Chen Laoyu: Chinese speed skating has affected my fate (Part 1)
This morning I suddenly thought of a topic: Chinese speed skating once seriously affected my personal destiny, and it is even impossible to say that it changed the trajectory of my life.
You must think I'm showing off my skating skills or skating experience, right? Don't tell you: Since I was a child, I was a "four-body, hard-working, grain-in-one" and nerdy child. So almost all sports and athletic performance are not related to me. But in comparison, skating I was barely OK. When I was in college, I found that only one or two of my classmates seemed to be skating, and I was one of them. I was secretly proud and often wanted to show it in front of my classmates. But no one seems to appreciate it or admire it. I skated with neither speed nor tricks, so I couldn't be proud of it. The reason why I am one of the very few skaters is only because I grew up in Beijing and lived as a child at the Beijing Foreign Affairs College, where there are ice skates in the winter, and the academy also lends skates to everyone. You must know that at that time, a pair of skates was tens of dollars larger, which was equivalent to an ordinary person's salary for more than a full month. Few ordinary people can afford to buy skates. In addition, there are very few ice rinks around the country, so there are very few people who can skate.
So why did Chinese speed skating affect or even change my destiny? You can only listen patiently to me slowly. ......
In 1963, for Chen Laoyu, it was a crucial year for him, because this summer, he was about to graduate from high school. Where to go, he will face the first major choice of his life. At the time, though, I didn't know it. No one put any pressure on me. Now that I think about it, the children at that time were really happy and didn't want it! I have read to the third year of high school, and I still don't know whether to study, to take the college entrance examination, or to work hard. No one asks and no one cares. I don't know about other people's homes, but that's what my family is like anyway. Mom and Dad are busy with the revolution every day and have no time to take care of you.
The middle school I attended was called Beijing 21 Middle School. It was a boys' school, which meant that there were not a single girl. But there was a girls' second high school next to our school, and it was full of girls. We used to sit upstairs and whistle through the window to the girls over there. The girls looked up at us reservedly and said to us politely: Stinky hooligans!
Therefore, at that time, 21 was notorious for being a rogue school. Anyway, no one thought our school was a good school at that time. Surely few people in such schools can get into decent good universities every year. I'm not a kid who loves to learn. Plus my mom and dad didn't ask. So I usually don't study, only busy with what I like. At the end of each semester, I will drive a night train before the exam, and I can also cope with the exam, and the academic performance will always remain at three and a half to four points. My mom and dad were happy with that.
(Above: Beijing 21 Middle And High School 2nd Class, 1963)
Since I was a child, I liked to be alone, make small handmade toys, or throw stones and hit the slingshot; later developed to make a small lamp, a small electric motor, a small radio. Initially just an ore radio, it was later upgraded to a tube and transistor radio. Moreover, I am particularly interested in the theory of radio. In this way, I was absorbed into the radio group by the Jingshan Children's Palace in Beijing. So, although I was busy with extracurricular activities every day after I went to middle school, especially after high school, I slowly began to like physics classes because it solved some of the practical problems I encountered in engineering production. The practical experience even surpasses that of the physics teacher. Sometimes in class, he dared to challenge the teacher, scare the students one by one, and finally was elected as the representative of the physics class. Later, I also had a feeling about chemistry class, as soon as I learned it, I always got a high score on the exam. As for mathematics, later it was generally able to keep up, after all, mathematics could not play physics. But I was very resistant and disgusted to those courses in the liberal arts, because they had to be memorized by rote, completely unimaginative, and unbearable. There is no doubt that if I go to university, I will only be able to take science and engineering.
But, just then, something big happened! Shortly after the start of the last semester in 1963, the school organized us to have a physical examination. This is a routine physical examination before the national college entrance examination. The results of the physical examination, all the students are fine, the school only sent me a formal written notice: so-and-so students, according to your physical condition, you are not allowed to apply for all science and engineering schools.
The physical examination before the college entrance examination was very serious and comprehensive, and the doctors actually found that I was hemian in my left eye. In other words, the left eye has basically no vision. The cause is optic nerve atrophy. At the time, this was difficult to diagnose and incurable. Oh, despite the rapid progress of modern medicine, optic nerve atrophy is still an incurable disease to this day. After I received this notice, I immediately understood that I would not be able to take the college entrance examination. My feelings were mixed at the time. Obviously, my body was not up to me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Now the state does not allow me to enter the university, and I cannot accept it. I was lonely included in another book. I am depressed, I am lost, I am wandering. But I also have a high-sounding reason, I don't have to study or take exams again! Isn't that nice too! So, I was overjoyed again! I stopped going to school anymore. For me, who didn't like to go to school, there was no problem!
But I also understand that if I don't go to college, I have to do something, right? In 1963 our motherland turned rapidly to the left and entered a rapid revolutionary upsurge. The party and the government began to call on intellectual youth to go to the countryside. One of my mother's old friends, the actor Huang Zongying (the wife of the big star Zhao Dan), probably had no drama to act at that time, so he changed his career to write the reportage that was most in line with the revolutionary trend. She is really amazingly talented, she wrote "Special Girl" like a song like Mu Ru crying, describing the life of Zhiqing as incomparably tall and sacred, which caused a sensation throughout China and touched the hearts of countless young boys and girls. There is no doubt that I am also strongly infected. Needless to say, the best way out for urban children is to go to the countryside, to the frontier, to the places where the motherland needs it most! I told my father and my mother: I just don't have to go to college anymore! I'm going to the Northern Wilderness!
