Rooted in the Xingyang Mountains for a lifetime as the daughter of the common people
--Remembering General Peng Xuefeng's niece Peng Tao
Elephant News reporter Zeng Tao, Yang Zhenghua, Lin Yang
On February 17, the reporter drove into the watershed village at the foot of the three mountains in Xingyang City, and after a bumpy and rugged mountain road, we went around to a small village hidden in the mountains, and in the deepest part of the village we found a courtyard that had fallen into disrepair: fragmented earthen walls, dilapidated and simple cave dwellings... Looking at the scene in front of you, you can imagine the extent of poverty here 53 years ago. No one would have thought that the owner of this house was Peng Tao, the niece of General Peng Xuefeng, who had lived and lived here for more than 20 years, and then traveled to Many places in Xingyang until she died at 19:30 on February 14, 2022, and she dedicated her life to Xingyang and to this mountain.
"My life is given by the Party, and I will listen to the Party for the rest of my life."
Peng Tao was born in 1944 in a revolutionary family in Zhenping, Nanyang. His grandfather was Peng Yuting, the leader of the Wanxi Autonomous Faction, his uncle was General Peng Xuefeng, who had been praised by Chairman Mao as a good example for the Communists, and his father Peng Xiuren was one of the first engineers in New China, who made outstanding contributions in the field of science, and was received by Premier Zhou Enlai three times and Vice Chairman Liu Shaoqi four times.
The first on the left is Peng Tao taking a group photo with his parents
"My life is given by the Party, and I will listen to the Party for the rest of my life." These are the words that Peng Tao often hung on her lips before she died, and she said and did the same. When Peng Tao was young, she was injured by the enemy's shrapnel, and under the care of the party, her young life could only survive. After the liberation of Kaifeng, Peng Tao settled in Kaifeng with her parents and was recommended by the organization to enter the Workers' and Peasants' and Soldiers' University for further study. In 1969, as soon as he graduated from the Workers' and Peasants' And Soldiers' University, Peng Tao responded to the party's call and signed up to participate in the intellectual youth going to the mountains and the countryside. From kaifeng, the former provincial capital, he came to the watershed brigade of Liuhe Commune in Xingyang County, and changed from a "citizen" to a "member".
Members dressed in rustic and worn-out clothes, mountain roads that smell of livestock dung, "foreign oil" lamps that blacken their nostrils at night... Just arrived in the rural mountains, Peng Tao could not sleep for several days and nights. The revolutionary family's innate red genes, boundless loyalty to the party and firm belief in the party made her persist, slowly adapt and integrate into everything here. She put away the clothes she had brought from the city, removed the watch that her mother had given her on the eve of going to the mountains and going to the countryside, and changed into the clothes of the local farmers; she took the initiative to ask to feed the pigs at the breeding place of the production team, and constantly familiarized, accepted and integrated into the production life of the mountain village from the inside out. What she has seen and heard since she went to the countryside has strengthened her determination to dedicate herself to the mountainous areas, pay the blood of youth, fight against the heavens and the earth, and change the face of poverty in the mountainous areas.
"I'm going to do it in the countryside for a hundred years!"
"The Yu opera 'Chaoyanggou' is her favorite play, and she sings it at home when she has nothing to do." Peng Tao's husband, Zhu Hailong, introduced that in the mountain villages of the 1960s and 1970s, the degree of poverty could be imagined, the land was poor, the grain production was low, and under the large collective system of the people's commune, the grain distributed was simply not enough to eat, and the families with large populations were even more worried. "At that time, my family of 9 people, the mother with 6 sons and 2 daughters struggled to survive, 8 children who were growing up were hungry and screamed, and they worried about eating every day."
"I'm going to do it in the countryside for a hundred years!" Peng Tao was 25 years old at the time, influenced by the image of Wang Yinhuan, a character in the Yu opera "Chaoyanggou", and had the idea of establishing a family in the watershed village, rooting deep in the mountains, and being the daughter of the common people all his life. Despite the opposition of his family and the incomprehension of his classmates, Peng Tao resolutely decided to marry Zhu Hailong, a farmer in The Watershed Village who did not know a few characters, and walked into the most difficult family in this mountain village, relying on his own meager efforts and hard work to help this simple and helpless poor family survive the predicament. Since then, Peng Tao has completely taken root in this mountain village.
