Wang Xiaolian
In December 1972, I left the Shanhe Farm where I had lived in the countryside for four years and joined the army to join the 15th Railway Corps (known as Unit 5765 to the outside world) stationed in Beijing. The main task of the Iron 15th Division was to build the Beijing Underground Railway.
For the first two months, our recruits were training at the yongqing county troop farm in Hebei Province. The simple wooden house where I live is trained to walk in unison every day, and there are also assassinations, shooting, bomb throwing, and marching exercises.
At the end of the two-month training for recruits, a large truck pulled our recruits to the troop station: Xiaohongmiao, outside The Guang'an Gate in Beijing -- the automobile repair battalion of the Logistics Department of the 15th Railway Division. The battalion was divided into three companies: the first engineering repair company, the second company of automobile repair company, and the third company of the system and distribution company, all in one compound. A series of large factory buildings specializing in the maintenance of construction machinery, such as excavators, scrapers, bulldozers, etc. Erlian repaired cars in the main plant, mostly large automatic loading and unloading trucks. This factory building was built with Soviet aid, and the roof is arched, like an inverted cauldron, so it is vividly called "cauldron lid" by everyone. Sanlian is responsible for the manufacture of mechanical parts and also has a separate factory where various machine tools are installed. In addition, there are steelmaking workshops, carpentry workshops, sand turning workshops, electrician workshops, etc., which are arranged around the factory area. The battalion lived in a dormitory building, about six or seven stories high.
I was assigned to a company as a statistician, but I was actually in charge of dispatch. My usual job is to fill out a task list after receiving the task assigned by the battalion headquarters, hand it to the relevant schedule, and after they complete the task, I will fill in the working hour list and give the list and processed spare parts to the battalion department. At that time, I was relatively idle at work, and I ran to the workshop when I had nothing to do, and I especially loved to run to three rows. The three rows are women's platoons, all of which are machine tools. It's fun to chat with them. I remember talking more with two people, one was a female soldier who opened a grinding machine, who was petite and loved to laugh. One is a female soldier who opens a planing bed, named Zhang Yanhua, who looks relatively simple. Her chalk writing is good, and I can draw well, so lianli's board newspaper is in charge of both of us, once a week. Because of their better cooperation with each other, I have been excellent in the board newspaper, and I have always been at the top of the three companies competition.
I have a penchant for writing. For some good people and good deeds that happened to the company, he secretly wrote a press release and submitted it to the "Railway Soldier Newspaper" for publication, but he did not expect to really publish it. Even the instructor and the company commander were very happy and gave me a lot of encouragement. Xiao Yunru, the battalion instructor, was the secretary of the former Railway Corps Headquarters, and he was also happy that "Xiu Cai" had appeared in the battalion, and often praised me at the whole battalion meeting. I was always called "Dude" in a Shandong accent when I met. Wang Yonghai, a native of Harbin, was also willing to write, and later we often wrote jointly and signed it together. For example, he wrote "What is the Fire And Feared For the People" in which the commanders and fighters of our battalion helped rescue the Leguo pesticide explosion at the Guang'anmen Railway Station; wrote about the deeds of a company of technicians overcoming technical difficulties and replacing the copper sleeves of construction machinery with engineering nylon bushings, saving a lot of money. All in the "Railway Soldier Newspaper". It also attracted the attention of the Political Department of the Logistics Department of the Fifteenth Division. Treating us grassroots reporters as treasures, we organized a journalism training class, invited the head of the reporter group of the "Railway Soldier Daily" to give a lecture, and asked the reporting group of the division headquarters to "pass on the help" to the trainees, thus improving our news reporting level. Our publishing rate has been further improved.
At that time, I was also hired as an outside counselor at the nearby Nanxinli Elementary School, and I often went to the school to tell revolutionary stories to the elementary school students, and sometimes went on outings with them. Once, when I was injured while working in a company, the teacher led the children to visit me.
I love speed skating, so I go to the countryside and serve as a soldier with an ice knife. In winter, on Sundays, take time off to skate in Shichahai Park. Skating addiction on weekdays came up, please take a leave, and take advantage of the night with your comrades to climb over the courtyard wall to skate at Youth Lake.
In 1974 and 1975, the 15th Iron Division and the Ministry of Railway Soldier Culture jointly organized two literary and art study classes, and also informed me to participate. The location was once at the division headquarters of the forestry department compound and once at the forestry college at Wudaokou. The first time was when Li Wubing, a poet from the Ministry of Railway Soldier Culture, gave us a lecture and personally helped revise the manuscript. Present at the study class were Zhang Peifang and Wu Disheng of the Propaganda Section of the Divisional Headquarters, and Xu Guotai, Li Xiaoyu, Zhang Yaxin, Hu Zhongjun, Jiang Xianpei, and me in the grass-roots company.
In this study class, Li Xiaoyu's father, the famous poet Li Ying, was also invited to give a lecture. He told that when he went to the army to experience life when he "ten thousand artillery shook the Golden Gate", he saw a small flower next to a shell shell in my artillery position, which triggered his poetry. It shows that many times, the material of poetry is in life, and there is no need for fictional truths at all. During this class, I published poetry works in "People's Liberation Army Literature and Art", "Railway Soldier Daily", and "Comrade-in-Arms Newspaper".
Because I often went out to participate in various study classes, which affected the company's statistical scheduling job, the company transferred me to a shift (fitter's class). The first class leader is Song Chunhua, a native of Harbin.
