Text/Simu
Lived in Changsha City for generations. All year round, summer life is the richest. It is characterized by heat, especially the scorching sun, which is a test of nature on human life and will. It is hard to bear the scorching heat and is in panic all day long, but summer also breeds the fruits of autumn and the harvest of autumn.
Every morning, as soon as the sun emerges, you can immediately feel the intense ultraviolet rays that bring people a burning feeling. By noon, the sun is scorching in the sky, and if you walk in the sun, it feels like you are in fire. After a morning of exposure, the earth has absorbed heat and started to release heat. The thermometer always stays at about 37 or 8 degrees during this season, or even reaches forty degrees.
Sunny, hot and high temperature weather, while baking people's bodies, it is also baking people's emotions. In summer, the body is prone to heatstroke and the mood is more prone to heatstroke. The heatstroke is like a wild horse that has broken away from its reins. Sometimes it is restless and has a hot temper. Sometimes it is full of thoughts and memories related to the hot summer.
That year, things that were so hot in Changsha happened from time to time
I remember learning geography in elementary school, and I only knew that there were three major furnaces in China, all on the edge of the Yangtze River, namely Chongqing, Wuhan, and Nanjing. With my personal experience and feelings of more than 60 years of life, the heat of Changsha in summer should be the fourth largest furnace city in China and deserve it.
According to my father, Changsha, in 1954, Changsha had the largest flood, the longest heat and high temperature weather, and the highest temperature was probably 40 degrees (Baidu searches Changsha with meteorological records since 1951, with the highest temperature being 42 degrees, but I don’t know which year it was).
That year, people who died of heat often occurred in Changsha. Those who died of heat were the elderly and children. Children who died of heat were carried in baskets and sent to the outside of the city to bury them quickly. Such things happen every summer in the slums in India. I didn’t expect that Changsha, where I live, also had such incidents in 1954, which sounded quite scary.
I was born in Changsha in the summer of 1953. I just turned one year old in 1954. My young life has experienced such high temperature and scorching heat and can survive. I have to thank my parents for their careful care and for my tenacious life.
"Holding" - a warm memory of childhood
In childhood, there was another thing that always reminded me of when it was hot in summer, that was "Holding" my father bought rice.
I remember that one summer when I was four or five years old, the hot summer had already baked the earth extremely hot, especially in the afternoon. The hot sun shone the newly built asphalt road in front of my house one after another. On the black asphalt road, layers of visible air heat waves continued to rise, and the cicadas on the trees were also baked by the scorching sun, which added some anxiety and anxiety to the people who were resting in the afternoon.
At about three o'clock one afternoon, my father had to buy rice after finishing his whole life. The place where he bought rice was in the current Juguan Temple, which was also called Wangjiapingzi at that time, and it was only two miles away from my family Jingwu Road.
For some reason, I learned that my father was going out, so I had to follow him. The behavior of adults calling the child "following his feet". In fact, now I think about it now that the child’s subconscious mind is simply to ask adults to take advantage of the opportunity to go out to buy some candy and other snacks. Just for this greed, I cried and made a fuss, and my attitude was very stubborn, so my father had already walked from the streets to the main road, and I was crying and chasing him to the door of the Xie family’s tailor shop.
When my father saw me and I left the house, he had to turn it back and blamed me, "You are just disobedient. You must follow me in the hot weather. You will know how amazing it is later!" After that, he stretched out his rough big hand and held me through the newly built road in front of the door.
Children are children. If you have adults holding them, you will feel at ease and feel at ease. You will not cry anymore. You will wear shorts, be shirtless, and walk on the asphalt road that is almost melted and soft by the sun. You will only feel soft, hot, and uncomfortable. But you can’t remember the fresh and exciting feeling.
Comic "Father and Son" Author / E-O-Braun
Cross the road and walk into the alley of Hengqing Examination Hall diagonally opposite. The road is paved with long strips of mashi . The mashi is also hot and hot, and the small foot boards are stepped on it. It’s no wonder that the streets in the Qing Dynasty, after hundreds of years of wind and rain and crushing, can they not be smooth? My father walked very quickly, and I was almost trotting all the way and was led by him. Only in this way can I keep up with his pace and not get scalded and uncomfortable.
Changsha Old Mashishi Pavement/Photo provided by Hong Xinyi
Run out of Hengqing Test Hall, crossing Zhongfu Garden and the Biaozi Bridge, not far ahead is the Juguanci Grain Store. The grain store has a black painted door, which is very thick (you can see everything you see). The store is also very large and feels cool. After a while, my father bought rice and fed oil, and led me back.
Carrying twenty kilograms of rice on his shoulders, holding a bottle of oil in his hand, and holding me walking under the scorching sun. My father obviously struggled. While he was breathing, he said softly: "Look at whether you will follow your feet next time. I know it's amazing this time. Don't follow your feet next time, remember?" There was a blame in his tone, but it was more pity.
Listening to my father's breathing and repeated muttering along the way, stepping on the hot stone road and asphalt road, he went home in a while. There is no desire to eat snacks, nor the depression of being blamed by my father. There is only the freshness and excitement of walking under the scorching sun. It is really: "Children do not recognize the taste of summer."
