Educated youth and elk are legends in Dafeng County, Jiangsu. The spirit and culture of Shanghai's educated youth have long permeated the land of Dafeng; the magical story of the elk has long been famous all over the world.
One day more than 40 years ago, more than 80,000 Shanghai educated youths, carrying simple luggage, boarded a ship at the seaside pier with noisy gongs and drums. When they arrived in Dafeng County, they immediately built a building on a desolate salt-alkali beach. He built a simple house, hung up a farm sign, and began his entrepreneurial life of reclaiming wasteland. Even birds were reluctant to inhabit the tidal flats on the Yellow Sea because the ground, water and wind were salty. In this white, salty place, the educated youth want to create myths. But they had never imagined how salty and bitter life would be on this boundless alkaline seaside.
Every one of the more than 80,000 Shanghai educated youth has unique experiences and unforgettable feelings. An old man named Chen Yulan, a female educated youth at that time, said that she tasted the taste from salty to bitter here, and also enjoyed the joy of going from salty and bitter to sweet. At that time, she and the young girls and boys built a hut on the salt flats, which also served as a dormitory. Twenty-five educated youths were crammed into each house. They slept side by side, cultivated side by side, and lived face to face and back to back. The most difficult thing was not the above, but the lack of water for washing and washing. Each person had to buy a thermos of boiling water from the team's "Tiger Stove" with a ticket every day. That bottle of water is really precious. You rely on it for washing your face, washing your feet, drinking tea, and rinsing your mouth. As for taking a bath, I have to wait for the stars and the moon, and I can only take a bath every ten days and a half. If the "tiger stove" is broken and there is no hot water for several days, you can only drink cold water and wash your face with cold water. Chen Yulan said that these hardships are nothing. The most painful thing is the fatigue and hardship of land reclamation. The blood blisters on her hands break and appear again, and the blood blisters on her feet turn into calluses...
Chen Yulan and the year 8 Tens of thousands of Shanghai's educated youth, on this dead salt-alkali flat, on this seaside with salty wind, salty rain, and salty soil, moistened the fertile soil with their blood, turned their sweat into sweet rain, cultivated hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land, and irrigated dozens of Thousands of acres of crops. The wasteland has become a granary, the salt-alkali flats have become the vegetable gardens of Greater Shanghai, and the "Shanghai Enclave" with fragrant fruits and vegetables. The "enclave" not only presented rich fruits, but also produced a number of outstanding figures and left behind a unique spiritual culture of educated youth. This spirit and culture, together with the colorful fruits of the fields, become a rainbow on the beautiful seaside.
The fields where a bumper harvest is expected in Dafeng County today are the masterpieces of the educated youth of those days. They have become a modern agricultural garden for high-quality crops. Fresh vegetables from all seasons are continuously transported to Shanghai from this "enclave". Most Shanghainese know the "enclave" of Dafeng County and remember the blood and sweat of Shanghai's educated youth on that land.
A group of elk settled on the Dafeng Salt Flats at the same time as Shanghai’s educated youth. Elk are also resistant to salt, bitterness, wind and sand, and hard work. They grew from a few to many, and gradually multiplied into the largest herd of elk in the world. Dafeng people regard elk and educated youth as miracles and pride on the Dafeng salt flats. The elk is warm and elegant, and was called a "mythical animal" and "lucky thing" by the ancients. It is a rare bird and animal unique to China. Three thousand years ago, there were hundreds of millions of them, but by the early years of the Qing Dynasty, there were only two to three hundred. Although Dafeng is the hometown of elk, there are no traces of elk in Dafeng, and all we can see are elk fossils. There were only a few dozen left in the royal gardens in the capital for the Emperor and Queen Mother to enjoy. Later, they quickly disappeared with the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and only 18 survived. This is the only remaining elk in the world, but it happened to fall into the hands of the "Eight-Power Allied Forces" invaders who burned the Old Summer Palace. When he was about to become a robber's prey, the kind-hearted British Duke Bedford purchased the only elk in the world from the robbers with a large sum of money, carefully raised them in his manor, and was lucky enough to breed.
Eighty-five years after the elk fled their homeland, the 18 elk that year have given birth to 39 children under the care of Duke Befort and his descendants. Although the descendants of the elk no longer know where their hometown is, the people in its hometown always think about the elk. Its powerful and prosperous country picked them up from London through diplomatic and friendly means and sent them back to their hometown in Dafeng. In the land of their hometown, the elk connected the roots of their bloodline, and also received the care of Dafeng people. My hometown is a paradise. Over the past few decades, 39 elk have given birth to more than 2,000 offspring in this warm wetland. This is the pride of China and Dafeng. The fate of the elk is tragic. The tragic and tortuous story of the Dafeng elk reflects the hardships and rise of the Chinese nation.
Dafeng has become a kingdom of elk, and beautiful stories are performed in this kingdom every year. Dafeng people feel a kind of light from the spirit of Shanghai's educated youth and the story of Milu Mei, which is reflected into the spiritual sky of Dafeng culture, and the spirit and power of creating miracles rise in Dafeng.