In 1977, the road to the college entrance examination of a landlord's children
Author: Ming Ruoshui
A catastrophic snowfall in the Northeast has just passed, and in the blink of an eye, it is entering the last month of 2021. As a person in western Liaoning, I can't help but think of my own college entrance examination road in the heavy snow in December 44 years ago.
One day in December 1977, stepping on the heavy snow more than half a meter deep, I and a dozen zhiqing walked out of the small village where we went to the countryside to work and went to the town to participate in the college entrance examination, which had been abolished for more than ten years.
Those of us who were born in the 1950s have grown up in elementary school in the education of red treasure books and quotations and songs. The three words "go to college" have never left a trace in the dictionary of our lives, and our entire lives are covered by the word "revolution.".
However, at the end of 1977, accompanied by a heavy snow, it brought us new terms such as "going to college", "registration", "examination" and "admission ticket". We were so unexpected, overwhelmed, genuinely frightened. No one would have thought that the five-cent registration fee, a form, and an exam would change the trajectory of our lives and create permanent feelings, joys or regrets.
After graduating from high school in 1975, I went to the countryside, and a green school bag, a straw hat, and a wooden box accompanied me from Jinzhou City to the countryside known as the "Broad World" at that time, and began a life of "great achievements". We know that Qingdian is a collective household of more than 40 people, all from Fushun and Jinzhou. This was a relatively proud part of my life, and the ideal and pursuit at that time were very firm, that is, to "accept the re-education of the poor and lower-middle peasants," to be a good successor to the revolutionary cause, and to strive for the great cause of "liberating all mankind" all my life.
Author when going to the countryside
In the middle of October 1977, the news of the resumption of the college entrance examination came, and we knew that more than a dozen people were preparing to apply for the examination. In those days, the family composition was still an obstacle to the application for the examination, and the children of landlords, capitalists and bourgeoisie were not allowed to join the army, join the party and go to school. Although there is no restriction on the registration of this college entrance examination, do people with bad family backgrounds have reference qualifications? Can I be admitted? It's still an unsolved mystery that haunts my heart.
After the director of the production brigade saw me registering, he said, your family composition is not good, and if you do well, you will not be admitted. The reason why he said this was because half a year after I went to the countryside, because my performance in all aspects was very outstanding, the brigade considered the issue of my joining the party and sent this director to my father's school for external transfer. As a result of the external transfer, my family was born as a landlord, and my parents also had political problems and did not meet the conditions for joining the party, so they could only further examine me as a "child who can be well educated."
Although the director of the brigade poured a scoop of cold water on me, I felt that since I could register, I had to take the exam, and whether I could be admitted or not depended on luck.
Because my family is not from a good background, I am extra careful when filling out the college entrance examination volunteer. Excluding the military and police academies, I did not dare to apply for liberal arts schools, and science schools were afraid of admission restrictions, so I had to turn to medicine that I did not like. As long as you can continue to study, it is much better than mixing in the dirt of the countryside, how can you consider your own interests and hobbies?
My hobby was sports, I was a middle-distance runner in middle school, and I had good athletic performance to meet the admission criteria of the sports academy, but that year the sports college was classified as a liberal arts. I like to write, and I dream of becoming a writer or journalist, but since elementary school, I have been carrying the burden of a bad family composition, and I can't join the Red Army, I can't join the Red Guards, and I can't join the Party. I did not dare to apply for liberal arts schools, for fear that I would not be admitted if I failed the political examination.
After registering, there is still a month's revision time, picking up textbooks that have long been unfamiliar, I don't know where to start, and there are not many books to review. Fortunately, my father, who is a middle school teacher, has borrowed some textbooks from the school library, and I, together with my sister who rushed back from the rural zhiqingdian, Threw myself into the intense review.
When I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, the Cultural Revolution began, and I basically stopped taking culture classes. After that, he followed his parents on the "May Seventh Road" and went to the small ravine. After three years, I returned to the city school, and after less than a year of secondary school, I began to "resurgence against education" and stopped attending classes, and went to study engineering and agriculture. I have taken serious cultural classes, more than four years of primary school, more than one year of middle school, I have no idea what high school is, and my cultural knowledge is seriously mutilated.
