Silent storytelling
Excerpt from "Breaking Through seventeen degrees north latitude"
There is no need to elaborate on the process of reclamation in the mountains. The scene of reclamation is much the same as the life of the reclamation. As long as you have read the description of the reclamation of the Leizhou Peninsula in this book, it is not difficult to imagine the scene of reclamation in the mountains. If you want to give an objective judgment, you can say that the difficulty of cultivating rubber in the mountains of Hainan Island is as great as that of the primitive forests of the Leizhou Peninsula. It is difficult to use machinery such as tractors to open up the wasteland here, and the difficulties in transportation are even greater. The grain eaten every day and the materials needed to clear the land were all picked up from outside the mountain by hand. In the face of flash floods and traffic barriers, workers had to tighten their belts and dig up "revolutionary vegetables" (a bitter wild vegetable) in the mountains to fill their stomachs.
You also have to endure the infestation of evil things in the subtropical mountain forest: miasma, lightning, evil insects, poisonous mosquitoes... The folk language "Hainan Ten Monsters" is the third monster: "three mosquitoes and a dish, five mice and a sack, and mountain ants can be used as belts", which is a portrayal of the evil things in the mountains of Hainan.
Experiencing the hardships of hard life and hard work is the common life mark of farmers. People are not born to like tribulations, and they choose to suffer some out of helplessness, some for some utilitarian purposes, and some for lofty purposes and ideals. Farmers are using the hardships of their own lives in exchange for the glory of the motherland's rubber cause.
In the central and western part of Hainan Island, there is a large highway connecting Wushi in Qiongzhong County and Danxian County, called the Wuna Line. On one side of the 32 km Una Line, on a sloping slope, 300 mounds of earthen fortifications are scattered among thorns and mountain flowers. The people who are buried here are all the employees of Yangjiang Farm, who have dedicated their entirety to the rubber cause.
When it comes to these deceased workers, people are reluctant to say that they are buried on the 32-kilometer slope of the Una Line. People say this: they transferred to the "32 team".
"32 Team", a special "unit" in the minds of Yangjiang Farm employees, a glorious resting place for life. None of those who reported here had the name of a martyr, and even the name was unknown to the outside world. But they all have great ordinariness —ordinary lives, ordinary grandeur; great sacrifices, great sacrifices. These two records in the historical materials of Yangjiang Farm may allow us to feel this great ordinariness:
Chen Guangding, a 24-year-old iron-blooded youth, when he participated in a collective labor competition, worked for two consecutive nights, suddenly felt unwell, sweating, cold and feverish, weak limbs, he knew he was sick. However, in order not to drag the hind legs of the group, he continued to fight hard without everyone's illness. At three o'clock in the afternoon of this day, he had been sick for three consecutive days, and suddenly his body shook, and he fell on the construction site with a "porphyry" sound.
The teammate next to him rushed forward to help.
The captain touched Chen Guangding's forehead with his hand: "Oh my God! It's hot! "Everyone knows that Chen Guangding insists on doing it with illness!" I didn't expect that Chen Guangding, who was usually silent and quiet, was actually a tough guy!
After a while, Chen Guangding woke up, saw everyone surrounding him, and was curious: "I'm fine, what are you doing around me!" Let's get to work. ”
The captain said, "Comrade Guangding, you are sick and have a high fever, so hurry back to the hospital and rest!" ”
Chen Guangding blinked and said, "The task of opening up the wasteland has not been completed, and I will not leave." Struggling to stand up, he reached out and grabbed the handle of the hoe, but as soon as he tried, the handle slipped out of his hand.
Chen Guangding, who had been working hard for 10 days, really didn't have any strength at this time.
With tears in his eyes, the captain said, "Guangding, you don't even have the strength to lift a hoe now, how else can you work?" If you don't go back, I'll have to ask someone to carry it!" "Several teammates immediately came up to him to carry him.
Chen Guangding had no choice but to agree to go down the mountain. The captain sent two team members to escort him, but Chen Guangding refused to die, and a person staggered toward the bottom of the mountain.
In the evening, he finally came to an unnamed ditch. On weekdays, when the commandos come back from work, they have to wash in this ditch. After crossing this ditch, there is a place to live not far ahead.
There is a simple wooden bridge above the gutter.
When Chen Guangding stepped on the wooden bridge to the center of the bridge, his body suddenly twisted and he planted a ditch. The water of this ditch is only two or three feet deep, and people standing in the deepest ditch cannot penetrate half of their thighs. If a healthy person falls into a ditch and stands up with a little force, it is no different from falling on the flat ground and standing up, but Comrade Chen Guangding has no strength to lift his head from the shallow water...
The young Chen Guangding actually left the human world silently in this three-foot-deep ditch...
Warriors cut down trees, moved boulders, and trimmed the circumnavigation of the mountain.
