The Great Leap Forward
Fang Xianming
It was getting a little cold. For those of us who grew up in Jiangnan, Shanghai Zhiqing felt even more cold. Everyone put on the cotton coat early. It was early October 1970. Listening to the weather forecast, the minimum temperature is already a few degrees below zero, and the highest is less than 10 degrees. This is basically the temperature of the cold winter month in Shanghai. And here, the heating period has not yet reached the mile.
When I woke up in the morning, the place where water was often poured at the entrance of the dormitory had been covered with a thin layer of ice. Stepping on it "card, card" sounds straight. A small wind blew through and drilled into the neck. If you forget to button it for a while, you will get goosebumps. There is only warm heat at noon, but the cotton jacket on the body cannot be taken off. In the evening, as soon as the sun went down, it was not yet five o'clock in the afternoon, and the heavens and the earth were covered with a layer of gray curtains, and gradually the curtain became heavier and heavier, and the color became darker and darker.
It doesn't necessarily feel colder than in the morning. So people can also open the window while eating, sit in the doorway, and chat for a while. I heard that in winter, the windows must be sealed. The local name is "slip window slit". Every crack in the window had to be pasted with paper, and on the outside. As soon as I heard them say that the windows were pasted, I remembered the "three monsters of the northeast" that I had heard in Shanghai before, and one of them was strange: "The window paper is pasted outside." "Originally I didn't understand, now what window paper, there are glass windows, what else to paste, not to mention "paste outside", I think it is incredible. Now I understand, that's what it means.
This is the autumn of the Northern Wilderness, which is also known as the Golden Autumn. As far as the eye can see, this side is a patch of cornfields. At this moment the corn had been cut down and placed in the ground; there were patches of soybean fields, ringing bells, and the wind was blowing. Some are already harvesting, and Cambaine carries a huge "pusher" and pushes it piece by piece. Sorghum is red, and I remember that there is a novel that is called this name, "Sorghum Red", "red", probably means cooked. No, the tall and thin sorghum, topped with red spikes, seemed a little unsteady under the blowing of the wind. In autumn, everything ripens, but it seems very solemn. The earth was cut, a bare patch, and the few remaining leaves on the trees trembled in the cold wind. Autumn is coming after a harsh winter.
We are still busy in the tanning field, and the soybeans are about to enter the field. At this time, there were only some people in our class on the drying field, and most of them were Shanghai Zhiqing and Harbin Zhiqing, led by Yang Dianxue platoon leader. Yang Platoon Commander is a Shandong native, with a large round face, dark skin shining, and he knows that he is quite healthy at a glance. The eyes are small, a smile and a happy smile, then it narrows into a slit. The teeth seemed to have lost a few, somehow, and it was said that his age was less than the age of tooth loss.
Although he looks to be in his fifties, the people here are old, and from his son's twenties, it is about forty years old, and the tall man is slightly camely, I don't know if it is a long-term sack or something else. One of his black cotton jackets had just been made, and the buttons had not yet been nailed, and the buttonholes had not been worn. A hemp rope was tied to the waist and it was used as a buckle. From the open arms, you can see that inside is a blouse worn as a shirt, and the collar stands straight up around the neck. The lower body was still the black cotton pants. Judging from the jagged cuffs that appeared at the hem of his pants, inside was a pair of very old ball pants. On the round head, a hat that had long changed color but could still be seen was faintly yellow. It was a popular military hat at the time and never seemed to have been washed.
Don't look at him like that, but the man is as strong as an ox. One hundred and sixty pounds of sacks, in his eyes as easily as a young man carrying a 30 pound bag. With such a person as a platoon leader, the work is naturally done, but if he uses his own strength to demand these seventeen or eighteen-year-old young people who are still developing, it will be miserable.
