In 2008, the Museum of Great Man Relics located in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, was completed and opened. In the "Style Lasts Forever" exhibition area, a yellowish white cotton pajama occupies the position of a separate display case.
This great man wore pajamas for twenty years, "working" from the fifties to the seventies, with 73 patches layered on top of each other.
In the end, it was really to the point where it could not be used normally, and it was finally replaced.
In the logic of the older generation of revolutionaries, the meaning is not only to cherish material resources and make the best use of them; ruling is control, but it is also a test, and there is still a task ahead to build a new China.
That famous pajama
This pajama was born in the early 1950s by Master Wang Ziqing of the Raymond Clothing Store in Dongjiaomin Lane, Beijing. At first, it was supposed to be a piece of clothing that was too ordinary to be more ordinary: a white alfalfa cotton texture, a sandwich suitable for spring and autumn, and two large pockets on the left and right that were suitable for carrying hands. The owner should have been very satisfied with this pajama, and this upper body was worn until 1971.
Now look at this pajamas, the original white has been yellowed because of obsolescence, the collar has been changed, the most amazing is the number of patches: the department responsible for custody has been specially identified, easy to wear sleeves, elbows, hem and other positions have been patched with patches, and some places even stacked layer by layer, a total of 73 patches.
According to the staff around the great man, in fact, when this pajama was worn for ten years, there were holes in the neckline, cuffs, and elbows. The famous folk proverb - "the new three years, the old three years, the sewing and patching for another three years", probably not casually made up to just care about rhyme, the three states of clothes add up to a total of nine years, usually, a piece of clothing is really to the limit of ten years.
At that time, the personnel in charge of washing clothes at the Zhongnanhai Service Office had repeatedly suggested "changing to a new bar", because they were not good at pulling hard when cleaning, fearing that if the force was slightly greater, the clothes might be torn along the hole. At that time, the person in charge of this matter was the great man's life guard and hairdresser
Zhou Fuming
He thought that the comrade in the laundry room had a point, so he found a dinner time to mention it to the great man.
I thought that small things would be done in a minute, but the great man did not agree, thinking that the country was still in a difficult period, "there were very few cloth tickets issued", and many staff members around them were still wearing patch clothes, and there was no need to make special ones.
Eventually, the pajamas were sent to the General Logistics Garment Factory and sewn up by a master surnamed Liu. This teacher fu is very experienced, high craftsmanship, found the same color cloth to make up for it, do not look carefully actually can not see it. Everyone was very satisfied with this, and after that, it was repaired and broken, and when it was broken, it was repaired again, and this dress stubbornly lasted for twenty years.
It was not until 1971, when the fabric became more and more fragile, to the point where it did not dare to scrub hard and crack into a large hole without paying attention, that the great man finally agreed to replace it.
Subsequently, the dress was registered and stored until a year after the death of the great man, when the items on display in the great man memorial hall were sorted out.
The ins and outs of the relics museum exhibits
In 1977, the Monument to the Great Men in Beijing exhibited some household items, but for a short period of time. Subsequently, these objects were sent to China Gebo for exhibition, but Gebo's space and warehouse were limited, so some of them were also displayed
Fortress Garden
Inside the house.
After cleaning up the old objects, the Central Guard Bureau decided that it was best to have a place to receive them in order to better preserve them, and the places they intended were Shaoshan, Yan'an and Xibaipo.
In the end, after several twists and turns, the fate of this batch of old things was fixed
Shaoshan
。 At that time, the attitude of Shaoshan was: when the great man was young, he left a proverb "Buried in the bones, why should the mulberry land, life is everywhere green mountains", and now it is the best destination to let these old things return to their hometown, and at the same time, this is also of great help to the local exhibition.
In October 1990, the Central Guard Bureau officially submitted relevant instructions to the CPC Central Committee, and obtained the consent of the CPC Central Committee. Beijing and Shaoshan immediately appointed special personnel to begin handling the matter. At that time, no more than now, there were express logistics companies all over the land that could do the work, and this batch of items was not suitable for others to handle.
The staff who manage the former residence of Fortress Garden are hands-on, the wooden box is made by themselves, the sack of grass rope confetti foam and other materials are all prepared by themselves, in order to ensure safety, they also contacted the Guang'anmen Station Police Station to assist in the transportation. On November 6, the handover officially began.
This batch of household items was moved out of the South Room warehouse one by one for delivery, one person was responsible for checking the list on the spot, two people were responsible for extracting the products in turn, and the other person was responsible for introducing and recording and storing; the staff of Shaoshan was responsible for counting and numbering, sealing and locking after confirmation.
According to the records, a total of more than 6,400 items of the former residence were transferred to Shaoshan, including 20 first-class cultural relics and 85 second-class cultural relics.
