In The Footsteps of My Father (3)

Tianjin Zhining intellectuals took photos in the 1980s

Serial No. 3 ——

Hot-blooded youth went to plug

Bao Xia/Wen

During his studies at the Tianjin Broadcasting School, my father heard the state's call to support the construction of the northwest, persuaded his parents, and passed the examination of the sixth branch of the Tianjin Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Liuzhuang police station, and the Liuzhuang Street Branch of the sixth district of Tianjin.

On January 23, 1956, fifty-two of his classmates who were traveling with his father sang red songs and took a train to Lanzhou, then changed to a large truck with a canvas tent and arrived at Yinchuan Normal School. His father was active in school and was elected as a cultural and sports committee member by the speed third class.

The half-year crash training ended quickly. In August 1956, Tianjin athletes Ren Jiaming (basketball player) and Feng Baozhong (wrestler) stayed in the Yinchuan Sports Committee, and the other 50 students were divided into cities and counties. There is a shortage of education jobs in Ningxia, and more than half are allocated to the education system. Among those assigned to the educational posts in Zhongning County were his father (Zhongning County Erquan Primary School), Zhao Yuhua (Zhongning County YiQuan Primary), Gao Sex (i.e., Gao Kui, Zhongning County Er Wanxiao), Lu Baozhen (female, Zhongning County Erquan Xiao), Du Zhaoyin (Zhongning County Enhe Wanxiao), Li Ziliang (Zhongning County Erquan Elementary School), Li Jingcheng (Zhongning County No. 2 Complete Elementary School), and Zhao Zixia (Zhongning County Erquan Elementary School). The Zhining people of Zhongning County also include Beijing (Bi Deqing, Shi Shuzhen and his wife), Shanghai (Zhu Wenqiang), Nanjing (Ke Mingzhu), as well as young people with lofty ideals in Zhejiang and Shaanxi. Many years later, except for his father and Du Zhaoyin, who did not return to the city, other peers, friends, and classmates went back one after another.

In 1956, Zhongning was still in Yinchuan Special District, Gansu Province, and his father was less than 18 years old when he arrived in Zhongning and was assigned to Zhongning Second Primary School (also known as girls' school). When I first arrived in Zhongning, the conditions were beyond my father's imagination, there were no buildings, no roads, no electric lights, some schools borrowed temples to run schools, and some had to simply use them with the village horse number. The conditions for running the school were even worse, with no desks and some students sitting on adobe mounds to listen to lectures. The teachers' dormitory is an earthen kang, and heating is not guaranteed in winter. Fathers need to overcome difficulties such as changes in the environment, differences in customs, language barriers, etc., and the hardships of life are unimaginable to our young people today. The story of Feng Zhiyuan is told in the movie "Feng Zhiyuan", in fact, the difficulties that his father overcame were much more than Feng Zhiyuan.

When I first started work, my father was the third-grade homeroom teacher. The students in the class were eleven years old at the time, the eldest was sixteen or seventeen years old, only one or two years younger than the teacher, facing such a class of students, his father was just a junior high school graduate, did not have much teaching experience, how to improve academic performance, became his problem. One day at the beginning of class, my father cried in front of the whole class, and many students also cried, that is, this tear gathered the friendship between teachers and students. Since then, he has humbly learned from other teachers, explored teaching methods, and used storytelling, heart-to-heart talk, and individual tutoring to improve the quality of learning and attract students' attention.

At that time, the conditions in the whole country were poor, and the conditions of the peasants in Zhongning were even worse. The tuition fee of one yuan and five yuan per semester is more than one yuan, but many families in rural areas still feel difficult, and students write homework books with only one lesson and one book, and there is no excess at all. During the self-study class, the students all wrote in the school's large playground, holding a book in one hand and a wooden stick in the other, with their legs flat on the ground, and writing was more than ten meters. His father looked in his eyes and remembered in his heart, he was not rich, his monthly salary was only 26 yuan, but he took out 6 yuan to buy a book for each student in the class. There is not much money, but the memory will always remain in everyone's heart.

In the second half of the third grade, Zhang Xiuyun, an 11-year-old female student in the class, died suddenly without illness, and when she went to sort out her school bag, she found that the red scarf was folded neatly, showing the passion for reading, but it would never be possible. There was a lot of blood flowing under her until she died. This matter has attracted the attention of parents and teachers. When the parents told their father about the incident, the father took the classmates to visit for several days, sometimes not even caring about food, and used his best ability to find out the murderer. It turned out to be Yuan XX, a melon farmer in Baiqiao, who used watermelons, pens, notebooks and the like to cajole a group of female classmates such as Gu XX and Chang XX to rape and kill people. The father soon reported the case to the Public Security Bureau, brought the criminals to justice, and was later sentenced to death by the court for rape and death. Fathers love and hate, care about students, and fight bad people's behavior to attract the attention and praise of the whole society.

