Chapter 9 Chronicle of the Labor Reform Team (2) - Destroyed from "Tucheng" to Chadian (Part 1)

It was not until early autumn that we were able to leave Tucheng and head to Chadian Farm (the labor reform unit called it "Qinghe Farm").Still the same as going to Yingmen Iron Mine outside the Great Wall, the train is divided into two, the first few carriages are for citizens, and the last few carriages are for prisoners. The difference from going to Yingmen is that my wife Zhang Hu is reforming on this land, and fate has also thrown me here, which somewhat brings me a little pleasure of fantasy.The train passed Junliang City and Tanggu east of Tianjin, and the railway line began to be deserted.As far as the eye can see, except for the salt flats, there are thatch and reed ponds everywhere.

The tail of the train was so long because it pulled us special citizens, that when we got off at the station, there was no platform to step on.Xiao Naixin, whose legs and feet are not very flexible, rolled down with his luggage. He stood up and patted the dust. Seeing that there were many sentries around him, not only machine guns, but also horse patrols, he went half crazy again.He carried the luggage on his shoulders, and grinningly yelled to the sentry post and the soldiers on horseback, "The ceremony is too grand, thank you for lining up!" The soldiers ignored him, but the captain of the team reprimanded him:

"You old counter-revolutionary, dishonestly handcuff you!" The reform-through-labor cadres who escort the prisoners always wear a few pairs of "bracelets" in their clothes. When they get out of the car in this wilderness, the handcuffs act as a deterrent to the prisoners. On the way, a pickpocket in the front car wants to jump out of the car and escape. , was put on the "iron bracelet" with a "click", and then used him as a model to demonstrate in each compartment.When it was time to transfer from the train to a large truck, three armed policemen performed a loading stunt. One grabbed the manacled man by the back collar, and the other grabbed his feet. Like throwing a sack of grain onto the truck, After wandering down a few times, he threw it fiercely on the carriage board; at this time, the third armed policeman took advantage of the situation and lifted it up, and the escaped number was thrown onto the truck, and his body hit the vehicle body with a loud "boom".

This is a reform-through-labor farm with a radius of tens of miles, where about 10,000 prisoners of various types are detained. It is one of the largest reform-through-labor sites in Beijing.Before liberation, it was a place haunted by pirates. After liberation, the prisoners started labor-like reclamation here. By 1961, when we went to work here, there were watchtowers and barbed wire interlaced inside, rice fields, vineyards, thatched grass, and wild wormwood. It is the "sacred place" of the reform-through-labour organization. The word "sacred place" is an adjective we use.One is to describe its size, and the other is to describe its natural environment.There are iron reeds growing everywhere here, especially in the western hemisphere known as the "Western Wasteland". There are only reeds but no trees, only Alkali Artemisia but no soil. It is a chaotic natural world waiting to be opened.From the perspective of fresh air, this place should belong to the first-class sanctuary for recuperation.Due to the early development of prisoners in the Eastern Hemisphere, it had begun to take shape as a small town in 1961. There was a paper mill and a large vineyard, and a white two-story building (known as "Little White Building") stood in the vineyard. , where the political commissars of the head office live, and there is a public security hospital not far to the west, which is opened for labor reform cadres and prisoners.There is a prisoner theater troupe under the headquarters, and famous actors such as Mei Baojiu, Ye Shengchang, and Zhao Huijuan were all members of this prisoner theater troupe.Wen Huaisha, a famous professor of classical literature, and Kong Jue, a writer, also served in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The West Wasteland is arranged in Arabic numerals: there are 581 subfields, 582 subfields, 583 subfields, 584 subfields, 585 subfields and 586 cemeteries (the famous esthetician Lu Ying was buried in the "586" mass grave, It is described in the second part of this book "Zhemeng "Peach Blossom Spring""). "581" to "585" are all single-model buildings: several rows of red brick houses with a square in the middle.There are ditches full of sewage dug around, and barbed wire is woven beside the ditches to show the boundary between Chu River and Han. "586" has no ditches, and the dead "big labor camp" and "second labor camp" gained freedom there. There are small wooden signs or red bricks erected in front of the small mounds less than two feet above the ground, which read the name of the deceased.

I really can't estimate how heavy the famine after the Great Leap Forward cast a heavy shadow on this huge labor camp.My initial foothold was "583" in "West Badlands". As soon as the truck drove into the courtyard surrounded by moats, I saw the old number in shabby clothes, picking and pulling food on the garbage mountain next to the moat. They grabbed rotten vegetables Gangzi and sorghum stalks are wiped on the body and then sent to the mouth.They seem to have no interest in the arrival of these new numbers, and they are like roosters digging food without raising their heads, pawing back and forth on the smelly debris pile.

This shot stimulated me so much that my memory of this scene is still as clear as ever.No wonder those old accounts of Yingmen Iron Mine talked about going to the farm, and they were afraid of going to the tiger's mouth!Ordinarily, this is a place where grain is produced, so we should have a full stomach. On the contrary, after traveling all day, the "imported goods" we received in the evening were two "red corn buns" the size of duck eggs, which were not made of red sorghum noodles. , but made of sweet potato noodles.The first bite was very sweet, the second bite was more refreshing than sorghum noodle buns, the third bite felt slippery down the esophagus, and the fourth bite was a small bun.The two little buns were eaten as if I hadn’t eaten. I didn’t know the feeling of hunger in Yingmen Iron Mine, but I was threatened by hunger on the first day.I picked up the enamel pot to drink vegetable soup, and there were a few hemp rope vegetables that looked like earthworms in it. At the end of the drink, a thick layer of dirt settled on the bottom of the pot, so I had to throw it away.

