The years of intellectuals are an unforgettable memory, like a never-fading story, telling our growth and transformation. That period of dusty years in the long river of history, like a dazzling star, embellished with the struggles and dreams of the past, forever engraved in the course of life, shining!
— Epigraph
In December 1976, Han Feiyang and Lu Yanyan and other nine male and female educated youths accompanied the factory to go to the first production team of the Wangzhuang Brigade in Jingtai County to cut the team for exercise.
A few days after arriving in the countryside, just in time for the autumn crop field management, he was assigned by the production team leader to hoe weeds in the corn field;
The production team leader sent a 50-year-old farmer to lock the door to guide the educated youth.
I remember that this veteran led nine educated youths early in the morning to the hillside where there has been a drought and lack of rain and relied on the sky to eat, and the old man locked the door while bending down and squatting in the ground, pointing to the corn seedlings that have grown sparsely in front of him and are very similar to the corn seedlings, which are called a plant called ice grass by the locals for the educated youths to distinguish, while demonstrating to the educated youths how to use the shovel and hoeing technology correctly, and repeatedly telling them to hoe the ice grass, protect every corn seedling, and do not step on the soybean seedlings interplanted on the ridge; The implication is that on a dry, smoky, barren land, the hope of the local villagers' lives is planted;
After saying this, the old man took the lead in standing in front of him and hoeing the grass; In the cornfield about 50 meters long and 30 meters wide, the educated youths wore straw hats and scattered in a straight line, and the newcomers were enthusiastic about their work, and they were full of passion and followed behind the locked door to look like they were learning, and participated in the first production labor in their lives, and after a while they felt back pain and sweat on their heads;
Just insisted on doing it for a long afternoon, and threw off a long and narrow mouthful behind him, and when he took a little rest, when the old lock door turned back to check the fruits of the labor of the educated youth, he shouted and screamed, and found that the corn seedlings behind the educated youth were eradicated as weeds, and all that was left was ice grass. Zhang locked the door and squatted on the ridge of the ground while howling, while beating his chest and moving his feet and crying and shouting, how did you hoe the corn, my ancestors, how can I explain to the captain, do you know that grain is the lifeblood of farmers, he repeated such cruel words, not to say it well, let the ice grass be eradicated, why did you hoe the corn seedlings as weeds!
The old man stood up with the door locked, walked around on the field of the educated youth hoeing grass, and watched an ear of corn seedlings fall to the ground, he was angry and hateful, and he sighed that this group of clothes came to reach out, and the city baby who was not diligent in his limbs and grains had caused him a lot of trouble
……
That night, the production captain knew that at this time, he was also angry and hateful, but he was helpless and couldn't speak, he clearly remembered that he had come to the production team to cut into the queue and did some things, so he didn't dare to cause any more trouble!
For this reason, the production team leader was frightened, and he would never arrange for the educated youths to hoe in the field for fear of repeating the mistakes of the past, but only arranged for the educated youths to simply transport fertilizer to the field, a frame car with two educated youths in a group, or follow a trailer carriage to go out to engage in hauling;
In the seventies, Jingtai rural living conditions were poor, full of simplicity and hardship, the living conditions in the countryside were generally poor, the peasants were very poor, and there were many children, they really couldn't afford to buy fabrics, they couldn't sew clothes, and the little babies before going to school, as long as the weather was a little warmer, almost all of them didn't wear clothes and pants, and the only clothes and pants to be kept in the winter were cold before they were worn. At that time, the little baby had no guesses, so they didn't wear clothes and pants, and everyone didn't feel ashamed, let alone mess around, and they were very simple. People mainly rely on human and animal power for farming, such as ploughing the land with oxen and so on. People's clothes are generally patched, their houses are dilapidated, and the food supply is insufficient, with only twenty or thirty catties of food per person per month. The peasants realized that the corn grown in the barren land of Jingtai, which was dry and rainless, was less than an inch long, and the monk's head wheat was the hope of their survival.