Comic "Father and Son" Author / E-O-Braun
For many years, every time I encounter hot summer, I always remind me of the father who "followed my feet" to buy rice. This picture like ink painting always appears in front of me: a father wearing a white round-neck sweatshirt and Shilin blue shorts, carrying rice on his shoulders, holding a bottle of oil in one hand and holding a thin child in the other hand, the thin child was shirtless, wearing shorts, and a pair of bare feet. The father and son walked in the ancient streets and alleys of the Qing Dynasty. The weather was hot, but it felt warm.
Swimming in Liuyang River almost drowned
The hot summer also provides us naughty urban children with a special way to cool off, that is to go swimming in the river.
Especially after the summer vacation, we have broken away from the school's control, and parents are busy making a living and have no time to take care of it. We naughty children who live in slums and are even more unrestrained. After lunch, the children in the alley sneak out of their homes and gathered together in groups of three or five to swim in the Xiangjiang River or Liuyang River.
Now looking back, this is a very adventurous activity. Without the supervision of adults, it is easy for children to get into trouble. Even now, every summer, children's swimming and drowning incidents are still frequently seen on TV and newspapers, not to mention the 1950s and 1960s when we grew up. On our street, some children went out to swim with us after lunch, while others would never come back.
I remember a child living on the street behind us named Mao Jizi. He is twelve years old and is very big. He never came back after going out at noon. His father was a tricycle club, and his mother was a housewife. After taking him back, it was placed on the bamboo shop, which was a full bamboo shop. It was a pity! The child who is about to be adult died like this, leaving his parents with a lifetime of sadness and pain.
I almost encountered danger in the summer of my ten years old. Fortunately, my neighbor who went with me was very good at water and was several years older than me. He and another neighbor worked hard to rescue me from the Liuyang River channel. In fact, the reason for drowning at that time was very simple, which was the difference between the child's thoughts.
That afternoon, I went to the Liuyang River to swim with him and several other neighbors' children. At that time, I had not learned to swim, so I only played in the water on the shore with my waist. My neighbor's elder brother believed that he was good at water. After playing for a while, he said to me: "Can we swim to the other side? The water there is clear, more fun, and you can also steal the farmers' watermelons." Xi Zi was greedy, and when he heard that there was watermelon to eat, he was moved.But I said, "I can't swim yet, I'm afraid when I get to the middle of the river!" He said it doesn't matter, I'll carry you over.
At that time, this neighbor's elder brother was fourteen or fifteen years old. He looked like an adult and had good water quality. He crossed the Xiangjiang River and crossed the Liuyang River. He went back and forth like walking on flat ground without any effort, which made us young men who could not swim very envious. It was precisely because of my trust in him that I let him carry me and swim into the river. Unexpectedly, as soon as I entered the waterway in the river, the water flowed rapidly, and I panicked and tied his neck tightly with both hands. He couldn't breathe, so he kept asking me to let go, but in that case, how could I dare to let go?
Only in that case can people understand what dying struggle means. Not only did I not let go, I also grabbed the tighter and tighter. I really didn't let go like I was grabbing a life-saving straw. He choked two mouthfuls of water and panicked. I went under the water with a backstroke. He took a lot of effort to break free from my hands. I kept struggling in the water, drinking water (fortunately I didn't choke to death). I thought to myself: It's over, it's over...
At this time, after breaking away from my hands, my neighbor calmed down and hurriedly approached me from behind with another swimming neighbor, and pulled me up. One of them pulled me with one hand, and swam for a while before pulling me ashore.
After I got ashore, I didn't come back to my senses for a long time. I lay on the beach and heard a bigger neighbor's child say: Hurry up and wake him up, so as not to get "water ghosts" (there is this custom among the people that those who are rescued after drowning should twitch their mouths to drive away ghosts and awaken righteousness). I hurriedly sat up and said, "Don't hit, I'm awake." After saying that, with a wow, he vomited a large pool of water and the person came to his senses.
On the way home, my neighbor said to me, "You are so lucky. If you drowned you today, I will take the opportunity to explain to your parents." To be honest, I have never choked on water since I swim. Today is the first time I have tasted the choking smell. If someone hadn't helped me, I would have taken the opportunity to save you. I said, I don’t know why I hugged your neck tighter and tighter. Maybe I was panicked when I saw the deep water floating.
The two of them just chatted about the feeling of surviving the disaster. When they returned home, they didn’t dare to tell their parents that they were still as if they were beaten, but they were actually very scared in their hearts. Whenever they thought of the scene of being flooded, they always felt scared. This is what people often call fate. My life is endless, so I can still make fun of these words here today. ah! The memories that made me pass by death will never be forgotten for life!
"installing kilns" in high temperatures, and using "How Iron and Steel" to encourage
When I was seventeen years old, I started working. My unit was a brick and tile factory, and the first type of job was to install kilns. It was midsummer shortly after I started working. On the hot summer, the temperature was already over 30 degrees, and we had to go into the dim kiln room to load the kiln.
