"Educated youth go to the countryside to receive the re-education of poor and middle peasants" is the above call. The so-called re-education is actually labor exercise.
Rural labor is very hard for educated youth. Lighter farm work is field care after busy farming. Everyone took hoes and moved back and forth between the seedlings in the field, from one end of the field to the other and back again. Everyone can line up at the branch, talking and laughing all the way. In addition, planting other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, in the slack season is relatively light.
The hardest job is to pick up shit. When farming is busy, we should first pick cow dung, fertilize the fields, and then harrow and transplant them. In front of the cowshed, the smell of livestock manure came to my face. Stepping barefoot into a nearly one-foot thick cesspool, flies "buzzed" and collided with people's bodies and faces. Feet in the cesspit, greasy. Full of dung baskets, they started a trot, carrying a burden of more than 100 kilograms on their shoulders. A group of people ran on the country road, and they dared not stop to rest, no matter how tired they were, and there were people behind them. At the end of the day, my back aches and my legs ache. I need to drink a small bowl of rice wine brewed by farmers to relieve my fatigue.
This brigade has a forest farm. On a hillside, we dig holes and plant trees every year. Before planting trees, you have to pick the excrement up the hill, put it in the dug pit, and fertilize it for a few days before planting trees. Digging dung in the toilet, the stench is much worse. The green-headed flies are bigger, and they fly "hum ... hello ...", which sounds heavy, like bombers. When the two dung buckets were full, they picked them up the hill. When climbing the hillside, the dung bucket should be one after the other, one high and one low. The first hand holds the rope above, and the second hand tightly pulls the rope of the dung bucket below, and slowly "moves" up the hill, which is much more difficult than picking dung. One sultry day, moving up the mountain, a cadre's child carried the burden, and the bucket rope on it was broken. Boom, feces spilled all over her. Fortunately, there is a canal under the slope. Before everyone could react, she ran down all the way, jumped into the canal, soaked herself in feces, and hurried back to the dormitory to cry. Many years later, we met on the train and talked about it, which also caused laughter.
The forest farm should plant fir trees, and if there are no saplings, try to raise seedlings by yourself. You have to find seeds to raise seedlings. We contacted a county near the border, where there is an Laoshan forest farm, which grows fir trees. We went to that place in winter, because the seeds of fir trees are ripe in winter and can be picked.
When I came to the foot of the mountain, I looked up. Clouds cover the mountainside, but I can't see the top of the mountain. We walked up the rugged path and arrived at the foot of the mountain still wearing sweaters and thick clothes. Arriving at the mountainside, we took off our coats one by one. When we arrived at the forest farm on the mountain, we were stripped naked, still sweating and panting.
Someone in the forest farm showed us the way to the forest and taught us how to pick fir fruits. Then we climbed the tree and picked it ourselves.
The trunk of the fir tree has thorns. Experienced farmers wear two sanitary clothes and gloves to prevent stab wounds. We don't know this, so we think gloves are enough. When climbing a tree, it takes a long time for the chest and abdomen to be pricked and bleed.
Climbing up and down the tree is very troublesome and inefficient. Once I was near the end of a tree, and I met a branch that was torn from another tree. I pulled it, and the two trees got closer. I thought, if I draw the tree closer, can I cross it from one tree to another? I pulled the branch hard, and sure enough, two trees approached, so I slowly grabbed the trunk over there, hugged it and closed my eyes. The trunk shook back and forth for a while before I dared to open my eyes. People were already firmly holding on to another tree. You can cross from one tree to another, so that you can swing around the tree all day without touching the ground, and the work efficiency is much faster. This method has been popularized. We originally planned a ten-day working day, but we finished it in a week and went home early. Later, when I watched Animal World on TV and saw apes jumping among trees, I would recall the scene of picking fruits and seeds back and forth on Chinese fir trees.
two
In some blockbusters, special forces fight in the jungle, and it is common to catch anything and eat bugs when they are hungry. Actually, when we go to the countryside, we often eat bugs.