Soon after coming to the countryside, the production team leader arranged for the educated youth to live independently and learn to cook; At that time, there were only four male and five female intellectuals, and under normal circumstances, one man and one woman were paired to cook, the male intellectuals were responsible for carrying water, and the female intellectuals were responsible for noodles
In fact, in those years, the sixteen or seventeen-year-old educated youth's ability to cook was very poor, and it often appeared that they either steamed steamed buns with unfermented dough or rolled noodles into a pot of soup, so they often made crooked and noisy things for cooking, and even complained to each other; But when it comes down to noisy, in fact, everyone's cooking level is the same, or the eldest brother doesn't say the second brother's, is it as big as it is small
Sometimes, only the empathetic Han Feiyang can cooperate with the female intellectual, Lu Yanyan, to help each other and insist on cooking for a few days. After that, everyone basically refused to go into the kitchen to cook, and in the end, three families and four relied on the stove
At that time, compared with the people in the village, the educated youth lived a relatively wealthy life, when the educated youth first went to the countryside to the countryside, the government took care of food, and there was enough white noodles in the kitchen cabinet, but the educated youth were greedy, and they were not willing to cook with their hands and were lazy, even if they had noodles, they could not eat in their stomachs, especially when they were hungry in the middle of the night, they were a little smarter, and they started to think carefully, so for a period of time, there were a series of things in the village that made the villagers uneasy......
Once, there was a lazy member in the village who had been living by eating low-income households, and told the educated youth that the wife of the production captain often put steamed buns in a wicker basket on the roof of his house, and the educated youth didn't want to cook so he asked the captain's wife for steamed buns to eat
So, some educated young people thought about taking advantage of the dead of night, when the captain's family was sleeping, he put a string of firecrackers at the door of the hot kang cave at his house, and brought a firecracker from Lanzhou to light it with matches, and instantly made a loud crackling sound, the captain's family was awakened in his sleep, after a panic, he got up and saw that the fire pit had not collapsed, and went out to see that the door of the kang cave was blown open a big gap, and the yard was full of smoke and miasma, and at that moment the production captain thought that there was an earthquake! A little panicked......
Through this incident, the captain said at the villagers' meeting that if the educated youths go to someone's house to ask for steamed buns to eat in the future, they should hurry up and give them to them, these educated youths are the character of the Red Guards, the temper of the rebels, and the educated youths will return to the city sooner or later, so don't mess with them! So as not to cause trouble, because the production captain saw that when the previous educated youth went to the production team to cut into the team for exercise, when he cooperated with the brigade to criticize the rural landlords and the four types of elements, they wore pointed hats on the heads of the landlords, hung a sign around their necks, and bent over to hold a stack of bricks in their hands.
From now on, if the educated youth go to someone's house to ask for a bowl of slurry water, a piece of cake, and eat a white-flour steamed bun, it will become a natural thing!
……
In my memory, there are a few topics that have not been put on the table so far, one is that a few male intellectuals went to the village sheepfold in the middle of the night to steal a lamb to eat;
At that time, due to the small area of the livestock house in the village, the sheep of the village collective were assigned to each villager to manage and breed;
One day in the dead of night, there are young people quietly approached a low sheepfold, over the fence wall into the sheepfold, more than 20 sheep heard the movement after consciously crowded in a corner, a young man took advantage of the situation to pick up a little lamb in front of his chest out of the pen, took advantage of the night to send to a villager house that was said in advance, not in vain to plant and slaughter sheep, this villager is also profitable to slaughter the lamb that night, the sheep's head and belly into the water, the sheepskin belongs to him, the lamb meat belongs to the young people, the young people brought back the sheep that has just been slaughtered, In the middle of the night, lamb was stewed in a big iron pot in the kitchen, and the educated youths drank soup and ate meat per capita; The next day, the villager suddenly found that there was one less sheep in the pen, and he searched around the yard for loopholes, wondering if the sheep had been lost on his own, but in the end it was gone
At that time, in the golden autumn season, the autumn breeze must be a harvest season, the village people worked hard in the dry land to harvest the wheat of the monk's head, and some early-maturing corn were successively moved to the wheat field, and then used a mill to grind, even the flail, such a harvest season, everyone happily waited for the harvest of the year's accumulated quota to distribute grain; The chickens that the villagers originally raised in their own yards also had their beginnings, and they were released and turned into free-range chickens, which could freely gather around the wheat straw stacks in the wheat field to find wheat particles to eat.
This is how many days when you don't see meat and want to eat chicken, some educated young people come up with a way, so they go to the village to hunt wheat and secretly catch a chicken and return to the young people to fight the tooth sacrifice!
For a period of time, the villagers lost chickens one after another, and the villagers suspected each other that the neighbor Zhang family stole the Li family's chickens, and the Li family stole the Zhang family's chickens, but some people suspected that the educated youths stole the chickens at home, so some villagers pretended to go to the courtyard of the educated youth to investigate, and found that the courtyard of the educated youth was full of chicken feathers;
In order not to lose their chickens, some smart villagers asked their mother-in-law to make something delicious at home, such as boiling a few ears of corn in a pot, frying a handful of beans, and cooking a few white flour cakes to send to the educated youth, so that the educated youths could eat them, and then beat around the bush to say to the educated youth, the village lost the chicken, and I don't know who stole it, but I hope that my chickens will not be lost, and they are all counting on the chickens to lay eggs and accumulate them, and send them to the market to sell them for a few catties of kerosene to light up!
