I. Step into the society
My fifth uncle, Jiang Mingyuan, was my father’s youngest brother, who came to our family in his teens and grew up in our home.
After 1963, the implementation of the class line was already evolving towards the “composition-only theory”, and some information said that by the 1964 college entrance examination, all the children of the “Black Five Categories” were wiped out. As a child of the “Black Five” from a landlord family, my fifth uncle was fortunate enough to graduate from college in 1963.
During his college years, he was in the “Three Years of Hardship” period, and hunger was the most profound memory of that era, but despite the lack of food and clothing, Uncle Wu still studied very hard and worked very hard, scoring above 90 in all subjects of his major courses, most notably theoretical mechanics, with 100 points. The teacher who taught him also emphasized that Jiang Mingyuan’s test papers were almost flawless and no demerit points could be found.
With such top grades, Uncle Five is fully qualified to stay in school to teach. But back then, several of the students who stayed in school had mediocre grades, and whether they were competent to teach was not a consideration.
At that time, the social atmosphere is still good, graduation allocation is approaching, the students are also calm, to ask favors, looking for connections, open the back door of corruption has not yet become the wind.
At that time, the graduation allocation slogan was.
1, the party points there, we will run to there.
2, the needs of the party is our volunteer.
- Resolutely obey the assignment and be a tame tool of the Party.
Except for a few places to stay in school, it was not announced how most of the graduates would be assigned. The department held a graduation allocation meeting, the secretary gave a report only the general principle: “where to come from where to go”, while taking into account the personal volunteer.
After Uncle Five left his hometown, his household registration has been in our family, belonging to Chongqing city. His original home, Zhongjiang County, belongs to Mianyang Prefecture. There is no clear statement as to where graduates like him are considered to be from.
My father’s parental style was so strong that he scolded him as much as he did us, which gave him a strong sense of subordination and his desire to leave early from elementary school. The first thing you need to do is to get your own home, so when you fill out the volunteer, Uncle Five doesn’t even think about your own account in Chongqing, “where to go” “where” to locate the old home Mian Yang district. When the dust settled, he was indeed assigned in Mianyang.
With simple luggage, goodbye to the city where he had lived for more than ten years, Uncle Wu and his group of graduates took the then small fireboat of water transport from Beibei District along the Jialing River to the downtown Caiyuanba train station. The sun was blazing, the heat was rolling in the cabin, and the river breeze was lingering outside the ship’s side. Uncle five as the leader, no time to enjoy the scenery along the way. He was busy all the way: changing cars, checking luggage, counting the number of people, etc.. The graduates lived in the guest house and waited for their turn to be assigned from the prefecture to the county, and then from the county to the school.
The waiting days were also very torturous. Mian Yang area, including the mountainous areas on the edge of the plain, mountainous areas and the plain, compared to the school’s hardware and software facilities, teaching standards, student population, living conditions are not in a dimension. Everyone’s heart was in a state of flux.
Uncle Five was directly assigned to Suining Middle School.
Suining Middle School was one of the two best middle schools in the Mianyang area at the time, and its personnel relations were directly under the Mianyang prefecture, where the principal, Liu Xianhua, looked at Uncle Wu’s file and gave priority to the top student.
Suining Middle School was adjacent to the Drainage River and covered a relatively small area of less than seventy acres. The names of the school buildings are all very loud and have the distinctive features of the revolutionary era: the teaching building is called Zhuo Ya Building, the office building is called Lei Feng Building, the teachers’ dormitory building is called Red Specialized Building, the students’ dormitory is called Jiguang Building, and there are two small two-story houses near the entrance of the school (Fuzhou River Girls’ High School, a church school before liberation), one named Zhiyu Hall and the other named Moral Education Hall. In the middle of the school building is a playground with a running track of less than 400 meters. Although the size of the school was not large, it was considered a famous school in the province.