The arable land in the watershed village is thin mountainous, the soil is weak, the yield is very low, and in the event of drought, the harvest is not even sown. There are only three or two livestock power board trucks for agricultural transport, commonly known as "rack cars", and the production conditions are very backward. Peng Tao ran from the village to the commune, from the commune to the county, from the county to Kaifeng, asking his father to find a relationship, and the county allocated more emergency grain to the watershed brigade, and every year transferred a part of the public grain handed over to increase the rations for the members of the society. After the problem of eating for the people in the village was basically alleviated, Peng Tao once again set his sights on improving the productivity of the village, went to the province many times, won the fertilizer target, increased the fertilizer of the farmland, introduced a walking tractor, made the village use mechanized agricultural tools for the first time, and greatly improved the agricultural production environment of the village.
In 1978, the state issued a policy that zhiqing could apply to return to the city. Peng Tao's family arranged everything for her for the first time, a comfortable and leisurely job, and a warm and comfortable house. However, Peng Tao refused the kind persuasion of her family and classmates, and resolutely chose to stay in her second hometown, Xingyang, just as she had come to this small mountain village to take root in this small mountain village, and her determination was firm and unwavering. "If you are determined to take root here, you must not be a deserter, you cannot talk and do not count!" Zhu Hailong clearly remembers the vows his wife made that year, spending half his life here in Xingyang, looking at the familiar grass and trees, and getting along with the neighbors in the village for decades, why not leave!
"The Party's orders must be carried out, and the Party's work is above all else!"
Peng Tao's husband, Zhu Hailong, is the eldest son in the family, and he has successively played iron in the blacksmith shop of the production team, cooked in the collective canteen, and left early and returned late. Peng Tao went to work on time with other members, returned home after work, took good care of his brother and sister, and used his cultural knowledge to seriously tutor his brother and sister who were going to school.
Peng Tao, as the only person in the village who had entered the university, while tutoring her brother and sister to study, she also brought the children from the neighboring village into her home, taught them to read and write in her own dim cave, and told them that only by studying well could they get out of the mountains, change the poverty in the mountains, and become useful talents for the construction of the motherland. Under her earnest teaching, the first batch of college and secondary school students came out of the village.
Peng Tao's efforts, the villagers all saw in their eyes and remembered, the prestige among the masses quickly established, in addition to the daily hardships in the front of the lead, the charge in front of the leader, the party work has become her new task, from time to time to the city, county meetings, listen to reports, back to the commune, brigade to convey the spirit, implement the requirements. Holding absolute loyalty to the party, she regards the tasks entrusted by the party and the requirements of her superiors as the primary task, and does it first, without mentioning conditions or reasons, and no matter how difficult it is, she must face the difficulties.
Once, the county party committee notified Peng Tao to go to the county for a meeting the next day. Who expected to wake up early the next morning to find that the goose feathers had drifted overnight, and the snow had blocked the way out of the mountain. Peng Tao casually stuffed two cornmeal nests into the bag, took a shovel and went out, while walking, clearing the snow and opening the road, passing the Linya Sheep Gut Trail, she fell dangerously down the cliff. Walking to the top of wanshan mountain, the bus that runs in the morning and evening is also stopped due to snow, and you can only walk into the city in the snow. I left home at 5 o'clock in the morning and walked for a full 7 hours, and when I arrived at the county party hall at 12 o'clock, the meeting had just ended.
When she saw Peng Tao, who was like a snowman, dragging her disabled right leg at the door of the venue, the county party leader told her that the snow was heavy today, and less than one-third of the people who came to the meeting were still less than one-third, and she could ask for leave. Peng Tao replied seriously, "The party's orders must be carried out, and the party's work is above all else." Peng Tao disregarded the difficulties and dangers to brave the snow to participate in the meeting, which made the people attending the meeting cry, and touched and inspired many people at that time.
"Individuals cannot take advantage of the public family in the slightest."
At the beginning of his visit to Xingyang, Peng Tao remembered his father's teaching, "Individuals cannot take advantage of the public family in the slightest, and they cannot suppress others with force." "Distinguishing between public and private and being innocent is Peng Tao's lifelong creed.