Nowadays, in order to protect the environment and preserve health, people pay attention to returning to nature and chasing wild animals and plants in their diet. When we were educated youth, we could pick different kinds of wild vegetables in the countryside and fields, such as "Leigonggen" and cabbage, and there were ridges everywhere. But at that time, wild vegetables were all bitter people. Unlike today, eating wild vegetables has become a specialty of the rich. Apart from wild vegetables, eating insects is a meat dish. The highest nutritional value is the bee pupa. This is a wasp larva born in a nest. Fat in vain, not only sweet and delicious, protein is also very rich. Snakes are also very nutritious "bugs". When you make soup, it tastes sweet. Unfortunately, both of them are difficult to deal with, and you have to risk being stung. Grasshoppers can also eat. When you catch it, string it up with a grass and bake it. It smells delicious. The best food is oil grasshopper, which is green and crisp when fried.
What I often eat is a bug with a thick little finger, a chubby, dark brown body, a pair of transparent little wings, and occasionally a short flight. When plowing and raking fields, there are many gadgets in the fields that run very fast. The old farmer tied a small cloth bag around his waist when he was ploughing the fields. When they see bugs, they catch them and stuff them into the bag. This kind of bug with unknown scientific name is called "paparazzi" in the local dialect. After work in the evening, when we "returned home with a full load", an enthusiastic farmer uncle called a few educated youths home, fried a plate of delicious "paparazzi", served a small bowl of homemade rice wine, and told us anecdotes about the village while drinking, sometimes making us laugh until we were slightly drunk.
There are many edible insects in the field, which can be caught in the ditch beside the field. As long as the villagers say they can eat, we dare to catch them and eat them. Catching insects to eat is not only fun, but also can supplement our body's nutrition.
three
This is a village where Zhuang people live. According to local customs, it will take three or two years for a daughter-in-law to formally enter the man's house. When we went to the countryside, our son had just been married to his wife for a year. When I heard that my brother married a daughter-in-law, I wondered why I didn't see the shadow of his daughter-in-law. I didn't understand the reason until I heard about that custom. However, it is said that in the past three or two years, my daughter-in-law often came, but she just got up at night and helped with some housework at home, so she hurried back to her parents' house without being seen. We will pay attention to this matter. We lived in the partition of this house. Before dawn, there was movement downstairs, so we got up and looked down quietly. Indeed, there is a strange woman carrying water, cleaning and making breakfast. The lights in the rural house are dim. We only saw a figure who was in a hurry and worked hard.
At that time, the "educated youth", unlike today's educated youth, only needed to cope with their studies and ignored other affairs. Although the life of educated youth is not good, it is still quite athletic, physically strong and energetic. In addition to heavy physical labor, we also built a barbell with cement in the village and practiced weightlifting every day. Even the villagers appreciate it and sometimes join in it with great interest.
A river in front of the village flows slowly, and swimming has become another hobby of ours. Not only do we shuttle in the river in summer, but we are not afraid of the cold in winter. We insist on swimming in winter and don't lose to the powerful villagers' labor force.
In their spare time, some educated youths will display their fists and practice with the "three-legged cat" kung fu they learned from somewhere. Sometimes I accidentally hurt each other, and the other party doesn't mind, just smearing it with my own medicinal wine. A little guy brought an illustrated book for practicing Qigong, which contained a portrait of a monk demonstrating Qigong. There are written instructions. The little guy practices every day and doesn't know what tricks he has practiced. Anyway, he cherishes this book and won't show it to others easily.
This is some fragments of the educated youth life I have experienced, and the situation varies from place to place. I only know what I've been through.
"Young intellectuals go to the countryside and receive re-education from poor and middle peasants." This is a special history, and it is history, let future generations say it. Those of us who have experienced this period of history have suffered a lot, but we have also honed our will and can withstand all kinds of pressures on the road of life in the future. The experience of educated youth is only a past life, and it is a part of our whole life. Looking back now, this experience is inevitable and inevitable. History is always moving forward. Looking back on the past is just to take a good road in the future.
Now, we still carry the memory of that time and move on. ...