One year, Mingwa and Mingwa’s mother came to Beijing with us to treat Mingwa’s illness. It was the first time for both mother and son to take a train and see the plains for the first time. They stayed awake all night and looked out of the window, saying, "Suffering is not a bad thing, and selling seeds is so popular." They said, "You have to work here even if you are a beast. The land is full of plains." It was early in the morning, and the sunshine gradually spread on the vast plains, and the mist also became brilliant. However, Mingwa suddenly sighed and said, "I have nothing to do in this life. I have to die early and live again." The wrinkles at the corners of Mingwa's mother's eyes immediately spread out, and she scolded him with a stern face: "You are talking nonsense again!" The scattered wrinkles were all white marks, because there was less sun exposure. We also advise Mingwa not to have any wild ideas. Isn’t it because she relies on Beijing to cure her illness? Mingwa said nothing more. Both mother and son stopped talking and looked out the window, which seemed to be filled with emptiness.
Mingwa's disease is congenital heart disease .
When we arrived at Qingping Bay, we didn’t have our own cave dwelling yet, so we stayed at Mingwa’s old stone cave first. It was on the high earth cliff at the head of the village, twenty or thirty meters away from the cliff. The machine was shut down all day long to hear the sound of water from the Qingping River. Ming's baby is big, chews "scars", and can't remember his scientific name. In northern Shaanxi dialect, pockmarks are called scars. Mingwa's mother is also called Aunt Scarzi, Fengying or Yuying. Mingwa is the boss, and the next six are all boys. Whoever ranks next is called Yuan'er.
If Mingwa had been born in Beijing, at least she would not have died so young. If you were born in our place, apart from being unable to move, you would always be suffering. The hardships in the mountains are not light. Even if you are following the cow's butt to hit the dirt, you still have to rush away while the old cow is behind. An adult laborer has to keep up with three or four groups of cattle. The transition to adult labor at the age of seventeen or eighteen requires the most effort. Others are reluctant to admit that you have grown up, and they are reluctant to mark your merits. Mingwa is at this age, working hard to earn ten cents of work. Unless you first overwhelm many adult workers in terms of physical fitness and strength, it will be difficult. Mingwa is not short, but she is thin due to illness. When the work was over, everyone walked back to the village. He would stand on the ground to catch his breath for a while, holding the handle of the hoe, with bloodless lips. The person who left behind advised him not to be greedy for work points and collapse his body, so he forced a smile and said: "It's not bad at all." He kept breathing, and his voice was as low as talking to himself.
The book introduces our place like this: the surface is broken, with undulating beams and ridges, and ravines. The area along the Yellow River has narrow mountain ridges, steep slopes and deep ravines, and the bedrockis exposed, forming canyons and cliffs...
It is said that the wind moved the loess to form the plateau that spans thousands of kilometers, and the water cut them into pieces over the long years. When I went there in early 1969, there were dozens of trucks, raising yellow dust for miles and crawling on the plateau. People huddled in the carport. Soon we saw the cave dwellings, which looked very revolutionary in rows. Everyone sighed. Then we saw the sheep again. The old man holding the sheep was wearing an old sheepskin coat. Everyone respected them from the bottom of their hearts and waved to the old man, but the old man only paid attention to his sheep. Then we saw people wearing white sheep belly handkerchiefs crowding on the bank of the river, looking at our motorcade blankly and doubtfully. We waved to the world again, but the world still stood dumbly and doubtfully. The plateau was flat and open, like a plain, endless as far as the eye could see. Suddenly, the car seemed to have reached the end of the earth, and the plain land collapsed like an ax or a machete into a large deep valley. Looking down, I felt dizzy. There are also people living in the deep valley, with smoke curling from cooking stoves, dogs barking and chickens crowing, and the animals and their drivers are as small as crawling ants. The further north you go, the more deep valleys you see, and the bigger they become. The flat land gradually disappears, and it becomes all undulating mountain ridges. Then arrived in Yan'an. Then I found that Pagoda Mountain was not "towering", and Yanhe River could not "flow" in winter. Then when someone offered us a job, the county cadre leading the team yelled away. The poetry in my heart was frustrated. Li Zhuo made a hiss between his teeth and tilted his head to think for a long time.
