My middle school days

Chapter 3 Student Life in Difficult Times

The three years after 1960 were the most difficult years of life for our people. Prices in the market have soared, and food has become the first need for people's survival. The school in this period, half a day of class and half a day of labor, called "combination of work and leisure", there were two mid-term final exams have been cancelled. Every morning class, in the afternoon to dig wild vegetables, a few people carry a large basket to the field outside the school to find wild vegetables. Liu Shouye and I, through the reeds to the Wei River, saw the river beach full of thorny buds, regardless of the hand pulled a full of a large back, on the way back to take turns on the back, walk dizzy, hungry really can't do it, see the reed field creek in the colorful small fish, catch and stuffed into the mouth, eat a few in a row, suddenly feel not panicked, and then touched a few crabs, the small one swallowed raw, the big one brought back to prepare to cook, so hard to carry to the school canteen. A few cooks saw that we both had more backs, and directly asked us to put two bowls of wild vegetables in the big pot to eat, and after eating, we had the strength to climb up the slope to the class to pick up the steamed buns and eat the wild vegetable soup that the class shared, and danced happily, because we had never eaten such a full.

I came home once a month to take twelve yuan living expenses, at home one day, my mother asked me to pay a pound of food stamps, eat pumpkin salted noodle soup, the child does not give steamed bread to eat, because it is the only one to do for the work to earn money my father to eat, I saw many people in my class with fried noodles, also hungry panic, I also fried a pound after handing my mother a pound of food stamps to bring back to school, at night rushed into a thin soup to drink, in order to relieve the dormitory to see others eat hungry.

At that time, many students would not plan to use the funeral, the monthly meal ticket was used up in advance, and when the meal was served at noon a few days before the month, several students without tickets squatted in front of the classroom window and sang the "International Song", alarming the teacher to come and let them go home early to ask for food stamps to eat. More interesting is the appearance of "scalping students", the most famous is Guo Changsheng, he bought more steamed buns for dinner, sold steamed buns before going to bed, one wanted two steamed buns, some students who could not resist the temptation went to exchange, soon he collected not many steamed buns, the end of the period was not afraid of buying a lot of steamed buns, just when the rainy day was moldy, had to give free charity, at night he gave an order, the dormitory classmates snatched up, eat a piece of even moldy buns before going to bed, which was also our happiest thing at that time.

Our class Chen Lijun has a high amount of rice, and the porridge bottom left in each big bucket, he preemptively scraped it off, often a large aluminum basin, and he can't finish drinking it and bringing it back to the dormitory to eat at night. Later, he caught a nest of young birds from the high poplar trees in the west, and left one to feed it porridge every day, and the birds jumped into the basin, making them dirty and thin, and the birds could not finish eating, he would continue to eat with a spoon, and let our classmates eat.

In order to prevent the last class in the morning, the students were hungry and panicked, the teachers and students thought of a lot of ways, one of which was to bring a pot of boiling water between classes to put some salt cubes, each person put a teapot in the table pocket, and when hungry, they used the wheat stalk to keep sucking, but this is really useful, and they can insist on listening to a class taught by the teacher.