My dad didn't speak, didn't say anything, didn't smile, he was always so subtle. My mom strongly disagreed. She said: You are not yet seventeen years old, what are you doing in the Northern Wilderness? It doesn't matter if you don't go to college, you stay in Beijing. What did I say I was staying for? Working as a salesman at a heping-ri store? That doesn't throw away the dead person? My mother caught me by this sentence: It's all revolutionary work, when the salesman lost who? Look at your unhealthy mind! It turns out that when you go to the Northern Wilderness, you are afraid of losing people in Beijing.
Neither of us could convince the other. My parents' colleagues, some supported, some opposed. It is the majority that is opposed. Their reasoning is: let's read more books first. Support is a minority. The most positive is Feng Mu. A great writer from Kunming later became the vice chairman of the China Writers Association. He mainly did not support me, but supported Guo Xiaolin, the son of the great poet Guo Xiaochuan, to go to the Northern Wilderness. Later, Guo Xiaolin really went. There are many great poets in my neighborhood. Another great poet, Li Ji, was much gentler than Feng Mu. He said: In fact, we may not necessarily go to the Northern Wilderness to engage in agriculture, but we can also engage in industry. I wondered: Is there still industry in the Great Northern Wilderness? He said: Of course! There's oil there. I have a good friend named Wang Jinxi, and it is there to dig a well to produce oil. I was surprised: Wang Jinxi is your good friend? At that time, in the daqing of industrial science, Wang Jinxi was a well-known heroic model. He said: Of course! Have you seen a picture of him learning Maoxuan? The old wool coat he was wearing was what I gave him. Later, I learned that it was like Feng Mu had been the propaganda director of the Kunming Military Region. Li Ji served as the propaganda director of the Yumen Oilfield. These big writers are not simple. I have a bottom in my heart. There was really no way out, so I asked Uncle Li Ji to send me to Daqing. But in the end, I had not yet graduated at that time, and now I could not walk the path of Hou Jun, Xing Yanzi, and Wang Tieren, nor could I be a "special girl". The days are like this, day by day, I don't study anymore, every day I install my semiconductor radio. Walk and see.
Finally, my situation was discovered by the homeroom teacher. The class teacher is the Chinese teacher Yuan Xingyun. He was a majestic old master, with a broad-minded and lofty stride, with deep eyes, no screeching, no smell of the world, and no attention to mundane affairs. It seems that he has been living in the distant Chu kingdom. When I see him, I think of a man named Qu Yuan. I guess he shouldn't have seen me at all. Unexpectedly, he actually noticed my abnormality and called me to his office.
He said: "You don't seem to have been normal lately. What's the matter? ”
I replied, "There's nothing wrong with me." It's just that I decided to go to the Northern Wilderness. ”
He was taken aback and asked, "Why?" ”
I took the notice that the school had given me from my school bag and put it in front of him. He looked at it and said, "I know this, but people didn't say they wouldn't let you take the college entrance examination." ”
I said, "All the science and engineering schools won't let me take the exam." What's the name without saying? ”
He said: "Science and engineering schools do not allow applicants. You can apply to liberal arts schools! ”
I said, "That's not possible." How to test the liberal arts? I'm so bad at liberal arts. Politics is so hard. I haven't studied history at all. "At that time, after the division of high school subjects, some courses in the liberal arts could not be learned by students who applied for science and engineering. So I didn't take courses like history in high school.
Unexpectedly, Teacher Yuan said, "Your Chinese is good. I noticed that you are one of the few students who can memorize the "Former Chibi Fu" in its entirety. ”
I said, "I'm not good at language. It's always three to three and a half points. I just like Chibi Fu. "In fact, after so many years of study, I have always disliked chinese. It was only when I was in high school and took Mr. Yuan's Chinese class that I suddenly liked Chinese, and I liked the "Chibi Fu" he talked about and everything related to it. This was something I slowly realized after a long time. So, it's also possible that a truly good Chinese teacher can change your preferences and even affect your whole life.
Teacher Yuan said: "Don't talk about the score, that doesn't mean anything." I found that you can still read the Book with Chen Bo. "At that time, the arts and sciences were divided into subjects, and many science and engineering students could not even read such texts in the language class. Listening to Teacher Yuan say this, I am still energetic. Unaware of the height of the sky, I actually said to the teacher in Versailles, "I can't read it." I should be able to memorize it. ”
Teacher Yuan said seriously at that time: "Then you will start from the "Late Spring march". ”
In the late spring of March, Jiangnan grass grows, miscellaneous peanut trees, and warblers fly wildly. Seeing the banner of the homeland, I feel that Ping was born in the domain day, and the strings are strung up, and I am not sorry! So the honest and public think of Zhao General, Wu Zi's weeping of the West River, the love of people, the general alone and ruthless? ......
Teacher Yuan suddenly stopped at this time: "Enough." He turned to me and asked, "Do you know Karuizawa?" ”
This shocked me. What kind of ghost is "Karuizawa"? I was speechless.
…………
(To be continued)