In a battle to excavate terraces at Yangjiang Farm, Liang Jiafeng, a young party member of the seventh team, formed a youth commando team with 11 young men who were alive and well, and went to the hillside construction site in front of Niuwan Village. This hillside, with many rocks and steep terrain, is a hard bone that is difficult to "gnaw".
They had planned to take this hill in two days, but they didn't expect it to be too difficult, and they still hadn't finished the battle for two days.
The 12 commandos held their breath, took off their shirts as soon as they went up the hill, and worked hard with their bare arms, and they made a fierce heart: no matter how difficult it is, it must be completed today, and it will not be extended!
They worked from morning to afternoon, and suddenly, a series of earth-shattering explosions rolled over their heads, and electric light that tore through the long sky flew around them, and a torrential downpour poured down on them. But the commandos got braver and drier in the rain.
When they reached the last terrace of the mountain, the dark and heavy sky suddenly skimmed a miserable white electric light, and a 'rumbling' thunder that shook the mountain and exploded directly at the mountain where they were working.
A tragic tragedy occurred: 12 brave and loyal warriors who developed the rubber cause in the motherland were all struck by lightning because of their lack of natural scientific knowledge.
Liang Jiafeng, Li Dogzi and six others were killed by lightning. Six others were seriously injured, leaving them with lifelong disabilities...
In the construction of the new farm, the agricultural reclamation workers show their ordinary greatness, and their leaders also have great ordinariness.
Zhang Jicheng, commander of the Qiongya Column, commander of the first regiment of the First Lin Division in the early stage of reclamation, director of the Qiongshan Reclamation Institute, later deputy commander of the Third Division of the Production and Construction Corps of the Guangzhou Military Region, member of the Party Committee of the Corps, director of the Tongshi Agricultural Reclamation Bureau and secretary of the Party Committee of Guangdong Province, and member of the Standing Committee of the Hainan Li and Miao Autonomous Prefecture Prefecture CPC Committee. He was exactly like a peasant, emaciated, with tough bones and bulging cheekbones on his dark-skinned face. A "Chinese" with more Hainanese ingredients than Mandarin, and loves to eat fried small salted fish. "There's a little salted fish Wa (I) can skim (eat) three bowls of porridge!" This is his beautiful "manifesto" for eating. When there is porridge in his stomach, he seems to have endless energy. He had only lived to be 65 years old, and apart from fighting wars, he had spent his entire life to tossing and turning for the clover tree.
When the Hainan Reclamation Bureau decided to build those seven new farms, it sent him to longjiang farm to be the chief on the spot, to put it bluntly, that is, to let him, who had been the director of the reclamation institute, once again go to the front line to do "reclamation cattle". Without saying a word, he went to Xinchang in Baisha County, which has a small population of only 30,000 people in the mountains, and started from scratch. He turned a new farm into the main farm of agricultural reclamation in Guangdong (including Hainan), with an annual output of thousands of tons of dry glue.
He didn't seem to have any vigorous deeds, his life was as ordinary as his appearance, melted into the sea of people, ordinary enough to distinguish him as an "official". His greatness lies in the fact that he is doing countless ordinary things, selflessly for the great cause of developing the rubber country.
Here is a very ordinary fragment of his life:
The Chashan operation area of Longjiang Farm should build a large rubber forest of 18,000 mu as a model for agricultural reclamation in Hainan. Zhang Jicheng led more than 1,000 employees and more than 20 machines to camp on the day of the "May Day" festival. He and his staff reclaimed barren mountains, lifted trees, blew stones, and dug holes. By the spring festival approaching, considering that everyone had been working hard for several months, Zhang Jicheng decided to take a few days off to let the employees go home and celebrate the New Year. However, in order to prepare for rubber colonization after the Spring Festival, mechanical operations cannot be stopped. He sent all the workers and the men of the command home and left him to spend the New Year with the mechanics.
Squatting in Chashan for more than half a year, Zhang Jicheng, who had war wounds on his body, was getting thinner and thinner, and not long ago he had enteritis, and Rao Jingchen, the secretary of the party committee of the field, planned to arrange for him to go to treatment and recuperation after the New Year, but he did not come back, what to do? He thought of a way, saying that there was something important that he had to come back to study and decide. Zhang Jicheng returned to the field department, and the field leaders put forward many "difficult things" one by one, asking him to stay for a few days and come up with ideas to solve them. Zhang Jicheng found that these things are daily work, he is not there can also be done, obviously, everyone is looking for an excuse to let him go home for the New Year, rest.
They failed to keep Zhang Jicheng, he said: "Leading cadres should bear hardships first." For the construction of the rubber production model base, I left dozens of employees at the construction site for the New Year, if it is called hardship, I should take the lead. "He rushed back to the construction site without eating or eating." The leaders of the field knew that he would definitely not want to take the car specially prepared for him, so they asked him to take a "hitchhiker" on the pretext of delivering New Year goods to the construction site.