The specific job is to stack bricks weighing up to six kilograms into a stack of brick walls with ventilation functions according to certain roasting requirements. This is a physical work that requires certain skill and skill. It takes four or five hours to do it, and the weight it transports every day reaches dozens of tons.
Especially in the hot summer and high temperature season, we stood in the kiln room that had just been ablated by a thousand-degree blazing fire. We were all over, just like we were caught in water. There was no dry yarn. The temperature in the kiln room was high but very dim. Two low-pressure incandescent lamps were suspended on the top of the kiln room for lighting. The high-speed axial fan was wrapped in harsh noise, hot air and dust, which made us difficult to breathe and couldn't open our eyes. We were wearing one-inch thick cloth-sole round-mouth canvas shoes under our feet. Only such shoes can protect the soles of the feet from being scalded by the hot kiln room. It felt really painful to do such a thing at the beginning.
and we went to the factory together. Some of us couldn't bear such hardship and simply refused to come to work and quit their jobs. Some started to go to the infirmary and hospital to take sick leave, and some looked for relationships to change jobs. In short, as long as we could get out of this job, everyone would cross the sea of eight immortals and show their magical powers.
people work in high-temperature places, sweat a lot, and have a very thirsty mouth. Only by constantly drinking water can the body maintain balance of moisture. There is a large wooden barrel outside the kiln. Inside the barrel is tea made of old tea leaves. The tea is very thick, just like the current soy sauce. There is a layer of white brick dust floating on it. Every ten minutes, you have to run out of the kiln room to drink a scoop to breathe out the natural air outside. I was very amazed at the antibodies in my body. There were more than a dozen people in a homework team who drank a bucket of tea and shared a scoop. I had not been infected with any infectious diseases such as hepatitis B for many years.
Working in that difficult working environment is also a test of people's will. During those difficult years, I always used a sentence from the former Soviet novel "How Steel Is Tempered" to cheer myself up: "Labor is harsh, but it can train people into steel education." I also often recite the teachings of the ancients: "So when God will give great responsibilities to this man, he must first suffer his heart and mind, exhaust his muscles and bones, starve his body, and be empty... Then he knows that he is born in distress and dies in happiness."
Use this belief to strengthen your will and persist in that heavy and arduous work. Winter goes and spring comes, and for six years, I spent the dark, hot and dusty wheel kiln workshop. In other words, there were six hot summers boiled in that kiln room.
Especially those old masters who are older than me, have been engaged in this work since they entered the factory in the mid-to-late 1950s until they retired in the mid-to-late 1980s. It can be said that they have been working on red bricks for life. Their hard-working spirit cannot but be respected.
It is these six years of hard work experience that has become the most important spiritual wealth on my life path. It inspires me to continue to work hard to change my living environment. My level of education is the foundation of elementary school and the brand of middle school, so I used my spare time to pick up the original middle school textbooks and started systematic self-study. The purpose of self-study is to enrich my spare time, and second, I firmly believe that the knowledge I have learned can come in handy after all.
1979 hot summer, July 7, 8 and 93, I took the national unified college entrance examination. Although this college entrance examination was not recorded, it aroused my confidence and courage. Finally, in the hot summer of 1982, I received the admission notice from Hunan Radio and Television University and started three years of TV University study and life.
The subsequent high temperature of forty degrees is 40 degrees, but after experiencing the extreme weather in 1954, I experienced another high temperature of 40 degrees. It was August 10, 2013.
First day weather forecast message informs citizens: (No WeChat at that time) Today's temperature will reach 40 degrees. Since Changsha had a meteorological record in 1951, high temperatures of more than 35 degrees have reached more than 40 days, which is a record number.
What is the concept of high temperature of forty degrees? The atmospheric temperature has exceeded the human body temperature by four degrees. In such extremely high temperature weather, if the body is not careful, it will cause heatstroke. In mild cases, fainting, and in severe cases, shock . I am just over 60 years old, spring comes and autumn comes and cold comes and heat goes, but it is common to me, but such high temperatures are the first time I have experienced it in my life. (Because the first time I was too young, I had no memory.)
. Faced with such extreme high temperatures, citizens' reactions were normal. Although the sun was still vicious, it was no different from usual. Retired old men and aunts still practice morning exercises, and young people work as usual. The high temperature of 40 degrees is not particularly uncomfortable for the body feeling.
I remember that it happened to be Sunday. I exercised and relaxed in the park in the morning. After lunch, I took a nap in the air-conditioned room in the afternoon. When the sun sets in the west, the high temperature of forty degrees passed normally. If you think about it carefully, there are no wonder two reasons. One is that the continuous high temperature weather has strengthened the body's adaptability and regulation function. The other is that abundant electricity and popular air conditioning equipment have improved people's own high temperature resistance, making people in the city feel that the high temperature is 40, but that's it.
The hot summer gives us rich life connotations. Under the evaporation of sunny, hot and high temperatures, some unusual stories will always be interpreted, and some unforgettable feelings will be played back from time to time on the hard drive we remember.
END
*This article is exclusively published by City Memory CityMemory. Author | Simu, Editor | Makino, Typeset | Lilian, Unspecified Source Pictures are all from the Internet.
