Text/Li Chuanmin Editor| Swallow Photo | Network
In the autumn of 1958 A.D., it was a time of enthusiasm and excitement, and the storm of "one big and two dukes" swept across the earth. The People's Commune had just been established, and everything was in the midst of a frenzied toss. Several of the original elementary schools were merged into our school. The people in the village were relocated to a nearby village, houses were freed up for students, and the school suddenly expanded by more than ten times. Students eat collectively, sleep collectively, work collectively, participate in the deep ploughing of the land in the cultivated area, pick cotton, send public grain, and eat without money. Gongs and drums are noisy, red flags are displayed, and there is a lively atmosphere of "communism".
On this day, on the school playground, more than 2,000 teachers and students solemnly held a grand steel smelting oath meeting. At the meeting, Principal Zhao solemnly announced: "I order you, before twelve o'clock in the middle of the night today, you must refine the first furnace of steel in our school!" The steelmaking commander-in-chief and chief engineer, teacher Wang, who usually teaches us manual labor lessons, stepped onto the stage, raised his right fist, and solemnly declared: "Guarantee to complete the task!" ”
In the woods behind the school, a blacksmith furnace more than one meter high and two meters square was coiled, and a large bellows for blacksmiths to strike iron was installed. Around them were piled iron pots, iron basins, iron locks, chains, iron door noses donated by the surrounding masses, tables and chairs and benches pulled from the masses' homes with axes, and wooden doors and windows of the wardrobe. The small flag in Teacher Wang's hand waved: "Ignite!" Suddenly, the flames rolled, and the flames flew up to a height of more than a foot. A dozen bare-chested senior biao-shaped boys took turns pulling the bellows to cheer for the "steel-making furnace" fan. Teacher Wang commanded intently, one moment continuing firewood, splitting and peeling; the next moment putting iron tools, clanging. Finally, when it was almost dark, the hot molten iron flowed down the grooves on the stove into a large earthen basin that had been placed on the ground in advance.
At dinner that day, the students who participated in steelmaking each comforted two white noodle steamed buns, and eight people had a pot of pork stew cabbage. Teacher Wang did not care about eating, he excitedly went to pull the reed of the cable broadcast speaker (there was no telephone at that time, it was a local telephone that used the cable broadcasting line to transmit information), forgot to report to the principal, and directly reported to the commune the great news that our school had successfully refined the first furnace of steel.
The next morning, the head of the commune's education group, that is, after the establishment of the commune, was transferred from our school to the commune, Principal Li, accompanied several major leaders of the commune, riding bicycles, all the way to inspect the fruitful results of steelmaking in the school. On the case of the Teaching Office, a bright red silk was laid out, and on it was placed a black bun-shaped iron block. The leaders of the commune walked solemnly to the steel products in turn, looked at them with their eyes, and touched them with their hands. On behalf of the leaders of the commune, President Li expressed warm congratulations to the success of steelmaking in the school and expressed cordial condolences to the teachers, students and employees who participated in the large-scale steelmaking. Subsequently, President Li raised a question: "This piece of steel looks a little less dense, nor smooth enough, a bit like a honeycomb, grits grains." Teacher Wang, chief engineer, explained: "This is just a piece of steel blank, is not a thousand hammers and hundreds of hammers to become steel, but also after repeated forging, in order to become the final steel." He did not say that this was actually a mixture of iron mixed with slag, and he did not know that qualified steel products, other elemental content, should be controlled within a few percent or even a few thousandths, and he did not even know the basic process of steel smelting.
Sixty-four years have passed, and this is a small wave of the vigorous steel-making movement of that year, and today it is shared with friends who have experienced it, and friends who have not experienced it.
Author: Li Chuanmin, pen name Lei Zefeng. Male, born in 1945, from Heze City. Retired construction engineer of Heze Foreign Trade Grain, Oil and Food Company. He is a member of the Poetry Society of Shandong Province and Heze City.
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