This article was published on the "No. 30 Courtyard" public account on August 25, 2021, with changes
In the 1950s, I attended Zhangzhou Experimental Primary School , and in the early 1960s, I studied at Xiamen Minli Primary School and Shuangshi Middle School After studying, he returned to Zhangzhou No. 3 Middle School to complete his junior high school and high school education. Several of my alma maters are century-old schools. The predecessor of Experimental Primary School is Longxi Private Yuxian Primary School founded in 1878 and Longxi Private Yangzheng Primary School founded in 1905. It has been more than 140 years ago. Xiamen Minli Primary School was founded in 1907, and Shuangshi Middle School and Zhangzhou No. 3 Middle School recently celebrated their 100th anniversary. The predecessor of Shuangshi Middle School was a private school, and the predecessors of Zhangzhou Shi Primary School, Minli Primary School, and Zhangzhou No. 3 Middle School were all church schools.
Graduated from Xiamen Minli Primary School in 1962
School History Wall in the Foyer of Minli Primary School
These famous old schools paid more attention to education before the Cultural Revolution. The teachers in the school are generally highly qualified and dedicated, the students are diligent and eager to learn, the teaching quality is high, and the enrollment rate is among the best. At that time, students' academic workload was not heavy, and children had a lot of time to play outside class. Those who love reading can borrow books from the Youth Home in Zhongshan Park when they are young. After middle school, there is a library on campus. During afternoon self-study classes and after school, you can go to the library to borrow books or read newspapers and periodicals. Sometimes I go to Xinhua Bookstore to read books. As long as you take good care of the books, the bookstore doesn't look bad on students who read books. On Sundays, you can also go to the city library in Yangwen Building or the library of the Workers' Club to read.
Although the school attached great importance to education at that time, the entire atmosphere was focused on politics. It was necessary to implement the educational policy of "education serves the proletariat and combine education with productive labor" and emphasized that students should participate in productive labor. When I was in elementary school, I often participated in labor. In addition to bringing my own tools to clean the campus every week, I also cleared wasteland on campus to grow vegetables and sweet potatoes during difficult times. Every time when the rice is harvested, they have to go to Datong Brigade on the outskirts of the city to pick up rice ears. Another time, the school organized a trip to a winery to peel lychees, but the children were very conscious that they did not eat the lychees. After the "June 9" flood, they collected pebbles and bricks and handed them over to the school, and then transported them to fill the stone embankments for flood control.
After entering middle school, it was stipulated that two weeks each semester must be arranged to go to the countryside to participate in agricultural work such as harvesting rice. This can be regarded as the "pre-school education" of "re-education from poor and lower-middle peasants" in the future, right? Everyone advocates revolution and requires progress, takes pride in poverty, diligence and thrift, takes pleasure in labor, and does not regard labor as a burden. The first time I went out to work was when I was in the first year of Shuangshi Middle School. I went to the school-run farm in Gaoqi, Gaoqi, to dig sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were planted on the soil of the old airport runway. I learned how to dig sweet potatoes from the side of the ridge with a hoe in hand. Use a hoe to dig hard to loosen the soil, and the sweet potatoes can be pulled out in whole bunches without damaging them. The sweet potato vines will grow adventitious roots in the furrows, and small sweet potatoes will also be pulled out. This kind of work is very interesting. Everyone must bring their own quilt and sleep in a farmhouse, sleeping next to each other on the straw-covered ground. At such a young age, I actually had to walk more than 10 kilometers to Gaoqi while carrying a quilt on my back, and my soles had blisters. Twenty years later, I heard that an international airport was going to be built here, and I felt a sense of kinship with it.
The farm of Shuangshi Middle School is the old Gaoqi Airport
Then he transferred from Xiamen back to Zhangzhou to attend the No. 3 Middle School. In the first semester, he went to the Shipu Brigade on the outskirts of the city to cut rice, and went from the Zhujian Slaughterhouse on Majao Road to the No. 4 Middle School. It's not that far away. I go early and come back late, and I have to work for several days in a row. Vegetables need to be planted after the late rice harvest in the suburbs. When harvesting, the paddy fields have dried up. It is not too difficult to work down-to-earth, as long as you master the key points and avoid cutting your fingers with the sickle. At lunch, I had the production team, and once I actually had stewed noodles , stewed soup although the condiments were not rich, but they added thinly sliced white pork belly, I thought it was so delicious, I will never forget it in my life, probably for a long time Maybe it’s because I’ve never eaten pork. The farmland in Shipu has long disappeared and is now a land of high-rise buildings.
In the second semester, I went to the Pangu Brigade of Guotang Commune in the outer suburbs, which is nearly 20 kilometers away from the city. The school arranged to take a large open-top truck of the army to go there, but I was not so lucky when I came back after the end, so I had to walk back to the city.It’s midsummer and we are participating in and competition, that is, harvesting and planting. Pangu is at the foot of Tianbao Mountain. When harvesting rice, students are arranged to work with farmers. One person throws a bucket or throws the bucket (threshing bucket) in groups of several people. The farmer threshes, lifts the bucket, and carries the rice. The students divide the labor to harvest the rice. Or pass around the cut sheaves of rice. I slept in the brigade headquarters at night. There were many certificates posted on the wall, and I realized that this place was once called the Rocket People's Commune of Longxi County. When the commune was turned into a commune, the original place name was not used. Fashionable names such as Satellite, Pioneer, Victory, and Hongqi were given. Tianbao became Rocket Commune.
