Tonight, I am still sitting under the window and in front of the lamp, thinking quietly. No Yue Hui spilled in from the window tonight, and it was raining outside. Autumn rain is vigorous. By the light of the lamp, I saw that the thin rain seemed to radiate metallic luster, revealing a sense of beauty and free and easy beauty.
When I opened the window, the rain immediately fell on my cheek. In the middle of the night, I felt the chill of autumn. It won't snow in the north in late autumn in Jiangnan, will it? When I closed the bay window and sat back at my desk, my thoughts somehow drifted to the Taihang Mountain in the distance and drifted back to the snow season more than 40 years ago.
That winter was particularly cold, and the first snow turned the world upside down. People living in the south of the Yangtze River can hardly perceive the ferocity of the snowstorm in the north.
The wind howled and rolled up snowflakes, like a thousand wolves howling. It furiously pounced on vilen and villages, blocked roads, shook tree trunks and hit people's doors and windows. In just one night, it filled the valley, crushed the branches and tore off the grass roof of the hut. In the diffuse snow smoke, the world is white and the eyes are hazy.
We set out on such a day and went to the lonely mountain of Taihang Mountain to build a canal. It was a fiery age, an age when young people were full of blood. A group of 14-and 15-year-olds bravely climbed Taihang Mountain with red flags and dark clouds in the sky. At that time, the revolutionary fanaticism of our young people, in my mother's words, could make the river boil even by jumping into an ice cave.
The canal repair site is on the half slope of the lonely mountain. On the mountain, a pair of couplets was chiseled with red paint: Pi Xing Dai Yue Xue Da Zhai, Shan Pi Shan Da Gu Shan. I stood on the high slope and looked around. There are people everywhere and red flags everywhere. The tweeter is playing songs with quotations from leaders, and people are buzzing. You can also hear the tinkling of chisels nearby and the faint blasting sound in the distance. The spectacular scene can't be seen now anyway.
That canal is called Yuefeng Canal, which is the largest irrigation canal in the city under Taihang Mountain where I live. In order to build this canal, 6.5438+0.4 million people joined the construction, with a direct investment of 6.5438+0.1.1.4 million yuan. The canal began in the mid-1970s. It starts from Taizhuang in Shexian County in the west, passes through Cixian County and Fengfeng to Yehe Village in Wu 'an, with a total length of 86.5 kilometers. The diversion flow of the source is 30 cubic meters per second. The main project includes diversion canal, main canal and branch canal, with a total length of 280.5 kilometers. More than 1500 aqueducts and reservoirs were built. There are 9 large aqueducts with the whole canal 100 meters above, connecting Zhanghe River, Fuyang River, Qinhe River and Dongwushi Reservoir, forming a water conservancy network extending in all directions. It is said that even today, it is one of the main water sources in this city.
We are young, physically weak, wielding a sledgehammer to break rocks, lacking strength, and it is too dangerous to fire and shoot. So I was arranged on the construction site, Saner, Jiong, Chun and Bing, and I forgot his name for a long time. Six people went to pull a scooter and send cement to the migrant workers who repaired the canal.
At that time, I was the monitor of the school, and I was quite prestigious among my classmates. Without anyone's division of labor, I became the head of six people. Sanerjia is a vegetable farmer in the school. She has a strong figure and great strength. Tim's father is a soldier. He is tall, vague and clumsy. Chun is also a farmer's child, of medium height, with few words and very boring. The soldier is a small man who looks a bit like a mouse. It can be said that he is a big boy and quite clever. On the first day of arriving at the construction site, I agreed with my partners that we were here to learn Dazhai, and we should strive for the first place in everything, and no one should relax.
On the first day at the construction site, we didn't rest, put down our luggage and pushed the scooter up the mountain to transport cement. It is about two kilometers from the cement warehouse to the canal maintenance point. The mountains are undulating and rugged. Above us, there are many big snowdrifts on the top of the mountain, which seem to fall at any time. There is a bird path buried under the snow. One side of the road is a bottomless canyon, and the side near the root of the mountain is covered with thorns. There are six big slopes and nine small slopes on this road. This is uphill. Tim is a big man. He drives in the middle. We tried our best to push the cart on both sides. We pushed the cart uphill in the snow, with ups and downs. If the landslide falls, it will be a car crash. When going downhill, we grabbed the handlebars desperately for fear that we could not control the inertia of the car and fell into the ditch. If the car falls into a ditch on this snowy road, it will definitely die.
