Text/Open-minded late maple
When I was a child, there was no shaving in the village, and I had to go to the street to shave my head. Sometimes people with deep hair don't want to run away, and my mother always says, "Look at your hair like a sinner, you have to go out into the street today to shave your head." As he spoke, he took out a 2 dimes from his pocket and forced me to go to the street for a haircut immediately. Since the summer of 1968, Zhu Conggui, an honorary soldier in the Xiliangshan Glory Institute in He County, returned to the village to settle down and started working as a head shaver, which changed the situation of difficulty in shaving heads in the surrounding villages.
Zhu Conggui and I are of the same clan, according to the generation is my uncle, when I was a child, my family was very poor, there were five brothers, he was the youngest, and the people in the village called him "Little Old Five". At the age of 13, he went to Buji Street to learn the craft of shaving his head, and at the age of 16, he set up a barber stall on the street to shave his head and face and pluck out his ears. On the sixteenth day of the first month of 1943, at the age of 18, he was forcibly called to the turret by the interpreter of the Japanese turret stationed in Jinlou Village, Huali Village, Buji, to shave the head of the Japanese, he was timid by nature, and it was the first time he saw the Japanese, when he shaved his face, he was nervous and scraped the face of a Japanese devil squad leader, and suddenly the blood flowed, he was frightened, picked up the barber tools and fled in the direction of the west, the devil Wa Li Wa La shot and chased after him, he was young and had good physical strength, and ran to Hecunbu 8 miles away, Hecunbu is the station of the second company of my New Fourth Army and Han Independent Detachment, The devil didn't dare to chase after him, so he was able to stop and breathe. Towards the evening, he did not dare to go home, his stomach was growling with hunger, he took out the only one yuan on his body, bought two pieces of baked cakes to satisfy his hunger, and when he was eating baked cakes at the door of the baked cake shop, a scout of the New Fourth Army passed by and found him a little suspicious, so he took him to the company headquarters for interrogation. In the company, Zhu Conggui truthfully told everything that happened in the afternoon. After hearing this, the company commander asked him what he planned to do in the future, and he didn't know where to go, so the company commander smiled and said: Come with us, give the brothers a haircut, and have food and clothing. In this way, Zhu Conggui stepped into the revolutionary ranks.
(A documentary card has been added here, please go to the Toutiao client to view)
After the surrender of the Japanese devils in 1945, the independent detachment of Hehan was ordered to go north to Linyi, Shandong, and the troops were reorganized and reorganized into the 63rd Regiment of the 7th Column of the Shandong Field Army, Zhu Conggui was a machine gunner of the third battalion at this time, and in 1948, during the Battle of Laiwu, Zhu Conggui held the machine gun in the position outside the moat for two days and two nights without going off the battlefield, and eliminated countless enemies. In the early morning of the third day, he was pierced through the abdomen by an enemy bullet, and his comrades urgently carried him to the field hospital for rescue. After the victory of this battle, he was commended by the Shandong Field Army, awarded a second-class meritorious service, and honorably joined the Communist Party of China. Deaf and deaf due to the shelling of his ears, the head of the unit arranged for him to work as a shaver again and cut the hair of his comrades. Until June 1950, he transferred to Huangshan Forest Farm.
During his time at the Huangshan Forest Farm, he met Chen, a widow who was 2 years older than him, and the two formed a family. Due to deafness, people are a little wooden, and it is inconvenient to work, in 1959, the Glorious Courtyard of Xiliangshan in Hexian County was completed, and the organization arranged for the couple to enter the Glorious Courtyard to recuperate. He was 34 years old.
In 1968, the whole country vigorously carried out the movement of going to the mountains and going to the countryside, a large number of urban educated youths came to the countryside to settle down, Zhu Conggui, who had been in the Glorious Institute of Xiliangshan for ten years, had not been accustomed to living a leisurely life, and asked the president of the Glorious Academy to go back to his hometown and settle down in Zhu Daxian Village, Buji Commune County, the dean did not agree at first, he went to make trouble every day, the dean could not ask the director of the county civil affairs bureau, the director was helpless, and discussed with the office of the educated youth of the county revolutionary committee, and finally issued a "certificate of decentralization of intellectual youth" to him. In addition, he was given 20 yuan per month for living expenses. In this way, Zhu Conggui and his wife returned to their hometown of Zhu Daxian Village, where they had been away for 25 years, and the "57" group of the commune allocated 300 yuan and half a cubic meter of timber to the brigade to build two bungalows by the pond behind the west end of the village for them to live in.
After returning to the village, Zhu Conggui's ears gradually became hearing without knowing some magical power, and he began to be idle, bought a set of barber tools in the city, and opened a barber shop at home. Since then, I haven't shaved my head and haven't been on the street.
