy on me! Parents in heaven, will also be slightly relieved, after all, one of their four children finally survived ……
Nowadays, it is hard to understand how a living person can easily die of hunger. Indeed, from starvation to death by starvation is a chronic torture process. From no food to eat to find everything to eat to fill the stomach, months of malnutrition, people will be as thin as a bone, this is the first stage. If you can no longer replenish nutrition, people will be swollen at any time, this is the second stage, then as long as you eat, you can still live. During the period of swelling, people are already extremely weak, and their ability to go out and actively find something to eat is greatly reduced. If there is still no food to eat for a period of time, the person will soon become dehydrated and thin, and become a dry corpse, this is the third stage. Dry corpse stage even if there is something to eat can not be absorbed, will certainly die: may fall down and die, may also fall asleep will not wake up. My elder brother and sister-in-law both died in bed.
In the fall of 1960, I entered junior high school, and now I think that under those extremely difficult conditions, my brother and sister-in-law allowed me to continue my education, which was more important than a mountain! Until I graduated from junior high school in 1963 and even went to teacher training next, the chronic hunger caused by insufficient food rations for students was still a real and tangible feeling, and it was a great test of one’s will to be able to complete one’s education while suffering from hunger!
I can’t remember how much the monthly food ration for junior high school students was, it was more than 20 pounds, and it was mostly coarse grains, and sometimes fresh sweet potatoes were used instead of the main food (maybe 3 to 4 pounds of fresh sweet potatoes topped 1 pound of grain). Breakfast and dinner every day to eat thin, mostly thin rice or vegetable paste soup. Each class a large barrel, one person spoon, each person can be divided into 2 to 3 bowls (eating fast to Sheng the third bowl, slow eating only two bowls), also eat a half full bar.
Eat dry lunch, each person a steamed bun or a nest, occasionally you can eat half a bowl of rice. Half a bowl of vegetables per person is basically boiled vegetables, less oil and less taste. Two hours after the meal, that is, after two classes, the stomach will be hungry rumbling. In the afternoon, during extracurricular activities, many students would quietly sneak to the school’s vegetable field where the harvest had been completed and grind out the roots left in the soil to wash or peel off the outer skin to eat raw to feed their hunger.
I remember shortly after entering school, a boy in the second grade bet that he could eat 18 bowls of vegetable paste soup at one meal. A few students in the class did not believe, risking their own hunger a meal, but also to bet to see if that student can eat 18 bowls, the results of eating to 12 bowls and then could not eat – 12 bowls! Now that I think about it, it’s really scary!
The school canteen was not full, and students who were better off at home would bring some dry buns, fried noodles and other dry food every week to supplement, or bring some raw sweet potatoes and rice to the school canteen for steaming, usually in the morning during recess to put the raw sweet potatoes or add water to the rice bowl into the steamer designated by the school canteen, and the canteen would steam the bun or rice at noon, and then the cage of sweet potatoes and rice would be steamed. Since my brother and sister-in-law’s family had a large population and a small labor force, the rations were not enough to eat, so I did not have the luxury of bringing dry food from home to school, and had to brace myself when I was hungry. Whenever I saw other students in the dormitory taking out dry rations to eat, I consciously avoided them and hid outside to read a book.
In the spring of 1961, many of the students and teachers suffered from oedema, a disease caused by chronic hunger. After being diagnosed by the school doctor, they could get a nutrition ticket and receive a bowl of very thin soy milk in the school staff canteen after dinner every day with the ticket, which was said to be effective. Although I was thin and weak, I did not suffer from oedema, so I did not have the chance to receive a nutrition ticket, but I was fortunate enough to drink a few mouthfuls of the soy milk received by a sick classmate.
If the three years of junior high school was “hunger hard”, the years of secondary school after 1963 and the first few years after joining the workforce can be considered “continuous chronic hunger”.
The teacher training school I attended was more than 100 miles away from home, and it took me two days to walk. During the four years of secondary school (one year of assignment was postponed due to the Cultural Revolution), I basically had to survive and study by eating in the school cafeteria. The monthly food ration for teacher-training students was 30 catties, and the cost of food was 8.8 yuan, so each meal was allocated to about 3 taels of food and 9 cents, which was not much better than the food in junior high school. Besides, I was 16 years old when I went to the teacher training, and I was in a period of physical development, so my hunger was no less than that of junior high school.
Compared with the whole day hunger muscle pain, adolescent boys and girls due to hunger embarrassment still feel embarrassed when I think about it!
