Cui Zengqi: Trip to Yunnan (10)

Cui Zengqi: Trip to Yunnan (10) Phoenix City Cui Zengqi I remember that thirty years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, I made a special trip to the village where I lived as a child...

Phoenix City Cui Zengqi

I remember that thirty years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, I made a special trip to visit the village where I lived as a child. I stayed up all night when I returned to the hotel that day. The impression I had at that time was that after forty years of construction of the country, instead of getting better, this place was worse than before. The house we lived in is still there, but it is dilapidated. The primary school I once attended no longer exists. The school has been turned into a sheepfold, and the small streets are still the same as before. The village is silent, and the villagers are still lifting water from the well surrounded by green thorns. Several old people are sitting at the door smoking long hookahs, enjoying the warmth given by the sun, waiting for time to pass by. At that time, China was proposing to realize the four modernizations as soon as possible and achieve the goal of a moderately prosperous society. I felt at a loss. I asked when the spring breeze of the four socialist modernizations would blow here.

After thirty years of reform and opening up, I walked into this village from Bashang again and felt that some changes had taken place. Although compared with the national pace, it is still much slower. Seven or eight young people were sitting at the entrance of the village, basking in the sun, while Teresa Teng's singing was playing from the loudspeaker. In the past, it was only a small street less than fifty meters long. Now it has expanded into a residential area of ​​50×50 meters square. That is because of the growth of population. Seventy years ago, there were only 450 million compatriots in the country, but now there are more than 1.3 billion. I took a photo I took here thirty years ago and looked for a childhood classmate. They told me that he had died of silicosis a few years ago. He worked in the coal mines all his life and was not yet sixty when he died. Silicosis has claimed many Chinese lives. As the main energy source supporting China's economic development, China's coal industry, which ranks first in coal production in the world, has done so at the cost of tens of thousands of lives every year. I thought about this classmate and the many friends who had worked with me deep in the earth to devote themselves to the coal industry of the motherland. We once joked that we lived in an environment of "four stones and one piece of meat" every day. When dust paints us black or gray every day, it also invades our nasal cavities and lungs. When an unfortunate accident claimed the life of a comrade, we retrieved his body from the collapsed strata, buried the body of our comrade, and continued our "battle." I would like to submit a proposal to the National People's Congress of China: erect a monument to the miners who sacrificed their lives in the process of socialist modernization. This monument is located in Shanxi Province, a major coal-producing province. Without their sacrifices, China would not be the world's second largest economy today.

With the enthusiastic help of the villagers, I finally found another classmate from the second grade of elementary school. He is a child from the countryside, six years older than me, and I didn’t know him at all when we met, but when we talked about classmate Lu Liwen and past events, we immediately became familiar with him. After he finished third grade, he dropped out of school and returned home to farm, and later became a production captain. A lifetime of farming has built up a good body. At the age of 80, he can still walk freely on slopes with his grandson on his back. The two of us walked and talked, one step at a time, one scene at a time, one emotion at a time, which triggered many memories.

He showed me the classrooms that used to have adobe walls, but are now used as farmers' homes.

The classroom of that time, the farmhouse of today. The playground in front of the classroom has been covered with housing. It is really ridiculous to think of a scandal that happened on the playground. It was the period of the Anti-Japanese War, and the teacher hoped that each of our children would become future anti-Japanese warriors. During the drills, we should strictly abide by the disciplines required by the soldiers. Even if a fly landed on our nose, we were not allowed to move or speak at will. One time during a drill, I suddenly felt a pain in my belly. I still stood there motionless, so I couldn't control my bowel movements and fell into my pants. The classmate next to me couldn't bear it anymore and reported to the teacher that he smelled the enemy's stench, and then he realized that it was me who was in trouble. That time, the teacher did not blame me, but praised me for observing discipline and saving me face. The pond and a large locust tree behind the classroom have disappeared, and the good natural ecological environment has been destroyed by population growth. Back then, I put a wooden board in the pond to try out the feeling of floating on the water. Unexpectedly, as soon as I stepped on one foot, I fell into the water with a "splat". Fortunately, other classmates pulled me up. This was my first scientific attempt at the cost of my life. The big locust tree was the dividing line between the Han people and the Miao residents. The path beside the tree was the road leading to the Miao village. The Miao girls walked past the tree. We watched them from a distance wearing red, green and black clothes, but we never dared to talk to them. Now that the big trees have been cut down, exchanges and communication between ethnic groups have strengthened, and the boundaries of language, clothing, and culture are no longer so clear. I was deeply immersed in the memories of the past... One by one, the past events came to my mind. A simple and innocent child grew up in this mountain village. After experiencing the hammering of wind and rain and the temper of the world, he became who I am now bit by bit.

We two "old friends" walked towards the village hall, which was the only two-story building in the village seventy years ago and still retains its original appearance. Facing the gate is a large hall where the village chief judges criminals. The short turret upstairs is the music classroom of our elementary school. In this small turret, we sang the anti-Japanese song, "Cut off the heads of the Japanese with a broadsword," and the graduation song's "Our peaches and plums are fragrant today, and we will be the pillars of society tomorrow" inspired us to face the future bravely. Trials were often held downstairs, just as we have seen in movies and theater performances. The village chief sat in the center, and the yamen escorted the prisoner into the hall, beat him hard with thirty boards, and asked him whether he wanted to be recruited or not. The surroundings were crowded with villagers watching the fun. The roar of the village chief, the clatter of boards, the shouts of prisoners and the songs of children were intertwined. This symphony of small village life mixed with joy and screams still lingers in my ears. While reminiscing about the past, we took a group photo in front of the remaining old village office.

Conversation in front of the village hall

Walking up to the high point of the village, looking at the hillside in the distance, the barren hills are covered with weeds, which is the land used by the US Flying Tigers to camp. Around the winter of 1943, for unknown reasons, a plane crashed in the fields of Zaige Village. Kind-hearted villagers rushed to rescue the pilot of the plane and escorted him to the camp in Kunming. Soon, the Flying Tigers set up a tent on a hillside not far from the village and set up a radio-to-air contact station. These American soldiers drove their jeeps to the village every weekend to buy groceries. This was a happy time for the children. We followed them and said they climbed into the jeep unprepared. These American soldiers neither greeted us nor refused us, so we became their uninvited guests and came to the camp. Perhaps it was because they were away from their relatives and children, but we were warmly received by them. We could freely roam around the camp and play, and we could also share a small piece of chocolate and canned food. They were the first Americans I got to know. These veterans who participated in China's Anti-Japanese War are all over 90 years old this year. It would be such a blessing to have the opportunity to meet and recall the past together.

The US military jeeps filled with Chinese children truly reflected the scene of the children being with the US military back then.

When it was time to say goodbye, I asked my classmate to write down his address and postal code so that I could send the photo to him. He said that all the words he knew were returned to the teacher. I was embarrassed to forget that he dropped out of school after entering the third grade of elementary school. I asked some young people sitting at the head of the village for help. They found pens, but they couldn't write. I was shocked. In China, which has become the world's second largest economy, there are still many children who cannot enjoy the most basic educational opportunities! When I picked up a pen and asked them to dictate their address and postal code, the answers I received were incomplete because they had never written a letter in their lives.