During the arduous years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a "special" primary school, the Eighth Route Army's "Anti-Small School", was established in Yan'an. Most of the students in the school are the children of cadres and revolutionary soldiers in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and their parents, some of whom fought on the front line, some of whom worked in the border area, and some of whom had already died in the revolutionary war.
The children came from the north of the South China Sea and gathered in Yan'an. Children who came to Yan'an from all over the world tossed and turned along the way, their clothes torn, and their heads and bodies covered with lice. After coming to the school, although the cleaning was carried out, due to the poor conditions of the school, I slept in the cave dormitory, the ground was wet, and it was very easy to grow lice. After all, the students are still young, their hair and body have lice, they will not clean up, the teacher can not take care of it, everyone sleeps on a big bunk to infect each other, eliminating lice has become a big problem.
In the beginning, the teacher simply shaved the hair of the classmates, and the students at the school all became bald heads. Older female classmates were unhappy. The young Liu Beixin also felt that the bald head was not good-looking, so he put on a military hat and dressed as a man, and everyone gave her a nickname called "Liu Mulan". "Liu Mulan" In addition to the bald head in the dormitory, he wears a hat when he goes out. The students said, everyone is bald, you take off your hat. She said, I am not, how ugly the bald head is, how majestic it is to wear a hat.
Some students shouted, "Liu Mulan, tomboy."
Liu Beixin said: "A tomboy is a tomboy, and it's better than looking bald."
One day, during the military training class, the villagers in the nearby villages came to see the liveliness, and when they saw the bald heads of their classmates, they thought they were all boys, and they said with great envy: "The Eighth Route Army is really blessed, and the boy is born."
Liu Beixin said angrily, "Whoever said it was all male dolls, I was a female doll!" The students burst out laughing.
Later, everyone's hair grew again, and the lice were still stubbornly hiding inside. The teacher told them to pour kerosene over their hair and wrap a towel to cover it for a while. In this way, although some of the lice can be killed, because there are still eggs, after a few days the lice will reproduce again. Thinking about the lice and eggs in their hair, the students were very uncomfortable, and often grabbed the lice and eggs in their hair with their hands while listening to the lessons during the class. At the end of the class, he began to launch a "general attack" on the lice.
Outside the cave, everyone regarded the elimination of lice in their hair as the elimination of the Japanese, and set up the battlefield. First, "individual combat" and fighting for each other, and then "coordinated operations" to help each other, from "comprehensive clearance and suppression" to "key attacks" to "individual breakthroughs", many methods were adopted. Finally, everyone summed up the results together.
"How many have you eliminated?"
"I've already killed a class."
"What about you, what are the results of the battle?"
"I ate one row of them."
"What are you like?"
"I captured a company, hahaha."
Later, the teacher found a home remedy from nowhere, dipped mercury paste with cotton thread, coiled it in his hair, and finally killed all the lice and insect eggs. The killed lice can be washed off, but the eggs remain in the hair in bunches until they are cut off with the hair during the haircut, which is completely removed.
The lice on the head were destroyed, but the lice in the clothes were stubbornly hidden, and several could be caught with a touch of the hand. In the summer, single clothes can be changed and washed frequently, and at noon, when the sun is strong, the teacher will lead the students to line up to the Yanhe River. The teacher told the female classmates to be in the upper reaches of the river, and the male classmates to be in the lower reaches of the river, and they took off their clothes and handed them to the teacher. Classmates jumped into the river to swim and bathe, fight water fights, catch small fish and tadpoles, and the teacher took off everyone's clothes on the shore and washed them in the river.
Instead of soap, a kind of "back-to-back grass" is picked instead, and after washing off the lice on it, it is put on the branches and grass to dry. The sun soon dried the clothes, and the teacher told the students to get up from the river, put on clean clothes, and return to school with the "booty" they had caught from the river and sing happily.
However, in winter, it is not so convenient. Winter cotton clothes are issued every two years, can not take off often washed, take off will be frozen. The students only stayed up until the winter and spring seasons changed. One day, the hospital staff came to the school and brought a powerful "steam lice extinguisher", the so-called "steam lice extinguisher", which is a large iron pot and a large wooden barrel, which is filled with water and a large stove is set up in the open space in front of the cave.
A roaring flame burned in the stove, and hot air came out of the cauldron. The teacher told the students to take off their cotton clothes and pants, hand them to the hospital staff, and then put them into the large wooden barrel of the "steam lice extinguisher" and cover them with a lid. Several people carried large wooden barrels to large iron pots to steam. At this time, the students could only stay on the beds in the cave dormitory, covering their quilts and not letting their bodies freeze. The big iron pot steamed for half a day, and finally the cotton clothes and cotton pants were steamed, and when it was taken out, the lice were eliminated. Then, the teacher dried the students' cotton clothes and pants and told everyone to put them on.
The students put on clean cotton clothes and cotton pants, were very happy, and said that they would never suffer from the sin of lice again. The "steam lice extinguisher" guy really works!
Liu Beixin also grew long black hair on her head, and she didn't have to wear a hat all day to wear a "tomboy", but her nickname of "Liu Mulan" could not be changed...
■ Text/Adapted from "Children in the Red Cradle" (by Li Lun, published by Huashan Literature and Art Publishing House)
■The pictures are illustrated except for the book cover
■ Editor / Jia Lifang
■ All rights reserved, may not be reproduced without permission