Soybeans have already entered the field, and the drying field requires a large number of people. Although the autumn harvest is not as tense as the wheat harvest, the autumn harvest time is long, the amount of grain is large, the varieties are mixed, and a large number of beans and corn are to be hoarded and left for external transportation. The soybean particles in beidahuang are uniform and full, golden in color, high oil yield, good quality, and most of them are export products, so soybeans are one of the three major crops here. As soon as the autumn harvest season comes, a large number of soybeans will enter the field, plus corn and other grains will also enter the market at this time, and no more people will not be able to do it. The director of the tanning field is still the Yi Zhanhai squad leader, and the deputy squad leader Li Lifu has been transferred away, and the deputy squad leader has not been appointed again.
At this time, the superiors suddenly issued a notice, saying that the Third Division had engaged in a water conservancy battle in the 30th Regiment, and because of the location of Wanbao, also known as the "Wanbao Water Conservancy Project", it was necessary to concentrate tens of thousands of people. Each company of the whole division had to draw labor to the construction site. Moreover, the people who were drawn this time had to carry backpacks and walk to the water conservancy site, saying that they were doing some kind of training. Therefore, the company decided to also allocate more than a hundred laborers to go there, so it would no longer send people to the drying field, nor would it ask for people from the drying field, just such a few people, and they would also do a good job in the drying field and manage it well.
The two heads came back with their heads hanging down. The company couldn't do anything about it, and they couldn't do anything about it. Who knows what kind of water conservancy war is being fought at this time of great excitement, and so many people have been drawn out at once. Captain Yi, the leader of the Yang Platoon, led the people of us to a meeting to discuss what to do. Things are there, the task is very heavy, and nearly half of our group of shanghainese who have just arrived are "new tanning fields", although they are young men, but after all, they are young, only seventeen or eighteen years old, and it is the first year.
During this time we all lived in the company. In such a cold weather, the simple Kang mat shed in the tanning field cannot live in people. It was getting dark early, and every day everyone had to go to work from the company to the drying field and return to the company after work. Most of the old workers have bicycles to ride around, and we young people have to walk from the company to the tanning field, the tanning field to the company, and walk back and forth for more than ten miles to "commute to work".
In the face of piles of grain, we also felt that we had weight on our shoulders. Of course, the ones who know this weight the most are naturally the two heads - Captain Yi and Captain Yang. Especially the Yang platoon leader, it seems that his temper is also much bigger.
In the morning, the north wind whistled. Pushing open the door, a gust of wind blew in front of him, and he couldn't help but tighten his shirt and rush out the door. Against the wind, a few of us walked up the small road leading to the camp headquarters to dry the field. The land where this little hairy road is located was originally planted with wheat. After the wheat harvest, the ground had long since been turned over, and it was bare and unobstructed. The raging north wind swirled on the ground, drilling into people's necklines, cuffs, and trouser legs. On the ground, I don't know whether it was clear snow or frost in the middle of the night, a gray and white. The wheat grains that had been harvested in the field had grown seedlings, and now they were facing the threat of death, shivering in the cold wind. A few of us, through the second place, got down the big trench known as the "North Trench". After getting down the ditch, I went up the ditch again, and walked along the bank of the ditch for a while, and then we reached the number of the other company. At this time, I could already see the houses of the camp, especially the tall camp club. Because I had already walked more than half a mile, my footsteps seemed to be lighter, my speed was faster, and I didn't feel so cold on my body.
We went to the tanning field every day as usual, went out early and returned late, stepped on the frost to go from the small hairy road, and dressed in the sunset light from the small hairy road, day after day.
It was a rare good day. There was not a trace of cloud in the sky, a copper gong-like sun hung in the air, a brilliant light directly hit the earth, there was no wind, and everything seemed to wake up as if the spirit stood vigorously, and people felt particularly comfortable.
"How nice this day!" Yang Dianxue's first sentence when he arrived at the tanning field and saw everyone was this sentence. He took out his cigarette pocket, picked up the cigarette dust on a small cut note, rolled up a cigarette, smoked it with taste, and discussed it with Yi Zhanhai.
