Xiong Jicai
In the early 1960s, I was admitted to Jingzhou Middle School in Hubei Province. At that time, a pound of rice was supplied every day, but as a young student with a long body, he still did not have enough to eat. In the morning, a bowl of clear vegetable porridge, Lunch and dinner can only eat less than four pairs of double steamed rice and a spoonful of cabbage radish with less salt and less oil. A classmate went to help the kitchen and wrote a dozen oil poems to sigh: walk into the kitchen door, a large basin of porridge, a wave in the circle, and see people in the middle.
At that time, during the difficult period of three years of natural disasters, school leaders tried every means to organize production and self-help in order to improve the lives of teachers and students. Next to the Guandi Temple in Dongmen, stone and broken bricks were picked up from the bricks and rubble that had been bombed by the Japanese army, and the land was sorted out to grow vegetables. In Ximen, Taihu Farm gives the school more than a dozen acres of land, as a school farm, teachers and students take turns to plant vegetable fields, but also from the school to pick manure to fatten vegetables, otherwise they will not grow vegetables. Once, a few of us young men formed a team to pick up feces, and went to the farm with strings, and I was accidentally stabbed deeply into the heel by a diamond horn thorn, and I couldn't pull it out, or the school doctor Dr. Cai took it out, and I crippled for many days to recover.
The school responded to the call of the superiors to carry out production and self-help, carried forward the spirit of the large-scale production movement in Nanniwan, the base area of Yan'an during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and did it itself, with sufficient food and clothing. The school simply suspended classes for more than ten days and went to the Shau-chiu Concave along the Yangtze River to open up wasteland and cultivate land. On the river beach, the reeds are overgrown, and the school decided to do a big job here. First remove the reed roots, dig deep into a ridge of new soil, and then plant broad beans, in this boundless beach, can be of great use.
Teachers and students set off every day after breakfast, and the three of them dug a hoe together, so that the tools of human breathing were endless, and they took turns digging the ground, focusing on removing the reed roots. The school propaganda team went to the scene to cheer up and cheer up, "the sky does not give help to the grain field, dig out the sowing line with all its strength, work intensively and carefully to grasp the work, and make sure that the grain piles are full of warehouses." "One, two, three, rush forward, are good men, are heroes, dig the ground to compete in martial arts, and award awards to models in it." In the rhythm of the propaganda team's bamboo boards ringing in the sky, they launched one after another charge, sweating like rain one by one. A ridge of new land appeared, but there was not a single seed in front of him.
The school applied to the Grain Bureau of the Jingzhou Special Bureau for the allocation of broad bean seeds, but there were no seeds in the local warehouse, and the seeds were also transported to the Qianjiang Yajiao grain warehouse hundreds of miles away. Several student cadres of our student propaganda team were temporarily ordered to transport seeds.
It was nearly evening, and the passenger shuttle bus was stopped, so I had to take the Long Lake waterway. We borrowed two wooden boats, which were set off by Sun Chuanfang and Yu Yueying, who could hold boats. We sang and laughed all the way, and it took us more than two hours to reach the Yajiao grain warehouse. However, the custodian was sick and had just gone to the hospital to hang up the hanging bottle, and when he returned, it was already dark. We urged the custodian to ship the goods quickly, carry a few thousand pounds of broad beans on their shoulders, and start to return. At first, there was still a little light in the sky, but as I held on to paddling, it was so dark that I couldn't see my five fingers. The vast and boundless long lake, if you draw the wrong direction, it will cause a mistake of a millimeter and a thousand miles, and it will be difficult to catch up with the seeds sent to the students tomorrow morning. After discussing it, everyone decided to camp in the lake, wait for the east to turn white tomorrow, and find the right direction before moving forward. The two boats are close together, and the two sides are fastened with bamboo poles. Male and female students divided into boat silos and slept in unused sacks. In the first half of the night, the wind and waves were calm, everywhere was dark, only a few fishing fires could be faintly seen in the distance; but in the second half of the night, the lake wind was gusting, blowing the boat left and right, the lake water was two or three meters deep, and everyone slept in the cabin with trepidation. From time to time, fish jump out of the water and then fall with a thud, and occasionally fish jump on the bow of the boat, jumping around, and everyone has no heart to care. The night was dark, the wind was blowing, the boat was shaking constantly, and two sailors pulled up the loose bamboo poles, pressed against the hull, and inserted them again to make the boat lean tighter. In the middle of the night, everyone yawned and scanned the night sky with their eyes wide open, hoping that it would be dawn soon. Finally, when the eastern skyline revealed the bright light of the fish's belly, Sun Chuanfang, who was familiar with the terrain, said: "We can sail the boat!" So everyone opened their eyes and sat up together. The sailors threw away their arms and propped up the boat vigorously in the direction of Jingzhou. As the boat paddled forward, the sky grew brighter, and we were confident that we would arrive after breakfast by the reclamation army. The boatman plucked up the courage to hold the boat with all his strength, and the boat rushed forward like an arrow off the string. As soon as they arrived at the shore, the classes were waiting to be seeded. On the bank of the Yangtze River, a man carrying a basket of seeds and a long string of reclamation troops set out toward the reclamation of the Yangtze River.
A red sun rises in the east, and the whole earth is bathed in golden sunlight. The morning breeze gently brushed our faces, and we felt relaxed. Our propaganda team has honorably completed this seed shipment.