My fifth uncle was assigned to teach two classes of cubic geometry in the first year of high school, 12 classes per week. In teaching, he soon made a name for himself and was well liked by the students. My uncle, who did not like to speak in public, began to feel the joy of being a teacher and began to love this profession. The work was just on track, and his enthusiasm for teaching was suddenly cut off when the school assigned him to join the Shangning Commune’s four-clear task force for three months.
The Shangning Commune was about seven miles from the county seat. Since there were few shuttle buses, Uncle Wu picked up his bunk roll and walked to the commune to report for duty.
The team members first met in the commune to study for a day, to convey the central and provincial documents about the four clear work, to clarify the boundary between the “four clear and four unclear”; the working method is to rely on the poor peasants, pay close attention to the class struggle; the purpose is to help the cadres downstairs to bathe, lightly loaded, so that the cadres with four unclear problems through the campaign to transform into four clear cadres, and finally The only ones to be disposed of are the very few cadres who are not clear.
The next day, the team members went down to the production team to work with the poor peasants with food, housing and labor.
Uncle Wu was assigned to a production team called Liangjiagou in the 11th brigade, and lived in a poor farmer’s house. The uncle was in his fifties and could not afford to get married; the parents of the two children had both died during the “difficult period”. They lived in an adobe walled straw house, with four walls and no decent utensils, the children and adults were in rags, and they ate three meals a day, including red potato rice and pickled radish that could be counted.
Born in a small township, growing up in a big city, Uncle Five was shocked by the abject poverty in front of him. Every month, in addition to the fixed amount of food stamps given to the head of the household Lao Liang, Uncle Wu also deliberately pay more food expenses, to give the family a little help, sometimes back to school to get things, by the way, the month’s ration of meat to buy back, to improve the family’s livelihood.
For three months, Uncle Wu traveled through the countryside every day, visiting poor families, listening to their opinions on the brigade and production team cadres, working with the community members, and collecting all kinds of production data to report back to the commune when they met.
In those days, he often lost sleep, and several piglets in the pigpen behind the house might not have enough to eat, either grunting or squealing. The hardship was the hardship of others, but the torment was the heart of Uncle Wu. As a child of the Black Five, he certainly did not dare to think deeply, only to do his job. As for how to get these poor people out of poverty and live a relatively stable life like the city people? He did not understand, and could not understand.
Three months later, the four clean-up work ended, the effect of what Uncle Wu know nothing. There was no change in the production team, which cadres are the four unclear cadres? The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. In January 1964, after attending the commune summary meeting, Uncle Wu returned to school with a lot of questions.
After returning to school, there were no class assignments as the end of the school year was approaching. Uncle Wu used this gap to prepare for the next semester’s classes. When the new semester started, he still taught two classes of three-dimensional geometry, and everything went according to schedule and worked well. It seemed that the day could go on in such a stable manner.
II. Guilty by words
At the end of April, a chance event became the trigger of Uncle Wu’s tragic life, and became the inflection point that changed the trajectory of his life.
The teachers’ dormitory underneath the red special, is the office of the General Affairs Office, the office outside the roadside there is a large advertising board, the school used to publish a variety of announcements notice, from time to time also sent some cultural information, such as film advertising posters and so on. There were many students, teachers and staff passing by this road, and they would stop to see what information was on the board.
One afternoon during extracurricular activities, there were a lot of people gathered in front of the advertisement board, Uncle Wu originally did not like to get together, but that day it was a ghost, when passing actually stopped to get together. Xu Guangrong, the director of academic affairs, was directing the logistics staff to tear off the advertisement of “Dream of the Red Chamber” movie on the billboard. Someone asked why? Xu said that it was inappropriate for the school to post such advertisements, which would have a bad impact on students. Xu set the task and then left. The scene is full of discussion, see the situation, Uncle Five interjected: “Dream of the Red Chamber” will be released on May 1, the film can be seen, high school language textbooks also have selected paragraphs for teaching materials, what can be a bad influence? Should not be torn out.