It is said that newborn calves are not afraid of tigers. At that time, six of us, running all the way, began to transport cement on the edge of the cliff in this snowy day. We all went up the mountain to build canals voluntarily, which supported our belief, that is, the leaders called for "learning agriculture" and the revolutionary enthusiasm that young people could never have imagined today. That enthusiasm is similar to religious fanaticism. In the farmhouse we borrowed, there were quotations from the leaders: We should not only destroy an old world, but also create a new one. Teenagers aged 14 or 15 want to create a beautiful new world with their ideals every day. As for what the new world is like, I have never thought clearly, and I can't tell myself. However, nowadays, when we see a 14-or 15-year-old child still coquetry in his mother's arms, what we have experienced is really a sigh.
When I was fourteen years old, I once signed up to put my horse on the grassland in Inner Mongolia. My aunt, who is in charge of the joint defense commune, said to me: you are not a big person, but your heart is quite wild I think you'd better go home and study. Don't bother me until you are eighteen. Good people are everywhere. At that time, people were wild and revolutionary since childhood. Now, I can't understand my son after 80. Perhaps, there is a deep generation gap between the generation who grew up eating KFC and the generation who grew up eating sweet potatoes, and their thinking is never on a communication platform.
People in Taihang Mountain use blue stones to build canals. The canal wall is a sandwich wall, with stones horizontally laid on both sides, gravel and muck filled in the middle and bonded with cement, and gravel and muck between the sandwich walls are grouted with cement. In this way, the canal body will be firm and will not leak, but the amount of cement is also very large. So every time masons see us, they will shout: Come on, boys, come on.
A group of girls aged seventeen or eighteen live next door to our house. They drilled holes in the rock with hammers and steel. This group of girls, all full of vigor and vitality, were awarded a red banner on the construction site, which read "Iron Girl Class" in four big letters. The girls in the "Iron Girl Class" are very proud. Every day when we pass by our dormitory, we shout: little boy, call big sister. However, the big sisters lost their pride in a few days and suffered us.
Taihang Mountain is very cold in winter. Breathing into frost, dripping into ice. Our residence is on a hillside, and when we get out of the dormitory, it is a big downhill with a length of more than ten meters. Although there is a pigsty and a toilet less than two meters to the left of our residence, we are afraid of the cold, so we bought a big pottery jar that can hold ten liters of water as a urinal for urinating at night. Early this morning, it was spring's turn to be on duty. He picked up the urinal and went to the toilet. As soon as he went out, he stumbled. Bang, the urinal broke, filled with a pot of old urine, and splashed a slope. This guy was bored and didn't say anything when he came back. It's funny now. When the mountain breeze blows, urine turns into ice. The iron girl who went to work early made slides for free, and several people fell black and blue. The urine was not frozen firmly, and the girls smelled bad. They were angry, but they reported it to the field command. The construction site sent someone to investigate. We said it wasn't intentional, but they said it was intentional. After quarreling for many days, I still don't know, so I have to give up.
This incident makes us feel a little guilty. After I went home to apologize, I told my friends that they were a group of young girls who floated around with banners every day. What good air! Are we cowards? Let's get them a flag, shall we
All right! Five partners roared together.
What a fart! The next day, our flag fluttered on the old elm tree behind our house. Standing at the entrance of the village, you can see the white-pricked diapers under the snow lamp. That night, the neighbor's third son wet the bed in the middle of the night. The fire in the lotus pond damaged the fish pond. I'm angry. I hate it. I picked up a five-inch steel needle and plunged it into his stomach. One shot worked, and I didn't pee for days. Bedwetting is a disease. Although Saner tried hard to endure it, she peed several times. I gave him an injection every day and finally cured his bed wetting. After decades, he didn't wet the bed again, and thanked me several times again and again. My mother is a doctor. In junior high school, I studied acupuncture with her colleague Su Xiucai as a teacher. Mrs. Su told me that during the three-year natural disaster, hunger was unbearable. She married her husband who drove for four meat buns, and later learned the skills of traditional Chinese medicine, only to know that acupuncture can eat meat buns without men. Later, I joined the army as a soldier, and with this skill, I cured many comrades-in-arms of injuries and sprains in training. Therefore, I also served as a military doctor.
