March 26, 1986 , Chen Yonggui, who served as Vice Premier of the State Council, died of illness in Beijing . After his death, what specifications should be used for the memorial service become the most troublesome problem for his family.
In fact, before he died, Chen Yonggui told them to keep the funeral simple, but because he served as Vice Premier of the State Council, if the memorial service is too low, will inevitably cause malicious speculation from others. If the organizer is too grand, he will be criticized for not complying with the system . In any case, it is the result that everyone least wants to see.
Just when everyone was in a dilemma , Deng Xiaoping's words pointed out the direction for them : Comrade Chen Yonggui's memorial service should be held in accordance with the specifications of the Vice Premier.
Chen Yonggui
This Why did the memorial service of the vice premier of the farmer attract public criticism ? Everything starts with Chen Yonggui’s own experience.
1915, Chen Yonggui was born in a farmer's family in Shishan Village, Xiyang County, Shanxi Province. Due to his poor family, the whole family could only rely on a few acres of thin fields to survive. Although his father worked diligently in the fields every day, he still couldn't support so many people.
Their lives are already very difficult, but they did not expect that the house was leaking and raining. Shanxi suddenly encountered a severe drought. . The crops planted by farmers were not harvested, and many people were starved to death before they had time to escape.
drought
In order to exchange some food from the landlord, Chen Yonggui's father had to bear the pain and sell his wife and eldest daughter.
In that ignorant era, women had no right to speak at all. Although they do not want to separate from their relatives, they still cannot get rid of their fate of being abandoned.
In the end, Chen Yonggui's mother was sold to the next county, and his sister was sold to another village in Xiyang County , becoming someone else's child bride, which made Chen Yonggui realize the importance of food for the first time.
Grain for a bumper harvest
Even so, the situation at Chen Yonggui's family did not improve at all. As the drought became more and more serious, many people were forced to flee their hometown. Later, Chen Yonggui's father fled to Dazhai Village, , who was only five years old. Since then, the father and son depend on each other and settled their homes in Dazhai Village.
Although he left his hometown, Chen Yonggui's father never forgot that he cruelly abandoned his wife and daughter to survive. Under the condemnation of his conscience, he finally decided to seek relief by committing suicide. After his father passed away, Chen Yonggui, who was 111 years old, became an orphan.
In order to survive, Chen Yonggui could only exchange for some food by herding sheep for others.
The children who herd sheep
The suffering of life did not destroy Chen Yonggui's desire to survive. Although he lost the opportunity to go to school, Chen Yonggui was hard-working and good at doing farm work. Soon after, he met the first noble man in his life.
Before the founding of New China, the rural cooperative system was generally implemented in rural areas. Every village had to rely on their own labor to exchange for labor points . The more labor points, the more grain they were allocated.
Jia Jincai, a villager from Dazhai Village, sympathized with Chen Yonggui's life experience and also took the opportunity to invite him to join his mutual assistance work group.
People's Commune Ruins
After joining the group, Chen Yonggui gradually showed his ability. In order to improve the productivity of the villagers, Chen Yonggui took the initiative to discuss work distribution plans with his team members to ensure that everyone can complete the production plan within their own capabilities.
Under his leadership, the mutual assistance labor group has developed better and better. As the number of team members continues to increase, Jia Jincai proposed that he set up a new labor group.
After forming his own team, Chen Yonggui worked harder, and he was trying every day to increase the land output. In this way, Chen Yonggui made his reputation in Dazhai Village with his outstanding abilities.
Chen Yonggui
948 , under the recommendation of Jia Jincai, Chen Yonggui successfully joined the Communist Party of China . Later, Jia Jin took a fancy to Chen Yonggui's potential, so he strongly recommended Chen Yonggui as the branch secretary of Dazhai Village .
After Chen Yonggui took office, he shouldered the important task of leading everyone to become rich together.
While he led the villagers to reclaim wasteland and study methods to increase grain output, he organized everyone to build canals and innovated methods to irrigate farmland.
Under the leadership of Chen Yonggui, the villagers' enthusiasm for production has greatly improved, and the appearance of Dazhai Village has also been completely renewed.
