In the winter of 1962, the vast Horqin grassland ushered in the coldest cold snap of winter. There was a heavy snowfall in Baogutu Village, and on the night of the third day of the Lunar New Year, only the oil lamp was lit at Eji's house in the east of the village. On this day, several relatives who came to visit my maternal great-grandfather were unable to return due to bad weather, so they gathered at the earthen landlord's house at night to chat and play cards. Twelve-year-old Eji followed his sister (my aunt) to boil water and serve tea to everyone.
It was almost the middle of the night, accompanied by a few dog barks, and a dark shadow suddenly appeared outside the window. My grandfather went out to check on and found that it was a young man. He carried a shotgun and two hares on his back, and was so cold that he could not speak. His grandfather threw the shotgun and the hare on the roof of the house before helping him into the east house. He looked to be about twenty years old, a big man of more than 1.8 meters, with a pale face, but he was a handsome man with thick eyebrows and big eyes. His grandfather asked him where he was from, why he was here, and who he was looking for? His purple lips twitched, and he kept repeating "Telephone, telephone...... Drink water, drink water...... "I can't say anything else." The leggings on his legs had turned into ice lumps, clinging to his calves like plaster, and he looked incredibly stiff. One relative whispered, "Could this man be a spy?" and another said, "It looks like it's dying, what can I do if I die here for the New Year?" The aunt woke up her great-grandfather, who was already resting in the Westinghouse. Before his great-grandfather got off the ground, he shouted, "Don't give him cold water, pour him less hot water." And asked the aunt to hurry up and inform the village security director.
After carefully checking the man's condition, the maternal great-grandfather began to guide everyone and hurry up to save people. My grandfather brought two buckets of cold water, separated the man's legs, soaked them in the buckets with his shoe belt and leggings one by one, and then dug out a bundle of eggplant straw from under the snow on one side of the yard and put it in a large pot to boil. My grandmother cooked millet porridge in a small pot. After a long while, a thick layer of ice formed from the man's shoes and leggings, and he was finally taken off. His legs were swollen and bruised, and he looked very rash. His teeth chattered, and he still couldn't speak. Someone said, "What if this man is a class enemy?" There was no doctor in the village, and there was no medicine for frostbite. After discussing with the security officer, my maternal great-grandfather decided that no matter who this person was or what his identity was, he had to use local methods to save the person first. The man's legs were unconscious, and they drooped down like two sticks. Several people lifted him onto the kang, made him squat on the kang table, boiled water from eggplant straw, kept soaking his feet, wiping his body, and gave him half a bowl of hot millet porridge.
After a night, the man gradually got better. The man said that his name was Nuoribu, and his Chinese name was Yang Wenlin (there is still a phenomenon in eastern Inner Mongolia where Mongolians take Chinese names, and Han people take Mongolian names), and his home is in the village of Baori Hutuga in the north. He was a student at the Zhalantun Agricultural and Animal Husbandry School, and he came to his uncle's house during the winter vacation, and went out hunting with a few uncles on a snowy day. It was getting dark, the wind and snow were howling, and he couldn't make out the direction. In desperation, he saw the long black telephone line over the snow, and thought that he would definitely find the village and town by following the telephone line, so that he could contact his family. At night, the temperature dropped to minus 30 degrees, and the cold wind cut his face like a knife. He struggled step by step, tired, hungry and thirsty. The telephone lines seemed endless, and no matter how he walked, the scene was the same in front of him, and just when he was about to lose his grasp, he saw a faint light not far away......
The snow in the northern wilderness covers the entire winter, and the cold wind blows, mixing snow and dust and sand in the air, making the land even more depressed and barren. If you are not a local, once you enter the winter wilderness, it is easy to get lost and more likely to encounter accidents. In the afternoon of the next day, several men in sheepskin jackets followed the footprints on the snow from the village of Uliji Tutara, thirty miles northeast of the country, all the way to Eji's house. They were several of Noribu's uncles. When the uncles saw that their nephew was saved, their hanging hearts finally let go. Noribu's legs are already feeling and moving, but he can't get off the ground and needs to recuperate. The uncles had to go back first. My grandfather took Norib's shotgun and hare off the roof and let them take them away. They took only shotguns, and refused to take hares. They were shy and embarrassed to say it was to show gratitude, but everyone could see it.