In winter, the farmhouse where we live is a house covered with wheat straw. A few people helped Saner tidy up the bedding, and there was no place to hang it. So the soldiers went up to the roof, and I climbed the tree and hung Saner's bedding from the roof to the branches. As a result, a huge flag was flying high on the old elm tree, and a map was drawn in the center of the flag. After urinating on the kang, Saner faded for many days.
Just a few days after this incident, something happened to Brother Tim. It's a hard life. In the era of planned economy, eating and dressing are all customized. You need food stamps for eating and cloth tickets for dressing. The urban per capita ration is about 25 A Jin months. Although the countryside is better, most people still do not have enough to eat. On the construction site, we go to the kitchen to cook three meals a day. Many times, every meal is just two pieces of dry food and a bowl of vegetable soup. Nothing fishy. It's time for us to grow up and do manual labor, and our stomachs are growling every day. Tim, being a big horse is even more unbearable So, after dinner that day, he sneaked into the kitchen, stole a piece of pig's trotter fat of more than two kilograms and swallowed it all the way into the snow like a hungry wolf.
In winter, he eats too greasy food to sleep. He got up in the middle of the night and drank some cold water. In the middle of the night, he had a stomachache and ran out with pants in his hand. Maybe he can't. When he ran to the middle of the bunk bed, the thin shit sprayed out, making the six people sleeping in the bunk bed covered with thin shit and stinking. The soldier had no choice but to go up and knock Tim down. Then everyone pressed Tim together to fight. Tim defiantly shouted, Let me go. I have diarrhea. While shouting, thin excrement gushed out, sprayed on the wall and splashed on us. The result is that all six people stink up and down.
These good things, through our own noise, let the girls in the "iron girl class" next door know. According to them, everyone laughed. Good things stay indoors while bad things will go far away. In a few days, through their chirping laughter, the whole construction site knew the secret of shit in our room. This morning, in addition to the old elm tree, two old locust trees in the street were also covered with our bedding and clothes. Uninformed villagers also praised us: these young people who came down from the city are really diligent and clean.
What is this? It's like pushing a roller barefoot-it's embarrassing to turn around.
On this day, I held the first class meeting after arriving at the Taihang Mountain construction site, and pointed at my nose and severely scolded Jiong: You, you, pouting in the sun-what a shame! Although I didn't scold Saner, he blushed like a monkey. Apart from bed and loose bowels, these two things hit us hard. I'm ashamed to meet people, and I can't wait to find a crack in the ground. At that time, all six people faded.
Although embarrassing things have happened one after another, they have not shaken our will to compete with the "Iron Girl Class" next door for the red flag. The six of us made up our minds unanimously: we will never go down the mountain until we get the red flag. We are little men in No.7 Middle School, so we should act like men for everyone to see. In order to show our determination, we also wrote a letter of determination to learn from the elder sister next door and strive to be an advanced collective on the construction site. Finally, all six people bit their fingers and pressed their blood fingerprints on the resolution book.
Where there is a will, there is a way. After several days of constant observation and exploration, I finally found a way to improve the transportation efficiency of the scooter: six people pulled a car into two cars. Up the hill, six people push a car up the hill and down the hill, and three people slide it down. Such an attempt really gets twice the result with half the effort and greatly improves the efficiency. However, this method is also a bit dangerous, that is, when going downhill, you can't hold down the shaft and let the cement bag on the car slide in front of the car, which may get out of control and slip. Once the car ran faster and faster when it slipped down the slope. At the bottom of the slope, the cement on the car slipped forward as a whole, and the spring of the drive shaft could not hold up. At the moment when his feet were about to leave the ground, he released the handlebar. This man is very boring. If you let go and want to run, ask everyone to run together. He didn't answer. This is bitter for the soldiers on the side. The out-of-control car crashed into a stone, the handlebar turned over and the soldiers grabbed the left handlebar and bounced out. Fortunately, this guy is clever. He can do a somersault after flying seven or eight meters in the air, with his feet in front and stuck in the snowdrift on the side of the road.
