Production Captain
Text/Guo Zhitao
The production captain is the highest commander based on all the teams at the third level of the year.
From 1958 to 1982 of the last century, the three-level rural organizations were the people's communes, the production brigades, and the production squads. In 1982, the people's commune was changed into a township, the production brigade was changed into a village committee, and the production team no longer existed.
At that time, the production team was divided by the number of households and the number of people, and a production team had a population of about 100, which was basically divided according to group dwellings, and the production team leader was a relatively authoritative and capable person who held the position, and the main condition was that he was from a poor and middle peasant background. The organizational structure of the production team consists of a team leader, an accountant, a custodian and a representative of the poor peasants.
Because my father worked on the dam, my father was purged from the cadre team and sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution because he did intelligence work for the underground party during the Anti-Japanese War, and because the superior leaders died and there was no direct witness after liberation. At that time, I was still a minor, and my family had a bad fortune and dropped out of school to work.
There are four natural villages and seven production teams under the jurisdiction of our production team, and the farthest village is seven miles away from the location of the brigade, and each production team has a population of about 100. The production team where my family is located is the fourth team of 103 people, more than 4,000 acres of arable land, the captain is a middle-aged man, named Ge Yuan, medium height, crippled left eye, big teeth, capable, budget-conscious, very prestigious.
The rural areas on the dam are dominated by agriculture, and farming is the daily occupation of the members. The production team leader is basically the same as the members, leading the members to work every day. Specifically, the responsibility of the team leader is to arrange the planting plan and material distribution for the year, and usually arrange what the members do every day.
Every winter, the team organization led by the captain adjusts the stubble according to the needs of all the land, and determines which land to plant and what crops. Determine which land will not be planted next year. (There are hundreds of acres of land not planted every year, the grass grows tall in the summer and turns it over once with a plow, turns the grass to the bottom to make manure, turns it again in autumn, and plants flax the next year, there is no grass in the ground, no hoe, spring planting and waiting for the autumn harvest)
The spring is not warm and the flowers have not yet bloomed, but the land that has been frozen for a winter has melted, and the captain and the members of the club have begun to sow seeds against the cold wind or sandstorm. In those days, two mules or horses or oxen pulled a plow in front of the dam farming, and a person in the back carried a wicker bucket with seeds in it, and held a leaky seed tube in his left hand. The drained seed tube is about three feet long, the tube is about three centimeters thick, the top is trumpet-shaped, and the upper seeds are slowly loosened by hand. Finally, a man led the livestock and pulled a frame-mounted stone roller to bury the seeds. A production team has more than 10 farm tools, and a set of farm tools is used to sow seeds. As the leader of a team, he also rushes around the fields to sow seeds, and does not earn wages if he does not work.
In the summer, the whole team of men, women and children was organized to hoe the ground in a single way.
The most nervous is autumn, and the most particular thing on the dam is that the yellow field (the ripe crops are called the yellow field) do not stay overnight, for fear that the wind and hail will cause damage to the mature crops. Whenever the crops are ripe and the harvest season, the whole team of men, women and children go out together, cook on the fourth watch, attend work on the fifth watch, walk to the field and the sky is just bright, eat at noon and leave quickly, and go home at night when the crops are gone.
The whole labor of the adults who cut the crops is two, and the underage children are half laborers, and the captain does not work less than others, and he also cuts two fields. In addition to doing his own work, he also had to check whether everyone had cut clean and whether there were any crops that had been thrown away. The captain and the members have the same mentality, so that the grains can be returned to the warehouse.
In autumn, the beans, peas, flax and wheat are harvested, and these crops are cut and pulled into the scene, and two mules pull and grind. A few people work in the scene, and most people cut wheat during the day and raise the grain at night. The lifting field is to use four strands of wooden forks and wooden shovels to lift the milled grain and straw into the air, separate the grain and straw through the wind, and then sieve it clean with a sieve.
After the miscellaneous grains were milled and distributed to the members, the staple grain wheat was also harvested, bundled and dried in the ground, and all the people began to raise yams, nearly 200 acres of yams were picked up from the ground and pulled back to the yard, and each member received more than 2,000 catties of yams. At that time, due to the cutting of the tail of capitalism, almost every family shared more than 10,000 catties of yams and more than 10,000 catties of yellow radish, which they couldn't eat at all, and most of them were fed to pigs. According to national regulations, five catties of yams are worth one catty of staple grain, and the production team on the dam does not top a catty of grain.