After the incident, the three senior students who were present at the time, the process of the incident and the discussion into a letter, reflected to the Suining County Cultural Bureau, expressing their dissatisfaction with a school leader to remove the advertisement. The Cultural Bureau forwarded the letter back to the school and asked the school to handle it properly. Xu Guangrong had heard of my fifth uncle’s “high theory” and combined it with an analysis of the fifth uncle as the mastermind behind it. After that, Xu every time he saw my fifth uncle, are intentionally put on the arrogance of ignoring, let the fifth uncle embarrassed. The three letter-writing students all failed in the college entrance exams that year, shattered dreams of college, a beautiful future destroyed in a letter.
My uncle paid the price for this, one step behind.
After the final exams, Uncle Five’s teaching effect is outstanding, the school informed him that the next term as a sophomore two classes to solve the fold geometry teaching. The whole summer he did not go anywhere, in the dormitory to the textbook exercises all done again, prepared lesson plans, more tired than the class. It is not that Uncle Wu is not capable enough bottom line, but he does not allow himself to have half a flaw in the work.
Unexpectedly, a few days before the start of the school year, the party secretary Duyuan Qiong asked him to talk. Uncle Wu is not a member of the party, even the Communist Youth League for several years to fight the door has not crossed, he has self-awareness, dare not in the “political progress” have any extravagant hope. The secretary suddenly interviewed him, making him panic.
The only secretary did not open the door, she made a small padding: “You have a thick background, teaching effect is also good, can be a side.” Uncle Five was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when the focus of the secretary’s conversation reached his ears: “Our key schools also have the responsibility to support our sister schools.”
The secretary said cryptically, but five uncle is not dumb, heard the secretary’s meaning is actually the “expulsion order”. Soon after joining the work of Uncle Five, has been in the teaching of the tentative role, of course, can not accept this inexplicable “be supported”. But after all, Uncle Five is young, but also always high-minded and arrogant, he did not give in to the secretary, his tone is still hard, questioning: “is not to transfer me away!
The only secretary is not fast, pull open the drawer and take out an envelope and hand it over. The fifth uncle took a look, the transfer order, household registration, food and oil relations all in it, the transfer order clearly wrote Jiang Mingyuan transferred to the stop river middle school – that is the most remote township in Suining County rural junior high school. It was clear that he had been sent out!
Uncle Wu was angry and unconvinced, but he was an intellectual, so he couldn’t “cry and hang himself”. The school did not give him any opportunity to understand the truth and explain and defend, and even if it did, the final outcome was still eggs against stones. Uncle Wu could only forcefully suppress his grief and anger, he stood up and coldly said, “It’s okay, I’ll roll up and leave.”
Secretary Dok wanted to ease the atmosphere and said, “Old Jiang, you don’t have to rush, there is a report from Premier Zhou on intellectuals to be conveyed in two days, you can listen to the report and then report.”
“No need,” Uncle Wu turned around and left. It was only when he returned to his dormitory that he finally couldn’t hold back his aggression and sorrow and cried bitterly.
The teachers in the teaching and research group were incredulous and indignant in private, but no one came forward to say a fair word in public, after all, the eggs touched the stones, and in those days when everyone was at risk, self-preservation was the primary consideration.
In early September 1964, Uncle Wu left Suining High School and took a freight truck instead of a bus to the remote Zaijiang District. At that time, the roads were gravel, and the passengers were bumped to the east and west, with dust flying from the rear of the truck. It took nearly three hours of tossing and turning to reach the Zaijiang district.
Barrier River District is Lezhi County, Pengxi County, the junction of the three counties, the former serious banditry. Small field town next to the Qiong River, only a street along the river. School buildings are distributed in the hills next to the highway, the scale is very small, only two classes per grade. The school lived on water wells, lighting by kerosene lamps, and the surrounding countryside is no different, the poor living conditions exceeded the expectations of Uncle Wu. A few years later the school expanded and bought a generator, but it broke down so often that it could barely be used for evening study. After the evening study session, the school building and the mountains outside the school were trapped in thick, boundless darkness.
