Some people say that fate is in their own hands, and reading will change fate, but I don't think that's entirely the case, the important thing is that fate determines everything, and fortune dominates life.
On December 13, 1923, my wife was seriously ill and needed to recover after surgery, and my son paid for us to go to the south for recuperation. Four of us retirees got on the train from Yichang East Railway Station together, got on the green sleeper car, and prepared to go to Beihai, Guangxi to spend the cold winter. After stepping onto the train from Yichang to Liuzhou, I was scrolling through my phone and watching a commentary on Toutiao about whether pensions should be paid to farmers who participated in the construction of national projects in water conservancy. When the train horn sounded, I suddenly remembered that the line I was on was not the same Zhiliu Railway that I had helped build 55 years ago.
The Zhiliu Railway from Yichang Zhicheng to Liuzhou, Guangxi, with a total length of 883 kilometers, it crosses the mountains and mountains, connects the Jiaozhi Line, known as the second Beijing-Guangzhou Line, and is a war-ready railway built at that time. Thinking back to the scene of my construction of the railway 55 years ago, I dropped my phone and hurriedly lay on the window to find the place I had experienced when I was young, the train rushed past the Zhicheng Bridge, I tried my best to recall everything in front of me, and I experienced the scene of hard labor that spanned two years and months to see how much overlap it had. The scenery along the way is very picturesque, and it is completely different from the scene of the labor I fought 55 years ago.
It was from the winter of 1968 to the spring of 1969, and the Cultural Revolution allowed me, a young man who had not finished high school, to join the tide of intellectual youth returning to their hometowns. Our militia company, which consisted of production brigades, far exceeded the "strength" of one company. I hurriedly crossed the Han River with the flow of people in the crowd, and walked 20 kilometers to Qianjiang County, where the open-top cars waited for us to pull us from Qianjiang to the old stadium in Shashi. Then come to the current foreign wharf on the Yangtze River embankment. We slept on the embankment overnight, and the next day we took a machine barge and freighter to the west along the Yangtze River, and in the afternoon we arrived at our destination, Yangxi, a section of the Zhiliu Railway Line on the south bank of Zhicheng. At that time, the Zhicheng Bridge was not built, and it was later built by us migrant workers. Our main battlefield is the section to the south of Yangxi, which is a lofty mountain, and a flat railway embankment is to be opened, including an overpass.
At that time, there were no excavators, all of them relied on shoulders to carry and fight the battle of the sea of people, the roadbed was blown up from the mountain bag to take soil to build, and the bridge needed to be built by picking sand and carrying cement from the distant riverside. Mountains are flattened to fill the valleys, and the roadbed is then rolled into a road with a bulldozer.
At that time, it was snowing heavily, the militiamen carried the soil, wearing only a pair of shorts shirtless and facing the north wind, desperately charging to the roadbed filling in the rapid trumpet, and the slogan "Repair the war readiness road as soon as possible and completely bury the emperor's rebellion" can be seen everywhere on the construction site, when I rushed to the valley, I was full of half a load of soil, and my shorts were also soaked.
This Spring Festival, we can't go home for the New Year, usually life is hard, the rice can be full, the vegetables eaten are cabbage and radish, it is difficult to see a little faint, everyone wants to go home for the New Year and eat a good meal, but no, whoever runs away will be criticized as a deserter. There was no rest during this Spring Festival, and the educated youth in Wuhan couldn't stand it, so they secretly fled to the riverside to prepare to go home for the New Year, and the militia regiment sent us to arrest the "deserters". Later, it is not clear how to deal with these deserters, but I know that soon after they were recruited to return to Wuhan, but I think that their experience has been counted as the length of service, and it has been recorded as the number of years of service that people are hotly discussing as paying pensions, and I am only a farmer during this period of time, because returning to my hometown is not counted as years of service.
The train continued to move south, and I grabbed my phone again and looked at the online comments.
