The working years of the educated youth in Xinjin
Li Changqing
It's the annual May Day again, in the festival of recognizing, commemorating, and advocating the glory of labor for the workers, I, who am more than a year old, suddenly think of the educated youth years 50 years ago in my mind, and think of those people and things when I settled in the queue.
Cut the queue and settle down by the West River
In the summer of 1966, the Cultural Revolution began, and I joined it as a young student who had graduated from junior high school. In October of that year, I was elected as a member of the "Wenjiang District Secondary School Revolutionary Teachers and Students Delegation to Beijing", and met with Chairman Mao Zedong and other central leaders on the 18th of that month.
In the second half of 1968, Chairman Mao issued a call for "intellectual young people to go to the countryside and accept the re-education of poor and middle peasants". At the end of the year, at the age of 19, I was assigned to the second production team of the 11th Brigade of Shunjiang Commune (now Hongshi Community, Wujin Street) located by the West River, and became a rural educated youth. The production team has the surname Cheng as the majority of the population, followed by the surname Zhou, and also the surnames Xu, Luo, Lv, etc., and the locals are used to calling this place Cheng Linpan. The area of the production team is close to the Xihe River, and the sandy land is the majority, and the paddy fields where rice is planted are basically transformed from sandy land. In addition to grain crops such as rice, corn, and red vetch, cash crops such as vegetables, sugarcane, and cotton are also grown. All year round, although there is a lot of farm work, but as long as you are diligent, you will not be poor, there is a local saying: "Three years will not be flooded, and the cattle herding baby also wears a silk shirt." ”
Cooking rice over a wood fire for the first time
When I first arrived, there was no ready-made house for educated youth, so the production team arranged for me to live at Aunt Xu's house. Aunt Xu is a woman in her 50s, kind, with four daughters and a son, and the people in the production team call her "Xu Dada". Xu Da's house belongs to the bamboo forest thatched hut with a strong flavor of western Sichuan folk houses, and the three main houses have a "corner" kitchen, and I live in a "phi phi" (a simple small house extending from the eaves to the dam) from the eaves of the main house on the right, and I share a stove with Xu Dada for cooking. I remember that it seemed to be the season of rape harvesting, I used an untied rape stalk to cook rice and firewood, first stuffed the head of the rape stalk into the stove, and then continued to stuff the tip of the rape stalk, and soon the smoke in the kitchen did not disperse, the smell was choking, and then the flames rose very high, and there was a tendency to rush to the roof. Seeing such a movement, Xu Dada hurriedly ran over to me and said, "Baby, look at the burning of the house!" Then he taught me that the rape stalks should be pulled into straw, not burned for a long time, and the stove should be hollowed out. I still remember what she said at that time, that is, "A man must be faithful, and fire must be hollow." Later, in addition to work, Xu Dada took the initiative to help me pull all the rape stalks into straw handles and stack them under the eaves behind the main house in an orderly manner.
Xu Dada was very good to me, and the first person to "re-educate" me was her. From the day I moved into Xu's family, we got along very well in the days that followed, especially once after I sent her youngest daughter Lianfang to the hospital late at night, she treated me as a family member.
Doing farm work for the first time
Our production team is located in a river dam, with few people and a lot of land, and in my memory, the main crop planted is corn. The farmers and I worked at sunrise and rested at sunset. I have little strength, I am short-sighted, I wear a pair of glasses, I often carry dung to the river dam to water corn seedlings, and walk barefoot on the river beach. In the shallow water of the river beach, countless small pebbles were hard and slippery, and the pain in the heart of the foot was unbearable from the small pebbles, and the burden on the shoulders became heavier and heavier as the distance increased. Seeing me like this, Xu Dada told me that when carrying the burden, I must step on the big pebbles. After I did what she said, it was much easier.
