The story of Sun Li's | costumes

The story of the costume

Text | Sun Li

I was far from a clumsy boy, but by relying on my industrious mother to spin thread and weave cloth, coarse cloth cotton clothes, there will always be. I deeply felt the difficulty of cloth after participating in the revolution during the War of Resistance.

In the spring of 1939, I went from the Jizhong Plain to the mountains around Fuping, where there was a shortage of cloth because cotton could not be grown. After the summer, the autumn is getting cooler, and we don't have any equipment. I brought a jacket from Jizhong, and a comrade who came with me was versatile, and he borrowed a pair of scissors from his fellow villagers, cut it open, sewed it into two clips, and spread it on the clay kang without mats. This made me feel the rarity and preciousness of cloth for the first time.

At that time, I was working at the newly established Jin-Cha-Ji News Agency. In the winter, I was sent to the Yanbei area for interviews. The Northern Yanbei area, which is the area north of Yanmen Pass, is a place where the geese do not fly there when there is ice and snow. I was wearing a coarse cloth cotton jacket and pants, and I was tall, with large exposed parts of my ankles and wrists. Gather early in the morning at the foot of the mountain, and the wind is cold. One day, when the troops were departing, a comrade who was interviewing him took off a yellow tweed coat of the Japanese army that he had brought from Jizhong and put it on me. For the first time, I felt the care and warmth of my combat mates.

In the winter of 1941, when I returned to Jizhong, a comrade gave me a dog-skin coat. When the army moves at night, dogs bark near and far will expose themselves. The masses in Jizhong District beat all the dogs to death within a few days. I took the leather home, and my lover, out of the black coarse cloth she had woven and dyed, made me a short leather jacket. Because the dog skin was too thick, it was very difficult to make, and she had her hand bruised several times. When I returned to Luxi, I cherished taking it across the railway.

In the winter of 1943, the enemy "swept" the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region for three full months. In the spring of the following year, I had just returned to Fuping from the Fanzhi area in Shanxi, and I was ordered to go to Yan'an in full gear. At that time, it was necessary to take a single coat and change the cotton coat. Because I went late, all the men's clothes had been sent out, and only the women's clothes with large plackets were left, and there was no way to take them down. The color of this single coat, which is dyed with indigo, is very bright, and is called "moon white" in the mountains. Because it is a women's dress, when changing clothes in the dormitory, I hesitated, is this like wearing on the body?

Suddenly, two female students came in—I was teaching in the high school class of North China United University. With scissors and needles, they immediately tore off the placket of the blouse, sewed it into a lapel, and then sewed the placket into a very fashionable big lapel drill-bit shirt. They looked at me and smiled and walked away, not knowing whether to compliment them on their craft or to mock my image.

Then we set off in a line in the jujube grove.

This group of people and horses walked on the long and bumpy road to Yan'an, the holy land of revolution, and the sunset was reflected in our brightly colored clothes. If people in the city see it now, they must think that it is a strange costume. Or just look at my description and think that I am deliberately distorting and defaming the image of the Eighth Route Army. But at that time, the mountain masses were not surprised, because they often saw workers wearing such plainclothes outside the village.

Passing through Lu County, a comrade who was working in the countryside there greeted me at a key crossing and sent me off. Early spring, early morning in the mountains, above the grass, there is frost and snow. Apparently he had been there for a long time, and there was also some white frost hanging from his thick black sideburns. He was next to our marching line, shook my hand and said goodbye, and said something very brief.

It should be added that in the middle of the luggage I was carrying was one of his Japanese military fur coats, which he had obtained as a trophy from his past work with the army. At the time, it was a rare thing, and coats were made solidly and exquisitely: leather collars, rain cloth surfaces, silk wool on the upper body, sheepskin on the lower body, and plush sleeves. On top of the sheepskin, there was also the blood of the enemy. It turned out that Jianbi was in the landlord's house, and before this departure, I considered the cold weather in Yan'an and went to look for my leather coat, but if I couldn't find it, I picked him up.

In early summer, we went to Suide and rested for five days. I went to the ravine and took a shower. It was a sunny ravine, and the water of the small river was warm, and the water rushed against the sand and gravel, making the sound of Qingyue. I lay on a large smooth slab in the middle of the river, gentle water flowing from my head, chest and legs, and small sand and gravel often rushed into my mouth. I washed and dried the shirts that my female classmates had made for me on the stones, and then put them on when they were dry.

Our captain went to the Jinsui Military Region to make contact and came back to me and said: Commander Lu Zhengcao wants me to go to him. One morning, dressed in such a costume, I arrived at his solemn headquarters. Soon after arriving in Yan'an, the coat that had been carrying thousands of miles of hard work was rolled into the Yanhe River with all my clothes because of a flash flood.

After the flood, the leadership sent me new equipment, including a woolen cotton coat. This kind of cotton coat is of course good, but there is a disadvantage, wear a few days, the wool inside will fall down, the upper body has become a clip, and the lower body is very bloated. A comrade who went with me to Yan'an was going south with General Wang Zhen, and they were given cotton coats of cotton wool, and he told me the time of passing through Qiao'ergou and told me to wear my woolen cotton coat and wait for him at the intersection. Because it is going south, the more you go, the warmer the weather.

This winter, the female classmates took out the cotton from one of my cotton mattresses and replaced the wool in my cotton pants, so I had a pair of cotton pants worthy of the name. They gave me a pair of wool stockings and a very narrow scarf, which made me warm and happy through this winter.

At this time, a comrade who had just arrived in Yan'an from behind enemy lines was actually wearing my dog-skin jacket, saying that another comrade had worn it for a while and then forwarded it to him.

In August 1945, when Japan surrendered and we set out from Yan'an again, I was sent as a front station to drive donkeys for the female comrades for a long time. The babies, packed in two thorn baskets, hung on either side of the mothers. The little donkeys walked upside down, the mothers' bodies swayed, and the children, like swallow chicks, poked their heads out of the basket, shouting, playing, mixed with the mothers' caressing voices, shaking the long journey of joy.

In the winter, when we arrived in Zhangjiakou, the old comrades of Jin-Cha-Ji welcomed us at a meeting and dressed very neatly. A comrade saw that I still had only a coarse cloth cotton jacket and pants, so he gave me some money and told me to go to the small city to replenish some clothes. Later, when I returned to Jizhong, I went to Xuanhua, ripped a Japanese officer's yellow tweed cloak from a comrade's bed, walked for fourteen days, and went to my hometown, wearing this strange dress, and met with the family of Jiubie. This is just a few things I remember, as for the landlord's wife, sister-in-law, and sisters making shoes and socks for me during the war years, sewing and mending, it is even more impossible to say for a while.

When we fought against Japanese imperialism and the Chiang Gang, we wore such clothes. But our material conditions are much better than those of the previous generation of old Red Army soldiers.

Wearing these thin clothes, we forged ahead. Now, those biting cold winds are no longer blowing on me, but still blowing through my heart. Among them, there is the wind of ice and snow outside Yanmen Pass, the wind of yellow sand rolling in the Jizhong Plain, and the wind on both sides of the Yanhe River, although it is a harsh winter, there is also some warm wind. Dressed in these thin clothes, we climbed on frozen stone slippery mountain roads, rolled in the deep snow, and crossed in the rapids. Sometimes the night fog is thick and the morning frost is pressed, but our direction is clear, and as soon as the sun comes out, the song rises again.

It was completed on December 26, 1977