On the eve of the Chinese New Year's Eve, Zhang Jicheng found that the Chinese New Year's Eve meal prepared for the workers at the construction site was still missing a main dish. He picked out two young workers with hunting experience and said, "Come with me up the mountain and get some wild game for everyone." "Everyone knows that Zhang Changchang is a good gunner, but he is disabled, has enteritis and has not fully recovered, afraid that he will not be able to eat, and advise him not to go." In order to let the employees have a good year, Zhang Jicheng insisted on going into the mountains overnight. After a night in the mountains, I carried back a yellow fox and a mountain pig in the early morning. Chinese New Year's Eve night, after a sumptuous dinner, Zhang Jicheng and the workers held a party around the campfire...
Zhang Jicheng and everyone shared the weal and woe, the staff was deeply encouraged, on the first day of the New Year, they started the machinery to cultivate the rubber colonizer.
In Zhang Jicheng's career in agricultural reclamation, sinking into the front line, maintaining zero distance from the staff and workers, and bearing hardships in the front are the three characteristics of his leadership style. He died of exhaustion for the rubber cause. These backgrounds, people from his name can also be associated with an ordinary and great tragedy - for the rubber cause "accumulation" of dedication, accumulation of "accumulation" of the cause of "success", but himself "accumulation" of labor into "disease" disease.
Hu Chenxiang, the deceased former deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial General Bureau of Agricultural Reclamation and secretary of the Party Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Reclamation Agricultural, Industrial and Commercial Joint Enterprise Corporation, served as the director of the Hainan Agricultural Reclamation Bureau from 1961 to 1964. He was an old revolutionary of the "March 8th" style, a county party secretary before the founding of the People's Republic of China, and from 1953 he was the director of the South China Reclamation Bureau, and in 1957 he was transferred to Hainan Agricultural Reclamation. From then on, he worked in Hainan until 1969. At the rubber reclamation and colonization site in Hainan, he is often seen. Working with the workers, understanding the situation and solving problems in the course of labor is a work habit of his, and Xie Fuzheng, who was the director of the satellite farm, recounted one of them in his memories:
...... At 8:00 a.m., Director Hu and Li Weilin, deputy secretary of the Baisha County CPC Committee, and a group of 6 people came to the satellite farm. Director Hu said: "I'll talk about other things later, first follow the shift to work..."
……
When they arrived at the construction site of the sixth team, Director Hu saw that the workers were doing various jobs on several hillsides, and the tractors came and went "suddenly, suddenly, and suddenly", and were in full swing. Director Hu lian praised: "This face is big, encouraging each other, promoting each other, sound and colorful, not a competition." After saying that, he picked up the machete and worked with the workers. Like a skilled old worker, he cleaned up while cutting the mountain bag, and sorted the branches and branches cut from the canopy according to the technical requirements. ...... When the workers saw that his shoulders and face were red, they handed him a straw hat and did not wear it, braving the scorching sun, and insisted on working with the masses. By the time the labor was over at noon, his clothes were soaking wet.
...... Afternoon...... Director Hu sat precariously in the cab of the tractor and the tractor hand pulled the head of the tree at boot.
The temperature of the tractor cab was higher than the ground, and the roasting was severe, plus the tractor operation was to pull the head of the tree, pull the wood, go uphill for a while, go downhill for a while, look up for a while, and bow down for a while. When Elder Chen saw that the tractor had shaken Director Hu forward and backward, upside down and roasted, and the beads of sweat were rising, he said: "Director, you rest, I will go down and report to you on what the situation is." Director Hu hurriedly waved his hand and said, "No, no, I don't feel what I want to know when I leave the cab." "He always insisted on working with the captain.
"Following the shift, Director Hu has a lot of first-hand materials." Xie Fuzheng said, "He learned that those big trees, big wood, and big stones are difficult to move with 'Dongfang Hong', not only consume a lot of fuel, take time, but also nest work, you have to use 'No. 100'." At that time, the requirements for colonization were high and the time was tight. When he returned, he brought in two 'Stalin 100' tractors, which greatly accelerated the progress of the reclamation. ”
Wang Changhu ( right ) Director of the General Bureau of Agricultural Reclamation of Guangdong Province , 1983 ) Hu Chenxiang ( left ) , Deputy Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Reclamation of Guangdong Province
Zhang Jicheng and Hu Chenxiang, as well as those who are buried in the "32 Team" of Yangjiang Farm, their experience and status are different, their role and contribution to the development of rubber undertakings are different, but their lives are equally shining with ordinary and great brilliance, and their souls are also forever haunted on Hainan Island and haunt the rubber forest. The Republic will always remember them, and we will always miss them.
Source: Excerpt from "Breaking Through the Seventeenth Degrees of North Latitude" Old Zhiqing Homeland