There were three math teachers, including Uncle Wu. The other two are middle-aged and have only college degrees. The school arranged for Uncle Five to take two classes in the second year, such teaching tasks for him, is the anti-aircraft gun to shoot mosquitoes.
The job is easy and the salary is not bad, but the wall of despair inside Uncle Wu is getting higher and higher and thicker. In such a school to stay on, the future will look to the head, just to make a living. Once studied so hard, is it just to make a living now? I have not yet gotten married and started a family, and I have not yet had children. …… dare not think about it.
Every day after dinner, the bitter Uncle Wu, moving a rattan chair to sit in the open space between the school building and the dormitory building, looking down the hill at the highway and the small river ditch next to the highway, as well as the farmland and hillside farther away, his eyes blank, no scenery for him to enjoy, no poetry and faraway places as far as his eyes can see. A sorrowful heart full of chaos, Uncle Five often sat in this way empty and confused until the evening study, before going to the classroom to complete his last work of the day. The colleagues all think that Uncle Wu is noble and does not get along. The teacher, who had a spur-of-the-moment remark, dared to “fit in” easily. How dare you easily reveal your grievances.
This year, that rural high school in the arrogant uncle five, in the teaching of the peak, showing a crane stand out of the momentum. His teaching ability impressed the principal Zhao Shuncai, the principal gave my uncle full trust, every time he went out to meetings, business trips, always let him take over the work. The principal’s reappointment obviously crossed the ceiling set by the “class line” for the children of the Black Five at that time, and many teachers with good roots openly expressed their dissatisfaction, laying the groundwork for Uncle Wu’s later misfortune.
In 1966, the first to be hit by the storm was the education sector, even in the most remote villages. At Uncle Wu’s school, the first to bear the brunt of the storm was naturally Principal Zhao, who was in power to implement the revisionist education line, and others. Uncle Wu, as an ordinary teacher, was covered with big-character posters just like other teachers. At that time, the movement was rapidly changing, and the ordinary teachers were hit by the “weapons of criticism” as a strange wind, after which they were like a pile of waste scraped into a corner and forgotten.
During the period, Uncle Wu, together with other ordinary teachers, took a ride on the big tandem, went out for a tour. After that, Uncle Wu got married and had a daughter, although life is turbulent, but also stumbled to complete the most important event in life. If the days go on like this, poverty is not lacking in the small happiness of the grass, after all, there is a home.
III. Storms like a rock
By 1970, the school’s leadership team had long been paralyzed. According to the supreme instruction of the great leader, the poor propaganda team was stationed in the village school where Uncle Wu was located and took charge of the power. The head of the poor propaganda team was called Han Chengsi, who was a genuine farmer before the Cultural Revolution.
Near the winter break, a teacher whose family was out of town asked for leave to leave school early, and Uncle Wu followed the same example and asked for leave.
But Han Chengsi gave Uncle Wu a head start: No! There is no holiday yet.
The fifth uncle is not convinced: someone to take a leave of absence you agreed to it?
Han replied: I said no, then no! I do not agree now! His eyes squinted and showed his unbeatable arrogance.
The fifth uncle heard, stubborn temper up, but also may have no knowledge of this uneducated “poor propaganda team” contempt, he defiantly contradict: you do not allow leave I also want to go.
Han Chengsi played the gangster: Hey! I do not care, I can not control, I also leave!
The words have come to this point, the fifth uncle negative: you go ah! You can say that I drove you away!
The fifth uncle did not look back out of the office of the poor propaganda team, left the school, with the lingering strong psychological shadow, to go to the county five aunt to visit relatives.
A prophecy. Later, the words really became the current counter-revolutionary evidence that the children of landlords expelled the poor propaganda team. The price that Uncle Five paid for this was the separation of his wife and family, the family was broken, and people almost died.
At that time, the school did not resume normal, teachers do not attend classes, in school only to participate in various political studies. After Uncle Five returned to school, has not seen Han Chengsi’s figure. One night, the district held a meeting of cadres, school staff and residents, the district party secretary Xiao Shiliang spoke, pointing the finger directly at Uncle Wu: some people do not obey the leadership of the poor propaganda team, which is the intellectual transformation of the anti-transformation.