The telephone line runs through the village of Baogutu, but there is no telephone in the village. There are also no telephones in the villages of Ulijitutala and Baori Hutuga. Norrib continued to recuperate at Eji's house for a month, during which time several of his uncles came to visit. Although it was a difficult time and almost every household in the village had no food left, his grandmother still cooked porridge for him every day. After careful care by the family, Noribu's injuries got better and better, and he was finally able to walk slowly on the ground.
At the beginning of March, the weather was sunny and the snow had not yet melted, but the cold had passed, and the children had run out of the house to play in the village, and the adults had tidied up the courtyard walls and began to plan for the year's work. One day, Noribu's uncles led a half-grown old man, Noribu's father, to Eji's house, leading a sturdy donkey. When he saw his son, he didn't dare to cry, he just blindly wiped the tears on his face, and he didn't know what to say. He asked his son to kneel down and kowtow to the elders, and recognized his grandfather and grandmother as his godfather and godmother. My grandfather refused to accept any of the milk and food that the old man brought, and instructed them to bring back the two hares as well. The donkey wears a thick sheepskin jacket on its back, and two long sleeves hang down from either side. They helped Noribu up, put his legs into the long sleeves, and tied the cuffs from the bottom. They left the village of Baogutu step by step along the dirt road.
In the next few years, every Chinese New Year, Noribu came to visit his grandfather's family and brought his new daughter-in-law to come. His daughter-in-law kowtowed to the elders and said, "If I hadn't met the kind family of my godfather and godmother, Nuoribu would definitely be paralyzed and even lose her life." "It's a miracle that Norib's legs were not only healed without a doctor or medicine, but also without leaving a root cause. On several occasions, Norrib came during the autumn harvest to help my grandfather with his work, and led my uncle to the field to teach him how to cut autumn grass. In the eyes of his uncle, Noribu was a strong, handsome, hearty, and knowledgeable Mongolian man, as kind as his brother.
As the days passed, the eldest aunt, Eji, eldest uncle, second uncle, and younger uncle walked out of Baogutu Village one after another, some went to other villages to get married and have children, some worked in government agencies, and some studied outside...... In 1980, my uncle took my grandfather and grandmother to the Yamen camp because of a job transfer. Nuoribu inquired all the way about the Yamen camp and came to visit his godfather and godmother. Later, my grandfather's family moved around for various reasons such as life and work, and gradually lost contact with Noribu. A few years ago, when my uncle was working in the Kezuohouqi Court, he chatted with a newly assigned colleague and learned about Nuoribu. The young colleague, also from the village of Baori Hutuga, said that Mr. Noribu had passed away at the age of about 70. As for where the old man is, why he doesn't have it, whether he has children or not, she doesn't know anything.
In those years, the dirt roads between villages were of different widths, potholes, and difficult to walk, not only did there be no cars, but even horse-drawn carriages and ox carts were only available to well-to-do families. There was no electricity, no lanterns or candles in the village, only homemade oil lamps. There are two kinds of oil lamps in the Eji family: one is made of inkwell, in which vegetable oil or kerosene is poured and lit with a thread drawn from the top, and the other is a wooden stick about 20 centimeters long that is inserted vertically into a wooden board and made a spoon-shaped container at the top end, which is lit with oil and wires. Eji said that when he sewed and read a book under this oil lamp, his nostrils were black the next day. And this oil lamp is far less bright than a candle, it is a very dim light, and if you want to see what is clear, you have to get to the flames. But just such a little light, on the winter night sixty-one years ago, made Noribu, who was in trouble and almost desperate, see hope and made him feel the warmth of the world. When Eji first told me this story, he said, "I used to have a frozen brother......