Unforgettable educated youth years

Without the hardships and pains in life,

Life is just a breeze, a cloud,

Let the lost youth become the cornerstone of our life!

Everyone has his own experience. Although dull, the unique journey of life has left a deep imprint on our hearts, which has created the hardworking and fearless character of the generation after 1950. 197 1 year, our new junior high school students, known as "intellectual youth", were arranged to be mobilized to the frontiers of Yunnan, to the countryside, to the places where the motherland needed them most, to receive re-education from poor middle peasants, to roll in the mud and forge a red heart.

I am the eldest daughter of my family, and I have three younger sisters, who are studying in junior high school and primary school respectively. My mother was sent to Xichang "May 7th" cadre school for exercise, and my father was in poor health. My family decided not to let me go to Yunnan to divide the border, but listened to my father's arrangement and settled in the outpost brigade of Lianshan commune in Guanghan county. That year, I 17 years old, still in a dream age. I started my life in this unique way.

I remember the day when I went to the countryside, it was the dead of winter in Chengdu, and the cold wind was chilly. All the cars going to the countryside started from Renmin South Road Square, and a bright red banner was pulled up on the truck, which read seventeen striking characters, "Educated youth went to the countryside to receive re-education for poor middle peasants". In the square, gongs and drums were loud, red flags were flying, and many people came to see me off. I stood in front of the truck and looked at the crowd with tearful eyes and saw my father leading me. Goodbye, sister! But my throat choked and I couldn't say a word. The cold wind lifted my father's hair. A pair of big hands and three pairs of small hands kept waving in the crowd. They are like holding hands separately. I have been trying to dry my tears, because they block my sight. I want to see them clearly, until the four little black spots disappear completely in front of my eyes. I cried my eyes red and my brain went blank. What is the countryside like? What am I going to do there?

When the production team assembled, they realized that there was no room for our educated youth to live in the team. The girl was temporarily arranged at Aunt Wu's house, and Aunt Wu's son worked in the county government. On the same day, we got the pole, dung bucket, hoe, sickle and other production tools that were in close contact with rural land, just like soldiers got steel guns. The battlefield is at the foot of this vast land. Look at these, we just see "weapons" in movies and picture books.

The production team leader saw our mood and said: Don't worry, your first task is to gain a foothold, draw a clear line with the black five categories of "rich land against bad right", firmly distinguish the "enemies" around you, and tell us loudly who is the landlord in the team? Who is the Rightist? I felt like an enemy at once. I didn't expect the "enemy" to be around. I made up my mind silently that I must have a class stand, remember the names of those "enemies", recognize their faces, learn from the poor and middle peasants with an open mind, exercise well in the vast world, and be the successor of socialism!

The first night I came to the countryside is still fresh in my memory. When night fell, it was dark all around. Only one oil lamp was beating, giving off a dim light. Everyone crowded into the big hard and cold bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. The pigs in the pigsty next door purr from time to time, and the room is filled with the smell of mixed pig excrement and pig food. I don't know who is crying.

At dawn the next day, a loud whistle broke the peace of the countryside. The captain blew his whistle and went to work. The whistle is long and tactfully, low before and slow after, and the sound is high and low, like a collection. Educated youths were in a hurry to get up, so they didn't have time to wash, so they took hoes to work.

I still feel nervous when I think of that special whistle more than 40 years later. This may be the shadow left in my heart at that time!

When a novice does farm work, he really can't pick his shoulders or lift his hands. They made a fool of themselves by confusing the whole grain with the leek seedlings. With a shoulder pole on his shoulder, he pressed up a blood bag, dug mud, made blood bubbles on his hands, went down to the paddy field to sow seedlings, and the leech climbed onto his leg and dragged them all away.

I remember the first time I picked dung into the field, I had to cross several ditches. Because of the uncoordinated swinging posture, people and buckets fell into the ditch together, and the whole body was soaked by fecal water. I got up from the ditch and didn't want to wipe off the dung and a pair of long braids splashed on my face. I picked up the empty bucket, immediately went back to fill it, and continued to go to the fields. My wet clothes and hair were dried by the sun. At that time, there was only one thought in my heart, not to let the poor and middle schools.

I remember that during the Red May War, I worked 10 hours a day, and I had to catch up with harvesting wheat and transplanting rice. I have a strong nature and compete with farmers. They cut five rows of wheat, and I cut eight rows of wheat with my teeth. Sweat dripped down my hair into my eyes, and my eyes stung. Look at the farmers who bend over to cut wheat around me. Inadvertently, the sickle cut the little finger, a large nail was cut off, and blood flowed. At that time, the rural medical conditions were poor, and the production team had no medical points. Not until 10 km away. A woman next to me is busy looking for some "cloth shit" in the seam of clothes, which is actually cotton fiber and dust falling in the seam of clothes and put it on my wound.

At that time, educated youth went to the countryside, and the state only gave a small amount of subsidies. For those of us who are growing up, we often have to eat "dry" in the first half of the month and "thin" in the second half without vegetable oil. We wanted to improve our food, so we raised chickens ourselves, but before the chickens grew up, we ate the millet of the poisonous mice by mistake and all died. It's heartbreaking to see a dead chicken grow to about a catty.

In those years, the rural productivity in Guanghan was very low, and the division of labor system was implemented. All workers earn more than 10 cents a day, and women only earn 8 cents at most. Food supply is insufficient. I remember when my mother was in the May 7th cadre school in Xichang, she wrote that she had found a local rice with a high yield per mu and brought me some seeds when she went back to Chengdu to visit relatives. Back in the team, I gave the seed to the captain, and the captain got a treasure. The conference will praise my high ideological awareness. The team specially set aside a piece of land, carefully fertilized and watered, and the seedlings really grew gratifying, stronger than other seedlings, and everyone's face was full of smiles, looking forward to a bumper harvest. When rice has long ears, due to the difference of sunshine time between Xichang and Chengdu Plain, the final yield is not as high as Xichang, but it is still slightly higher than the local area. So the captain transferred me to the research team to produce "5406" bacterial fertilizer.

Insecticides are applied to cotton in summer. There is an essential process for cotton to bear peaches, that is, applying pesticides. We are carrying a big medicine box, which contains dozens of kilograms of medicine. It jingles on our backs. We keep pumping air with a handle in our left hand and spraying pesticides on cotton with a nozzle in our right hand. The main pesticide at that time was "66 powder". At that time, there were no protective equipment and no masks.

These bits and pieces of experience have taken me past seventeen, which is different from the young people now. Those slightly bitter memories linger in my mind, but they become clearer as I get older. I often think that without the hardships and tempering of seventeen years old, there would be no calmness and calmness in facing difficulties today.

The life of educated youth is a milestone in my life, which has laid a solid spiritual pillar for my future life. I often share this belief with young people and become my spiritual wealth.