Dazhai Village
Just while he led everyone to work together to do production, God asked Chen Yonggui a difficult problem.
1963, Dazhai Village encountered floods, winds, droughts and mudslide disasters one after another. All the results of everyone's hard work were destroyed. Chen Yonggui didn't care about his sadness. In order to save everyone's losses, he combined his years of labor experience, not only led the villagers to transform a slanted hillside into terraced fields, but also reclaimed a large area of land covered with rocks into fertile fields.
Under his leadership, Dazhai Village not only survived the continuous natural disasters, but also handed over commercial grain worth up to 240,000 to the country. The news of attracted the attention of people across the country. Subsequently, many farmers went to Dazhai Village to ask Chen Yonggui for methods to increase grain output.
After Chen Yonggui successfully transformed the terraced fields, he began to think about how to improve the utilization rate of the land. After conducting a field investigation of the wastelands in the village, he finally put forward a bold idea to the villagers: He wants to make artificial terraces in the wolf's nest .
The total area of Wolf Needle Palm is 87,912 square meters. It is a dry river ditch that has been abandoned for a long time in Dazhai Village. It not only has a steep terrain, but also has serious soil erosion problems and is difficult to plant crops.
But these problems are not worth mentioning in front of Chen Yonggui. He firmly believes that man will conquer nature. In order to make full use of this vast land, Chen Yonggui led the villagers to devote themselves to the major project of manufacturing artificial terraces. The whole village built 150 acres of land in three years. This is a very amazing result.
Wolf Need Palm Dam
In order to ensure that this land can harvest crops, Chen Yonggui led everyone to build the dam, but it was washed away by the flood twice. It was not until 1957 that the villagers of Dazhai cooperated to build the dam again, and poured into thick lime mortar, and finally built a dam that cannot be washed away.
With these newly added land, Chen Yonggui led the whole village to achieve a huge leap from 130 kilograms to 800 kilograms per mu.
Later, Chairman Mao accidentally learned about his deeds of bringing villagers to reclaim wasteland and overcoming natural disasters. In order to show his appreciation for him, Chairman Mao not only invited Chen Yonggui to Beijing for a special report on agricultural production, but also asked him to sit beside him at his birthday party. This is an honor that others have always dreamed of.
Chen Yonggui took a photo with Chairman Mao
Under the appreciation of the central government, Chen Yonggui's career became more and more smooth. He took the position of Secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee step by step from a small village party secretary in Dazhai Village.
Perhaps Chen Yonggui himself would not have thought that although his cultural level is not high, it has been so valued by the country. What surprised him even more was that the position of provincial party secretary was not the end of his life.
1975 , Premier Zhou specially found Chen Yonggui and told him a big news: The central government decided to let Chen Yonggui serve as vice premier and be in charge of agricultural production , hoping to use his experience to help more people benefit.
Chen Yonggui at work
After Chen Yonggui learned the news, he strongly refused because he felt that his cultural literacy and theoretical knowledge were not qualified for this position. However, under Chairman Mao’s persuasion, Chen Yonggui finally resolutely shouldered this burden.
975 , at the suggestion of Chairman Mao, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee decided to hold the first national agricultural study meeting in Dazhai Village, Xiyang County, Shanxi Province. It was at this meeting that Chen Yonggui and Deng Xiaoping had their first close contact.
Agriculture Dazhai Movement
As the main person in charge of the central work, Deng Xiaoping delivered an important speech at the opening ceremony of the conference. He not only highly praised the production movement of Dazhai, but also raised some problems in the process of learning Dazhai's production experience : " learns from Dazhai, please be careful not to only see grain output. We must study some specific policies of Dazhai and Xiyang . " His speech greatly encouraged Chen Yonggui. After the
meeting, Deng Xiaoping, who presided over the daily work of the central government, cooperated closely with Chen Yonggui, greatly promoting the national agricultural learning movement. According to data records, , With the development of the Dazhai movement in agriculture, the effective irrigation area of farmland across the country increased by 1.1 million hectares per year, and the level of agricultural mechanization has greatly improved .
Irrigate farmland
While Deng Xiaoping supported Chen Yonggui to speed up the production movement, a premeditated political movement put Deng Xiaoping in a difficult situation.
