cloth
ticket
target
remember
memory
Text/ Song Jizong
To be honest, as a post-60s person, I am a little afraid of the New Year's Holiday.
Because every holiday, my son and daughter always have to buy me two new clothes, and my wife and children are clamoring for me to change them from head to toe.
In fact, at this age, people do not have much luxury in material needs, and it is enough to eat and wear warmly, and it is enough to have a safe place. For me, half-new clothes feel comfortable wearing on the body.
Seeing what young people are popular to wear now, and throwing a piece of clothing aside without wearing it a few times, I think it is a waste. But the young man said: "The times have developed, unlike when you were young, a piece of clothing 'new three years, old three years, sewing and mending for another three years'."
Young people are right, from the time I was born in the sixties to the eighties, there was a shortage of daily necessities, and people's material needs were indeed enough to eat and wear warm. In memory, people's lives in that era were inseparable from "tickets". Go to the store to buy cloth to "cloth tickets", go to restaurants to eat "food stamps" and so on, the most common is closely related to our lives "cloth tickets".
Cloth tickets are tickets used to purchase cloth for clothing, and are measures for the state to implement unified management of cloth purchase and sale and supply according to population. The units of cloth tickets are: one inch, two inches, half a foot, one foot, two feet, five feet, ten feet, etc., and it is strictly forbidden to buy and sell circulation. In those days, cloth tickets were inextricably linked to our lives, because our lives were inseparable from food, clothing, shelter, and clothing was a top priority.
When I was a child, like my peers, I rarely wore new clothes, and only changed into new clothes during the New Year's Festival and when I went to relatives' houses. A dress should be worn for two or three years, and there are only two old clothes in winter and cotton and summer. Cotton clothes were worn from winter until the next year when they were warm before changing into single clothes, dirty, and the mother unwrapped and washed; broken, the mother sewed and repaired. In two years, you have to add some new cotton, otherwise, the cotton coat will not be "angry".
Summer, the "golden" season for me and my peers, is a comfortable time to spend the summer and early autumn bare-buttocks or wearing only a pair of small pants. When going to primary school, families with slightly better conditions can still make a new dress for their children, but most families can only make a new dress for their children until the End of the Year. The clothes worn by the older children are sewn and the children wear them again, and finally washed and faded, with patches piled on them.
The scarcity of materials, the poverty of life, no matter whose home, is very frugal. Worn rags, unplugged, made into cloth shoes to wear.
In my memory, my mother had to make several pairs of cloth shoes every year. Before making shoes, you should "touch the back", first lay a layer of paper on the Kang table or door panel, then touch the pulp on the paper, and then layer the old clothes cloth that is washed and stacked very flat on it. After the sticky paste is enough for seven or eight layers, use the same method to touch another piece, which is the "touching the back" of the villagers before making cloth shoes. The pulp that touches the back is made of the rice noodles at home, because the back of the paste pulp is soft when the back of the shoes are touched, especially when the soles of the shoes are soft, and the needles are easy to penetrate. Although the white dough is more sticky than the chyme noodles, it is very hard when it is inserted into the sole, and it is very difficult to make.
After the back was completely dried, my mother began to make shoes. Attach the shoe sample to the back, cut it with scissors, fold them together, and be one centimeter thick, and then start to absorb the sole. After the sole is put in, the side of the shoe that was prepared in advance is sewn on it. The side of the shoe is generally made of black striped velvet, but the girls and daughters-in-law use red velvet. Finally, the mother scraped the soles around the soles white with scissors, and a pair of "hairy bottom" cloth shoes were beautifully made.
The scene of my mother touching her back to making shoes is still vividly remembered. Looking back now, I have realized the meaning of the phrase "the mother's hand is on the line, and the wanderer is clothed". Mother's love bathes her children all the time!
Cloth tickets are required for the clothes worn, and cloth tickets are also required for quilts covered at night. In that era, no matter whose children were, not everyone had a quilt cover, and it was normal for two or three children to pull a quilt. Especially in winter, when you sleep until the middle of the night, you pull over, he pulls over, pulls and pulls, and fights.
At that time, most of the people raised sheep, and after two years of shearing the wool, they invited a feltmaker to roll it into felt, sleep on the kang at night, and roll it up and put it aside during the day. Families and families are not the same, at that time, the population is large, the sheep are small, only the elderly can be laid with wool felt, and young people and children sleep on the mat. No wonder some women get together and joke about it: "Take off the light at night, and fill the flowers in the morning." The old quilt is dead and rotten, and the pressure is so overwhelming that people can't turn over."
Cloth tickets are issued uniformly by the state and are issued once a year. Adults are limited to twelve feet per year, and children are few, only five or six feet. Twelve feet of cloth can be used to make a dress, and the cut cloth head is made into a pair of cloth shoes to wear. The circulation of cloth tickets varies from year to year, and it is said that in the most difficult period of 60 years and 61 years, each person was only issued two and a half feet of cloth tickets per year.