The difference between the teacher training period and junior high school was that meals were served in groups of eight, with one person taking turns spooning each meal. Breakfast and dinner were usually thin rice or noodles in soup, 8 people in a small bucket, about two bowls per person. The person in charge of spooning the rice has to consider both the uniformity of the portion and the constant stirring to ensure the uniformity of the consistency. But the irregular viscous fluid mechanics sometimes play tricks on people, and after stirring a spoonful, the consistency is often still uneven. The person in charge of the spoon tries to give the thick one to others and pour the thin one in his own bowl.
If, on the other hand, the person in charge of the spoon fetches the thick one himself and gives the thin one to others, he will not only be looked down upon by others, but also make his own conscience uncomfortable. Individual students may indeed find it hard to bear the torture of hunger and take the opportunity to mooch off the spoon, resulting in a bad reputation in the class.
Especially embarrassing is the sharing of rice, 8 people a small pot, is the kind of shallow like a plate like a small porcelain pot, steamed in the steamer. The students on duty brought the basin of rice, examined it carefully from front to back, used a chopstick to find the center of the circle, and then used the geometric principles learned to draw four over the diameter of the center of the circle in eight equal parts, then each person from the basin to allocate a 45-degree angle of the fan-shaped rice. First dial or second dial, is a problem – first dial, greedy people will dig others, the last dial can clean up the remnants of such cheap tricks are disgraceful.
But hunger is a cruel existence, can not resist the temptation of food, is really an instinct, no blame; and can resist the temptation of food, starve its skin, suffering its heart, is also a practice.
Sixteen or seventeen, seventeen or eighteen years old is in the adolescence, but the hunger era we seem to be difficult to say youth. Female students have irregular periods, male students rarely have that kind of dream, which does not match what you learn in physiology class. But adolescent male and female students still have the desire to interact with each other, due to the strict school discipline at the time, each other have something to say, mostly in private, but unexpectedly think they are doing it unnoticed, but in fact in the control of the “organization”.
In the second year, a female student who was a class officer, out of concern for me, slipped a note into my weekly diary, reminding me to pay attention to the relationship with the class teacher, which touched me a lot. You know, at that time, I was a typical poor country boy image, small, thin and bony, ragged clothes, starving to death, it is lucky to live, where would think that there will be people care about me! I had no hope but to fight hunger by studying hard. But the sudden concern of a handsome classmate of the opposite sex from a bad family background opened up my dead love.
When one day I received the five dollars she had saved in her weekly diary, I was shocked beyond words! I knew that she was encouraging me to study hard and try to get into college (she was desperate because of her bad background). I spent half a day in the Xinhua bookstore and bought two literature books. Back in front of the school, I saw farmers with baskets selling hot sweet potatoes. I used to restrain myself, turn my head and walk past, trying to resist the temptation of the hot aroma of sweet potatoes. But this day, touching the money left in my pocket more than a dollar, finally surrendered to hunger, thief-like bought a hot sweet potato, gobbled it down. Afterwards did not taste the hot fragrance of sweet potatoes, but full of regret.
Every time I saw her walking across the street, I was too ashamed to look up at her. On the eve of graduation, I finally got the opportunity to be recommended for guaranteed admission to university. However, soon after that, the Cultural Revolution broke out and my dream of going to university was shattered. In the early days of the Cultural Revolution, first she was criticized with big-character posters, and later I was also approached by the secretary of the school league committee to explain the process of dating her – a hazy relationship that ended in tragedy during the hunger years!
A year later, I decisively filled in “Xi’an” on my volunteer assignment form and said goodbye to my hungry hometown and my soul-breaking Montessori teacher! But hunger was still following me around!
In 1967, when I first joined the workforce, I was still considered a trainee, and could only receive the trainee salary of a secondary school graduate, with a monthly salary of 34 yuan for a class 8 wage area. The money is almost always used up before the end of the month.
What is even more unexpected is that such an internship salary was taken for 5 years until 1972, when the central government issued a document to allow all graduates of colleges and universities at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to be officially “regularized” – the internship salary of 43.5 yuan in the 8 categories of secondary schools. Pity! One of the main reasons why our group of people generally started a family very late was that the salary was so small back then, and we could not even feed ourselves, so how could we have money left over to support our families?
