Stetson, famous novelist and writer. He was born on January 4, 1951, and died on December 31, 2010 due to a sudden cerebral congestion.
We should be familiar with him, especially his self-deprecating sentence: occupation is illness, amateur is writing.
In our memory, he will always be the great writer who worked in a wheelchair with a disability.
His contemplation of life and death and the pursuit of the meaning of life have touched countless people, leaving us with thought-provoking and excellent works such as "I and the Temple of Earth", "Fate is Like Strings", and "Retreat Notes".
On December 22, 1968, the People's Daily quoted Chairman Mao's instructions: It is necessary for intellectual youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants. As a result, about 20 million young intellectuals from all over the country went to the countryside.
Everyone has a period of time, it is called youth. Part of Shi Tiesheng's youth coincided with the magnificent and powerful movement of going up to the mountains and going to the countryside (also known as the cut-in team).
Shi Tiesheng wrote at the beginning, "Last year, I dreamed of returning to northern Shaanxi. "
What is the place in northern Shaanxi?
In Stetson's dream: boundless loess connects to the sky. The rolling hills lie down like giant dinosaurs, driving the sunset and starlight day and night with their bare backs. The river had eaten enough dirt and flowed heavily and hard. Only on the half cliff silently grew a few clumps of needles and wolf's tooth thorns, all covered with yellow dust. The heavens and the earth are silent, and the desolation of the primitive is the same...
Ten years later, Shi Tiesheng still often thinks of northern Shaanxi, the place where he stayed when he was a zhiqing.
Think about it by day, dream by night. He remembered the cattle he had fed, the villagers, the old stone kilns where he lived, every inch of the land that people had walked... There are also friends who have been in the queue together and are now scattered in the end of the world.
He was 17 years old.
There is a paragraph in it that is particularly interesting, and it really writes a very vivid picture of the juvenile period.
Before the "Cultural Revolution," there was a time when the class was in physical education class, and the whole class stood in line on the playground, and the physical education teacher said, "Female students are out of line on menstrual leave." Four or five girls stood out, and there was a faint sigh of dissatisfaction in the boys' ranks. This is not the first time, but this has happened in physical education class lately.
Suddenly, Xiao Bin also stood out.
The physical education teacher was stunned: "What's the matter with you?"
"Take a menstrual leave." The answer was very confident.
The PE teacher was stunned.
"Why only let the girls please, not let the boys please?" Xiao Bin asked reasonably.
The girls all lowered their heads and smiled quietly, making each other's eyes. This made the boys even more angry.
The teacher had to say, "They're not in good health."
"We're not in good health either!" The boys shouted away, saying that their stomachs hurt, that their feet were broken, and that their waists were flashed.
"What's wrong with them, they run to the cafeteria faster than anyone else!"
"Besides, only if you are not in good health should you exercise!" One by one, they are all righteous and awe-inspiring. That physical education class did not succeed, and it was always noisy. That's how small we are.
That's no sex education, and no one gives a physiological lecture.
Reading it makes people laugh out loud, and the image of a group of straight teenagers giving themselves "menstrual leave" with red ears constantly appears in their minds.
Shi Tiesheng also likes to go to the small river ditch of the Yuanmingyuan with his friends to touch fish, and his interest is high; He had a "great" dream when workers earned money to buy a pair of the most fashionable shoes "pullback" sneakers ...
He was obviously still a child, but he always wanted to pretend to be an adult and become a man. The teenager does not know the taste of sorrow, loves to always sigh, and is worried about pretending to be an adult. He told his mother that he was going to Yan'an to join the queue, and her mother shed tears, sighs, and sadness. He was actually very excited, brainwashed by other people's stories of interlude, and always felt that intervening in line was a beautiful thing with poetry. In the face of the sighs of his mother and others, Stetson also pretended to sigh to prove that he was an adult who was going to go far away.
A sentence written on the cover of the book: Some people say that those of us who have cut in the queue always like to talk about those days of the queue, not because of anything else, but because our best years were spent in the queue...
So, what does Stetson think of cutting in line?
He said: I went to northern Shaanxi almost on a trip, with a curiosity about the unknown, to look at my own future again, to rediscover my own ability, a good opportunity to contribute to society.
With the ambition to do something for the country, Shi Tiesheng brought a box of books, Marxist-Leninist classics, literary and philosophical masterpieces, and came with his friends to a rural village in northern Shaanxi called Qingping Bay.
There was no mechanization here, only the backs of men and the backs of cattle squirming in the blood-red sun.
Here, he is a keeper and raises a dozen cows. Jin Tao and Xu Yueyue became teachers, and Li Zhuo became barefoot doctors...