One year, Peng Tao wrote a letter to his mother, unconsciously using a few pages of manuscript paper with the words "Liuhe Commune Revolutionary Committee", after his father learned that she put such a manuscript paper at home, he saw through the serious consequences at a glance and severely criticized her.
In 1980, considering that Peng Tao had lived in a damp cave for a long time, rheumatoid arthritis was constantly aggravating, and the disability of his right leg was serious, under the persuasion of many parties in the organization, Peng Tao agreed to accept the county's arrangement to work in the county. At that time, the organization arranged for her to do administrative management at the relatively relaxed and decent post and telecommunications office, and she said that the job was not suitable, and she wanted to do some real and capable work on the front line of the enterprise. Finally, Peng Tao was assigned to work at the Xingyang County Mining Machinery Factory.
After Peng Tao went to work in the county mining machinery factory, she was assigned to be a warehouse administrator, she changed the "nepotism", vigorously rectified the warehouse materials out of the warehouse, the storage of accounts do not match, the record of chaotic status, began to standardize the bills, improve procedures, strict procedures, so that the warehouse management on the right track, fundamentally eliminate the "people personal account chaos", even if the leader approved the "note" to ask for materials, she also strictly in accordance with the provisions of the refusal to ship, plugging the loopholes that harm the interests of the state. During his time as a warehouse manager, peng Tao managed the warehouse accounts and materials clearly, and did not miss a penny. In 1986, Peng Tao took the initiative to apply for a post with heavier production tasks and was transferred to the county towel factory to work in the front line of production, until in recent years, he was plagued by diseases and his body was completely unsuitable for work and went home to recuperate.
Not only is he strict with himself, Peng Tao often tells his children by example that they must not possess the slightest interest of the party and the state. Her husband, Zhu Hailong, has been selling vegetables for a living, and some of her children are still running for jobs.
"Don't get in trouble for the organization!"
As a descendant of the red family, Peng Tao has always maintained a low profile, dedicated herself silently throughout her life, been invited to attend provincial and Zhengzhou city meetings many times, often arranged to make excellent representative reports in various parts of the province, received by provincial and Zhengzhou city leaders many times, her deeds have been taken into documentaries and broadcast everywhere, and her photos have been hung in the Publicity Exhibition of Zhengzhou Erqi Memorial Tower... With such superior political conditions, Peng Tao never proposed any political treatment and power position to the organization, but only cared about the village collective and the masses.
In 2005, Xingyang was hit by heavy rainfall, and the Suocheng Market residential area where Peng Tao lived was located in a low-lying area, and the water had flooded the first floor in just two or three hours. At that time, Peng Tao was in his home on the second floor, and the outside storm boat was rescuing the trapped people in the house building by building, and when the rescuers shouted in front of the building whether there was anyone in the room, Peng Tao closed his mouth, and the rescuers went to the next house. Later, after the rescue organization learned about the neighbors and learned that there was still an old lady living in the house whose whereabouts were unknown, he found Peng Tao at home and finally rescued her from the storm boat on her back. Later, when asked Peng Tao why she did not respond to the rescue at that time, she said that when she saw two storm boats, she needed to save so many people, and she couldn't take care of it at all, and at that time, she only wanted to let the rescuers save others first.
When he was young, Peng Tao could not take out the shrapnel in his right leg bone, and every rainy day would be stinging and unbearable, and later because of his long-term life in the mountain village environment, coupled with living in a damp cave, complicated by rheumatoid arthritis, hand bones, foot bones and other growth and deformation, making the right leg more severely disabled, difficult to move, less than 60 years old to use crutches. The ensuing elderly diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease overwhelmed Peng Tao's already weak body, and he had to take a lot of drugs every day to control his condition.
"If we have money, we will be cured, and if we don't have money, we will be discharged from the hospital, and we will not cause trouble for the organization!" After being infected with the disease, no matter how difficult it was, Peng Tao never asked the organization and the government, asked for care, and engaged in special things, but silently undertook it himself.
Over the years, whether it is the dazzling halo on his head or the withdrawal from the front line of work to fight against the disease, in addition to the unswerving political position inherited by the red family, Peng Tao has always placed himself in the position of an ordinary person, living a life without shame and without controversy. With her actions rooted in the Xingyang Mountains, she fulfilled her promise to be the daughter of the common people all her life. (Correspondent Jiang Shixun Wang Luyi)