When I entered the chat room, even though there were no messages, I had mixed feelings when I saw the names of my brothers and sisters who were far away in China, and I couldn't help but shed tears. When I am the youngest, my memories have not disappeared, and when my brothers an

In early February 2022, just after the Spring Festival, my eldest brother in China established a new WeChat chat room and named it "Six Brothers and Sisters Chat Room".

entered the chat room. Although there were no messages, I had mixed feelings when I saw the names of my brothers and sisters who were far away in China, and I couldn't help but shed tears.

My parents gave birth to a total of six brothers and sisters. I am the youngest. I am now fifty-four years old and currently live in the distant New Zealand . The eldest brother is one round older than me and is also sixty-six years old. As the youngest, I will slowly watch them grow older, and I can't help but be filled with emotion.

Brothers and sisters are not used to chatting by text. They usually just leave short voice messages. When I faced an empty chat room, I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to write down some fragments of my childhood memories.

When I was the youngest, my memory has not disappeared. When my brothers and sisters can still find the days we have gone through together in my words, some of which are gratifying, some of which are helpless, and some of which are regretful, they all inspire me to persevere every day or more. Or write less and post it in the chat room for your brothers and sisters to read.

Writing requires materials. When I once again opened up the old memories buried deep in the hearts of my brothers and sisters, I deeply felt that it was not easy for them. In that era, the dreams of many aspiring young people were wasted. I feel how lucky I am to have the love and care of my parents and the selfless company of my brothers and sisters. Having them around is a blessing.

I think it’s more important to tell their stories. The oldest brother’s memory is declining every year. I want to record their life trajectories before their memories disappear.

I started collecting photos of my brothers and sisters when they were young. Most of them were black and white photos taken on film. Especially when I saw the photos of my three sisters when they were young and looked at their youth that bloomed like flowers, I was filled with emotion.

The Story of Datong Mining Area My Brothers and Sisters

Recalling the past, the memory is blurry, but when I write it into words, it is a song, and every note is so clear. ---Author Feichang Journey

We live in the Silaogou Mine in the southern suburbs of Datong. Our parents raised six of our brothers and sisters. Our childhood lives are deeply engraved in this ditch. In the 1990s, the six of us brothers and sisters later left the mining area one by one, but my parents have been here all their lives.

Our three brothers’ names all have the character “gui” in their names, and the names of our three sisters all have the character “gai” in their names. However, in the household registration book, the official names of the three sisters are different. Fortunately, the eldest sister is called Gaihua, the second sister is called Ernv, and the third sister is called Sannv. Their names are Gaiying and Gailan, but in The name in school is not the real household registration name. The third sister didn't like this name. After she was admitted to the normal school, she had her name changed through the authorities. After graduating from the normal school, she has been using the new name.

The nicknames of the three sisters are also very interesting. The eldest sister’s nickname is Qiao Sheng. Maybe after the parents gave birth to their son, the eldest brother, they hoped to have a daughter. The eldest sister came at the right time and was born by chance. The second sister’s nickname was simply Ernu. After the third sister was born, her parents wanted a son, so the third sister’s nickname was Tsang Sheng. The next step was indeed a son, and that was me.

The Story of Datong Mining Area

In October 1973, the eldest brother had not finished high school and was just eighteen years old. Like his father, he became a miner and shouldered the burden of the family's life. The eldest brother said that he was relatively lucky to be able to go to work, because most of his classmates went to the countryside to join the queue. He worked as a first-line underground worker in the nearby No. 7 Mine, mainly as a coal loader. He worked underground for three years and later transferred to work on the field.

When he first started working, his eldest brother bought a monthly bus pass and took the bus to and from Qi Mine and home every day. Later, he bought a bicycle as his main means of transportation. Because the journey to work is all uphill, it takes

more than 20 minutes to reach the workplace by riding a bicycle along the road next to the river ditch.