At the end of November, the exhibits arrived in Shaoshan by rail transport, and after years of inventory and sorting, more than a thousand of them finally appeared in the Great Man Relics Museum and were open to the public.
The "not paying attention" of daily life
In the museum that has been opened to the public, the exhibits reflecting the daily life of the great man are not only this pajama, but his personal habit of not deliberately pursuing enjoyment and not engaging in specialization can be said to have penetrated into all aspects of life.
Among the items on display at the Museum of Great Men is three bottles of tooth powder and a bald toothbrush. For modern people, tooth powder is already a rather distant and unfamiliar thing.
In fact, cleaning teeth with tooth powder was one of the customs in Hunan in the early years. The tooth powder used in it is not an industrial product, but is essentially the white ash left after the chaff is burned, which contains a lot of potassium and is an alkaline substance, so it is used to clean the teeth.
After the founding of the country, the great people still used tooth powder as customary. Captain Guard
Li Yinqiao
He was persuaded several times to switch to toothpaste, but he replied, "I have no objection to your use of toothpaste, after all, it is produced for use", as for himself, he is still willing to follow the old habits.
Really wait until everyone in the country uses toothpaste, that is, the day when tooth powder is eliminated, at that time, naturally it will not be willing to go far to use tooth powder!
According to the staff around the great man, throughout the fifties and sixties, he did not buy a single new dress. Regarding the aspect of wearing, his attitude is consistent, only concerned with "simple and suitable for himself", and does not bother to think about the old and new.
Even now, looking at the clothes, shoes and socks he left behind, in addition to the coats that cope with the scenes, they are often patched.
From a young age, he developed the habit of wearing stockings, cutting the bottom of the socks when they were worn, adding a new layer of socks and then wearing them, so that a pair of socks could top for many years. However, over time, the high barrel of the sock inevitably loosens, often slipping to the ankle and easily revealing patches.
On formal occasions such as meeting foreign guests, in case of "dew filling", it is not a big episode.
Therefore, the staff around the great man gradually developed a habit, often reminding him to pay attention to the legs, and over time it became a code word - "the ugliness of the family should not be publicized."
American writer and author of "Red Star Shines on China"
Edgar Snow
He once recalled the details of the life of this great man, and thought that "in him, a distinct peasant color was maintained".
For example, in order to maintain concentration, he likes to drink tea very much, and he loves to drink hot tea and strong tea; after drinking, he will naturally take out the tea leaves and eat them, not caring who the guest sitting opposite is. He believes that tea leaves, like green vegetables, contain nutrients that are useful to the human body, and it is a matter of course to eat them all.
The enamel teapots he usually use and are almost inseparable are also full of impact marks and rust marks.
Informality behind the scenes
Regarding the "lack of attention" in the details of these lives, the great man has his own set of views, he once said something similar to the following on different occasions - "I save a piece of clothing, the soldiers in front of me will have one more bullet", "Now the country is still poor, can not open a wasted head", "wear it in the others can not see, I do not feel good"...
This is probably the courage and mind of people who have experienced life and death and are accustomed to the wind and waves, "ten thousand years is too long, only to fight for the day", there are too many things worth doing in this world, and it is inevitable that some vision is not wide when life is wasted on enjoyment.
But beyond that, there may be a deeper meaning of "learning from history". He also once said, "We can't be like that."
Lee Zi-cheng
Entering Beijing", Li Chuangwang changed when he entered the city of Beijing, coveting enjoyment and abandoning his initial goal. But as the builder of new China, it is necessary to keep a sober mind.
There is such a story in "Han Feizi", the last emperor of the Shang Dynasty
Dissin
Originally gifted and clever, and famous hercules, in short, he was not a very bad ruler.
But one day, he suddenly ordered that ivory be used to make chopsticks. When Taishi Mizi saw this sign, he felt worried, because once he used high-grade ivory chopsticks, he would not be satisfied with the tableware made of stoneware, and the ingredients used for eating would also go to the mountains and treasures, and then the clothes, the palace...
Miko's evaluation of this matter was "I am afraid of his pawn, so I am afraid of its beginning", and sure enough, it was not long before the meat forest of the wine pond came, and from the perspective of historical lessons, this is the importance of "preventing micro-gradualism".
In the view of great men, in the era of economic development, it is obviously more difficult to restrain oneself and not to pursue material enjoyment than to pursue enjoyment when conditions are poor. However, only the difficulties are what needs to be done.
epilogue
This great man's pajamas is still a heavyweight exhibit in the museum, not only because it reflects the details of the lives of a generation of great men, but also highlights the incomparably sober self-knowledge and truly pure idealism in the context of that era, and if compared with these, exquisite material enjoyment is indeed shallow.