The second study class was mainly for the People's Literature Publishing House to deal with the backlog of manuscripts for more than ten years, and a car was shipped. Wang Jianguo, editor of the Poetry and Prose Group of the Modern Literature Editing Room of the People's Literature Publishing House, guided our work. We read all the manuscripts (most of them are poetry collections) and felt that there were many excellent poems in them, so we suggested compiling a collection of poems. The publishing house agreed, and published the "Torrent Collection" of selected poems of workers, peasants, and soldiers, which had a great influence.
Since Xu Guotai and I performed well in the study class, at the suggestion of Wang Jianguo, we were seconded to the Poetry and Prose Group of the Modern Literature Editorial Department of the People's Literature Publishing House as poetry editors in June 1976. Through learning and exercising, my poetry writing level has been greatly improved. The famous poets Wang Zhiyuan, Tu An, Kuang Man, Mo Wenzheng, Guo Baochen and other teachers met almost every day and gave me and Xu Guotai a lot of guidance, so that we understood what is a good poem, how to select and edit it.
1976 was an earth-shattering year. Three great men have passed away one after another, and I participated in the editing of several books such as "Selected Poems of Zhu De", "Premier Zhou Will Always Be with Us", "Chairman Mao Will Always Live in Our Hearts", and "Song of Victory". According to the arrangements of the company, Xu Guotai and I also went to the northeast and Hunan to organize the manuscript, and completed the task very well.
In July, the Tangshan earthquake, the publishing house prepared to select and compile a selection of anti-earthquake poems from the poems published in the national newspapers and periodicals. Xu Guotai proposed that only the poetry manuscripts created by the frontline of earthquake resistance should have vitality. The society leaders adopted his advice. Editor-in-chief Wei Junyi took us in a car in the company, braved the aftershocks to Tangshan and Fengnan to assemble a manuscript, and published the poetry collection "The Red Flag That Cannot Be Shaken" as quickly as possible, which took only 10 days.
In October, smashing the "Gang of Four", Xu Guotai and I learned of this news in advance and happily wrote "Sing High, War Song; Mercedes-Benz, Train!" Sent to the People's Liberation Army Daily, the poem was immediately published as soon as the Central Committee announced the news of smashing the "Gang of Four." The two of us also joined the parade of the People's Literature Publishing House into Tiananmen Square to gather millions of people to celebrate the "two victories." In the middle of the conference, the two of us were very passionate and spread out the manuscript paper on the floor tiles of the square. At night, the two of us stayed up all night in the office of the publishing house, revised the manuscript, and sent it to the People's Daily the next day, which was quickly published. The poem was recited by three people at the "Celebrating Two Victories" poetry recital held by the Poetry Magazine at the Workers' Gymnasium, which caused great repercussions. At this stage, I cooperated with Xu Guotai to publish poetry works in a large number of newspapers and periodicals such as People's Daily, People's Liberation Army Daily, Beijing Literature and Art, Wenjin Literature and Art, Liaoning Literature and Art, Xiangjiang Literature and Art, Jiangsu Literature and Art, and Heilongjiang Literature and Art.
In early 1977, because of my achievements in writing, the company instructor talked to me and said that he wanted to promote me to a cadre. I declined. Because, at that time, the army stipulated that cadres below the battalion level should go back and forth wherever they were transferred to other professions. I came from the farm and had to go back to the farm. At that time, the policy was that soldiers who went to the countryside and farms could be demobilized and returned to their hometown cities. I request demobilization. The instructor said that this matter could not be determined, you had to find a superior. So I went to the political office of the division's logistics department to talk to Director Liu for reasons, and he agreed. Thus, in April 1977, I was demobilized and returned to my hometown of Jixi, where I was assigned to work in the Municipal Labor Bureau and start another life.
About the Author:
Wang Xiaolian, a native of Jixi, Heilongjiang. He graduated from the department of Chinese of Heilongjiang Electric University, the graduate class of Lu Xun College of Literature, and the advanced research class of cultural and creative industries of Tsinghua University. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association, and a first-class writer.
He served as a zhiqing in Heilongjiang Shanhe Farm, and then joined the army to the Railway Corps stationed in Beijing (later changed to infrastructure engineering soldiers), and served as the vice chairman of the Jixi Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature and the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine "Snowflake", the vice president of the People's Digest magazine of the People's Daily, the executive deputy director of the Beijing Photography Art Exhibition Hall, and the president of the Cultural and Creative Industry Research Institute of Shangba Cultural Group.
In 1974, he began to publish literary works, and successively published prose and poetry works in more than 150 newspapers and periodicals such as People's Daily, People's Liberation Army Daily, Literature Daily, People's Literature, Contemporary Literature, Beijing Literature, Northern Literature, Fujian Literature, Xiangjiang Literature, Bud, Essay, and Chinese Prose. His personal monographs include: poetry collection "Beautiful Style Painting", "Sea Wide Sky", prose collection "Tianya Moon", "Wrangler's Morning and Dusk", "Love Mountain and Water", "No Chance Snow Season", "Bi Dream Thousand Returns to Xingkai Lake", "Great Mei Xingkai Lake", "Meizha Xingkai Lake", "Water Wide and Sky High - Heilongjiang Prose Travels", "Let the Sunshine of Love Illuminate the World", "Wang Xiaolian Prose Selection Flower Island", "Running from the Source to the Sea - Heilongjiang Travels" and other 13 books. In addition, works such as "Little Deer Don't Be Afraid", "Boundary Monument", "Beautiful Xingkai Lake" and so on have been selected into the Chinese textbooks of middle schools in Beijing, Hubei, Hunan and other provinces and cities.
Editor: Li Wubing Li Xunxiu