I remember that when I was in junior high school and walking to Xinmen Middle School with my classmates, I often met my elder brother riding a bicycle on the road. Whether it was a cold snowy day in winter or a heavy rainy day in summer, my eldest brother was down-to-earth and got through it all. This journey lasted for twelve years. It was not until my eldest brother became a corporate policeman and started riding the company's motorcycle that the journey to work became less strenuous. In 1985, the eldest brother became a corporate policeman, dealing with workplace thefts, fights and other violations of laws and disciplines.

My elder brother, who used to work underground as a coal loader, recalled his work underground with me on WeChat, which also satisfied my many years of questions and curiosity. Because when I was in junior high school, whenever I passed by a mining area, I often saw miners coming out of the mine. Not only were their work clothes stained with coal powder, but their faces were also black, from head to toe.

In order to provide miners with a normal working environment, ventilation equipment will be installed underground. The operation of the hair dryer will raise coal powder from time to time and blow it onto the miners' faces. Coupled with hard physical labor, miners will often sweat profusely and the coal powder will blow. Mixed with sweat, the miners' faces were blackened.

Coal mine shafts are generally divided into vertical shafts and inclined shafts. Vertical shafts need to be lowered to the deep underground working surface by a wheelbarrow truck. The eldest brother recalled that when he worked in No. 7 Mine, most of the shafts were inclined shafts. About twenty meters of slope, then take the tram to the working surface. There are lights in large alleyways with trams, but in alleys and working surfaces, workers need to use miner's lamps on their own safety helmets.

The coal mining working surface is safe. Every time the space is excavated, special staff will promptly set up iron or wooden supports and roof support plates to prevent landslides. From entering the well to exiting the well, there is a strict safety inspection system, and special staff conduct safety inspections. The miners' work clothes are also specially made to prevent frictional electrification causing fires.

My mother is always worried about the safety of my father and eldest brother at home. She prepares meals in advance in the afternoon and starts to worry about it. Once they come home late from get off work, my mother starts to get nervous and goes outside to take a look from time to time.

Only my father and eldest brother work at home, and my mother will prepare special meals for them, such as stir-fried meat and vegetables, scrambled eggs and white flour steamed buns. In the cold winter, before dawn, my mother got up early alone to prepare these meals. After my father and elder brother got up, they sat on the small bench on the ground and started eating. They kept discussing some things while the other children of us were still fast asleep on the kang.

In the early and mid-1970s, what we ate was basically cornmeal. My mother used cornmeal to make various staple foods, such as steamed buns, fa cake and pancakes. The limited supply of white flour from food stamps was basically given by my mother to my father and eldest brother, who were the breadwinners of the family. Occasionally, she would leave a little white flour for us to improve our meals. Those were the white flour steamed buns that we all liked to eat.

Until the late 1970s, when we moved to a building, our living conditions began to improve. We ate white flour every day. My mother often used white flour to make steamed buns and noodles, and we ate rice more often.

The story of the Datong Mining Area Wedding photos of the eldest brother and sister-in-law in the 1970s

The eldest brother got married when he was twenty-two years old, and the sister-in-law was introduced to her by her third aunt. They are cousins, both from Ying County . Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is the tallest and oldest existing purely wooden pavilion-style building in the world. It is listed as a key cultural relics protection unit by the country. Before the eldest brother got married, he and his sister-in-law visited the wooden pagoda . They took a commemorative photo in front of the wooden pagoda, and the photo is still kept at home.

We moved to a building on Xiangyang Street in 1978. My eldest brother built two houses and a large yard on the hillside behind our building. He also used one house as a small shop, mainly selling cigarettes and alcohol. , drinks and some snacks. The elder sister-in-law has no job and takes care of her three children who are all in school at home. She also manages a small shop. Although raising three children is difficult, the couple share the joys and sorrows and come through step by step.

When my eldest brother comes back from get off work, he will sometimes go upstairs to chat with his mother for a while, and her mother will also confide in him some trivial matters at home and worries in her heart. My eldest brother will also give us some magazines he bought to read first, especially " Popular Movies " and "Story Club" which we like to read.