Although not named, but the leave of absence incident has been set. The company’s main business is to promote the development of the company’s products and services.
In fact, there are many teachers who have private views on the poor propaganda team, and they are also discussing: Mr. Jiang only said a word, which threatened him with force? Did he get kicked out? The “Revolutionary Committee” at the higher level sent him, who dares to expel him? It is obvious that the poor propaganda team and the “rebel faction” to rectify the scheme of people.
These comments made Uncle Wu feel relieved that justice is still in the hearts of people after all. However, the ordinary teachers without power can only send a few private comments, can not provide any help for Uncle Wu out of trouble.
Song Xingzao, a young physics teacher in the same dormitory, quietly said to Uncle Wu: Mr. Jiang, you still have to find a way to make up for it.
Uncle Wu, a small man who could not control his own fate, a child of the Black Five who was sent, what can be done? Thinking about it, the only way for Uncle Wu is to put down his pride and lower himself to ask Han to come back.
Han belongs to the production team in the high mountains near Lezhi County, walking more than 20 miles of mountain trails, five uncle to see Han, pouring dirty water on himself to admit his fault, flattered against his will to plead with him to return to school leadership to grasp the revolution and promote production.
Han grunted and played official, said he knew, and did not take a position. The fifth uncle returned without success.
A week passed, no Han returned to school. The fifth uncle had to go to him again in the posture of a guilty plea, the second time, to ask him to scold himself, in order to reduce the crime. Han is a veteran of officialdom, but fixing intellectuals like Uncle Wu is a no-brainer. He still did not take a position, only said I have arrangements. Uncle Five then fell into an awkward situation, once again helpless and returned.
A few days later Han went back to school. It was inevitable that Han would go back to school, he had to sit in the position of the poor propaganda team to leap out of the farm gate later (after the poor propaganda team withdrew from the stage, Han was arranged to work as a temporary worker in the slaughterhouse in Zaijiang). He did what he did to insult and intimidate his fifth uncle, who dared to contradict him; in addition, he had planned with the school’s rebels to make Jiang Mingyuan, a top teacher who was relied on by the capitalists, a counter-revolutionary and, if possible, to expel him from his public position.
At that time, the “one hit three anti” campaign was in full swing. The news came from the county’s elementary school teachers’ “one fight, three anti” study class that a female teacher of Zaijiang Primary School committed suicide by jumping into a well, characterized as “fear of suicide”. A variety of suicide, suicide attempts, self-harm, self-madness of the news has been spreading, chilling, who are afraid that one day a trumped-up charge will hit their heads.
Many meetings at school were no longer allowed for Uncle Five to attend. About April or May, the county held a secondary school above all types of schools “a dozen three anti” study class, the school as a unit to arrange accommodation, bring your own travel, the location in Sichuan Province Agricultural School. The male and female teachers of Zhanjiang Middle School each lived in a classroom, and studies and small criticism sessions were held inside.
The local garrison “support the left” of a company cadres Zheng Xulong as the general leadership of the study class. In the opening ceremony, Zheng Xulong began with a clear statement: “The class enemy will never die of forgetfulness, and try every possible way to destroy the Cultural Revolution, we must, under the leadership of the great leader Chairman Mao, never forget the class struggle, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end, to dig out the class enemy hidden in the revolutionary ranks, to impose the dictatorship of the proletariat on them, so that they will never be able to They will never be rehabilitated.”
He Nianqiang, a teacher in Suining Middle School (a 62nd grade senior student of the Mathematics Department of the Western Division, from a family of workers with red roots), had studied the leader’s writings seriously for a long time and had written many insights and annotations in the margins of the leader’s books, but he was caught and designated as a revisionist, and was tied to a truck as a typical reactionary in the whole county, and was paraded through the streets by soldiers with loaded guns, and accompanied the killing field several times. This example made all the members of the study class jumpy.