In the one-sided public opinion trend at that time, Chen Yonggui always respected and supported Deng Xiaoping unswervingly. Although he was excluded because of this, Chen Yonggui never wavered his position.
After the storm subsided, Chen Yonggui believed that whether to support Deng Xiaoping’s return to preside over the work, Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou would be able to support China’s building in a hundred years. Therefore, he firmly voted for it, and after Deng Xiaoping's successful comeback, the two cooperated more tacitly in their work.
Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yonggui took a photo
978, Fengyang County, Anhui Province began to implement the family contract responsibility system . , a labor model that conforms to the actual production, quickly received support from the central government. With the development of productivity level, , the people's commune system disintegrated, and the agricultural learning Dazhai movement born based on the commune system was therefore terminated.
At the same time, the Xiyang West Water East Diversion Project, which is nearing the end, was also forced to terminate . Chen Yonggui was very sad about this, because once the project is completed, the problem of lack of water sources in Xiyang can be completely solved.
What he did not expect was that before he could ask the central government to restart Xiyang's project, a large number of slander and slandering him suddenly appeared in society. Some of Xiyang's cadres were excluded, which made Chen Yonggui very guilty, believing that he had implicated them.
Chen Yonggui went to the countryside to inspect
What made Chen Yonggui even more disappointed was that when he was under pressure from public opinion, some officials who were once promoted by him took the opportunity to take the opportunity to take the blame and fabricate various "exposed" letters to report his problems at work to the central government.
Deng Xiaoping After learning about this situation, he expressed his true thoughts in front of Chen Yonggui: It is nothing wrong to learn from Dazhai. I have the chance to go to Dazhai. They scolded them. I go to mine. must be realistic about Dazhai ... Although Chen Yonggui didn't say a word at that time, his heart was comforted by this.
1980, Chen Yonggui took the initiative to request the Central Committee to resign from the position of Vice Premier of the State Council. The Central Committee failed to change his idea after repeated attempts to retain him, so he had to agree to his request.
Chen Yonggui in his later years
After Chen Yonggui resigned, Deng Xiaoping talked with him for two hours. Although there were still some voices in society that expressed doubts about the Dazhai Movement, not long after, Deng Xiaoping made an in-depth and objective summary of the Dazhai Movement in agriculture. Under his influence, the public opinion community's evaluation of Chen Yonggui gradually became fair.
In terms of living arrangements for Chen Yonggui after resigning, Deng Xiaoping insisted on keeping Chen Yonggui's previous treatment unchanged. Not only did he send him a considerable amount of living expenses as usual every month, but he also arranged for the organization to transfer his and his family's household registration to Beijing.
Chen Yonggui's life is simple. He is grateful to the central government for taking care of himself and his family. However, after resigning, Chen Yonggui insisted on moving out of the house where he lived as Vice Premier, and he also moved his family's household registration back to his hometown.
Chen Yonggui's former residence
In 1985, Chen Yonggui was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. After Deng Xiaoping learned of this news, he immediately arranged the best medical team for consultation and often sent his staff around him to visit him.
On March 26, 1986, Chen Yonggui's life finally came to an end. Before his death, he specifically instructed his family to keep the funeral simple, and then died suddenly at the age of 71.
Once the news of Chen Yonggui's death was made public, it aroused the attention of the people across the country. The people were grateful for his dedication to agricultural production and were all saddened by the departure of the farmer Vice Premier.
Chen Yonggui's memorial service
When holding the memorial service, Chen Yonggui's family was in trouble again: although everything should be kept simple, if it is too deserted, it will inevitably attract sarcasm from the troublemakers. If it is held too grandly, it will be accused of not complying with the specifications.
After Deng Xiaoping learned of this news, he made a decision for them in just one sentence: Comrade Chen Yonggui’s memorial service should be held in accordance with the specifications of the Vice Premier.
Although Chen Yonggui has left us, he dedicated all his life's hard work to the people without reservation. Until the last moment of his life, he always cared about the people. This good prime minister who was born in a peasant will always live in everyone's hearts.
Chen Yonggui is in Dazhai