After a while, people arrived one after another, and it was just 7:30 in the morning. Under his orders, more than a dozen of us gathered together. Yang Platoon spoke in a very low voice: "Look at this pile of soybeans", he pointed to the pile of soybeans covered with a tomass cloth on the scene and said, "We are raising it all today, checking the scales and hoarding." When it's done, when it's done." Having said that, he divided the division simply, and then he tightened the old scarf that served as a belt.
It was a good day, warm as spring. Working in such weather will not freeze your hands, but it is really enough to dry this pile of soybeans in one day. With his half a year of experience in the tanning field, this pile of soybean wool is estimated to be about 80 tons, and it is really difficult enough to pack a thousand bags. Of course, after getting this pile of soybeans, the scene will be much easier.
Just do it. Several people pushed the field machine, and the whole staff was divided into two groups. Two golden dragons immediately squirted out from the belt of the yang field machine and shot at a pile. One morning, I saw only that the soybean pile mixed with bean skins, bean straw, dirt blocks, ears, weeds, dust, etc., became shorter and shorter at a little; and with the rumbling of the field machine, this golden mountain on this side was little by little uplifted, a little bit bigger, a little elongated, like a golden mountain. The sweat on people's heads and the dust that had been raised mixed together, one by one, they became big faces. There was a break in the middle and two moves. It was already twelve o'clock in the afternoon when all was finished. This work is really fierce enough, three or four hours to do such a big pile. Seeing that the predetermined goal had been reached, Lao Yang's eyes narrowed into a slit, and Lao Yi's face showed an almost invisible smile. A few of us young people were really tired and couldn't move, and the women were almost crying. However, this is only less than half of the work done, and the more difficult work is still in the next inspection scale into the hoard!
At noon on this day, everyone was particularly able to eat, and I also ate eight or two rounds of cake for the first time. After eating, I fell asleep quickly. When I woke up and opened my eyes, Captain Yang platoon rolled up the cigarette in his hand and muttered in his mouth: "Wake up, wake up, wake up, get up and smoke a cigarette..."
I didn't smoke, sat rubbing my eyes, and asked the people around me, it was almost one o'clock in the afternoon. This platoon leader, don't look at him without a watch, than anyone can count the time. When his cigarette was finished, it was just a little bit.
Captain Yang was smoking a cigarette and had already arranged the work there. The four old workers (including himself) were energetic, two of them holding the bag mouth and weighing the scale, two pouring bags; another old worker hoarding (which requires technology); five female compatriots in the back feeding the bag machine, a young man holding the scale to add the scale; me and five other young men three pairs of lifters down the scale, the other one also fed in the back; Lao Yi is the director of the tanning field as usual to do miscellaneous work. Old Yang finished smoking, the work was arranged, and the time was up to one o'clock. Old Yang said hello, and more than a dozen people hula walked out of the hut. Everyone slept a little at noon, and their energy was somewhat restored.
In the afternoon, the weather was hotter, and it seemed that the cotton clothes could not be worn. Listening to the weather forecast, the maximum temperature on this day is 12 degrees above zero. The sky was blue without a trace of cloud. Everyone walked out of the house and looked at the yellow soybeans that had just been raised this morning, and they really felt the joy of labor in their hearts. This soybean mountain is the crystallization of the morning's labor of those of us.
I watched with my own eyes, did it with my own hands, and turned a mixture of a large pile of grass stalks, ears, and other grass seeds, dust, small pieces of soil, and broken beans and bean skin beans into this large pile of clean and golden beans, which I am afraid has not done this work, or people who have only read it in books cannot experience it. And this fatigue, such endless labor brings endless fatigue feelings, and the more you do in the morning, it means that the same or even more than the fatigue of the morning, in the young people like us who were only seventeen or eighteen years old at that time, half afraid, half eager to try and helpless; this is also not experienced by people who see only from books, pictures, and movies.