After the military representative Zheng Xiulong’s order was issued, various schools responded, and the Zaijiang Middle School denounced Uncle Wu’s large-character posters and degrading cartoons. The first month or so was to put him under surveillance, not allowed to go out, not allowed to write letters, not allowed to see outsiders, ordered him to write an account, repeatedly in a small area to explain the crime to accept the criticism.
An ordinary teacher became a counter-revolutionary overnight and was shunned by everyone. All kinds of revelations and criticisms came out, and his crimes were too numerous to mention.
The first one was that he was from a reactionary background, daring to sing the opposite tune with the Great Leader, opposing the poor peasants to lead the education revolution, and openly expelling the poor propaganda team from the school gate.
There were also a series of unfounded and bizarre charges.
One, the school was closed due to the Cultural Revolution, several teachers got together to play poker, Uncle Wu did not play poker and listened to other people’s radios on the sidelines. When he was tuning the radio, he inadvertently dialed “Radio Moscow”, and Uncle Wu, of course, knew what these words meant and turned off the radio. During the criticism, he was qualified as “listening to enemy stations”.
Secondly, Uncle Wu had previously written a letter to purchase a plain white envelope, and was accused of hating Chairman Mao’s quotes to the bone in the criticism.
Third, before the suspension of classes, Uncle Wu was the class teacher of a class of junior class 67. The students in that class sang “Chairman Mao’s Soldiers Listen Most to the Party” with Uncle Five as the conductor. When it was his turn to sing, he said to the students, “I hit the line ‘Chairman Mao’s soldiers’ with my left hand and sang it on the left; with my right hand, sang it on the right.” He was criticized: He hit Chairman Mao with his left hand, and he also hit Chairman Mao with his right hand. How dare he hit Chairman Mao! This is a very serious crime!
All of them are capital crimes! Uncle Wu became an unforgivable counter-revolutionary! He could not tell the difference, but had to admit his guilt.
However, in the school, Uncle Wu could not pass the test no matter how much he explained. The stubbornness and unrepentant hat layer upon layer down. The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the actual situation. The material was reported, but the approval was delayed, for reasons unknown.
In August, the class was over, and my uncle failed to become a typical countywide criticism. Han and others refused to give up and took him back to Barrier River to continue the criticism. Because he was monitored and isolated, he did not hear from his family for several months. After returning to school, Uncle Wu wrote to his aunt, but the letter was lost. He had a feeling that he was on the verge of breaking up his family.
In September, the revolutionary teachers and students returned to school after classes resumed. The first criticism session after the school opened was planned and implemented by Han Chengsi and others. Han gave an order: “Bring out the current counter-revolutionary Jiang Mingyuan! A few students who had just returned to school took Uncle Wu to the podium, hung a black sign on his head, kicked him twice, and made him stand on a bench.
In front of his eyes, the familiar students and teachers were in black, and the slogans to defeat the current counter-revolutionary Jiang Mingyuan were deafening. The self-respecting Uncle Wu was at his wits’ end.
Han Chengsi was hoarse: “Counter-revolutionary Jiang Mingyuan confess!”
Some students came up from behind and kicked him hard, and Uncle Wu fell off the bench, and several students came up and pushed him, and he wobbled back onto the bench. Han announced the start of the criticism. The students and teachers of the rebellion came on stage to expose and criticize. Uncle Five’s mind was blank, his ears buzzing, those righteous words of criticism, those slogans that broke through the clouds, did not hear a word. The two hours of criticism was as long as two centuries. Before he could get down, he was dragged out by the students.
The staff criticism, the whole school teachers and students criticism continued for more than a month, large posters, cartoons, large slogans in the school overshadowed the sky, Zaijiang Street, the elementary school teachers dormitory opposite the district party committee wall, criticism column for three consecutive issues, repeatedly displaying Uncle Wu’s counter-revolutionary crimes. In the public sentencing conference, uncle five was dragged to accompany the public trial, accompanied by the killing field. Han and other people, the best way to “stir up the weekday chill”.