Nothing happened in the car, and my mind took me back to 1970, when I participated in the excavation of the 91.8-kilometer-long Hanbei River, an artificial river excavated from the winter of 1969 to May 1970. It opens at Wanjiatai in the western suburbs of Jingling, connects with the Tianmen River, accepts the water from the upper reaches of the Tianmen River, flows to Wuhan Xin'andu and divides into two branches: one enters the Han River from the Xingou Gate, and the other enters the Fu River from the Dongshantou Gate and flows into the Yangtze River.
We were digging the river at the opening of Wanjiatai at the time, the river was dug with semi-mechanization, it was transported by board car, it was easier than the pruning willow railway, after a winter and a spring of fighting, an artificial river that passed through two counties and a city was dug up, the river dredged the water in the Hanchuan Shenhu Lake area, changed the swamp into thousands of acres of fertile land, connected the Tianmen County River, the Han River and the Yangtze River, not only made the water conservancy benefit from the agriculture of several counties, but also made the traffic convenient. Ten years later, when I was in college, I took a steamer from Wuhan to my hometown and passed through the river I had dug, which made me feel deeply emotional, and I felt that as a part of the builders, the effort at that time was worth it. But when I was in the countryside at that time, I saw that the educated youths around me and the rural youths with a way out of the farm, and I had to find a way to leave.
In the winter of 1972, with the help of relatives, I finally moved my hukou to a state farm in Jingzhou City. Although the farm is state-run, it is still rural, and I was placed in a brickyard, where the labor intensity is greater than that of my hometown village. As someone who has experienced the exercise of digging rivers and building roads, I can't adapt to the labor intensity here. The partners on the farm always wanted to jump out of the door and work as workers in Jingzhou and Shashi, which became the dream pursuit of the young people on the farm at that time.
Subsequently, I worked as a farm teacher, and I completely jumped out of the farm by remediating high school knowledge and later being admitted to university. At present, the farm has become a street office, some have become civil servants and career editors, they are also retired, and the pension is higher than mine, some receive 5,800 yuan in the Social Security Bureau, and the Finance Bureau also subsidizes 1,500 yuan, and the pension is more than 7,000 yuan.
After graduating, I thought I was better than them, I worked in public institutions, I also enjoyed the official level, and I was still a senior engineer. And also experienced layoff, and became a substitute teacher at a university after being laid off.
I also thought about getting an extra pension after I retired. thinks that the innate opportunity is not good, and only the acquired can make up for it. After I was transferred from my career to an enterprise, I was laid off again, which made me return to the "pre-liberation" period overnight, and I reached the same starting point as my fellow farmers. I always wonder why bad luck always surrounds me, I want to break free, isn't the social security bureau publicizing that the pension is overpaid?
Although the index I bought was three times higher than that of ordinary laid-off workers, the 0.5 cost of laid-off workers is the cost of 1.5 on the job, how much does it cost me to buy a 1.55 index? This is the payment standard for flexible employees, how much pressure do I have to bear?
But I thought wrongly, no matter how high your contribution is, your deemed life is long! 24 years is only calculated with 1, and the career is calculated with 1.98, can you turn things around? Therefore, the average index is only 1.13, and no matter how high the fee is, the pension will be considered low, this is the result of my efforts, this can only be fate, and fate cannot be changed by myself, so I warn my fellow farmers, no matter how you fight, I have struggled, I have struggled, I have struggled, I cannot compare with my farm partners. We are both at the department level, I have higher education and professional titles than them, and I pay more than them, but the pension is more than 4,000 less than them.
Therefore, peasant colleagues, I have also built roads, dug rivers, and been admitted to universities, do you envy my 3,000 yuan pension? Who do I envy? I can only say that I have worked hard, my father has been a village party secretary in the countryside for several decades, has no salary and no pension, and when he is old, I will support him and live a long life, I am better than him, and my son is better than me. I hope that the descendants of my farmer friends will become stronger from generation to generation and not fight against fate. I still say this:
A person's life is only fate that determines everything, and fortune dominates life.
