On June 26, 1965, Mao Zedong was angry with Qian Xinzhong, minister of health, saying: "The work of the Ministry of Health only gives 15% of the country's population work, and these 15% are mainly old masters, and the vast number of peasants do not have medical treatment, no medical treatment, no medicine." The Ministry of Health is not the people's Ministry of Health, change it to the City Ministry of Health or the Old Master Health Department, or the City Old Master Health Department! ”
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong's anger was for a reason; in the early days of the founding of New China, the country was in ruins waiting to be rebuilt, most of the limited medical resources were concentrated in the cities, and the lack of medical care and medicine in rural areas had always been a problem of anxiety for the party and the state. Although the Ministry of Health has organized itinerant medical teams to visit the rural grassroots level on many occasions, this kind of mobile medical measures only has the effect of "raining over the wet ground", which still cannot solve the fundamental problem of rural medical treatment.
On June 26, Qian Xinzhong reported to Mao Zedong that there are more than 1.4 million health technicians in China, and 80 percent of senior medical personnel are in cities, of which 70 percent are in large cities, 20 percent are in county seats, and only 10 percent are in rural areas, and only 25 percent of medical funds are used in rural areas and 75 percent are in cities. It's no wonder Mao got angry.
Therefore, Mao Zedong resolutely gave instructions: "The focus of medical and health work should be placed on the rural areas, and a large number of doctors who can also be afforded in the countryside should be trained to serve the peasants!" ”
Since this day is June 26, this instruction is also known as the "626" instruction.
"Six-two-six" instructions
More than a month later, Mao Zedong summoned Qian Xinzhong and others, saying: "Medical education should be reformed, there is no need to read so many books at all, high school graduates study for 3 years is enough, mainly in practice to learn and improve, such doctors put in the countryside, even if the skills are not big, it is better than deceitful doctors and witch doctors, and the countryside can also afford to raise." ”
After Mao Zedong's instructions were issued, the state began to vigorously support qualified communes to quickly establish health centers, and the Ministry of Health began to organize medical training for young people with a little culture in the countryside. So the group of "barefoot doctors" was born, and the most famous of them was Wang Guizhen.
Wang Guizhen was born in 1944 to a poor peasant family in Dagou Village, Jiangzhen, Chuansha County (now Part of Pudong New Area) in Shanghai. In 1958, after graduating from primary school, Wang Guizhen worked as a textile woman in a textile factory in the town for 3 years, because of her diligence and studiousness, she quickly mastered the blocking technology, and was the first apprentice to enter the factory in the same year to become a regular worker, and also joined the Communist Youth League in 1960.
After the "626" directive was issued, the Jiangzhen Commune of Chuansha County, Shanghai, held a medical accelerated training course in the summer of 1965 to train rural hygienists who were half-rural and half-doctors. There are also certain criteria for recruiting trainees: they must be from poor and lower-middle-class peasant families, perform well politically, and must also have an education level of primary school graduation or above. After the document went down to Dagou Village, the village party branch unanimously believed that Wang Guizhen just met the above conditions, so it decided to send her to study.
Wang Guizhen (right)
In December 1965, 21-year-old Wang Guizhen walked into the door of the training class, the training class learning time is only 4 months, in order to let the trainees master the medical knowledge and general treatment methods that can be learned in a few years, the course of the crash course is particularly tightly arranged, which is a particularly big challenge for Wang Guizhen, who has not even attended middle school, she can not understand the symbols and chemical elements that are "greater than" and "less than".
But Wang Guizhen studied very hard, she still often read in the bed with a flashlight after turning off the lights at 10 o'clock at night, she also borrowed medical books from others, studied little by little like ants gnawing on bones, turned into dictionaries or asked those who were more educated than herself when she encountered words she didn't know, and sometimes in order to recite a medical term, she often got up in the middle of the night to turn over books.
At the end of the four months of study, Wang Guizhen became the best student in the crash course, and she returned to the village to become a village doctor. But at the beginning, the villagers did not dare to let Wang Guizhen see a doctor, everyone thought that being a doctor would take several years to learn, but she had only studied for 4 months, could medical skills really work?