One day, he brought back some stamps to me. It was also the first time that I came into contact with beautifully designed stamp patterns. They included landscape paintings, Peking Opera facial makeup paintings, and Chinese rare animal atlases, etc. What particularly attracted me was one A set of paintings from "The Twelve Beauties in the Red Chamber". The eldest brother said that if I like it, he will buy it for me again because he has a friend who works at the post office. From then on, my eldest brother would often buy me some stamps. I also specially bought a stamp album to store these beautiful stamps in categories.

The Story of Datong Mining Area

After graduating from high school in July 1976, the eldest sister, like most of her classmates, went to work in the countryside to join a team, so that she could get the opportunity to work in the future. The eldest sister went to Shizhuang Village, my father's hometown. Our father is also my father's eldest brother. Their family still lives in that village, so that my father can take care of my eldest sister.

The elder sister's work in the fields is mainly to spray pesticides. Like local farmers, she braves the hot sun every day to work hard on the rural land in summer. During the holidays, they can go home for the holidays because the distance is not very far and the eldest sister usually comes back.

Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, some neighbors set up a large stove for baking mooncakes in their yards just to make mooncakes for their neighbors. Remember that there is also a red-hot charcoal fire on the iron lid for baking mooncakes. It takes two people to move the lid every time. The men moved slowly away using strong wooden pillars. Neighbors prepared their own white flour, cooking oil, white sugar, sesame seeds, and other ingredients. They waited in line in the yard, and sometimes helped each other prepare the dough.

Autumn is the harvest season. The eldest sister will bring back a lot of fruits from the village, especially green and purple grapes, which look particularly slanderous. The eldest sister would use wool to make a small fruit bag for me and the third sister, and I would put small fruits of different colors into it, such as plums, apricots, peaches, etc. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, children will have small fruit bags like this, usually with a lanyard, hanging on their chests.

On the night of the full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival , the family gathers together, placing moon cakes and various fresh fruits on the table, such as apples, grapes, plums, and large watermelons. The elder brother used a fruit knife to cut the big watermelon into a tooth shape from the middle, and then broke it open. The watermelon on both sides formed a lotus shape. While the children were eating watermelon, they listened to their parents telling some legends about the moon, such as the story of Chang'e flying to the moon and the Jade Rabbit, as well as the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meeting once a year at the Magpie Bridge. Although the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is not necessarily related to the Mid-Autumn Festival, people are saying that on autumn nights, beside the grape tree stand, you can hear the voices of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl talking when they meet.

The eldest sister stayed in the countryside for three years and returned to the mining area to work in 1979. At that time, our family had moved to Xiangyang Building in the north of the river ditch.

A set of photos of the eldest sister

In 1982, the eldest sister reached the age of marriage. In my eyes, the eldest sister was the most beautiful of the three sisters. After she started working, she gave most of her income to her mother and kept some pocket money for herself. Like other young women, the eldest sister began to dress herself up. She also permed her hair.

Many matchmakers bring young men to our house for blind dates. We usually receive them in the big house. First, the mother chats with them, and then asks the eldest sister to come in and take a look. She usually takes one look and comes out immediately. We also help the eldest sister secretly observe, and the eldest sister will also ask her younger brothers and sisters for their opinions.

The eldest sister met a lot of blind dates, but the progress was slow, and my parents started to get anxious, until the eldest brother-in-law came to our house cleanly, and the eldest sister fell in love with him at first sight.

At that time, when young people were dating, there were no parks to play in. They basically visited and chatted at home. If they went out, it was to watch a movie. There were no televisions at home at that time, and movies were the main entertainment activity for young people.

I have watched many movies with my eldest sister and my second sister, especially the eldest sister, who has a job and income, and often buys tickets to watch movies with her friends. Because I was small, I didn’t need to buy a ticket, so I squeezed into the same seat as my eldest sister.

There are many classic translated films, and I watched them all with my eldest sister, such as "Les Miserables", "Notre Dame de Paris", "Yesenia", "Jane Eyre", and "Leper ", etc., through These classic movies also cultivated my interest in literature, and I later read several foreign classics and novels.