At this time, there is a naughty young man who came up with the idea to say, that is not simple, you can smear red ink on your chicken head or chicken tail to mark it, and the person who wants to catch the chicken will know that it is your chicken at a glance, maybe the chicken thief will not catch your chicken, the young man who said this, compared with other young people, often always has a little cleverness, and it is also the young man who can't hide the little secret in his heart.
The villagers realized that the three generations of educated youths came to the village to exercise, although they made a fire and cooked, they could insist on working in the fields every day, and it was rare to find that someone was stealing chickens and dogs;
There are incurable problems such as the inability of the educated youth to take care of themselves, which makes the production captain very troubled, so the commune leaders made a bold decision to let the educated youth go home temporarily, and specifically instructed the production team to grind two bags of monk's flour for each educated youth, and then sent 24 yuan to be squeezed into the green train and sent home, and the rest of the time is to stay at home and listen to the commune's recruitment notice.
I stayed in the city for nearly three years when I went home, and I heard that the female intellectuals stayed at home and helped their working parents cook, and some male intellectuals found a temporary job after returning to the city, and Han Feiyang moved cement at a construction site, and he could earn 1.75 yuan a day, and he could earn more than 50 yuan a month to subsidize his family, and he was very happy to earn money, and he did it for more than two years;
In August 1979, Han Feiyang, Lu Yanyan and other nine educated youths who returned to the city to stand by received the news that they immediately returned to the production team to wait for the recruitment to return to the city to work, because these educated youths were all from the factory and the society linked to the team, and then they were soon recruited back to work in their parents' units. After the two cherish the youth complex, cut the team to exercise when the adversity sees the truth, after returning to the city, you have love, I intend to come and go to tie the knot and become a husband and wife, after marriage, the husband and wife respect and love each other, the relationship is harmonious and harmonious, and they need to contribute money to help when they encounter big and small things at home, they are mutually discussed, and their parents are honored in the neighborhood, and the small life is prosperous;
Later, due to work needs, Han Feiyang was transferred to a public institution and became a management cadre.
The husband and wife have worked for most of their lives, the boat to the bridge, the car to the station, and their lives have come to an end;
Now retired, their husband and wife are the same as the grandparents and grandparents after the retirement of ordinary people, in order to help the second generation, manage the third generation, they are back to work, the current job responsibilities are single-minded, never half-hearted, serve the people wholeheartedly, take grandchildren at home, give grandchildren as "grandsons", take grandchildren are very tired, tired and happy, the old husband and wife are happy, happy smiles bloom like flowers;
Time stores sweet memories. The years have recorded the bits and pieces of happiness. Life is integrated into each other's concern. Sincere, infused with permanent affection.
More than 40 years have passed, most of the educated youths are working in a city, and they are all retired in a city......
May 24, 2023 is the 50th anniversary of the queue of the educated youth, the educated youths with joy, met and set foot on the magical land of the Wangzhuang Brigade in Jingtai County, and also saw the old man of the old Zhang Lock Door, now eighty years old and energetic, is already the fourth generation of the same house, he also let his daughter-in-law in her fifties make an authentic, fragrant monk head face for the young people, everyone sat cross-legged on the big clay kang of Zhang Lock Door for a long time to reunite with each other, the old things in the south of the city recall the year, Zhang Laohan said that great changes have taken place in the countryside of Jingtai, and the people in the village have built new houses and lived in new houses, and their lives are very rich.
The old man also told the educated youth with surprise: "The Jingtaichuan irrigation project started construction in 1969 and was completed and accepted in 1999, with an irrigation area of more than one million mu.
The biggest change in the first team of Wang Zhuang who was cut into the team by educated youths back then was that the mountainous area in the west of the village that depended on the sky for food had been vertically irrigated by the Yellow River! The familiar courtyard house has become a village cultural station, with all kinds of ornaments, pendants, pictures, and texts to show the great achievements of the people in the village, as well as some intangible cultural heritage imprints.
Fifty years have passed since the years of educated youth, and whenever I recall that unforgettable time, I always feel an inexplicable feeling in my heart. Because in this vast land, they have gained valuable growth experience. Nowadays, time flies, and the years of educated youth have become eternal memories......
2024.5.30