Once a villager had a toothache, Wang Guizhen offered to give him acupuncture, but he did not dare to let Wang Guizhenza, Wang Guizhen first gave himself a stab, the patient is not afraid. After Wang Guizhen stuck the needle down for the patient, the patient said that it did not hurt. After that, this patient became Wang Guizhen's volunteer propagandist, and gradually more people came to see Wang Guizhen.
Wang Guizhen treats villagers
"A silver needle, a handful of herbs" is Wang Guizhen's two magic weapons, she planted more than 100 kinds of Chinese herbs on a slope at the edge of the village, and came up with a variety of ways to combine soil and ocean, so that the people around her can treat diseases with less money.
Although Wang Guizhen is a rural doctor, she is not out of work, and she usually has to work barefoot in the fields. So this often happens: when Wang Guizhen was working in the paddy field, she was called to treat the patient, and she did not have time to wash the mud on her feet, so she went barefoot and continued to come back to work in the field after seeing the doctor.
Over time, everyone gave Wang Guizhen the title of "barefoot doctor", that is, Wang Guizhen had to work and practice medicine, which fully demonstrated her affirmation of her spirit of serving the people wholeheartedly.
However, some cadres did not understand this very well, and they thought that this title was a kind of irony for Wang Guizhen, and once a cadre in the city came to the village, heard about the "barefoot doctor", and said to the village cadres very angrily: "How can you call a model figure who learns lei feng like this?" Don't call it that in the future! ”
The barefoot doctor at the time
But the villagers did not care about this, they continued to call it so, so that more and more people knew the title of "barefoot doctor", and Wang Guizhen's fame became bigger and bigger.
In September 1968, Hongqi magazine, then China's most politically influential magazine, published an investigative report entitled "From the Growth of Barefoot Doctors to the Direction of the Medical Education Revolution," which specifically introduced Wang Guizhen's deeds. "People's Daily", "Wen Wei Po" and other major newspapers and periodicals have also been reprinted, Wang Guizhen was soon well known to the people of the country, the name "barefoot doctor" has also been widely recognized, since then the commune health workers have been called "barefoot doctor".
In September of that year, Mao Zedong also saw this article, he was very happy, and in the "Red Flag" magazine, the article's brow commented: "Barefoot doctors are good." ”
Poster for the barefoot doctor
After Wang Guizhen became famous, there were many letters from all over the country, some wanted to learn from her, some asked for medical treatment, and even courted, and there were also many people from all over the country who came to visit and study in the village, and the commune also set up a special reception group for this purpose. A photograph of Wang Guizhen's carrying a medicine box was also printed on the food stamps of Shanghai at that time.
On The National Day of 1969, Wang Guizhen was invited to Beijing to participate in the National Day ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and was cordially received by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. To her great surprise, she saw a team of barefoot doctors upstairs in Tiananmen Square, which consisted of nearly a thousand young rural girls carrying medicine boxes on their shoulders, carrying buckets, holding their trouser legs, and wearing barefoot. Wang Guizhen applauded them vigorously, and her hands hurt and she didn't feel it, and at this moment she was deeply proud of the cause she was engaged in.
Soon after returning from Beijing, Wang Guizhen was appointed deputy secretary of the party committee of Jiangzhen Commune, in charge of health care and women's work. In 1972, Wang Guizhen went to Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese Medicine for one year; in 1973, she went to Beijing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine for further study; in May 1974, as a representative of China's barefoot doctors, Wang Guizhen attended the 27th World Health Assembly held in Geneva, Switzerland, and made two speeches at the meeting.
In September 1975, the film "Chunmiao", based on Wang Guizhen, was released nationwide, telling the story of the female captain Chunmiao who took the initiative to invite Miao to study at the commune health center and returned to the village as a barefoot doctor after completing her studies. After the film was released, Wang Guizhen became more famous, more people came to the village to visit and see her, sometimes she had a tired day, and she had to receive some visiting groups in the evening until late at night.
"Spring Seedlings"
Also in this year, Zhou Enlai, who was already seriously ill, considered that most of the members of the leading group of the Ministry of Health were old, lacked grassroots work experience, and did not have poor and lower-middle peasant representatives, so he nominated Wang Guizhen to the Ministry of Health to take up a leading position in the Ministry of Health.