After arriving in our county, we got off the truck in a small town. The county cadre leading the team asked, should we rest overnight and then walk the dozens of miles of mountain roads, or should we go now? Men and women are competing to be heroes. They have come when they come, so they have nothing to fear. They can go now and go now.Several cadres led us over mountains and ditches, and then over mountains again, saying they were looking for a shortcut. Dozens of fellow villagers carried our luggage and climbed up the mountain with camel-like steps; each piece of luggage weighed seventy or eighty kilograms. The mountains are high, steep, and equally bare, with narrow paths winding over them. It took a long time to walk down a mountain ridge, and a half day to climb up another mountain ridge. Looking around, there were still endless mountain ridges, mountain ridges, deep ravines and ravines, connected to the sky.
But the top of the mountain is said to be flat and loose soil. Zhong Wei gasped and asked me: "Are there crops grown here?" "Impossible." Jin Tao said, also panting. Some girls also asked: "Is it possible to grow things at such a high place?" "Is it blown by the wind? It's so flat?" The fellow villagers laughed: "Where can the cheap wind come from? We still have to deliver dung here!" "How to deliver it?" "People carry it." "What to grow?" "How many kilograms is it?" "Seventy or eighty kilograms in total." "One acre?" "Oh," "One acre is only seventy or eighty kilograms?!" "Hey! Then we will be top-notch, and we have to catch up with the good years." Okay, now I understand what "dumbfounded" means. They all lowered their heads and walked away in silence. I don't know if these fellow villagers were lying to us, or if the school's propaganda team deceived us when they arrived. My feet became heavy. There were indeed wheat seedlings growing on the loosened land, and the mountain winds made them tremble.
Scarzi stuck out his butt and walked away, carrying my box with books on his back. I know how heavy that box is. It contains many hardcover Marxist-Leninist classics and literary and philosophical masterpieces. I thought that since I entered the society, I would of course have to think about some serious things in the future, and I could no longer think about fishing. Scarzi didn't know that he was carrying so many ideas and doctrines, and seemed to wonder why this small box was so heavy. Seeing the sweat on his forehead, I had no guts to say, "Let me carry it for a while." I just asked in shame, "Is it heavy?" Smile lines immediately appeared at the corners of Scar's eyes and forehead, "Ahem -!" He said, the smile lines on his face remained unchanged, and he became more and more happy as he carried the box. It took him a long time to find another sentence and asked me: "Are you getting up in the background?" I said I was from Beijing. "Ahem——!" he said again, his face still full of smile lines. He tried hard to think, but couldn't find anything else to say. "How soon will you be back?" another fellow asked. I said I wouldn’t go back and would stay in Qingping Bay from now on. "Ahem——!!" All the fellow villagers shouted and laughed non-stop, as if they had heard lies.
This "cough--!" has many meanings, which is slightly similar to "it's not cured" in Beijing dialect. Whether it is surprise, ridicule, admiration or envy depends on the specific situation. On the second day after arriving at Qingping Bay, when I opened my eyes in the morning, there was already a row of people standing in front of the Kang edge, including old men, children, and young people. It is customary there to go into the kiln and visit without knocking. A row of heads stared at a row of eyes, sighing softly "cough, cough, cough". He pinched the thick bedding and said, "Ahem——!" He touched the box with a human figure in it and said, "Ahem——!" He poked Li Zhuo's semiconductor, not knowing what use it could be used for, but they all said, "Ahem——!" Zhong Wei's dentures were placed on the windowsill to order a mouthwash cup. A row of people took turns to look at it and said nothing. An old man asked quietly: "What are you talking about?" A junior replied: "I don't know about the ball." Scarzi squeezed to the front, looked at it and said: "The ball -, dog tooth." We all woke up with laughter, knowing that we could no longer sleep. Scarzi was still arguing: "People say that Secretary Yao's mother-in-law in the commune had severe stomachaches in the past year, so she went to Xi'an to have a dog's intestines replaced. Oh, it's two feet long!" He tilted his head and gestured, looking at everyone around him to see if anyone dared to express doubts, and the pockmarks on his face turned red. "I know about this." An old man testified. The old man seemed to have some prestige among the people.
Li Zhuo turned on the semiconductor, and as soon as the music started playing, the whole kiln was filled with exclamations of "cough, cough, cough". The aunts and ladies were all standing round and watching, but now they didn't care. They came into the kiln and stood close to the wall. A few laughing women whispered to each other and pushed each other. That was the first time people in Qingpingwan saw semiconductor - such a little thing could sing so prosperously.
