In the 1960s and 1970s, the people's commune I was in was located in the southern part of the North China Plain, with five production brigades, the largest brigade had 22 production squads, and the smallest two "Zhuangs" had five or six production squads, that is, natural villages.
The name of our commune is "Yanli People's Commune", and the commune has a supply and marketing cooperative, a grain and oil station, a cotton station, a tractor station, an agricultural supply station, a gas station (diesel), a flour mill, an agricultural machinery factory, a fertilizer factory, etc., and a health center and a social high school. The means of production needed by the members must be purchased by the department, and the harvested agricultural products must be handed over or sold to the above-mentioned purchasing stations.
In the 1970s, the commune built a social factory, the pepper factory, and the commune began to call on the brigades to plant peppers, and after the peppers were harvested, they were all sold to the commune pepper factories. There are many female members of our brigade, and as soon as the day is dark, they take lunch to the commune pepper factory more than ten miles away to sort the peppers, and they can earn a few cents a day.