The town of Zaijiang ten days market 3 times, because the border of three counties, the flow of people and goods, the market day is unusually lively. Uncle five was often escorted in the street parade, hanging around the neck of the “current counter-revolutionary Jiang Mingyuan” sign, there are students knocking gongs to open the road, children followed by cheering, the villagers in the four neighborhoods poking and prodding as watching the monkey show. To the selected location, forcing him to stand on the bar stool to confess. At this time, Uncle Five, has no matter what face, self-staining has become a routine, he held up a loudspeaker loudly recite the crime has long been memorized, over and over again ……
The many listeners are the villagers, they are curious, the content of Uncle Five criticism of their own seem to understand, each nodding their heads praise: this teacher speaks well!
In addition to the criticism, parade and write a confession, more physical punishment. The school hired someone to repair the school building, Uncle Five was sent to do odd jobs, carrying mortar, one of the dirtiest and heaviest work, he did. At mealtime, because from head to toe full of mortar, too dirty, he waited for the teachers to finish eating before going. Master Deng in the kitchen, always quietly give him a little more rice, the stubborn Uncle Five, hot tears.
IV. Live ……
After the great leader’s “May 7 instructions” were published, Zaijiang Middle School opened up a farm 12 miles away from the school. The farm has nearly 100 acres of land, but also built a pigsty, a dormitory and a canteen, two classes of students can study and work here at a time.
The fertilizer used in the farm came from the school’s toilets, and the school stipulated that teachers and students who participated in the labor force should pick one trip a day (about sixty pounds) to complete the task. Uncle Wu, as the subject of labor reform, picked at least two trips a day, and the manure bucket was the largest, picking a hundred pounds or so. Uncle Five wore only a pair of shorts, a pair of broken liberation shoes, bare-chested, picking dung, tanned off several layers of skin, the former quiet and noble white-faced scholar, transformed. He carried on tenaciously and did not give in.
In February 1971, the winter holidays, teachers have left school to go home to their families for the Spring Festival, Uncle Wu can not leave school, and let him take over the teachers’ canteen chef, to stay in school staff cooking, including the rebel Tang Zhenyi family who has been actively organized to encourage him to fight. Uncle Five gritted his teeth and learned to work as a cook for a month. After doing other people’s reunion dinner, Uncle Five returned to the dormitory, lying alone in a cold bed, began to miss the family without a trace, tears like the floodgates opened …… boundless darkness, silent painful crying ……
The first day of March, a lenient conference was held, Uncle Five was called on the stage, announced that he was characterized as “the current counter-revolutionary”, not wearing a hat, a drop in salary, supervision and rehabilitation. After that, the criticism stopped and he was sent to a school farm for labor rehabilitation. In the farm, Uncle Wu worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, in addition to all kinds of farm work, but also to raise pigs and chickens and ducks, physical expenditure is super, but no longer the thrilling criticism, quiet.
This is the biggest pain for Uncle Wu in the reform through labor. Just after May Day, Uncle Five is carrying water to water the vegetable patch by the river, a teacher who came to the farm called, Jiang Mingyuan to get the letter.
What Uncle Wu got in his hand was not the family letter he had been waiting for all year, but a summons from the Suining County People’s Court – a divorce suit by Aunt Wu. Landslide, the end of the world can not describe the despair of Uncle Wu at that time.
After they met, Aunt Wu said: you are now the dark tube (control personnel), the child is the children of the counter-revolution, which will affect her life, I hope you think about the child, we divorce for the better.
Uncle Five had nothing to say. It is clear that he was framed, he knows it well, but does Auntie Five know and believe that he was framed? Even if you know, what can you do? The first thing you can do is to let your child take the blame for being a child of a counter-revolution and live a life where you are trampled on?
His family, his only support for living, was gone.
When he got out of the court and went back to school, he was able to go back to the farm. It usually took him 40 minutes to pick a hundred pounds of manure, but that day it took him more than two hours to move step by step. Collapsed in bed for two days and two nights, no water or rice, nothing, Uncle Five, collapsed.