After the soldier climbed out of the snowdrift, he quit. He grabbed Chun by the front and shouted, You coward. How can I find a daughter-in-law with my head on the ground and my face broken? Third, he went to Indiana and said, "As far as you are concerned, you are a mouse with a rat's head and eyes. You are more beautiful when you bloom. " . One sentence makes everyone happy.
After that, we have a solution. It is to lower the axle as much as possible when going downhill, and move the cement in front of the car to the back as much as possible before going downhill. Through constant practice, we run faster and faster, and the transportation efficiency is getting higher and higher. The amount of tasks completed actually exceeds that of adults. Finally, after the "Iron Girl Class", several of our boys also got the red flag of the "Steel Team". The difference is that people fight hard, but we rely on intelligence. With the red flag, the boys are coming for their lives. In less than half a month, we turned five pairs of wheels into twists.
Marx said that anger gave birth to poets. Sometimes happiness makes a poet. On this day, I came down from the top of the mountain and sang a poem while walking. I went back to the dormitory and called it "Mang Taihang". Some of them still vaguely remember: "A pillar of heavenly sword hangs upside down, fog surrounds the peak, and white clouds are low. The bird path twists and turns, the sheep don't walk, and the wind roar stones roll over the stream. Just pushing the car, the snow-capped mountains and icebergs show the red flag ... "This poem was printed on the mimeographed tabloid on the construction site the next day. In this way, I had a little poem title and became a "famous poet" on the construction site.
From then on, the "famous poet" led a small cement transport team, braved the snow and walked through the hillside of Taihang Mountain. With our youth and sweat, we left a shallow memory for that fiery age. We have also forged a profound friendship in this ordinary and ordinary labor. I remember that after I left as a soldier at the age of 0/6, I left two generations of soldiers, father and son, leaving only my mother and young siblings at home. Before our family moved back to Jiangnan, Saner had been delivering meals to my family. Tim always helped with a lot of rude words, and He Chunbing often came to do something within his power. I will never forget the friendship between friends in those days.
It's a pity that I have never seen Yuefeng Canal after it was flooded. When Yuefengqu was about to be flooded, my partners and I had already participated in the rehearsal of the flood documentary in advance. Wearing wicker hats and carrying sledgehammers, we listened to the director's command and walked back and forth happily at the gate of the Grand Canal many times. Every time we go to the camera, we grin. When he laughed, the director stopped and shouted, be serious, don't laugh.
The director is not allowed to laugh, but we think it's funny. Let's just open our hearts and laugh wildly and let the director jump high.
After that, I was transferred down the mountain. The next year, I went to be a soldier. I bid farewell to the place where I left my youth forever, the mountain, the ridge, the village in the snow and my friends. Time flies, more than forty years have passed, and I have never seen Gushan and Yuefengqu again. But in dreams and memories, those times and years are eternal.
Tonight, it's autumn in Jiangnan, and it's cold and rainy. When it rains, it is the most thought-provoking and thought-provoking. Facing the rain curtain hanging outside the window, listening to the sound of raindrops knocking on the window lattice, I remembered the Taihang Mountain in those days, the snowy days in the north, the Yuefeng Canal winding among the mountains like a dragon, and my friends driving on the snowy road with me.
Forty years is enough to change the world. As the years passed, we all reached the age of running for six. Don't say that youth is gone, and don't lament that Lian Po is old. We are a generation that has never left youth, and we are a generation that has never contributed to the motherland. In the 2 1 century, the stories of those fiery years may be crazy and funny, but they are also the youth of our generation, and youth is hard to forget.
The rain outside the window is still dripping, like a mess. My thoughts, like autumn rain, continue endlessly under my keyboard. ...