Later, after The Death of Stetson, he heard his close friend say that Stetson was very conscientious about his breeding work during the day, and he drove the cattle to the shade of the mountain to eat grass, because the grass there was fertile, and he did not forget to take a book of Marxist-Leninist masterpieces to read, read and read, and fell asleep, which had a very bad impact on his waist. At night, he would feed the cattle little by little, and when he could not let the cows eat them, he would stay in the cold kiln and curl up in his coat and fall asleep.
There was something wrong with his own spinal cord, coupled with the cold, which was very fatal to his low back pain, and when the disease was onset, Shi Tiesheng only took some medicine, and felt that patience had passed.
Who knew that fate would be so cruel?
Stay with friends and have a happy day.
Boys and girls are also the age when they are prone to mutual affection, and it is indispensable to cut into the queue. They hide a certain excitement and excitement, which is very clumsy. The boys obviously like it, but they are duplicitously spitting out that the thousands of girls are not, and ten thousand kinds are not good. The girls are not much better, "If the boys are not present, the girls will not be so chattering." "
They sang together, played music, worked, cooked and quarreled for the stove, slept in the cold waiting hall to save money, gossiped and talked to each other...
Witness the little bits and pieces of life in your hometown - there are many other things in the hardships, such as: warmth, day after day, simplicity, poverty, backwardness...
In northern Shaanxi, there is no red wine and green, only smoke, sunrise and sunset.
It has simple villagers
Blind old men can skillfully do farm work even if they can't see them; Huai Yue'er studied seriously and hoped to be admitted to college; Old Man Bai and Shi Tiesheng raise cattle together; There is also a group of simple children, children have food, and do not forget to give the elders, grandfathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in the family to taste; The villagers talk gleefully about black-and-white movies that can only be seen once in years as if they had discovered a new continent...
It has pure love
People of their time regarded love as very pure and sacred. Whether or not they are in love with someone, the family has decided to marry each other, and the two will live a lifetime in a down-to-earth manner.
It has touching affection
Mingwa is also suffering from fate and has congenital heart disease. Mingwa's eldest (i.e., father), he was born to do only two things, one is to suffer (suffering, that is, to work), and the other is to smoke. Mingwa's mother is constantly weaving and cooking, and her mother will always make a home very warm. His parents kept raising money to treat him. His parents had seven sons, and because they had seven, they loved one of them lightly. Poor parents in the world!
However, it is more of a poor and backward, lack of knowledge, lack of family planning, lack of machinery, lack of talent, more lack of knowledge of young people ... Everything is lacking, and the most important thing is brute force.
The story of Stetson's insertion of the team is over, and the novella "The Story of the Interstitial" can be said to record the youngest time of Stetson. Only later fate gave him a disabled position.
In 1972, at the age of 21, Stetson was at his best and most spirited age, and he could no longer stand up. As a young man, he could no longer devote himself to the countryside according to Chairman Mao's instructions, and he could not find the meaning of living, and he committed suicide twice. After committing suicide, he had an epiphany: death is a matter that does not have to be rushed, and death is a festival that will inevitably come.
Writing allowed him to find meaning in life.
Shi Tiesheng still misses Qingping Bay and wrote the famous short story "My Distant Qingping Bay".
Back to northern Shaanxi
For more than ten years, I wanted to go back and see, to see that place, to see the people there, for nothing else.
Wrote "The Story of the Cut-in Line"
Ten years at the flick of a finger, everyone runs to things, each going to the future. Go abroad, go back to Beijing, stay in Shaanxi, go to Hunan... Busy starting a family.
I also know that the years of being in the queue will never be forgotten, even if people later walk through the south, cross the north, see thousands of mountains and rivers, there is always a place in their hearts, left for the poor and backward countryside.
In fact, in the book "The Story of The Cut-in Line", many stories of friends and local people were written, and the language had local characteristics and humor.
From Shi Tiesheng's writings, I can feel that he is a positive and optimistic person, with humorous writing and quite ridiculous meaning. Even in the movement of going up to the mountains and going to the countryside, it is very difficult to be a young man, and there is no dissatisfaction between the lines. He has the heart of "I see how feminine Qingshan is, and I see Qingshan, and I should be like this" mentality.
These words feel philosophical and powerful to read. It may be that he is in a wheelchair alone in meditation, deep thoughts, but also has a show of feelings for Qingping Bay.
Completed in 1985, Stetson recalls his brief years of intellectual youth, which of course contain his reflections on life and destiny.
"The fate of man really does not know when, because of what things, it is decided."
"Man does not know where he is arranged by fate, and he does not know why he is arranged."
Just like this mighty movement to the mountains and the countryside, it has changed the fate of countless people, and the originally predetermined life trajectory of Zhiqing and rural students has deviated from the course.
What about us?
Where do people in the new era go in the tide of society?
Should we trust the arrangement of fate?