With this mixed feeling, now we have to put that big pile of beans on this afternoon, only three or four hours, weigh the scales, put them in bags, and then pour them into a big hoard one by one, and finally make a hoard tip, cover the kang mat, and wrap it all up.
The morning labor has tired people enough, and the afternoon is still these beans, but the work of filling bags and hoarding is much heavier than that of the morning yard - in general, the work of the bag is done by female comrades, while the work of bag hoarding is the work of the stick labor - the heart is a little afraid. But the kind of spiritual head of the flesh-and-blood young people felt that they could finish it. Time is tight, everyone went to the nearby yard to push the hoarding machine, bag filling machine, quickly installed, quickly in place. Everything was very conscious, as if they had all been combatified.
The task was there, and according to Old Yang's temper, he could not return home after finishing his work, and he would not do any ideological and political work. The job of a few of our youths is to lift the child, and he has already arranged it. The bag on the scale needs to have a brute force, the 160-pound bag from the ground to the scale to stand, and the bag must be accurate, the bag filling machine flowing beans are almost enough to 160 pounds before closing the bag filling machine exit, carrying the scale; and quickly pick up another bag to support the bag filling machine exit. It is necessary to have experience, strength, but also to react quickly and move quickly. Slowly, the bucket of the bag filling machine is full, and the appropriate weight cannot be grasped, and the scale is slow, or increased, or sharply reduced. Therefore, this irrigation bag can only be done by the old workers, and at that time we were just young people who had only been here for less than half a year.
Pouring bags also needs to be strong. The two men picked up the 160-pound sack, carried it to a height of about one meter, poured it into the bucket of the hoarding machine, and let the conveyor belt be sent into the hoard, which must also be done by the old staff.
As soon as the machine is installed, it is immediately divided according to the division of labor. Closing the electric gate, I could only hear the bag filling machine and the hoarding machine rattling, and after a while, the sound became heavy and slow.
Naturally, I was placed on a lift, two people with a pair of lifts. At first, the flat burden was pressed on the shoulder, and I didn't feel anything, and I was glad that a wheat harvest also pressed the shoulder out. If it weren't for his thin shoulders, the flat shoulders would be equivalent to resting directly on the bones, and the taste of more than a hundred pounds would really be imaginable. The first hour also progressed quickly.
Three pairs of lifters, like a marquee, carried over and walked over. The hemp rope used to count on the edge of the scale was also buckled one by one—that is really knotted rope counting. The hoard over there grew taller, and there was more than one person standing there. The sun also gradually tilted to the west, and the shadow became longer and longer. Although the lift pressed on my shoulder is always 160 pounds, my feeling is getting heavier and heavier. The little dwarf who held the scale was also a left hand for a while, a moment of right hand, even the Yang platoon leader who was as powerful as an ox, it was not so painful to carry the sack upwards, and sometimes with the help of leg strength.
The machine was still so "clicking, clicking" muffled. The cocoons prepared in the morning were also thrown roll by roll on the hoard, and the circles were placed on the edge of the hoards, and the soybeans were caught. After doing three machines, taking advantage of the time to move the machine, Lao Yang did not know whether he was addicted to smoking or wanted to take the opportunity to rest. Anyway he's the head, and his words count. He spoke: "Smoke your cigarette and dry it." "People waited for his orders, and when they heard them, they all took down the tools in their hands, sat down on the spot, smoked cigarettes, and did not smoke and sat there to recuperate.
The hoard was already more than two meters high, but the work had only been done for more than half a minute, and the time was almost three o'clock. The sun was much darker than it had been at noon, and the weather was still warm. I sat on that sack and felt only tired. The strength of the eight or two cakes at noon has almost gone at this moment, and the shoulders have begun to hurt. I want to try to change my shoulder with someone else, but I can't touch my left shoulder.
The time for a cigarette passed quickly. As soon as Old Yang stood up, everyone immediately stood up and moved the camera position with seven hands and eight feet. The hoarding machine and the bag filling machine rattled again, and then the sound became heavy and sluggish, not so good.