For more than a month, it is impossible to make up for the knowledge that has not been learned. Dad had to pick an important teaching, Dad asked, have you ever learned optics? I said, I haven't learned it, I won't. Dad told me about optics for half an hour. I also asked, will the factorization be? I said, no. Dad got a math teacher to give him a half-hour explanation of factorization. In this way, I learned from the East and the West, and I learned for a month.
The time passed quickly, and the day before the exam, my sister and I went back to our respective knowledge points to prepare for the exam locally.
At five o'clock in the morning, the weather in the northeast has not yet brightened, in the winter snow, we know the youth of more than a dozen zhiqing who took the exam, with stars above their heads, judging the direction, stepping on the knee-deep snow, running to the examination room forty miles away.
The empty land, white and silent, not a single footprint, a dozen of us. You pull me, I hold you, step by step, trying to move forward. By the time I walked to the bus stop on the highway, it had taken nearly an hour. We waited anxiously for the bus, and if we couldn't get on the bus, we wouldn't be able to catch the exam.
A large number of people at the bus stop were all candidates preparing to go to the exam. I was shocked, so many people, how can they get on the bus? You have to be ready to squeeze. As long as the bus comes, the boys open the way in front, the girls follow behind, and one pulls one to squeeze into the car. There were so many people waiting for the bus that within half an hour, two buses passed, and we still didn't squeeze in.
It was already dawn, it was close to seven o'clock, and there was still more than half an hour to drive on the bus to get to the town, and the town was still some distance from the school examination hall. Those of us squeezed forward desperately, squeezing to the nearest place to the stop before the next bus arrived, and finally pushing and pulling each other onto the bus.
When I got into the car, the doors couldn't be closed, the pedals of the doors were full of people, and the driver had to open the doors and drive to town. The bus was crowded with people, and it was impossible to stay down. In the air that was about to suffocate, it lasted for more than half an hour, and finally arrived in town. We didn't even dare to catch our breath, and ran quickly to the middle school that was the examination room. Finally, I ran to the school that was used as an examination room before the exam. I found my own exam classroom according to the test number, and I was relieved, and a stone in my heart fell to the ground.
The door of the examination room classroom has not yet opened, I lie down at the window to see, the rural school desk is very broken, potholes, can not write at all, I prepared the pad, has been forgotten in the zhiqing point, did not bring. Without a pad, how can you write on paper? I looked at the time, and with ten minutes to go, I ran quickly to the shops in town. Thankfully, the store was already open, I bought a pad and quickly ran back to the exam room.
By this time, the classroom had opened its doors and candidates had begun to enter the examination room. Another classmate of mine knew that Qingdian did not have a pad, and she repeatedly begged me to give her half of the pad I bought. I had no choice but to break the plastic pad, and I only had a pad the size of 16 small homework books. Use this small pad to move the exam paper around on the uneven wooden tabletop.
The morning exam was over, the candidates handed in their papers and walked out of the classroom. The classroom where the exam room was made was locked, and we had no place to stay, so we stood on the snow outside the classroom, eating the bread and cake we had brought. It was cold, and we came out early in the morning, past the crowded car, rushed to the road, and went through a half-day exam. The mouth was thirsty, but there was no water to drink. I saw the cleaner snow on the windowsill, so I pulled open the floating layer above, took a few bites of the snow below, moistened my throat, and swallowed the cake. White snow fell from the sky, it was a drink at our fingertips, and it was so cool to put in our mouths! The temperature is around minus 20 degrees, and we are cold from the inside out. Standing in the snow outside the classroom, we kept stomping our feet and rubbing our hands to prevent our hands from freezing too stiff to enter the exam room for a while and couldn't write.
The first day of the exam ended successfully, and we walked another 40 miles to return to Zhiqingdian. Because many students did not do well in the first day of the exam, some gave up the next day's exam. Although I didn't think the answer was good enough, I still wanted to finish the exam. The last subject is Chinese, which is what I am good at. The last volume of the language is the essay, which lasts 100 minutes. The topic was two, one was "On Youth" and the other was "In the Boiling Days", and I chose the first one.