During the three years of natural disasters, as in the whole country, my father did not have access to additional food. He couldn't get help from his relatives and friends, and he couldn't goug out of the land like a farmer to fill his hunger. According to teacher Wang Chunxiang, at that time, the teacher rationed twenty-two pounds per month, but the seven-fold eight buckle was seventeen or eighteen pounds, and he wanted to eat everything when he was hungry, and he went to the health center to hang glucose, and he could also get half a kilogram of white sugar.

Father is kind, rich and poor, gradually won the sympathy and help of his father and fellow villagers, simple and kind people although the rations are not enough, but still intermittently sent some relief to the father. Once, just when his father was hungry and cold and mentally collapsed and was ready to be electrocuted for the rest of his life, one of his student dolls saved his father's life by secretly carrying some nests and unripe fruits from the family.

In that era of lack of clothing and food, people's passion for life is still high, playing basketball and watching model plays is the spiritual life of the villagers. Hunger and poverty cannot overwhelm the heart that loves life. In his spare time, my father rode on his bicycle and went to play basketball at the home of the West Playground in Zhongning County, forty miles away. The West Playground is at the door of Ren Tianci's house, opposite the Qin Cavity Regiment. His father's basketball shooting skills are superb, the action is elegant, the tactics are cooperative, and the team sense is particularly strong. Some teenagers such as Ren Tianci, who loves basketball, not only learned their father's basketball skills, but more valuablely, they have taken into account the overall situation, team awareness and the fearless spirit of dedication, and have become idols in the hearts of Zhongning teenagers. Over time, his father and Ren Tianci became good friends, and Ren Tianci's father became friends for the year, often going to the Ren Tianci family in the county town to lara the family, drink a few drinks, and often communicate and write with Ren Tianci's father.

In the early 1960s, sports activities in Zhongning County were very popular in various government schools. The county has formed the Commercial Lan Team, the Grain Bureau Lan Team, the Primary School Teacher ZhongSheng Lan Team, and the Zhongning Middle School Lan Team, and the county town has competitions every day. In 1960, Zhongning County was extremely hungry, and the Autonomous Region B-class lan ball game was played in Zhongning, the most intense ball was zhongning middle school against the primary school team (that is, the bell team), when his father was the captain of the small education team (that is, the bell basketball team) and the athlete of the Zhongning County representative team. My father's pitching percentage was quite high, and every time he threw a ball, there was a round of applause off the court. At that time, Yuan Hongtao's father, Yuan Kedong, was the president of the autonomous region's orchid ball competition, and he often contacted his father, and there were many games in which his father participated in the referee, and his father's standard loud and beautiful voice touched every athlete and spectator.

From 1957 to 1973, his father taught in Zhongning Zhou Pagoda, Mingsha, New Fort, Gangqu and Caoqiao. He has won the Referee Award, Slam Dunk Award, volleyball Championship Award of the County Education Bureau, won the Zhongning County Model Teacher, Model Counselor, and served as the Director of Teaching. No matter which school he went to, my father always grasped the most difficult and worst class. After school, he would often leave some poor students in the office to make up classes one by one, and those dolls who dropped out of school, his father always came to the door over and over again to mobilize for school.

The union of parents stems from a model play. In the fate, when mingsha's father, who teaches at the elementary school, watched the play, he met his mother who was sitting next to him. At that time, grandpa did not agree to the girl marrying a poor foreigner, and threw the snacks her father had bought from Tianjin into the pigsty. The mother, who could pursue the freedom of marriage, broke through the feudal ideology and married her father in 1963 in an earthen house in Zhutai without the blessing of her family.

In the years that followed, his father won the recognition of his mother's family by virtue of his filial piety and character. A few years later, Grandpa built a house for my parents in the Mingsha Second Team, and we had a home.

Father is strict, but also kind, never discriminate against rural people, whether it is colleagues or neighbors, who have happy events, he helps to write couplets, in case of funerals, paint coffins for free.

There was a farmer in the Mingsha Second Team who was in poor health, and the whole family's clothes were nailed one by one in the New Year, and his father took out a limited edition cloth ticket to help his family. In the sixties, the countryside just had a full stomach, flower clothes are very rare, my new clothes are sent by my grandmother in Tianjin, usually I am reluctant to wear, are locked in the box for the New Year to wear, every time other people's families have married a happy event, the neighbor girl borrowed my flower clothes, my father always laughed at Mimi and said take it, take it away. The monthly salary of 47 yuan is all subsidized for the family, and the school eats meat once a few months, and the father is reluctant to eat a bite, so he takes it home to his sick grandparents to eat. Over time, Grandpa's prejudices against his father changed. When my grandfather was 63 years old, when he was dying of stomach cancer, he took his father's hand and said sorry for his father with tears.