In December of that year, Wang Guizhen, who was in the village to see someone, suddenly received a phone call from the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee informing her to go to Beijing to attend a Mao Zedong Thought study class. After the end of the study, the people from the Central Organization Department talked to her, and she learned that she had been transferred to the Ministry of Health and could not return to Shanghai.
According to Zhou Enlai's vision, Wang Guizhen's work should implement the "three three systems", that is, every year in april and months to work in the Central Health Department, 4 months in the Chuansha County Health Bureau, 4 months in the grass-roots work, after coming to the Ministry of Health, she was appointed as a member of the ministry's party core group (equivalent to a deputy ministerial cadre), concurrently serving as the deputy director of the Prevention and Control Bureau, specifically in charge of rural health, food hygiene, maternal and child health care, etc., the organization also specially arranged a secretary for her.
Wang Guizhen
At that time, Wang Guizhen was only 31 years old, which was quite young in the composition of the State Council. Li Xiannian's wife, Lin Jialin, is the director of the Department of Maternal and Child Health, and Wang Guizhen is connected to her office, and the relationship between the two is very good.
Once Deng Yingchao and Lin Jialin met Wang Guizhen while eating in the canteen, and the two of them specifically asked him: "You southerners eat rice, are you used to eating steamed buns every day in the north?" ”
Wang Guizhen replied: "We rural people are accustomed to suffering, and there is no problem. ”
Wang Guizhen's work is very busy, she not only has to approve documents, attend meetings, but also meet with foreign guests and attend various gatherings. She felt a heavy responsibility, so she learned Mandarin and English in her spare time, sometimes she could not sit still, and took the initiative to clean the garden, at which time the secretary would come to her and say: "You are the leader, there are public servants, why are you still doing this work?" ”
At this time, although Wang Guizhen was already a deputy ministerial-level cadre, she had never received a penny of the state's salary, she was still the original Jiangzhen Commune peasant household, her income was the work of the Dagou Brigade, her annual work was 3,000, and a job was only 7 cents, so her annual income was only 210 yuan. Although the Ministry of Health subsidizes her 5 cents a day, she can only pick the cheapest dishes to eat, such as spinach and tofu, and eat two more nests at noon.
Even so, Wang Guizhen's money was still not enough, and she had to often write letters to her husband Qiu Shuixing asking for money, when Qiu Shuixing went to Gansu Branch, the salary was also very low, but as long as he received Wang Guizhen's letter, he would send the little money he had left to save his clothes and food. It was precisely because of this that Qiu Shuixing did not know that his wife held the position of deputy ministerial leader, until he accidentally learned of his wife's identity from the mouth of the airport attendant when he sent his wife to Beijing to guard Mao Zedong's spirit.
In October 1976, Wang Guizhen was dismissed from all party and government posts. In 1978, after organizational research, it was decided to arrange for her to work as a factory doctor in a garment factory in Chuansha County. The factory was not well run, often could not pay wages, and finally went out of business, Wang Guizhen began to make a living for herself, she made clothes, raised long-haired rabbits, and had a difficult life.
In September 1987, the relevant organizations at the higher level arranged for Wang Guizhen to work at the Jiangzhen Health Center and transferred her to a town hukou, and her husband Qiu Shuixing also returned home from Lanzhou, and the long-separated couple finally lived a normal life.
In the spring of 1992, Deng Xiaoping's speech on the southern tour brought more hope to the Chinese people, looking at the rapid changes outside the home, Wang Guizhen also decided to start her own business, she borrowed 6,000 yuan, bought a printing press, and set up a printing factory in her old house, and named it "Revitalization".
Due to Wang Guizhen's popularity and the good popularity accumulated by long-term good deeds in the past, the printing plant soon opened up the situation, the business became more and more prosperous, the printing press increased from 1 to 5, and at most there were more than 20 workers working overtime day and night in the factory.
In 1999, under the care of the organization, Wang Guizhen retired from the county social security bureau with the treatment of cadres.
Now Wang Guizhen
Wang Guizhen, who is now 78 years old, has lived a well-off life, and she once said: "Thanks to the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, this not only gave me the spring of life politically, but also brought me a happy life." ”