My family’s relocation history
Author: Wang Qiong/Xianyang Changqing Children’s School
My father once worked in an iron factory. There were three living bases in the unit, one was the comprehensive living area in the town, one was in the mining area, and the other was In the mining area. Because my father is a mining engineering designer, our family lived in the mining area at first.
The family courtyard of the mining area is located in the mountains. Rows of neat houses are surrounded by a circle of tall poplar woods, with a gurgling stream in the woods. Each house here has only one suite, which is two rooms. In order to make life easier, people in the factory helped each other and built small courtyards with bricks and tiles. This is how a "home" with a separate courtyard was formed. Because the mining area is vast and sparsely populated, every family yard is relatively spacious. There are only two rooms in my house. My parents live in the outer room. My brother and I are young and live in the inner room. My parents draw a curtain between the two single beds. My father built his own kitchen and utility room in the yard. The yard passage was paved with blue bricks, and red bricks were used to form zigzag edges on both sides. Because there is only one store in the mining area, which sells some tobacco, alcohol and daily necessities, if you want to eat fresh vegetables, you have to be self-sufficient, so my father cultivated two small vegetable gardens on both sides of the passage. If you want to buy other things, you have to take the shuttle bus to the town to buy them.
The Zidi Primary School in the mining area only has grades one to three. When I was in fourth grade, I had to take the factory shuttle bus to the Changzidi Primary School in the town 10 kilometers away every day. There were four round trips a day, and each trip took about half an hour. I remember one time I overslept during lunch break and missed the bus. I ran to my father’s office and pulled him to force him to take me to school. My father looked at the heavy snow in the sky, frowned and said, "I'll call the school to ask for a leave for you. The weather is really bad today!" I refused, just crying and refusing to give up. My father gritted his teeth, took a pair of cotton gloves, and said, "Let's go!" Then he took me on his bicycle and rushed into the heavy snow.
From the mining area to the town, we have to pass through a seven-kilometer stretch of the Gobi Desert. There is no obstruction along the way, the wind blows harder, and the snow particles hit our faces painfully. My father, who had a head full of "white hair", straightened his back to protect me from the snow, and his thin face turned red from the cold. I regretted my stubbornness at that time, and asked my father embarrassedly: "Dad, are you cold?" My father said, "It's not cold. I'm doing my best, so why are you cold?" I said nothing more, and I couldn't say anything more, because he The more you say a word, the more snow you eat and the more cool breeze you get. Halfway through, I clearly saw that the fronts of his two leather shoes were covered with thick ice shells. During the long seven kilometers, I was shivering with cold and my teeth kept chattering, but I didn’t dare to let my father feel it.
It was already the second period when I arrived at school. Although my father was careful, he still staggered when he got off the car. He limped and pushed the bicycle, trying not to let anyone see that his legs were almost out of control. . The teacher saw us through the window and was surprised and asked us to go in and warm up quickly. My father waved his hand and said that we had to go back to work. I sat in the warm classroom and didn't listen to a word the teacher said all afternoon. All I could think about was the scene of my father pedaling his bicycle hard against the wind and snow...
When I got home in the afternoon, my father didn't mention the way back. The hardships on the way. In order to make it easier for my brother and I to go to school, with my father's efforts, we moved to a living base in the town half a year later, but my father started taking the shuttle bus to leave early and come back late.
The houses in the living base in the town are similar to those in the mining area. The difference is that it has two bedrooms and one living room, about more than 60 square meters. The small courtyard is built by the units and is roughly square. Standing on the passage, you can see the living room and large bedroom of the people in the front row through the window. My father built another utility room with bricks on the right side of the yard. The red bricks in the yard are laid out in a zigzag pattern and are clean and smooth.The first room on the left when I enter my house is the kitchen, and the second room is the largest living room. My parents share the living room with the bedroom. Directly across the corridor is my brother's bedroom, which is spacious and bright. I am very envious of his four large windows. The smallest bedroom on the right is mine. It can only accommodate a single bed and a set of tables and chairs. It also has only one window. For this reason, I grumbled unhappily for many days. But I quickly put this worry behind me because of the convenience of going to school and the liveliness of the town. Because the school is in the family area, I don’t have to get up half an hour early every day to catch the bus, and I don’t have to wait boredly for the bus to pick me up after school. , not to mention worrying about annoying my father because of being late.
In 1993, the bungalows in the family area were bulldozed in batches from front to back, and six-story buildings were built one after another. People living in the mining area and the refining area also moved here one after another according to the housing allocation policy, and the community became more and more lively. . In the evening, people enjoying the shade sit in rows and chat. Primary school students finish their homework early and hang out with friends in the yard. Girls jump rubber bands and jump squares. Some boys play football and some chase around for fun. At that time, the children's primary schools in various units also responded to the policy and closed down the schools within a few years. All students were enrolled in several central primary schools in the town according to their place of residence. Our community is close to the school, and it takes less than ten minutes to go to school. arrive. At the beginning, the students would be far away from each other depending on their units. As time went by, they naturally started to play together with those who had similar temperaments.
When I was in junior high school in 1996, my family also lived in a building! White walls, pink checkered tiles, beige bedroom doors, and glass sliding doors separate the living room from the balcony. It’s so beautiful! The house is larger than the previous one, with 82 square meters, two bedrooms, a living room and a dining room. We thought it would be great if the dining room could be a bedroom, but it is connected to the kitchen and it is difficult to change it into a bedroom. I chose a new bed with a bookcase on the bedside for my small bedroom, paired with a table and chairs of the same color, and I felt very happy. The elder brother's bedroom was transformed from a balcony, with only room for a single bed. The writing desk in his parents' bedroom was his desk. In winter in the north, a bit of cold wind comes in through the cracks in the windows. My brother can't stand the cold and often sleeps with his head covered. In summer, the sun shines directly in from the balcony window, making it extremely hot. My father asked someone to make the balcony windows double-layered and hang thick curtains. This would make my brother's "life" easier. I often joked and made faces at my brother: "Feng Shui is changing, come to my house this year." !" My brother tried to beat me. In fact, I knew that my brother was leaving me. As soon as my father proposed to let him sleep on the balcony, he agreed. He never wanted to compete with me for that bedroom.
In 2009, several high-rise buildings with more than 20 floors were added to the community, with an area of more than 130 square meters. At that time, my brother and I were living in other places because of work, and my parents also moved with my brother to other places. Looking up and seeing the blue sky above the tall building, I couldn't help but think: If my family lived in a house like this at that time, my brother wouldn't have to live on the balcony to be blown by the wind in the winter and hot in the summer.
In just twenty or thirty years, our houses have become more spacious and our lives have become more comfortable, achieving a leap from "livable" to "excellent living". Not only that, in the future we will live greener and more comfortable. Wisdom, look, the good days are yet to come!
(This article is reproduced from the "Learning to Strengthen the Country" Shaanxi Learning Platform on June 24, 2022)
About the author: Wang Qiong, a teacher at Xianyang Changqing Children's School and a member of the Communist Party of China. In 2008, the educational story "Easily Injured Self-Esteem" won the second prize at the Class Teacher Forum of the Petroleum General Education Management Center. In 2010, the paper "Opening Our Chinese Teaching Classroom" won the second prize of the Provincial Institute of Educational Sciences. In 2011, the essay "The Party in My Heart" won the first prize of Shaanxi Province. In 2015, the teaching design "Spring Couplets" won the first prize of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Educational Sciences. First prize. In 2020, he won the first prize in the "My Epidemic Prevention Story" essay competition of the Petroleum General Education Management Center.
