On the eve of the Spring Festival in the year of the tiger, the county government issued a notice to register people who had worked as teachers (including private teachers) and later participated in agricultural production, saying that these people should be given a certain monthly allowance. My cousin Qin Zhenrong, who is old, lives in the same village as me. He taught in several villages in the 1950s and 1960s and was naturally very happy to hear this news, saying that “the Communist Party has not forgotten these people who worked hard back then, although their children are very filial, but this is the government’s own money, so it is justified to use it. As evidence, he found several old photos from when he was teaching in those schools. One of them was taken in 1958 when he was teaching at Zhangjiazhuang School, 20 miles from his home, with his young students helping the production team to collect cotton. The familiar scene in the photo instantly brought back memories.
The year 1958 was a rare good year, and the autumn crop grew exceptionally well, but the bumper crop could not be collected in the field, as the people’s commune had been established and the young and strong laborers had all gone to Hancheng County, a hundred miles away, to support the “Iron Marshal”. The remaining laborers in the village couldn’t take care of them, so they set their eyes on the school children. I was thirteen years old and had just been admitted to the newly built Fangzhen Middle School, and the oldest students in my class were only fifteen or sixteen years old. In the morning, classes were held, and in the afternoon, the teachers led them to the nearby village to help the production team pick cotton, cut beans and pinch grain. The good thing is that they are all rural children, for the crop work is not unfamiliar, each of them are doing very vigorously, but also cheerful and happy. I remember that we went to the East Wang Commune by the Yellow River more than 20 miles away to help harvest soybeans, I carried a load of soybeans from the ditch to the field, sweating profusely, but did not feel tired, those aunts and uncles also praised me for my shoulder work.
After a busy period of autumn harvest, the school was informed that it would organize students to go to Hancheng to make steel. I was 13 years old, not old enough, but I was tall and a member of the class, so I asked my class teacher, Mr. Wang Tianmin, to go to Hancheng as well. Mr. Wang also wanted me to go, and readily agreed. When I went to the front line of steel, the first thing I had to prepare was to learn a song about the great steel-making. Mr. Ma Maozeng, who taught music, found a ready-made tune, modified it slightly, and filled in the new words, and it became “The Song of the Iron and Steel Warrior”, the lyrics of which I still remember clearly: “Pick up your bag, pick up your axe, shovel and stiffness, run to the steel, run to the great battlefield of steel! Steel making and human refining, growing with the blast furnace; steel making and human refining, becoming steel with the ore. We are the steel corps! We are a big regiment of steel!”
When we had almost learned the song, we had to leave. The class teacher told me to go back to the village and say goodbye to my family, and then wait for the group at the entrance of the village. We and Yang village in the northeast of Fang town, five miles away from each other. I was halfway to the sand alley when I saw my mother hurrying from across the street. I didn’t expect my mother’s tears to flow down, choking up and saying, “Good boy, you don’t know–” I said, “Mother, it’s okay. The principal said that he would be back in half a month!” While holding my hand and walking back, my mother wiped her tears and said, “People in the village say that once you students arrive in Hancheng, you will have to cross the Yellow River and drive far away. ……” I smiled and said, “No, it’s not true. Half a month, only half a month, your child will come back!”
When the sun was about to set, the “Steel Corps” from Fangzhen High School came. When they went to Hancheng, they had to go over two big ditches, and when they went over the Xu Shui ditch, the students were still very excited, and the song “steel making and people making” came and went, but when they crossed the Tai Zao ditch in the middle of the night, they couldn’t hold on, and they all dozed off, and their legs mechanically followed the people in front of them to move forward. It was only when their heads hit the backs of the people in front of them that they woke up with a jolt. The teacher leading the group shouted, “Sing, one class after another!” The song did start, but it was completely out of tune, listless and breathless. The dolls were really tired, but the teachers could do nothing about it because the superiors asked them to reach the destination tomorrow. When we arrived in Zhichuan at cock crow, the lead teacher went to contact the middle school there and dragged the students there out from under the covers so that we could sleep for a while. We were so exhausted that we couldn’t even take off our clothes before we got under the covers and snored.
The next afternoon, it was hard to get to our destination – the village of Goubei in Xizhuang Commune. The stove was not yet ready, so we could only gnaw on the buns we brought and drink the cold water from the ditch for four or five days in a row. After a night’s rest, we were assigned work the next day. The older students did the heavy work, or went to the mausoleum to demolish the bricks of the wall (Hancheng people are rich, the cemetery is very much, and all brick wall), pull back ready to build a blast furnace; or to more than 10 miles away from the horse ditch to carry ore. We, the younger ones, did light work and went to the mountains to cut down trees, regardless of cypress and persimmon trees, and cut them down for fuel. Our school was lucky, and we were able to make “iron” in ten days or so. The kids talked privately, “How is this different from our iron at home?” But who dared to say it was not iron? The students and teachers carried the black mass to the command to report the joy, the command award to Fangzhen Middle School a black goat, so that teachers and students to improve their lives. But the next days are not smooth, blast furnace even that “iron” can not be refined; autumn rains, logistics supply is not, the students and teachers drink rice soup for ten days, a piece of bread can not see, not to mention eating vegetables. The leaders above held them responsible, saying that morale was low and they wanted to “pull the white flag”. As soon as the principal investigated, the following jingle was circulated among the students: “When I came here, I only said 15 days, who knows how many times now, whoops! When will we return home? Poor thing!” Another passage reads, “We came to the big stove with jokes. We ate shit and drank horse urine!” This, of course, was a “reactionary speech” that disturbed the army and dispersed the fighting spirit – the principal made a severe criticism in the school assembly. Later, one of the brothers who spread the “reactionary talk” (he didn’t make it up, he was just unlucky enough to fall into the arms of the investigator) had his high school entrance exam the next year, but despite his good grades, the door to high school was closed to him forever.
Fifty-three days later, we finally returned to school, nearly 300 students and teachers in Hancheng for nearly two months, is the beginning of the refining of the “iron”. But the delayed homework still has to be made up, seven or eight classes a day, the dolls are drowsy all day long, at this time, we are fond of helping the production team when the autumn harvest that carefree days.
I asked my cousin’s husband, how did you come up with the idea of taking such a picture? My cousin’s husband said, in fact, at that time, several of their teachers did not think anything, one person mentioned a word, we agreed, then called the photographer. In this inadvertent moment, an image was left for the elementary school students in the Great Leap Forward era. The photo was not taken in our village, so naturally I was not on it, but I clearly saw myself and my buddies in the photo.
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