The eldest sister got married in 1982 and started living in Kouquan. However, her job was still at the No. 4 Mine, so she took a bus to and from get off work every day. She also took the bus to work when she was nearly eight months pregnant.

One day, she got off work early and slowly climbed up to the fourth floor where we lived. When she arrived at our house, she cried when she saw her mother, saying she had a stomachache. The mother thought she might be giving birth, so she quickly asked someone to take her to Qikang Hospital, where her son was born.

Later, the eldest sister and her family found a house in No. 4 Mine, so that the eldest sister could be closer to her workplace. The eldest brother-in-law started to commute by car again. He worked in a pharmaceutical factory in Datong .

My married eldest sister often brings her children to visit her parents. Since both her eldest sister and her eldest brother-in-law have jobs, my mother helps them take care of the children for a while.

The Story of Datong Mining Area

The second sister stopped going to school after graduating from junior high school. The Cultural Revolution was over by then, and the government did not force young people to go to rural areas to join the queue. The second sister also has no job, so she stays at home and helps her mother with a lot of housework. Her mother often asks the second sister to buy the food needed for the family's daily life.

The second sister mentioned on WeChat that she used to get up early at six in the morning and queue up at the grain store to buy white flour and cornmeal. Sometimes during the day, she would have to queue up at the vegetable store to buy groceries. After she bought the groceries, she couldn't carry them back alone, so her second brother would often go there and carry the groceries back home.

Sometimes the Qiaodong vegetable shop near our home does not supply oil, and we have to go to the Liangmatai vegetable shop further away to buy it. My mother usually asked the second sister to hold a small plastic oil drum, holding money and gas coupons tightly in her hands, and she had to walk twenty minutes to get there. At that time, the second sister didn't have any complaints. She called a neighbor's eldest sister, and they set off together.

Later, the second sister was not willing to have a job and stayed at home. She still chose to join the queue in the countryside, hoping that like the eldest sister, she would have the opportunity to be assigned a job in the future. At first, her parents were worried that she would not be able to bear the hardship of farm work and did not agree with her going to the countryside. However, the second sister made up her mind and went to the street to sign up with her household registration book.

In 1980, the second sister went to work in a rural area in Huairen, where she stayed for four years.

In the chat room of our six brothers and sisters, the second sister interacts with me the most. From the information she provided, I roughly understood the difficult journey of educated youths going to the countryside to join the queue. Only now do I understand the sacrifices my brothers and sisters made for this family, and how hard they fought for their own destiny.

The second sister worked in the apple orchard of Huairen Farm.There are more than 80 of them in the collective, living in a large dormitory. Men and women live in separate dormitories and share a communal cafeteria. They have different types of work, such as plowing the land, carrying manure, and pouring manure. The second sister has done manure. Like real farmers, they brave the scorching heat in summer and do farm work hard. After a month of hard work, they will get more than ten yuan, which also gives them a small sense of accomplishment because they no longer need to rely on their families financially.

During the Chinese New Year holiday, she often brought some dried vermicelli home for her mother to cook. Sometimes when she came back from the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, she would bring us some fresh fruit. Due to the long distance, sometimes the second sister didn't go home during the holidays. Her mother would ask her classmates who came back to bring her some stir-fry sauce. The second sister liked to eat it with steamed buns. The eldest sister, who was already working, also had people bring her five yuan, which made the second sister feel the warmth of the family.

In 1984, the second sister was transferred from the countryside to the mining area and was unemployed at home. However, she still faced difficulties in finding a job. Her parents were nagging about this matter all day long.

Later, my father was introduced to my second sister and asked her to work in a remote mountainous mine. The job was to give out mining lamps to workers, which was relatively easy. But after she stayed there for a few days, she cried to come back, saying it was too remote and there was nothing else to do except work.

Like the eldest sister, the second sister likes to watch movies. She has no job and usually asks her parents for money. At that time, movie tickets were only 15 cents. The second sister likes to watch Japanese movies. She thinks Japanese girls are very good-looking. Japanese female stars such as Mayumi , Kurihara Komaki , Yamaguchi Momoe , etc. are all her favorite stars. At that time, Japanese movies such as "The Hunting of ", "Love of Life and Death", "The Witness of ", "Swan Song" and "Looking Homeward " were all loved by young people.