I am used to writing essays without typing, so I write directly on the volume. Half an hour later, the composition was written 3/4, and only the end was left. At this time, Zhiqing, who came from outside the window, was shouting: "We are leaving, the train has arrived!" "They have given up on the exam and are ready to take the last train back to Jinzhou. I hesitated, if I finished writing the essay and did not follow them, I could only walk forty miles alone in the dark snow to return to Zhiqingdian.
It's too difficult, it's dark and the road is far away, there is no companion, I dare not take too much risk. So I decided to terminate the exam and decisively put the unfinished essay paper on the table. In the classroom, everyone was writing nervously, and the teacher was shocked to see that I had handed in my papers.
I took the essay exam for half an hour, the first one to turn in the papers, walked out of the examination room, quickly caught up with Zhiqing classmates, and caught the last train back to jinzhou home. I thought to myself, anyway, I can't get in the exam, or go home early, it's better to be safe.
Unexpectedly, after the New Year, in January, I received a telephone notice from the commune to go back to participate in the college entrance examination. We know the green dots, in the winter holiday for two months, the young people will not return until March. When I returned to the point alone for the medical examination, the whole point was quiet, and I was alone, and the row of dormitories was all closed. I picked up a shard of glass and cut open the seal I had attached to the wooden door by hand. I had to sleep all night and get up early the next day to go to the county for a medical examination.
The green dot was empty and pitch black, and I was the only one, and I was a little scared. Before going to bed at night, I went to the kitchen to find a kitchen knife and put it under my pillow, so that I could defend myself in case of a bad guy. I knew that the dilapidated and unstable dormitory door was useless to insert it from the inside, so it was better to simply hide it. Then I put a basin of water inside the door and placed it where I had to stay when I entered it; a small slit was opened in the door and a broom was placed. If someone comes in, the broom will fall on his head as soon as possible. He would take another step forward, and his feet would step into the basin of water and make a big movement. Even if I can't scare the other person away, I have time to prepare for resistance. After all this preparation, I went to sleep in peace.
When I woke up the next morning, nothing happened. At five o'clock, when the sky was just dark, I ran to the county physical examination site with three or four candidates from this village who took part in the physical examination.
The physical examination is in a small school, and the medical examination items are posted in front of each classroom. Under the leadership of the staff, we conduct medical examinations from house to house. The stove in the small bungalow of the school was very hot, and I didn't feel cold when I took off my cotton clothes for a physical examination. When I measure my blood pressure, I am very nervous. The doctor measured the blood pressure several times, and it was somewhat high. The doctor was very nice, she asked me if I had measured blood pressure before, and I said, no, it was the first time. She said, you rest in the house for a while, lie down for a while. After about half an hour, she measured me again, and then wrote it on the medical examination form, probably qualified. I'm thankful for the doctor, but unfortunately I don't know what her name is.
Letter of Admission
After the Spring Festival, in February, I received the admission letter of the "Chinese Medicine ApprenticeShip" in Liaoning Province, but there was no feeling of excitement and happiness in my heart. Because, this is not my ideal university. I reluctantly returned to Zhiqingdian alone to pack my bags and silently bid farewell to the place where I had paid for more than two years of youth and sweat. When we came, many people in the village beat gongs and drums and welcomed us vigorously, but when I left, I was alone and silent, and I embarked on the road of no return to studying medicine and practicing medicine.
The last diary before entering school in 1978
Before enrolling, an essay poem
More than forty years have passed, and another heavy snowfall in the northeast has just passed. Snow fell from the sky, blowing one after another, white and beautiful. In the early winter of 1977, friends who ran to the examination hall with half a meter of snow, how are you doing now? Are there still traces of ideals in your heart? Whether you are now a high-ranking official, Houlu, or poor and unemployed, you probably will not forget the snow that accompanied our youthful ideals back then, right?
After 40 years, Zhiqing, who had been consulting with that year, returned to the town where he had taken the exam, and the author on the right was the author
Author: Ming Ruoshui, real name Ming Xinke, born in 1956 in Liaoning teacher family, in 1975, went to the countryside to Beizhen County Caotun Commune Zhiqing, in December 1977 was admitted to the Liaoning Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine ApprenticeShip, graduated in 1983. Worked as a clinician in Jinzhou Central Hospital and retired in 2011.
Source: Zhiqing Love Affair