Text: Sun Ticai
Figure: From the network
In my memory, to know Suzhou and know the people of Suzhou, it has to start from the winter of 1969. At that time, due to the needs of the international and domestic situation, the state decided to evacuate the population of large cities, and our counterpart in the Yancheng area of northern Jiangsu received Suzhou people.
At that time, I was in the second year of junior high school at Zhangzhuang Middle School in Funing County. One morning, the weather was relatively cold, with a bitter northwest wind. The commune informed the school and organized students to rush to the Fusha Highway outside Sanli Road to welcome the devolved households in Suzhou.
At about nine o'clock, a motorcade came from the county seat to the direction of Guoshu Commune, the car stopped at the bridge of Sun Zheng's brigade, and our students lined up on both sides of the highway, constantly waving and greeting, welcoming and welcoming. In the midst of cheers, the cars came down one after another in Suzhou.
This was also the first time I had seen people in the big city of Suzhou up close. One of the homes is particularly striking. A middle-aged man, of medium stature, wearing a coffee-colored mountain suit, with a pair of myopic glasses on the bridge of his nose, is elegant and personable, followed by a woman, wearing a beige cardigan and permed wavy hair, with extraordinary temperament.
The woman's face was so pale that she could not see a single shred of blood, similar to that of women in Western countries, which we had never seen before in our rural children, perhaps because they had lived in the city for many years and could not see the sun. The couple is carrying a teenage girl and boy, and we reckon it's a family of four.
After the welcome, we went home from school, and the delegated households were taken back to the village by the heads of the brigades. When I got home, I told my mother what I had seen and heard in the morning, and my mother said, "Our brigade is also divided into three families, one of our production teams, and the captain first arranged to have lunch at my house." "When I saw that my mother was cooking fish, if it weren't for the precious guests, my mother wouldn't be willing to buy fish."
In the blink of an eye, it was noon, the commune radio station had begun to broadcast, and the "decentralized households" had also successively gone to the villages. Suddenly, the production captain was walking towards my house with four strangers. When we walked in, this family of four was the one we talked about like a foreign woman when we welcomed, it was already freezing, they were thinly dressed, and they were shivering with cold.
Parents warmly welcomed Suzhou guests into the house, and my mother put the hot water that had been prepared in the basin, took out a brand new towel and a piece of soap that Shanghai relatives had brought, which had not been willing to use, and asked the guests to wash their faces first, and then eat lunch.
During the dinner conversation, I learned that the man of the family, surnamed Wang, was a cadre of the Suzhou Municipal Taxation Department, his wife was an employee of a unit, and the two children were in the first grade of junior high school and the fifth grade of primary school, respectively.
After lunch, the production captain sent the family to a temporary resettlement accommodation. This is a Dingtou House (a house that opens the door at the top of the house hill) of less than 30 square meters, because the five insurance households are old enough to live in their daughter's house, so they vacate the house for the old Wang family to live.
In the city, they cook briquettes, there are electric lights at night, they eat tap water, where there is this condition in the countryside, what they want is nothing, it is dark at night, and they can only light kerosene lamps. The second aunt next door taught them to learn to make dinner with firewood and grass first, led them to the clear river in front of the door to fetch water, and taught them to burn the fire to cook, the grass should be less and less, slowly added, and the heart should not be anxious.
Under the careful guidance of the second aunt, the old Wang family finally ate the first dinner made in the countryside into their mouths. After a few days, their furniture was transported by boat to the commune, and the production team sent someone to retrieve the furniture. The hut could not be put down at all, only a few pieces that had to be used, and the rest were put in the warehouse of the production team.
In this way, Lao Wang's family lived in this Dingtou House for more than half a year, which was really embarrassing for them. In the spring of the following year, the above allocated money for the construction of houses, and built three small tile houses for all the "decentralized households", and their families moved into the new house, which was the only tile house in our village.
The Suzhou decentralized households lived in our brigade for ten years, and they supported themselves, mingled with the masses of the people, and participated in some agricultural production labor within their capabilities, which was unanimously praised by the villagers.
The three children of our brigade who were sent to the next household have all become good classmates with me, and they have all been walking all the way to school and after school. Although they are city people, but there is no squeamishness, every day to go to school is all walking, dirt roads, a trip of more than three miles away, whether it is spring, summer, autumn, winter, wind and rain and snow, never miss class.
On the way, they told us the story of Suzhou humanities: Wu Zixu, Yue Wang Gou Jian, Sun Wu; Suzhou Gardens: Tiger Hill Pagoda, Humble Administrator's Garden, Net Lion Garden; Suzhou Culture: Wu language, Kunqu opera, and Pingtan.
Through their vivid narration, I feel that it is called "Suzhou Paradise", which is really worthy of the name. Although people have never been to Suzhou, they have a vague understanding of Suzhou, and even make me feel immersed.
In the winter of 1972, I graduated from high school to become a soldier, and broke off contact with the people of Suzhou in the village, and later heard that after the reform and opening up, the implementation of the policy, in 1979 they returned to their favorite Suzhou City, the original classmates who went to school with me were also admitted to the university and returned to Suzhou to work.
In the winter of 2016, my wife and I went to Suzhou to run errands, and took time to visit the Lao Wang and Lao Wu families in our village. Uncle Wang and his daughter Wang Xiaoping, Uncle Wu and son Wu Yeqing warmly received us, but unfortunately, Uncle Wang and Aunt Wu have passed away and have not been able to see each other.
The two old people regard our hometown as a second hometown, and they are very happy to see people from their hometown, they do not forget the ten years of hardship, and they do not forget the neighborly care and help each other.
Talking about the people and things in the village at that time, they still remember it vividly, and tears of excitement flowed from their eyes, asking me to come back and thank their old hometown relatives and neighbors for their care and care. When they were separated, the two elderly people took my hand, refused to let go for a long time, and repeatedly told the old family to say hello.
Time flies fast, in the blink of an eye more than 50 years have passed, the society has undergone tremendous changes, our countryside can no longer find a Dingtou house, a small grass house, no longer have to pick up the river to cook. Whenever I think of the poor and backward villages that came to Suzhou in those days, my heart is full of excitement.
Now the countryside is no longer the same as it was fifty years old, the countryside has been urbanized, street lights, running water, cement roads, small bungalows, gas stoves, cars, motorcycles have everything. The peasants have long since been lifted out of poverty and are well-off.
Now that I have been retired for many years, I sincerely invite my classmates in Suzhou to revisit the old place of Funing's second hometown.