Once the Japanese movie "The Story of the Fox" was played in a cinema. It must have been a ticket issued by my father's work unit. My brothers and sisters seemed to have gone to watch it. At first we thought it was a detective film, but after watching the movie, no one appeared, only foxes. The second sister was very disappointed.

A set of photos of the second sister

Unknowingly, it was time for the second sister to talk about marriage. The second sister is the shortest in our family, and she said she must find a tall partner.

After several blind dates, the second sister finally fell in love with the second brother-in-law. The second brother-in-law was tall and talented. The second sister also realized her wish to find a tall man.

My second brother-in-law is a miner and lives in No. 7 Mine near us. It takes more than 20 minutes to ride a bicycle to our house. On days off, the second brother-in-law would ride a bicycle to see the second sister. They also often went to the mining area auditorium to watch movies. Movies were also the second sister's favorite.

They got married a few months after they met, and had a little daughter the next year. Later, the family moved to a building with two bedrooms and one living room in Changshenggou, Qikang. The second sister's family also bought a color TV and a washing machine. The second sister later found a job in the grain store there.

After my parents passed away, I sometimes stayed at my second sister’s house when I went home during the holidays in my third year of college. My niece must be four years old. She often pesters me to tell stories. I will tell her the fairy tales I read in fairy tales when I was a child.

The eldest sister would also take her little daughter and take the bus from No. 4 Mine to visit me at the second sister’s house. At that time, after getting off the train at Qikang Bus Station, we had to walk a long mountain road and climb uphill to reach the second sister's residential building in Changshenggou. We got together for a short time, had lunch, and the eldest sister had to catch the bus back.

The eldest sister’s youngest daughter was a superborn child. At that time, the eldest sister braved the pressure from her workplace to give birth to her daughter, which was not easy. The second sister later gave birth to another daughter, also a superborn child. None of the children had a household registration at first. When they were about to enter elementary school, money was spent to help them obtain a household registration.

The eldest sister got married in 1982, and the second sister got married in 1984. They both had their own families, but they often brought their children to visit their parents and younger siblings.

Six brothers and sisters

It may be the nature of our children. The second brother, third sister and I all take the initiative to love learning, and our grades in school are all very good. The second brother graduated from high school and was admitted to Datong Coal Technical School. After graduating from the technical school for two years, he returned to the mine in 1983 and became a worker.

While working, the second brother also tried to study for the college entrance examination by himself. He bought a set of self-study college entrance examination books, which seemed to cost less than twenty yuan. I remember that there were many of his books piled on the desk at home. In the evening, he and several of his close classmates went to attend a class near the auditorium. There were free workshops specially organized by the mine leaders for employees, especially mathematics courses. Unfortunately, it didn't work out in the end and the second brother gave up. He worked as an underground worker for several years and later moved to the field as an electrician.

My second brother was a good calligrapher. Hand-written novels became popular in the mining areas in the mid-1980s. My second brother copied many strange novels for us using red flag books. The ones that impressed me most were "The Twelfth Beauty Skin", "A Pair of Embroidered Shoes" and "The Green Corpse". My sisters' classmates often came to our house to borrow these manuscripts .

A year after my mother passed away, my second brother also got married in 1987, which finally settled one of my father's worries. At that time, I was in my first year of college, and the summer vacation was about to come. My second brother sent me extra money and asked me to buy him some popular tapes from Wuhan and some magazines and books about knitting sweaters for my second sister-in-law. I bought "Let the World Be Full of Love", which was very popular at the time, and the music tape of the TV series "A Dream of Red Mansions " which caused a sensation in China that year.

When I returned home during the summer vacation, I slept in the small house, my father was in the balcony house, and my second brother and his family were in the big house. When the third sister came back from the normal school, she was in the hut, and my father and I slept in the balcony room. I also bought two skirts for my third sister from Wuhan, and she was very happy. She was only twenty years old at the time, and she was in love, so she should dress herself up.

