In Lu Xun’s novel, the one called Kong Yiji said “stealing books cannot be considered stealing”! It was very justified and gave me some courage.
In my small cabinet of treasures, I once had a very ordinary book – a red plastic leather 64-page book “Quotations”, which must be no stranger to people over 50 years old.
As the Cultural Revolution swept through the campus, cultural textbooks were naturally put on the shelf. In the classroom, we first learned the “Five One Six” and then the “Sixteen Articles”. But what really “touches the soul” is to read the leaders’ books. The pocket-sized book “Quotations” has become the most convenient and practical learning material, and everyone is eager to have a copy of this “treasure book”. But it was not available in bookstores. Finally, a small number of “textbooks” were distributed by the plan amidst the sound of “good news” from the gongs and drums – a simple book of “The Book of Discourses”. As a result, our class had a big “family composition” list, and I was a child of the Black Five, so of course I didn’t even get to see and touch them, but at the ceremony to welcome the “precious books”, I was equally proud of But at the ceremony of welcoming the “treasure book”, I was also excited and shouted for “the happiness of being bathed in sunshine and rain”. Only when I was alone in the dead of night, I would lose sleep – for the sake of the “treasure book” that I had been longing for.
Soon, I arrived in the capital Beijing with the wave of the national conglomerate. The Foreign Experts Bureau, the former apartment of Soviet experts, became our barracks. We were organized into squads, platoons and companies, with two PLA soldiers leading the management, and of course, learning the Quotations. I was so impatient to go to the square on the second day of my arrival that I was ashamed that I never had a copy of the red plastic skin of the Quotations to study with me, so I had to get close to a young PLA soldier and borrow one.
In the square, I was so excited that I could hardly express my feelings. I held the little red book close to my chest and faced the giant statue of the leader, muttering to myself the popular oath of the time. At the end, I happily held the Little Red Book and took a picture. To this day, whenever I look at the picture of the scruffy, flabby kid with a happy look, I can’t help but be moved by my pure loyalty back then.
The book “Quotations” is too cute, I stroked it left and right, I really could not return to the little soldier, so I racked my brain to tell a lie, saying that the little red book in the square when the photo was snatched away by others. In those days, it was fashionable to “grab” the yellow army cap, the little red book and the leader’s badge, a kind of “you love me also love the revolutionary action”, and the person who grabbed it was more justified than the one who was robbed. The little soldier looked at my incomparable shame “sincere performance”, although chagrin but can do nothing.
Since then, that little red book has been with me for many years, it has given me many “doctrines” and “ideas” of enlightenment, and left indelible traces in my world view and outlook on life, many important statements to this day I can still clearly say its page number and content I can still name the page numbers and contents of many important discussions. What surprised me even more was that it was not until the death of the leader that I remembered the words “Wang x x of the 8341st unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” written on the front of the title page of the Little Red Book, and it turned out that the person I “bamboozled” was a soldier of the guard unit. Since then, I will be the small red book like a rare cultural relic collection, a wander almost fifty years.
One year a month, the new general secretary first stop to Xibaipo to revisit the “two imperatives”. The two musts were asked about the content of the two musts during a gathering of friends, and everyone was talking out of turn, only I was full of energy: “Please turn to page 167 of the Quotations – ‘ …… must make sure that comrades continue to maintain the modest, prudent, not arrogant, not impatient style, must make sure that comrades continue to maintain the hard work style ‘”, my recitation of the seat amazed, thumbs up high.
In fact, the reason is simple: in my early years, I had put too much effort into memorizing “The Book of Words”. If I had put more effort into memorizing Chinese poems, I would have been able to fight in the poetry conference now.
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