<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > unforgettable volunteer labor</h1>
Author: Liu Jinlong, former Railway Corps Headquarters Office
Since working in the railway corps, he has often participated in volunteer labor. Usually, from time to time, I get some chores from nearby factories to do what I can, and during the busy season of farming, I go to the countryside to help farmers grab the harvest and grab seeds, and every New Year's Festival, we have to clean up the environmental sanitation for the streets of the station, and so on. As the years passed, many of the volunteer labors I had participated in had faded from my memory. There is only one volunteer labor that I still remember, and that is voluntary labor on the construction site of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.
After the death of the great leader Chairman Mao Zedong in September 1976, the Party Central Committee immediately decided to build chairman Mao's memorial hall on the south side of Tiananmen Square to permanently preserve Chairman Mao's body. Due to the short construction period, tight time, and high quality requirements of the entire project, Li Ruihuan, who was then the commander-in-chief of the project of Chairman Mao's memorial hall, used Chairman Mao's philosophical thinking to guide the construction of the project and properly handled various contradictions in the construction of the project, thus building the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall at a high speed and with high quality. At that time, construction sites required a lot of labor to do some manual labor. Under the organization and command of Li Ruihuan, some cadres from the military organs stationed in Beijing were transferred to the construction site of Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall to participate in voluntary labor. I was working in the office of the Railway Corps Headquarters, and since most of the secretaries in the office were young and weak, I had the honor of coming to the site of Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall to participate in volunteer labor.
In view of the fact that the Tangshan earthquake that occurred before Chairman Mao's death affected Beijing, high requirements were put forward for the earthquake prevention of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. In order to prevent the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall from being damaged in a major earthquake that may occur in the future, the entire building of the Memorial Hall was constructed of reinforced concrete, and a large number of high-quality steel bars came from various steel companies in the metallurgical system. However, these steel bars have rust to varying degrees after being transported to the site, and in order to ensure the quality of the memorial hall, the rust must be removed before the steel bars can be lashed and the concrete poured. Our job is to remove rust from the various sizes of steel bars that are transported to the site. In order to ensure the construction progress of the entire project, our rust removal work has achieved three guarantees: First, to ensure that the rust removal of each steel bar is thorough, and everyone is very serious in the rust removal work, so that there is no rust in the strips of steel; The second is to ensure that the construction node, in order to meet the construction requirements of the next process, the rust removal task entrusted to us on the same day must be completed on the same day; The third is to ensure the construction safety and civilized construction, in the construction of Tiananmen Square, the construction safety and civilized construction requirements are very high, in the steel reinforcement rust removal site where we work, everyone wears a safety helmet, and the various types of derusted steel bars are stacked neatly and orderly, and the garbage in the field must be cleaned up at the end of the work every day. At that time, the scene was that on the one hand, the construction site of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall was undergoing intense and busy construction, and on the other hand, the traffic in Tiananmen Square was still in order, and various activities such as ground transportation and sightseeing were carried out normally.
The rust removal of steel bars looks as if the labor intensity is not large, and the whole labor process is also very monotonous, but due to repeated action, that is, the rust is removed by grinding the steel bar with iron sand skin. Those of us who usually sit in the office can't withstand the physical exertion of a long period of labor, and we feel back pain after a few days, although we wear protective gloves when working, but the effect is not great, most of us have blisters on our hands, but everyone is very proud, because we have made our own contribution to the early completion of this great project with practical actions!
Of course, there is dedication and reward. Shortly after the completion of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, some of our cadres who participated in voluntary labor had the honor of paying respects to Chairman Mao's remains before the memorial hall was officially opened to the public.
Author's Curriculum Vitae Male, Han Chinese; Shanghai native, born in December 1943; College culture, CCP member; Enlisted in September 1961, he served as a soldier, squad leader, platoon leader, regimental propaganda unit officer, division propaganda section officer, and secretary of the office of the railway command; In October 1978, he transferred to Baosteel and successively served as section chief and deputy department-level researcher. He retired in December 2003.