The first need after receiving the salary is to eat, and the original basic requirement of “must be well-fed after joining the workforce” is really a difficult goal to really achieve. First of all, the income is too low. For those of us who were poor when we joined the workforce, even if we take out half of our monthly salary, i.e. 17 yuan, for meals, it is still less than 60 cents per day, which means that a meal cannot exceed 20 cents; secondly, the food ration is limited. (360 catties a year for 365 days). Even if we calculate by one catty, the three meals in the morning, lunch and evening can only be distributed in this way: 2 taels (or 3 taels) for breakfast, 4 taels for lunch and 4 taels (or 3 taels) for dinner. In addition, the monthly ration of oil is only 4 taels and half a catty of meat. Because of the lack of oil and water, it was more and more difficult to fill the belly with the three or four taels of food.
Due to the small number of single staff at the school, there was no staff canteen for the first semester, so we went to the railroad staff canteen at Baoji Station, which was about 15 minutes away from the school. The monthly meal tickets were first divided into 30 or 31 portions according to the combination of coarse and fine grains, main and side dishes (big month), breakfast a bowl of thin rice, 2 taels of hair cake (coarse grains), two cents of salty vegetables; Chinese food four taels of rice or a steamed bun, a piece of hair cake, 10 or 15 cents of dishes; dinner a bowl of thin rice, a steamed bun, 10 or 5 cents of dishes. 5 cents of a dish are vegetarian dishes, 10 cents of dishes occasionally have a little The diced meat or meat slices, more than 20 cents of meat dishes or roasted fish pieces is considered very extravagant, because also with the oil ticket. Usually once a week you can eat roast meat or roast fish pieces. I remember many times, after eating and walking back to school, I felt hungry again and had to hold back.
Later, through the introduction of others, we gradually found two ways to “find food” to fill our hunger. One is to blend into the train platform, posing as a passenger when the bus enters the station, queuing up to buy biscuits sold in the station sales car, limited to six biscuits at a time, 5 cents a piece, a total of 30 cents (do not need food stamps). Sometimes the salesman asked for tickets, but we had no tickets, so we had to quit the line unhappily and go to another sales car in front of the line. These 6 biscuits, although not enough to eat a full meal, can be enough to barely maintain a day’s energy supplement to alleviate hunger. The second is to go to the first state-run canteen on Po Ha Street to buy bargain buns, i.e. buns without food stamps, at 9 cents a piece (two taels), which is 4 cents more expensive than buns with food stamps, and the flour is also a bit darker.
Although there are two channels mentioned above to buy no food stamps burritos, steamed buns, to fill the hungry stomach, but after all, still can not be so extravagant every day, because after buying the meal ticket remaining more than 10 yuan to buy some emergency clothing and household items, it is impossible to eat and drink all the net. One Sunday, when I was cleaning the house and packing clothes with a classmate, I accidentally found two pounds of 6 taels of food stamps, and immediately decided to go into the restaurant and use them to have a full meal – to eat dumplings in the first canteen on the street.
At the ticket window, it was found that one or two of the Shaanxi local food stamps had expired, and only two and a half pounds of food stamps were available. One or two grain tickets 6 dumplings, a total of 150 dumplings can be bought, five large plate. Hot dumplings are served, we both wind up, gobbling up, not long five plates of dumplings will be swept away. Patting the stomach, it seems that not enough, so each of us asked for a bowl of dumpling soup, gobble, gobble, drink it all. Now I feel really full.
In the railway station staff canteen, the rain and snow is very inconvenient round trip. The next year (1968) when the school opened in the spring, the school set up a single staff canteen, there are about 10 people on the stove. The former principal, who had been defeated, was in charge of the food, so that the “capitalists” who had nothing to do could find something to do. The teachers’ families were invited to cook. Although it was not necessary to travel long distances for a meal like before, after all, it was difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice, because the ration of food and oil remained unchanged, and every meal was still not enough to eat, and hunger was as usual. The solution is still the same as the aforementioned two ways: to buy biscuits at the station platform every now and then or to buy bargain buns from the street canteens. This situation lasted for more than 10 years, and it was only after the reform and opening up and the free market was liberalized that we finally said goodbye to hunger.
The experience of starving for years as a teenager left an indelible shadow in my mind, or rather left a clear aftereffect. To this day, when I cook, I always prefer more than less, rather thick than thin, that is, I am afraid of hunger, afraid of not enough to eat and then hungry, the result is often leftovers. My partner complains that I have “big eyes and small stomach”! Over the years I have eaten a lot of chicken, duck, fish and even seafood, but also eaten Western steak and salad, but the most difficult for me to give up or steamed sweet potatoes, thin rice, paste noodles these three old. Three days without these three foods, the stomach and intestines feel uncomfortable, eat the best things also have no appetite. Alas! This is a poor life out of hunger! My wish is that in the future, when I am too old to move in bed, I will be satisfied with steamed sweet potatoes, thin rice and noodles.
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