After the other crops were harvested, the two cars had already pulled the wheat to the scene, because the wheat is the staple food, just like two mountains, as soon as the threshing machine was installed, the whole team members were divided into three shifts to threh the wheat around the clock. And in the yard breeding room to set up a room, kill sheep and cook meat, make pies, squeeze oil cakes, three classes of people are eating collectively, not only to work to eat, but also to take some for the family to eat, so the family does not need to cook.
Three shifts take turns, the previous shift comes down to eat, and after eating, he pours down the threshed wheat straw to rest or sleep. In this process, it is inevitable that there will be personal affairs between the object or the man and the woman.
After several days and nights of continuous fighting, the threshing of the wheat was completed, the eldest women rested, and the young women cooperated with the men. In the autumn on the dam, sometimes there is very little wind, only waiting for the right wind to raise the field, just like Zhuge Liang borrowed the east wind, as long as the right wind arrives, it will start to raise the field day and night. After several days and nights, the men began to sift the wheat with a sieve, and the women poked the wheat with a dustpan and poured it into the men's sieve.
The tense autumn harvest and continuous struggle, the wheat harvest after sifting is basically over. Because there is no water and no fertilizer for farming on the dam, the sanitary fields rely on the weather for food, and the yield is not high, and the normal annual output is 50,000 to 60,000 catties of grain. Tens of thousands of catties of grain were distributed to each household overnight, and although the higher authorities symbolically sent a working group down to each production team to supervise the autumn harvest, the working group personnel were arranged by the team leader to not take a look at the courtyard all day long, and the production team sent two people to cooperate in drinking wine and eating meat. After the autumn harvest was completed, the production team sent a car to send the working group away, pulling white noodles, noodles, yams, sesame oil and mutton.
Although my father was beaten down and sent to the countryside, he was basically not discriminated against, and I became a custodian after a few years of labor. In those days, it was said that the people under the dam could not eat enough, but the people on the dam were satisfied with noodles, white noodles, yams, and sesame oil, and pigs and chickens also ate wheat.
As the captain of the team, all work is to lead by example, not only to work like the members, but also to arrange spring planting, summer hoeing and autumn harvest. In particular, the tense autumn harvest must not only be arranged, but also the working group personnel must be arranged.
Whenever the food was secretly distributed at night, the team leader and the accountant specially accompanied the working group members to drink wine and eat meat, and I and the poor peasant representatives distributed the food to everyone.
After the autumn harvest is over, the grain has been distributed to every household, and the working group personnel and the production brigade and squad have unified their voice, saying that this year's drought or hailstorm has caused the grain harvest to be poor, and relief is needed. The commune and the county government pretended to be confused and acknowledged the disaster, and the brigades made tables to report the specific population, and the higher authorities allocated corn, wheat, and dried sweet potatoes according to the order. The people on the dam would not eat corn, so they boiled the corn in a pot, sprinkled it with saccharin, and ate it with a bowl of plucking and pulling for each person, just like the people I saw later feeding donkeys.
Under the slogan of Dazhai in agriculture all parts of the country, crossing the Yellow River and crossing the Yangtze River, and supporting the country to produce more grain, the peasants did not rest in the cold winter and carried out the basic construction of farmland on a large scale. There is no action to learn from Dazhai in the countryside of Bashang, and there are no messy slogans, the captain of the club has one heart, and works honestly, everyone feels that they are doing it for themselves, only by working hard can they get more food, in order to eat enough, there are no treacherous and lazy people.
The people here also have a weak sense of any movement, and even the Cultural Revolution did not criticize the so-called "Seven Categories of Elements", which are generally considered to have no enmity with the "Seven Types".
The autumn harvest is over, people have rested in the long winter, there is no cultural entertainment, and men and women play cards every day to survive the winter.
The land was contracted, the production team was disbanded, Ge Yuan was no longer the captain, and opened a commissary in the village. People with brains, capable people, and calculating people will always live a good life.
About the Author:
Guo Zhitao lived in Zhangbei County before 1976. Participated in the work of writing materials in the Mengjiapu County Coal Mine, and worked part-time in legal proceedings. He served as the director of the office and the deputy director of the mine. In 2012, he was integrated into Ulju Mining Company to write materials and retired in 2017.