Such a small number of cloth tickets, needless to say, to make clothes for adults, even for children is not enough. People only have to put together the whole family to make a few clothes, who needs who to wear, or, first meet the children's clothes in the family, adults old clothes sewn and mended, will be worn.
The most difficult thing is to make two new clothes and a new set of bedding for the married son, and give the daughter who marries to make two wedding dresses. At this time, these families will not be able to come up with so many cloth tickets for a while and will ask for help from relatives, friends and neighbors. Simple and kind fathers and fellow villagers, take care of each other in case of trouble, everyone you are one foot, I am two feet, help each other, get through the difficulties.
In the spring of 1972, when my sister got married, she used the family's cloth ticket. In the winter, there is no longer a cloth ticket to buy cloth to make winter clothes, seeing that the family will suffer from the cold of winter, the kind second aunt, third aunt and my fourth aunt solved the urgent need.
My three aunts live in the countryside of Xiji County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where they belong to ethnic minority areas, the policies are relatively favorable, the circulation of cloth tickets is relatively generous, and each family has gathered five or six feet of cloth tickets to make my parents and my family of three warm and spend the winter. In particular, the third aunt was particularly fond of me, and sewed me a large safflower cotton jacket to let me wear a new dress for the winter.
On the first day of the first lunar month of this year, I put on the big red flower cotton jacket made by my third aunt and went out, and I had a good show in front of my peers, which made them envious. On the third day of the first lunar month, I went with my father to pay homage to my three aunts, who were working as secretaries in Majian Commune in Xiji County, and sent me five yuan of pressure money.
In those days, cloth tickets and renminbi were in short supply, and families were very difficult, and it was remarkable to be able to wear a new dress and a new pair of cloth shoes during the New Year. At that time, the fabrics were almost all blue rattling, blue huada and white color cloth, labor cloth, there was no other pattern, girls and young women wore very few clothing patterns, and the newly married young daughter-in-law could wear a red velvet top, which was very good, and usually reluctant to wear. Whether on the street or in the countryside, people wearing patch clothes are everywhere, and it is nice if the patch can be sewn with a sewing machine, but most of them are sewn by hand. The cloth and clothes used to mend clothes are not a color, very contrasting, very unsightly, but in that year, wearing clothes without revealing flesh is very content, what high requirements can there be!
Cloth stamps are not the same as food stamps, which can be used throughout the country and are not invalidated. The cloth ticket is one province at a time, and the provinces are not common to each other. In other words, Gansu Province's cloth tickets cannot buy cloth in Ningxia. The cloth tickets were taken to the store to buy the cloth, and the salesman cut off the "secondary coupons" on the right after receiving them, and the cloth tickets that were cut off the secondary coupons were invalidated and could no longer circulate. My hometown is at the junction of the two provinces of Ganning, and there are more people from the two places who are related to each other, and relatives often exchange cloth tickets with each other, you go to my place to buy cloth, I go to your place to buy cloth, so that you can buy the cloth you need.
After graduating from high school in the summer of 1979, I returned to my hometown to participate in production labor. Dealing with the members every day, I need to dress decently, and my parents, who have been poor for more than half a lifetime, pulled six feet of blue huada, took it to the best tailor in the village, and made me a Zhongshan jacket. Loving beauty is human nature, I am no exception, that Zhongshan jacket I am reluctant to wear when I work, only when I go out to enter the house, every holiday to wear, usually I wash it very clean, folded very flat. Later, it was washed white, but the clothes were still intact, and I wore that dress for three years.
From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, various chemical fiber products such as zhenliang, nylon, and acrylic fiber were successively introduced, and cloth tickets gradually withdrew from the market circulation field. With the reform and opening up of the mainland, all kinds of items are available in shops and markets, and people no longer have to plan how to use the cloth tickets for a year, and the era of living with various tickets has passed forever.
Now, our life is a bamboo newspaper peace festival high, wearing a famous brand, taste, price, no longer see people wearing supplementary clothes. And I still have a deep affection for cloth clothes, especially the big red cotton jacket that my third aunt made for me, which I will never forget for the rest of my life!
Cloth tickets and food stamps, once the main evidence of the lack of commodity supply and planned economic shopping, were related to the life of every family, every month and every day of the year, and it witnessed that difficult history.
Society has undergone changes, recording the hard life of our parents and the journey of hard work. The vicissitudes of our fathers remind us to cherish the happy life we have now!
March 17, 2022
About the Author:
Song Jizong, a native of Pingtouchuan Town, Huining, Gansu, is a member of the Huining County Writers Association. Life motto: Where the footsteps cannot go, the eyes can see; where the eyes cannot see, the state of mind can be reached. When a person has a dream, he can say: where his footsteps cannot go.