Spring festival
Text/Li Zhenjun
In the mid-1970s, I went to Heze City with my family from the countryside of Southwest Lu. The biggest difference between the city and the countryside is that you can take a bath regularly. Especially near the Spring Festival, bathing has a special taste. In the whole of Heze City, there is only one large bathhouse. Located in the middle of Dongfanghong Avenue, it is the center of the city. It is directly north of the Heze Prefectural Committee and the seat of the Bureau, to the west is the Heze Department Store, which is the commercial center, and to the east is the Triangle Garden and the East Coach Station.
At five o'clock in the morning, my father called up the two of us brothers. We started from a small and walked 10 minutes to the hammam. To bring your own towels, soap, soap, shampoo, etc. in advance, the impression of shampoo seems to be a seagull brand, bagged, the whole barrel is wholesale by the family from the Heze area department store, the enamel washbasin is not allowed to be brought in, and the waiter is responsible for supervision.
How much the ticket cost, I can't remember it clearly. Entering the door to place the clothes is a checkered cabinet separated by wooden planks, which has no door locks, and the lock was added in the early 80s. Slippers are a brand, a specification, only adults wear, there is no small size, children can only wear adult slippers. The so-called large ponds, that is, two pools made of cement in the house, vary in size and size. The temperature in the small pool is higher, the temperature in the large pool is lower; the water is only put in once a morning, so the afternoon bath is almost a "boiled broth", and a layer of white foam is floated on it. Even so, there are still a lot of people every day. Because you have no choice but to go there and take a shower.
In the mid-eighties, both of our brothers went to work, and my brother knew a waiter in a large bathhouse, that is, a waiter, who bought two bags of American diamines for him at a flat price, and he promised to open a standard room for our grandfather, which was the room he managed, at that time, this was the highest standard, and usually county-level cadres were allowed to enter. In the suite next door, there are two basins and pools, and the water can be used freely and casually. It was the most extravagant shower we had ever taken since we went into town. For ordinary people, a grass people, that is an expectation, it is difficult to achieve.
At the beginning of 1981, I was a senior in Heze No. 2 Middle School, and at that time, Heze Medical College was separated from Heze No. 2 Middle School. One afternoon after class, a high school classmate invited me and another classmate to take a bath in the staff bathhouse of heze medical expert hospital. His father was the head of the General Affairs Department of Heze Medical College, responsible for logistics. When I heard the news, I was very surprised and looked forward to it. On that day, 3 children played in the bathhouse that could accommodate dozens of people, not bathing, but enjoying, so that decades later, they are still fresh in their memories. The three of us children enjoyed ourselves as if the whole world were ours; there were, just the three of us, and we washed away the dirt, fatigue and burnout of the years and restored a new us.
Near the New Year, haircuts are also necessary and queued. In the impression, the barber shop of the former Dongfanghong Avenue is adjacent to the department store building and is located in the southeast corner of the middle section of the current Dongfanghong Avenue. The barbershop did not have a clothes rack at all, and the clothes had to be placed on a connecting chair. For the New Year, my mother had just bought two New Army coats for our brothers, which was very fashionable. The brother went to the Oriental Red Barber Shop to get a haircut, and after the haircut, he found that his new coat had been worn away by someone else, and he himself went home wearing someone else's old coat.
It is not clear how much an invoice costs. The shampoo for haircuts at the time was a mixture of laundry detergent and alkaline noodles. The next day, it was a layer of dandruff, and after washing his hair from the barbershop, he had to go back home with a second rinse, and that was the condition at that time.
Buying some meat for the New Year is also a must. Now Pan Yushou, there is a meat food store, every year into the Wax Moon, we have to go there to buy meat, fish, eggs and so on. Buy meat is to rely on meat tickets, and from the counter to line up tens of meters, or even more than a hundred meters, in the process of queuing, often people cut in line, by others scolded. It is impossible to choose which part of the meat you want, and the salesman has no choice in what you want. If anyone's relative works as a food worker, it must be respected, because everyone asks for him.
The last thing to say is to buy briquettes for the New Year. At that time, the family had to buy briquettes in winter. Throughout the winter, it is necessary to use the ground to row the car to the briquette factory to buy and pull back, the impression seems to be a winter row of briquettes used in one place is enough. My father led us to borrow a ground row car from the parents of a classmate at the Second Wood Factory in Heze District opposite a small school, and went to the Heze Regional Fuel Company (Heze District Briquette Factory) in Beiguanyuan to buy coal. In my memory, the longest queue was one day and one night, when we pulled our own coal balls back home, the joy was indescribable, like completing a big and difficult thing.
Since the reform and opening up, the times have changed dramatically, and people's lives are also changing day by day, and it is not too much to call it a rapid change. We have experienced the era of ground pot, the era of briquettes, the era of gas tanks and the era of natural gas, and each transformation is a leap and improvement in the quality of life. My father used to say, "We've caught up with the good times." "As epoch-making witnesses, we must strengthen our belief in moving forward in the torrent of the times, strive to forge ahead, live up to Shaohua, live up to our mission, and actively write a brilliant chapter worthy of the times and history, in order to be worthy of this great era."
January 6, 2022 at Tianze Garden
About the Author:
Li Zhenjun, a native of Heze, Shandong, a member of the Communist Party of China, born in April 1966, is an economist with a university degree and works for the Heze Development Zone Branch of the Agricultural Bank of China. He is a member of the China Financial Writers Association, a member of the Writers Association of the Agricultural Bank of China, a contracted writer of the China Contemporary Writers Alliance, a member of the Shandong Provincial Essay Literature Association, and a director of the Shandong Financial Writers Association. The essay "Growing up in the embrace of the motherland" won the "Chinese Financial Culture" Essay Excellence Award for the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of New China, the documentary reportage "Dongfeng Village Loves to Borrow "Dongfeng"" won the Agricultural Bank of China's "Poverty Alleviation Imprint - Literary and Artistic Works Exhibition" Prose Excellence Award, "For the Party Flag to Be More Colorful" won the Agricultural Bank of China's "Always Follow the Party" Theme Literary and Art Works Excellence Award, and in August 2021, "Fengyi Pavilion" won the third prize in the poetry category of the national "Fengyi Cup" essay collection activity held by "Financial Literature" Magazine. Many essays have appeared in literary media such as China Writers Network, Chinese Financial Literature, and Financial Literature.
Editor: Ma Xuemin
One point number Qingwei Heze creative base