"Chickens Cry in the Middle of the Night" and Spring to Princess Ridge

During the Spring Festival in 1972, I (second from the left in the front row above) and the Shi Wen art propaganda team took a photo in front of the auditorium of the station

Friends born before the 1960s, almost everyone knows the story of "Chickens In the Middle of the Night". "Chicken Cry in the Middle of the Night" was not only repeatedly written into comic strips, movie puppet cartoons, etc., but also once became a model in primary school Chinese textbooks. The story is that the landlord Zhou Peeled in order to cut the peasants, got up in the middle of the night and went into the chicken nest to learn howling, which caused the roosters to crow together, and the landlord went to urge the peasants to get up and work in the field. For a time, "Zhou Peel" became synonymous with the well-known bully landlord.

Maybe there is a cause for it! I don't know how I became a witness to the end of this story! And listen to me slowly.

It was also February and March 1972, and shortly after I finished my task of helping the division's propaganda team paint sets, I was officially appointed as an officer of the cadre section of the division's political department. The timing has entered the spring, but the vast northeast land is still cold and steep, and there is still snow on the hills near the airport.

One day, the chief of the cadre section asked me to go to the army immediately, without saying anything about what happened. According to the principle of confidentiality, I immediately took a train to report to the military headquarters of The Third Station of Xinghai on Black Rock Reef in Dalian.

Director Teng of the Military Cadres Department called a meeting between Officer Wang of the Cadre Department and I, only to learn that we were asked to carry out a new task: to resettle the household registration and work of Cui ××, chief of the cultural section of the original base of Pulandian.

Cui ×× is a native of Wafangdian in Liaoning Province, and is the grandson of Cui Laocai, the original form of Zhou Pi in the novel "Chickens Crying in the Middle of the Night" created by military writer Gao Yubao. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Cui ×× was labeled a "class dissident" who concealed his bullying landlord elements, expelled from the party, expelled from the military, escorted from his hometown, and supervised labor. Unsatisfied, Cui repeatedly appealed to the army, Shen Kong, and the Beijing headquarters, believing that he had left home to study in nearby Gai County since childhood and had not participated in the exploitation. In 1947, he directly joined the People's Liberation Army from the school, and also participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and made contributions to the revolution.

The military party committee has made a decision to resolutely correct it: To move Cui's hukou to Gongzhuling, Jilin Province, and live with his lover and children; and to deal with it as a normal cadre demobilization; and to properly arrange his work.

However, these three opinions came to the bottom, but they were put aside. In particular, the old comrades who originally undertook this case were very resistant. Director Teng asked me to first bring the opinions of the military party committee back to the division, and explicitly ordered me to return to Dalian as soon as possible and prepare to leave.

I reported to the section chief according to the procedure, and the section chief did not say whether it was or not, and asked me to ask the department leader for instructions. The head of the department only said "we ignored it", and I had to go back to Corey. The Chief of Section remains silent.

I talked about my views on the section chief and said: "This is from the line of the cadre department, and if we do not follow this line, the relationship with the military cadre department will be difficult to handle in the future." Is that the case, and I'll still go tomorrow? The division blamed me, and you pushed me on the head. The section chief simply said, "Then there you go!"

Back in the army, Officer Wang and I prepared in detail the work programme and course of action. Before leaving, Deputy Political Commissar Li personally listened to our report, and he said in a categorical manner: "How can a person decide his origin?" All these years have always contributed to the revolution! When you go this time, you must arrange him well, when he is settled, and when he will come back!"

Officer Wang and I knew very well in our hearts: In those days, a large number of intellectual young people went to the mountains and went to the countryside, changing from urban hukou to agricultural hukou. However, it is more difficult for us to move a "person with political and historical problems" from the countryside to the urban hukou of a neighboring province. But the military order is like a mountain, and even the greatest difficulties must be completed. With clear instructions from the military commander, we set out with confidence.

The first is to find Cui ×× and bring the care of the leaders of the troops to him and his family as soon as possible. We first went to Fuxian (now Wafangdian City) and found cui's production team.

The branch secretary of the production team briefed us on some information about the Cui family and Cui himself, and they said: "Cui Laocai is a bully landlord here, the people are indignant, and the exploitation and deduction of long-term workers are very strong. In the year of the land reform, Cui Laocai's family was basically suppressed. Cui ×× went out to study in his early years, he did not participate in the exploitation, and the people in the tun were not deeply impressed by him. ”

"When he came down from the army, he said that he was in the team to receive supervision and labor. We saw that he was almost fifty years old, unable to do any work, and he had tuberculosis, and he often coughed up blood, so he did as much as he could. Later, when he saw him here alone, sick and uncared for, strange and pitiful, he agreed to go back to the Princess Ridge lover's house. ”

So we immediately rushed to Princess Ridge. At that time, Gongzhuling was a small station on the main railway line between Beijing and Harbin, between Siping and Changchun. The town is next to a series of cobwebbed railroad tracks. We easily found the Cui family. When Cui listened to our intentions, his eyes were moist, and he just repeated: "Great, great!" I finally got you here. ”

Although less than fifty years old, Cui's hair was already gray, and her cheekbones carried the flush characteristic of tuberculosis people. The family of six lived in two small earthen houses with little furnishings except for two conspicuous sleeping kangs. Under the statue of Chairman Mao on the wall, there is a mirror frame, filled with some yellowed photos, recording the past of the owner.

When we asked about his life, he smiled slightly and said in a flat tone: "I am now a 'black hukou', no food stamps, no wages." Two children, plus elderly and frail parents-in-law, a family of five or six, rely on the income of their lover alone. ”

In the middle of the conversation, Cui's lover returned from outside. She was originally the head nurse of the base health team, from a poor peasant background, and was an active member of the army to study Chairman Mao's works. After Cui's problem came out, he also followed the bad luck. At that time, she was treated as a normal demobilization. The troops asked her for advice, in order to facilitate the care of Lao Cui and the reunion of husband and wife, whether to arrange to go together in wafangdian? She firmly refused, saying, "Why should I go to the Wafang shop?" I didn't make a mistake, and I still had to think about my children. So she took her two children back to Princess Ling's house and did her old job.

Talking and chatting, the two children also came back from school. The eldest is the handmaiden, twelve or three years old, and the younger is the son, who is only eight or nine years old. Looking at the two innocent and sensible children, I secretly decided that I must do my best to make their childhood life happier.

For more than a month, we traveled back and forth between Siping (the seat of the prefectural party committee), Changchun, Gongzhuling, Wafangdian, Shenyang, two provinces and five cities. I couldn't figure out how many departments and how many people I had found, but I finally changed Cui's rural hukou in Liaoning to an urban hukou in Jilin Province.

After the implementation of the household registration, the arrangement of work has become a big problem. Gongzhuling was not a large place, and there were few state-run units. Cui ×× consider his body and insist on entering the state-run unit, and medical care and labor insurance are guaranteed.

Contacting two or three factories, they all suspected that he was older as a worker, had been shaking a pen pole in the army for a long time, had no skills, and was still a young master as an apprentice. In the end, good to say, finally put his working relationship in place.

The night before leaving Princess Ridge, the Cui family prepared a table full of dishes and a lot of wine, and no matter what, they had to leave us for a meal. The next day the whole family came to see us off again until we got on the train. They still refused to leave for a long time.

The wheels rolled until we could no longer see the figures of them waving, and our hearts flew toward Dalian.