The farm original a long stay janitor Zhang Yuxing, see uncle five two days no movement, came to see him. Uncle Wu said he was sick.
By the third night, in the darkness, Uncle Five like a shadow silently came to the river where he usually washed his feet, full of only one thought – relief, he leapt.
Uncle five can not swim, the water is sinking, choking on a few mouthfuls of cold water, he suddenly awake: so go, that is “fear of suicide”! The divorce is to keep the child from taking the blame, this death, but will give her an additional black pot. It’s hard to live, but it’s hard to die and let the kids die! Let’s get through it! Maybe if you get through it, you can still see the spring blossom; if you commit suicide, there will never be a day when the ice melts!
Fortunately, the river is not deep, Uncle Five awake after a few randomly picking, feet to the bottom, hands touch the shore. He climbed up and returned to the dormitory wet. Zhang Yuxing saw him in the vegetable garden and looked puzzled. Uncle Five explained that he went to take a bath. Zhang responded, you have to take care and look away.
In the winter, Barrier River Junior High School is ready to try out a hooded high school, spring enrollment of 100, two classes, two years of schooling. But the high school math but no teacher. The Cultural Revolution also transferred a number of new teachers in the past few years, but all teachers no one has taught high school. At this time, the school leaders remembered Uncle Wu, who originally taught high school in Sui Zhong, and the results were still very good. A paper notice arrived at the farm. Han Chengsi was still at the school, but at this point he could no longer keep his hand in the sky. Principal Zhang talked to Uncle Wu, hoping that he would come out to teach classes and reform at the same time.
Uncle Five said, I am “counter-revolutionary”, is it appropriate?
Zhang replied, you first class, the new students do not know.
In this way, Uncle Wu took over the math class of two classes in the first year of high school. Before the Cultural Revolution, the three-year high school system, mathematics, algebra, geometry (stand, solve a few) trigonometry, etc., were taught by different teachers, at this time, the two-year textbook has not yet come out, Uncle Wu can not just class, he also had to adapt the textbook. No one among the mathematics teachers dared to teach the class, and I am afraid that the need to compile the textbook is the main reason.
The learning conditions of this class of students were very poor, there was no electricity, and kerosene lamps were used for evening study; the textbook was written by Uncle Wu, and the students carved wax paper and printed oil. The students were very hardworking, they knew the details of Mr. Jiang, but they still respected the teacher wearing the “counter-revolutionary” hat, liked his classes, and established a good teacher-student relationship with the suffering Uncle Wu, and maintained a long relationship.
In 1977, when the college entrance examination was about to be resumed, the senior students of Zaijiang Middle School also saw the dawn of knowledge to change their fate.
With the conscience of an intellectual, Uncle Wu took the initiative to do two things.
One is to put together the mathematical test questions of all the years of the college entrance examination before the Cultural Revolution, and give detailed answers and solutions, posted on wall posters and disseminated to students, while oil-printed books were successively sent to all graduates of the 77th to 79th classes.
Secondly, every Sunday morning, in the small square between the teaching building and the office, a lecture is held for the graduates, and the lecture is given for at least two hours by topic.
More than 100 graduating students filled the small square to the brim. Uncle five did not charge a penny, not asking for anything in return, just hope that more students pass the college entrance exams and go out.
The last graduating class taught by Uncle Five in the stop river middle school, the year of the college entrance examination, the county’s first and third place in mathematics, are the class of students; the average score in the college entrance examination and the rate of advancement also ranked top in the county. It is a miracle in the history of education in Suining that a township with a high school with a hat has produced such results.
My fifth uncle, from September 1964 sent to stop the river, to September 1979 transferred back to Suining city, a full fifteen years. Fifteen years, convicted for his words, criticism of labor reform, wife and children, sobbing blood and tears …… he survived. The bottom of the feet or the earth, the top of the head or the sky, waving a hand to say goodbye to the yesterday that can not say goodbye to the five uncle to middle age, finally ushered in a new life once looked forward to but did not dare to look forward to.
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