In the production team in the 1970s, the family's life was tight, which can be said to be tightening the waistband of the pants. The food was all divided among the teams, but not much, not even enough to eat. When the year is not good, the harvest in the field will also be eaten by the state. The coarse cloth clothes worn on the body are all made by the women of the family to spin, weave, dye, and then stitch and thread. A coarse cloth coat in the summer, a big crotch pants in the winter, and an old cotton jacket. There wasn't even a shirt inside.
Because it is very difficult to draft water by partnering with others to shake it up from the deep well, it is usually very economical. Coupled with the lack of replaceable clothes and the fact that the body is not washed often, this creates unique living conditions for fleas, and they multiply unscrupulously, even for several lifetimes. It can be said that at that time: communication relied on roaring, traffic relied on walking, heating relied on shaking, and there was no money spent. The grain you eat must be carefully calculated every day, and the thickness and fineness can be mixed to barely survive until next summer when the grain is distributed. At that time, people were all monkeys skinny, and there were so many fat people now. If a family has more children and a large amount of food, there is simply not enough food to eat, and it must be borrowed...
At that time, it was not an easy task to borrow grain, because there was not much surplus grain in each household, and if the neighbors knew that you still lent grain to others, they would naturally talk behind your back about where did you get this grain from? It wouldn't be stolen, right? If it reaches the captain's ears, I don't know how to make you...
In the winter, during the agricultural leisure season, in order to live, the young and strong laborers want to go out to earn some hard money to supplement the family, and relying on the production team to earn that little work is far from changing the family's overstretched economic situation...
At that time, there were two older brothers in my family, an older sister, a younger brother below, plus an uncle who died at the age of four (raised by my parents), and the mere marriage of my daughter-in-law emptied the house. Seeing that I am also seventeen or eighteen, according to the habits of the local rural people, it is time to look at the object. You say that a young man can't sit at home and wait to drink the northwest wind when the farmer is idle, right? But I couldn't find a suitable job, and with the encouragement of my parents, although I was unwilling in my heart, I had to go to the salt pond with cold wind and steep white light... I remember that it was 1978, I was eighteen years old, and my father said a lot of things to the captain to get the next place: salting and salting. At that time, everyone who could do this had to have a relationship.
First of all, we each pulled a flat cart with cover rolls, pots and bowls, pickles, oil, noodles, steamed buns, and put on the earthen cloth dumplings specially made by our mother (I heard people who have been salted say that the feet of the rain shoes in the lower pool are easy to sweat, and the leaves made of the soil cloth absorb sweat), and we set off in the morning...
From my village to Yuncheng Salt Pond, it is a hundred miles away, and it is all sand and gravel roads. At that time, there were only a few cars on the road, not as many as now, and it was convenient to hire a car.
Before dawn, a few of us pulled the flat car and embarked on the journey. What a long road, boring repetition of an action, mechanically pounding forward on two legs...
At the beginning of walking, there was still a little novelty and excitement, but in the second half of the day, the legs seemed to be not their own, stiff and numb, and they could stand in place for a while, and they all felt that it was a great enjoyment...
It's been a whole day like that... After dark, I finally walked to the location of the migrant workers' dormitory in the sixth section of the second factory in the salinization area...
The bedding was set up, and the foreman who had come earlier led us to the storage room with a shovel and high-waisted rain boots.
The storage room is also not far from where you live, and you will arrive in a moment. This steward of labor supplies, with a long thin face, wearing a dark blue cotton hat, speaking with a foreign accent, asked how big is the foot with a cold face? Then pick out two out of a large pile of old rain boots and throw them out, let them stand outside the door and try, absolutely not allowed to step into the room. The worker who led us there was a big taboo, he said to the custodian after we finished receiving the things, he also followed up, and when the custodian turned around to take things, he also followed in, and when he took the pump handed over, bent down to try to see if it worked, Leng Buding was pushed out of the door by this custodian from behind with his just-plucked ass, and almost did not fall. And he was scolded. At that time, I looked at our workers' faces, and it was really ugly than crying... These administrators treat migrant workers the same way, and their attitude is quite bad, and it can be seen that they have a kind of distrust and contempt for migrant workers in their bones...
The so-called dormitory is a long room, the house is not high, standing on the kang can be on the beam of the room. Similar to the production team's feeding room, the difference is that there is no dung hole.
In the middle aisle, on both sides is a large bunk, the other end of the room, plate a large stove, heating and cooking dual-purpose. The stove was lined with cotton socks soaked in sweat.
Each person on the bunk is only more than two feet wide, and when they sleep, they always face outwards, like a strip of twist flowers. Whoever wants to get up in the middle of the night to solve the problem, when he returns, the territory will be turned over by the neighbor next to him.