The ground on the dam is wide and large, and the corn seedlings are planted long in each row, so when watering, the dung bucket should be carried on the shoulder, and the corn seedlings should be watered with a short manure stall before and after. Especially after corn tasseling, the ratio of pig manure to water is halved, and after I scoop up the water, all that is left in the manure bucket is manure residue. What's even more embarrassing is that the dung bucket can't be balanced and controlled, one moment it touches my belly, another time it touches my back, the corn leaves sweep on my neck with fine skin and tender meat, like a knife cut, the weather is hot, and the body smells, I told Xu Da that the taste is too uncomfortable. Xu Dada smiled and said to me, you have to stir the water and dung in the bucket well at the beginning, scoop once in the front and once in the back, so that you can master the balance. I did as she said, and sure enough, I never got the feces on me again.
In those years, the work was evaluated according to the strength of the labor, and the scorekeeper wrote it down every day, and the captain saw that I was educated, and every time he asked me to record the work points, and I could record the work points in the shade under the scorching sun, I felt that it was a beautiful difference, and I was very happy to do it.
Sometimes the whole production team worked from the morning to half past three in the afternoon, and the team leader had no intention of calling it a day, and shouted: "Finish harvesting the jade wheat (corn) in this field." At this time, I was already hungry, and for the first time, I experienced the taste of "peasant rice, half past three".
A hard and joyful collective life
In my memory, the farmers in the production team were very friendly to me, and men, women and children loved to call me "Brother Li Zhige". Decades have passed, and although some of them have forgotten their names, they can still be called out by their nicknames, such as "young man", "old chicken woman", "Wu gang" and so on. Although the production team usually lives in each family, there are also a few days of "collective life" every year, and although the conditions are difficult, they are full of joy.
Due to its proximity to the Xihe River, the production team's means of transportation in addition to the erection car, there are also two boats, and the collective goods are mainly transported in and out of it, such as transporting bricks to the vicinity of Wudianzi to repair the warehouse, and then transporting vegetables to Yongxing to sell. Except for the person at the helm, the rest of the young adults do the work of pulling fiber. There is an old boatman named Cheng Siquan, and he will hum a few sentences of boat pulling tunes, and now I still remember two of them: "Hands carry stones and feet pedal sand, earn money for mother-in-law and dolls", that long tone, so far the aftertaste is endless. Once, in order to catch up with the Yongxingchang morning market to sell vegetables, the first afternoon to tug the boat down the Nan River, and live in a farmhouse in Tiexi Commune (now Anxi Town) at night, which was a relative of the production team Cheng, the host was very enthusiastic, entertained our group to eat and drink, chatted about family life, blowing shells, very happy, the fatigue of the whole afternoon was swept away.
Every year, the river is repaired, and the whole production team participates in twenty or thirty people, because they are far away, they need collective accommodation. I don't want to talk about the hard work during the day, but at night everyone eats and drinks together, but it is very lively. At that time, the conditions were poor, naturally there was no delicacies, just vegetarian dishes, and the wine was also an inferior "sugar wine", when drinking, everyone was polite, all were saying "you drink" and "you drink", but swallowed it in one gulp, the wine in the bowl was missing a big circle, so everyone laughed and slept happily.
In 1979, I was recruited and transferred back to the county seat. Later, due to my busy work, I really didn't have time to see Xu Dada, but the hard-working and kind image that Xu Dada left in my mind can never be forgotten. Later, I heard that she had passed away and could not see her again, and I felt regretful.
In fact, there are many places worth missing in this production team and even the whole Shunjiang, where there are beautiful memories of my youth, where the farmers are simple and loyal, treat me like a relative, and I have long regarded it as my second hometown; In particular, after I became a private teacher, I had a teacher-student friendship with a certain class of students in the seventh and eighth grades of junior high school there for four years, and I still keep in touch with them. With the arrival of May Day, I miss that period of labor even more and cherish this precious life experience.
Source: Fang Zhi Xinjin
Author: Li Changqing