Although he is a villager, he is introverted and rarely communicates with people, but his wife (I call her Aunt Wu) is very talkative, and when he gets a haircut, he is curious to ask him about being a soldier and fighting, but he just doesn't say it, and his wife takes out the meritorious service medal and certificate to show us, and tells us how he held a machine gun to fight Laiwu for two days and two nights... Speaking of which, the aunt couldn't stop talking. Although Zhu Conggui's haircutting skills have been lost for 20 years, he has not forgotten his haircutting skills, shaving his head, shaving his beard, and picking his ears.
When the farm was busy, he went from village to village to shave his head. This mobile head shaving tool is simple, a comb, two scissors, two razors, a pair of scarves, a clipper for shaving, a face-trimming knife (it is also used for shaving heads), a small ear pick, a string of oily knife cloth, a piece of soap, etc. Sometimes I also carry an iron pot and set it on a small stove to make a burden to carry. He traveled to every village and every farmhouse in the brigade. From adults to children, they have to shave their heads, and some women also ask him to cut his hair in the later period, although he only charges 2 dimes for shaving his head and cutting a hair, but the business is quite good.
The picture is taken from the Internet
When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, Zhu Conggui didn't pick a coal stove, but just put a basin rack on his shoulder, carrying a barber tool box in his hand, and after entering the village, he went straight to the production team's public house, where there was a big pot for boiling drinking water, and he used the big pot to boil a large pot of hot water for washing his hair. In the summer, he shaves people's heads outside the public yard.
At that time, the barber tools were all manual, shaving clippers, and the hands had to be kept clenched and loosened to cut off the hair, and in the long run, Zhu Conggui's thumb formed a very thick callus, and the thickness of the calluses was the key to measuring a shaver's skills. At that time, shaving the head is the most important time to experience the crafts of the shaver, the shampoo should be hot, the head should be washed thoroughly, and the razor should be sharp, otherwise the shaver's seven or eight inches long scraper will not be able to scrape, and the customer will also feel pain. An old man's head, he often has to shave for a long time, the hair is shaved, the face has to be shaved, the face is first covered with a hot towel several times, the face begins to redden, the hard stubble becomes soft, and then a round brush dipped in pancreatic water on the beard rubbed a few times, and in an instant the mouth and cheeks are surrounded by white foam, he opened the sharp razor, little by little from back to front, from top to bottom to scrape the face wrinkled by the wind, even the stubble with white foam was scraped off by the razor, The clean face glows with a faint blue light, and the person appears to be in good spirits. The person who comes down with a set of procedures for a haircut always has his eyes closed, and he looks like he is enjoying it.
Later, his business method also changed, and he adopted the practice of contracting villages and households, and walked around the countryside every day. The cost of a haircut is calculated on a per capita basis per year. The cost of a child for a year is half that of an adult. The boundaries between children and adults are determined by marital status. People who have never been married are always treated as children. So, people think it's reasonable to have a regular shaver to get a haircut.
There are many customs in the countryside, and there will naturally be no shortage of various sayings. The first haircut after the birth of the child is called "shaving the faucet", at this time Zhu Conggui not only has to solemnly give the child a haircut, but his wife also has to say nice things next to him, and "praise" the child, no matter what happens to the child in the future. At this time, the more compliments the better, because these compliments are not said in vain, and after the head is shaved, the parents of the children will be happy to entertain them decently.
In the early spring of 1973, I went to Wujiang to go to high school, and I didn't let him get a haircut, and then I rarely returned to my hometown to work, and only a few years ago I learned about the situation of Zhu Conggui, the "head shaver": his wife died of illness in 1991, when he was only in his 60s, and his physical condition was fine, but he couldn't cook the pot and cook, and the county civil affairs bureau learned about the situation and rearranged for him to return to Xiliangshan Glorious House to spend his old age, until he died in Glorious House in 2003, at the age of 77. It is said that before he died, he handed over the only 20,000 yuan he had to the organization as party dues, and made a request, and after his death, he put his haircutting tools in the grave, and he took away the heirlooms of decades.
During the Spring Festival this year, he went back to his hometown to pay New Year's greetings, and when chatting with the old people in the village, he also mentioned Zhu Conggui, and those who knew him sighed for him, he was one of the people who participated in the revolution earlier in our surrounding areas, he died nine times during the war years, he was injured and disabled, he made great contributions, he was loyal and honest, plain, obscure, never proud of his achievements, and even rarely mentioned his experience in the army, and what was even more tragic was that he had no children and no daughters in his life, which was pitiful.