The sun gradually tilted westwards—two more times—and finally when the sun was a pole high above the ground, it suddenly fell into the horizon, leaving a red cloud above, and the soybean pile seemed to be stained with a layer. At this moment, this pile of beans is only enough to dry two machines, and the hoard is much higher. My shoulders felt like they were about to collapse, and looking at my companions, their bodies were indeed better than their own, strong and awesome, but they also seemed to be clenching their teeth and too tired to speak. It was only after the sun went down, almost at the same time, that they all muttered in a low voice: "The sun is setting" - according to the usual theory, the sun goes down, it is time to go back from work. This nagging also seemed to remind Old Yang, "It's time to leave work." But he knew that he would not be able to get off work unless he finished this work, so he just muttered quietly.
Grit your teeth and hold on. It's about an hour. The thin hemp rope was densely tied with buckles, like the old monk's prayer beads.
In the twilight, this large pile of beans finally all passed through the bag filling machine, through the inspection scale of this sack and sack, and then through the lifting of six people and three pairs of lifts, through the pouring of the two brothers, and through the hoarding machine (the machine was also extraordinarily prominent that day, and there was no failure, if it was not completed), all of them were in the big hoard that stood tall. Then a few people were busy covering the hoard with kang mats, a few people were cleaning up the tools and machines, "cleaning the battlefield", and Lao Yang counted. Count those hemp rope buckles, forty in all, twenty bags per buckle, eighty kilograms per bag, for a total of sixty-four tons. Good fellow, this afternoon's hard fighting, the joy of labor only stayed in the heart for a while, hunger and fatigue all hit, it was almost exhausting. But there is no place for everyone to live in the tanning field. The old workers flew away one by one on a bicycle, and the young people had to walk about five miles back to the company, and the men and women had to take the steps that had not moved much and walk back to the company along the small road.
It is often said that there have been wolves on this path, so generally do not take the path after dark, on the one hand, they are afraid, on the other hand, it is difficult to see the road, so they all take the main road. But the main road is eight miles, and the small road is only about five miles. Everyone couldn't care about anything, there were about a dozen people who were afraid of something, and they walked three miles less. The sky is already very dark, we remember the experience of the old workers: "black soil, white water and yellow trunk road" - deep black is wet soil, white is puddles, gray and yellow is the trunk road. We watched dimly as the road went. The man walks in front and the woman walks in the back, keeping a certain short distance. When passing through the big trench, the boys in front of them could hear that the girls were running down the ditch and running up the ditch, afraid of falling.
Walking to the company, a new single dormitory was under construction. Because we increased our eighty Shanghai Zhiqing that year, the original dormitory was not enough, and in order to accommodate us, the old Zhiqing temporarily lived in the canteen. This dormitory was built entirely in my spare time. The so-called spare time is mainly built using the labor after dinner time. At that time, the use of spare time labor, called "leap forward", was the invention of a certain company instructor, and it was quickly recognized and popularized by the above.
Not long ago, the company had "leapt forward" to build a civil structure of the horse trumpet. This dormitory was also all "jumped in" out, in preparation for those who rushed to the Wanbao Water Conservancy Conference to return and put it into use. For this reason, we came back from working in the tanning field every day, and after dinner, we also had to participate in the "leap forward" labor of building this house. On this day, we dragged our tired bodies back to the dormitory, saw the shadows on the construction site over there, and thought that we didn't want to participate in this "leap forward" today, it was really tired, and we could hide from it. Who knew that just sat down in the dormitory, wiped his face, was holding a bowl of soup, chewing this yellow hair cake, a deputy company commander walked in and said to us: "You will go after eating..."
Author: Fang Xianming, former Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps 3rd Division, 18th Regiment, 4th Battalion, Shanghai Zhiqing.
Source: Old Zhiqing Homeland