In 1984, the third sister was preparing for her college entrance examination at No. 4 Kuang High School. She studied very hard and often studied alone in our small house. At that time, the mine would have frequent power outages at night, which made the third sister very distressed. She was often seen studying with candles lit.

When she entered her first choice school in the college entrance examination, for insurance, she applied for a relatively unpopular agricultural university. However, she did not go well in the college entrance examination in the first year and was not admitted to the school.

learned that the resources in the mining area were limited, so she left home to stay at her uncle's house in Pingwang District, and went to Kouquan Middle School for another year of intensive tutoring. She sometimes went home on weekends. I was living in the Bureau No. 1 Middle School for my freshman year of high school, and I would go home on weekends. I would see her at home. She would ask me some questions, and sometimes she would write an essay and ask me to write an example first to give her some ideas, especially argumentative essays.

In 1985, after a year of tutoring at Kouquan Middle School, the third sister was finally admitted to Datong Normal School, majoring in mathematics, and started her new life trajectory. At that time, the normal school belonged to the government department, and the school provided accommodation and meals. This also saved a lot of money for ordinary ordinary families.

The third sister who was studying in a normal school met the third brother-in-law of the same school. The two fell in love freely and did not follow the blind date route of the eldest sister and the second sister. After the two of them graduated, the third sister became a mathematics teacher at a primary school in Kouquan, and the third brother-in-law found a job in a local company.

Later, the third sister found a job in a primary school in , Datong City, and continued to be a math teacher. The family also bought a house in Datong City. The third sister is also the first among us siblings to move to Datong City.

In September 1983, I started living in high school for three years. Datong Mineral Bureau No. 1 Middle School is a key high school in Shanxi Province. It is a residential school where outstanding students from various mining areas gather. The purpose of the school is to send more miners' children to colleges and universities across the country. Three years of high school life also changed my destiny.

The story of Datong Mining Area My high school days

In the mining area in the 1980s, once the relationship between a man and a woman was established, before getting married, the young lovers in our mining area liked to travel to Beijing. Both the eldest sister and the second sister had been there.

I started going to college in Wuhan in 1986. Every year after the school holidays, I had to take a train back to Wuhan and transfer in Beijing. On the train from Datong to Beijing, you will meet such young lovers traveling to Beijing. They are in high spirits, talking and laughing, and are full of confidence and hope for the future. The train departs from Datong Station at 10 p.m. and will arrive in Beijing at 6 a.m. after eight hours of night travel.

Datong Mining District Silaogou Mine Railway Station

In my memory, my brothers and sisters were very filial to their parents. After getting off work, my eldest brother often goes up to our fourth floor to chat with his mother. She will also confide in him some trivial matters at home and worries in her heart.

After my second brother went to work, he insisted on buying canned food for my mother. There was no refrigerator before, so my mother usually put the canned goods in a cool place on the balcony. When I went home on weekends, my mother would leave some for me.

The eldest sister who lives in No. 4 Mine passes by our house after get off work and often goes upstairs to have a look and chat with my mother. She leaves us some food distributed by her work unit, such as sugar and orange powder.

The second sister married to Qikang and often took her niece on the train to visit her parents and us on weekends. She didn’t live there either, so the second brother-in-law picked them up on his motorcycle at night.

In 1986, my third sister was still in normal school, and I was studying at Kuang No. 1 Middle School to prepare for my college entrance examination. On weekends, we all returned to our homes in the mining area. My second sister also brought the children over, and the family spent a short time on the weekend. Mom and dad were also very happy to get together.

At that time, I felt that our family had experienced hardships and had good times, and life would get better and better. Along the way, I also feel that I am very lucky to be walking on the road to college without knowing it. My education process is also something that my parents are proud of and often chatter with the neighbors.

A set of ID photos of the author when he was young

The footprints of those years, author Feichang's journey

The author's other articles

Feichang's journey The story of Datong Mining District