The house was filled with the smell of smoke, sweat, feet...
At night, after a burst of noise, it is replaced by one after another, resounding like thunder...
At two or three o'clock in the middle of the night, someone got up to cook, got up late, and before the line could be rooted, they had to go to the canteen to cook. Because when I go, I do what I take from home, not for anything else, just to save a few dollars...
The next morning, before dawn, I pulled my own flat carts to the shouts of the workers, took a large mill, and wore high-waisted rain boots to work.
The place where I live is five or six miles away from the construction site, and I have to go down a big slope and walk another beach road to get there.
Standing on a steep slope, looking at the salt pond in the distance, a white expanse, unable to see the edge at a glance...
Yuncheng (called Lucheng in ancient times) salt pond area of 132 square kilometers, is one of the world's three major sodium sulfate type inland salt lakes, its ore body composition is mainly sodium sulfate, sodium chloride and magnesium sulfate. It is one of the oldest salt ponds in China, with a long history of salt making and a unique salt making process. More than 4,000 years ago, it was here that ancestors harvested naturally crystalline table salt. More than 1300 years ago, at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the ancestors of Yuncheng Salt Lake invented and perfected the "Reclamation and Drying Method", which is commonly known as the "Five-Step Salt Production Method". That is, the set halogen evaporation, over the "luo" mixing, storage halogen, crystallization, shovel out of the five steps. This method predates other countries by about 1,000 years and has made an indelible contribution to the development of salt-producing technology in the world, which british scientist Dr. Needham called "the living stone of the history of ancient Chinese science and technology."
In the endless, cold and bitterly windy salt pool, a group of people pulled and packed, using the most primitive method to pull the white salt from the pool all the way uphill to the pile.
Speaking of the pile, there is also exquisite, in which piece of pile, you have to look at a place that is high in the middle and low around it, so that when measuring the square, you can dip a little light.
Whenever the party arrives at the reception, the workers with smiling faces greet a few old workers with official faces (the first migrant workers in Henan, Shandong, Anhui and other places who suffered under the salt pond turned into regular workers, commonly known as old workers), and tried their best to please others. Hand over your cigarette and say something flattering. Because the wages of migrant workers every day depend on how much the amount of nitrate is and then divided by the number of working days, it is calculated that the day from morning to night is more than three pieces...
In the middle, everyone took out their steamed buns dipped in some salt, squatted and devoured them, and the fragrant ah was more beautiful than eating the stalls. Of course, there are also food stoves that come, but they are not too hot when they are delivered. An older person who went with him poured the soup he had cooked in the morning into the pot, and when he ate, it was still steaming, but it was very troublesome, and it was not worth it to beat the pot.
After the meal, the people who dress up must consciously change the flat car, which is also an unwritten rule.
That guy, who is called pulling a cart, doesn't go without making every effort.
The wheels are crushed on the fence woven with thorns, and wherever the wheels go, the thorns sink down, and with each step, they must exert all their strength to suckle...
Coupled with the fact that the cracks behind the flat car are constantly falling like snow melting salt water, stepping on it is wet and slippery, if you are not careful, you will slip, in the current fashionable saying: it is really exhausted...
At that time, although it was winter and the cold wind was biting, the sweat on my body was always flowing.
That bitterness, Mo Fa imagined, is like a child without a wife, everything depends on his own door building, and if his eyes are not hard, he will suffer losses.
They are all migrant workers, can be described as the three religions and nine streams, five kings and eight princes, everyone has it, quarrels and fights every day are commonplace, vulgar words are endless in the boring and heavy labor...
I was still young at the time, and I was very disgusted with these rude and indecent words, but I was helpless, and Quan Dang did not hear them. I always feel that this environment and atmosphere are very different from my ideals and ambitions, but there is no way to change it at present...
Each flat car substitution is not fixed, and whoever wants to change it can do so. This is a bitter pull of a big flat car, I am rushing to change the small flat car, no one is willing to change me. Occasionally someone comes to change and they all go together to take care of each other. After doing this for a few days, I really couldn't eat it, so I told my family to get a small flat car, and it was not a matter of going on like this.
Fortunately, at that time, the eldest brother was working in the county fertilizer factory, and within a few days, he took a ride to send a flat car.
When I happily walked to the small flat car root that was sent, I almost didn't go back: Mom! This flat car is one size bigger than the one I pulled...
In this way, after struggling for half a month, I discussed with my two partners to prepare to return home.
It was another morning, and the three of us were each pulling our own flat carts and covers, dressed in alkaline clothes, and clad in the winter sun on the way home from salinization...
The difference is that the flat car I pulled also has a flat car...
Photo: Feng Jianmin Editor: Wang Liang Linyi Network original