There is a large urine bucket for everyone to use at night when sleeping. It smells bad. When someone uses it, they often disrespectfully think of the great poem "The red rain turns into waves as it pleases, and the green mountains deliberately turn into bridges." Everyone tried their best to stay away from the urine pail in their bunks. At that time, there were only a few League members in the class, so someone shouted that members of the Communist Youth League should go up first if they had difficulties, so the little member of the Communist Youth League had to sleep next to the urine pail. It is even more difficult for a large size to go to the toilet. The big hole leads directly to the pigsty, and two wooden boards or even an old coffin are placed on top of the big hole to avoid splashing on the body. There was once a female classmate who was a freshman in high school and fell into a manure pit while walking at night.
I also visited Tang Commune in the third year of junior high, which seemed to be the Yueling Brigade near Pangu. In addition to cutting the rice, you also have to pull out and transplant the rice seedlings. Ever since I was a kid, I was always a little behind when I bent down. I had to pull out and transplant rice seedlings in the paddy field all day long, and my back was sore and my body was tired. When I grew up, I went to the city's traditional Chinese medicine hospital for a X-ray examination and found out that my spine was congenitally deformed. No wonder I felt more uncomfortable than others. But he still worked hard to show his positive performance and impress his teachers and classmates. At noon, I go back to the village or eat in the fields. I have plenty of grain rice (dry rice), but there is not much food. Almost every time I cook a bowl of noodles with paste as a dish, without any condiments or MSG, just plain noodles. . Since the food at home has always been simple, this was easy to overcome, but it gave rise to doubts. The politics class was teaching the concepts of surplus value, necessary labor and surplus labor. Basic food was considered necessary labor, so why did I have to bring money and food from home to participate in unpaid labor? Pay the ticket?
In the first semester of high school, I also went to work at the foot of Tianbao Mountain, not to cut rice, but to build mechanical plowing roads. Go to the river to pick large river stones to build the roadside, and pick small pebbles and river sand to pave the road. Carrying a burden for the first time was a great test for me. Many of my classmates had to carry water at home, so I had some training. I have a well at home and I never have to carry water. The river stones are round, and one dustpan holds one or two stones on one end. My shoulders are young and I cannot lift the heavy burden. I can't control myself when I lift my shoulders, so I start to sway. Sometimes the stones will roll to the ground, making me very embarrassed and making my classmates laugh. At that time, the whole country was learning from the People's Liberation Army. One day, each class was organized to climb Tianbao Mountain, and they went straight from Tianbao Plain to the top of the mountain with an altitude of 1,000 meters. At that time, the Red Army invaded Zhangzhou over the Tianbao Mountains, and a fierce battle broke out at the nearby Cross Ridge. Looking at the other side of the mountain top is Hua'an, with mountains connected to each other. I would never have thought that in a few years I would go to the mountains and go to the countryside and travel through the mountains and rivers of Changtai, Hua'an, and Anxi.
As soon as the first semester of high school started, he went to Tianbao Mountain to open a road. It was freezing cold, and the mountain was covered with thorns. There was no machinery, and a winding road was built manually. The construction workers first measured and marked the line, and then everyone used hoes to dig. They continued to use bulldozers to push the excavated earth toward the outer edge of the highway. Day after day, the road shape was gradually dug out, leaving many soil pillars with bamboo sticks nailed on the original surface. The amount of earthwork can be calculated based on the measured cross sections. After working, everyone also learned to sing revolutionary songs. I still remember humming this song: "Chairman Mao's works are clear springs. The spring water is clear and sweeter than honey. Drink the cool water from the spring. You will never run out of wisdom and wisdom... …”. I remember that this semester I went to the Xiabei Brigade of Shangdun Commune (also called Hongqi Village) on the outskirts of the city to participate in pond desilting and fertilizer accumulation. The village was engaged in social education. There was a work team leader who was a court cadre, wearing a jersey with Peking University's Mao body on his waist. Plug in a small pistol, it's so cool.
After the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, the school resumed classes in the spring of 1968 to start a revolution. All high school and junior high school students in the 66th and 67th classes left the school, leaving only the first-year high school students and the first-year junior high school students in the 68th class. They were organized into the first company and the second company. Our class was called the first company and the second row.Before and after the Qingming Festival, we arranged to go to the Buteng Brigade of Punan Commune on the other side of Tianbao Mountain to cut wheat. The Buteng Reservoir was nearby. After working, I was covered in wheat grass and weeds and looked very "filthy". In the spring, I ventured down to the reservoir for a swim. The water in the reservoir does not flow and the water in the lower layer is still very cold. As usual, I had to pay money and food stamps for this labor. Due to the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, I thought it was completely unreasonable. Even though the squad leader urged me several times, I still refused to pay. Therefore, I owed the school fees during the resumption of classes and the food expenses for this labor. Can't get that water-filled high school diploma. More than ten years later, when my nephew taught at No. 3 Middle School, he fished out this graduation certificate with the highest directive on it.
The system for school students to participate in rural agricultural labor was summarized by the May 7th Directive as "study of agriculture", along with study of workers and students of the army. I don't know how long this system was implemented. It probably disappeared in the early 1980s. At that time, the total number of hours of study per semester was greatly reduced, but I feel that I still remember a lot of the knowledge I learned. It can be seen that the education at that time was still relatively solid. Compared with children today, we had fewer classes and less homework, and the burden was obviously much lighter.
golden memories