Several old rightists returned to the mixed team of five poisons, Xu Gongjin and I were in the same group.Xiao Naixin and I were separated, but we were still in the same squadron.The two small captains who lead the team are both rightists who have been reformed here for more than two years. One is Zhu Cheng and the other is Xu Zhou.Zhu Cheng was originally a primary school teacher in a primary school in Beijing, and he was tall and handsome; Xu Zhou was a music teacher in a middle school in Fengtai District, Beijing, and he was very gentle and courteous.The captain of our reform-through-labour team was surnamed Liu, a demobilized soldier from the army, who had been in the court at the beginning of the Republic; the instructor’s surname was Yao, and the veterans secretly called him "Yao Bodhisattva". From his nickname, it can be seen that he had no evil deeds against the reform-through-labourers.But these cadres are not enough to change our situation. Captain Liu said a mantra: "I believe that the party is correct in dealing with you (first support yourself with a protective umbrella), even if there are cases of improper handling or individual cases of injustice, you should also Here is an honest labor reform. This is the enforcement unit, whoever makes trouble will be punished, and whoever is passive will be dealt with!" Although the words are a little too rude, it is actually the same thing.

Our team belonged to the Datian team. We did some work like digging ditches, and occasionally went to the fields to harvest rice or chop sorghum.Within a few days of arriving here, I heard a story like this: There were two new members of the Laiyuan team, and the way they stole cucumbers and brought them back to the dormitory was shocking. A and B each stuffed a pulled cucumber into each other's In order to avoid the inspection when returning to the dormitory, the stealing method is so indecent, but there is still a sentry that can see through this indecent method (this work is undertaken by the "activists" in the reformation), the two people were taken off Pants, each with a cucumber pulled out of the anus.When I first heard this news, I didn't believe it was true, but it was confirmed by an old right of the Laiyuan team - he witnessed this tragic scene with his own eyes.

The "cucumber incident" typically reflected the hunger level of the labor camps at that time.It’s funny to say that Du Gao and I (a member of Wu Zuguang’s small group in the “Er Liu Tang”) were able to meet in the crowd like ants on the farm because hunger was our lead.One evening after work was over, I took my rice bowl and enamel pot to cook as usual. When I got two sweet potato noodle steamed buns and a bowl of vegetable soup from the small window, and hurried to the dormitory, I found a face that was emaciated. A young man was running, stuffing his mouth with steamed buns, and a man with praying mantis legs was chasing after him, shouting, "Hey! Stop—"

"Hey! He stole my cornbread!" "Guys stop him." I understood immediately.The young man at the front robbed the thin man behind him of his dinner.Although there are as many thieves here as a cow's hair, it is still the target of public criticism to steal other people's food in the age of hunger.So someone ran over, and I couldn't help but follow everyone and walked towards the cannibal.By the time the thin man and the others rushed to the side of the "little robber", he had already filled his stomach with two small steamed buns filled with sweet potato noodles, and said pitifully, "I got edema! When the swell reaches the belly button, my piece My life will be confessed! I have to live! I am so hungry that I can’t stand it! If you want to hit me, you can hit me, if you want to slap me, you can slap me! Anyway, I will die sooner or later!” A few young men really went up to beat him up!But the skinny man let out a long sigh, and stopped the young man: "Forget it! Forget it! I'll admit it after a hungry meal. Even if I beat him to death, he won't be able to spit out the buns!" I suddenly found this dark and thin man very familiar. After a moment of recollection, I called out his name: Du Gao.He also recognized me, and we were both very embarrassed.The young writers who used to be in the literary world of Beijing and the playwrights of Qingyi unexpectedly met here, and the swollen number who snatched food became the matchmaker for the introduction.absurd?Is it absurd enough, grotesque?The scene of this meeting is one of the grotesque dramas of the age.A thin scholar without the ability to defend his morsel of food, after being snatched from someone's mouth, would stop others from beating the person who snatched the food. This may be the unique sadness that distinguishes intellectuals from their kind! The crowd dispersed, and we started talking about the old days.I learned that Du Gao was sent to Xingkai Lake Farm in 1958.The background of the deteriorating relations between China and the Soviet Union made those who belonged to the right brand of Xingkai Lake leave the ice-covered world like migratory birds flying south.After arriving at Qinghe Farm, Lao You was broken into pieces and scattered in various labor camps in the eastern and western hemispheres.Among them, there are many people in the literary and art circles. The names I can remember are: Wang Zhijie from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, He Yanming from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, Ba Hong from the Beijing Film Studio, and Wang Ming from the China Youth Art Theatre.Mo Guixin, the lover, tenor and conductor of the famous female singer Zhang Quan, was supposed to fly south with the migratory birds, but under the extremely difficult conditions of Xingkai Lake, he died on that miserable land. Luan Graves is called Sun Hill, what a brilliant and beautiful irony, the prisoner can only get the sun's light after death, what a wonderful name.The scenery near the lake there is very beautiful, small mounds are lined up, and there are small wooden signs inserted on it: the tomb of the forced laborer ×××.Later, the wooden sign was simply replaced with red bricks, on which the name of the deceased was written with white chalk. After a heavy rain, the chalk writing disappeared, and the dead ghost became an unknown wild ghost. Later, in the labor reform team, I met Ba Hong (one of the directors of "Take Huashan Out of Wisdom") by chance. He said that he had the good fortune to meet Mo Guixin when Mo Guixin was dying.At that time, Mo had just been pulled by a bullock cart from the seventh game to the entrance of the main hospital. Ba Hong was reforming in the cultural and educational team at that time, so he rushed to the scene to see him. Next to the car was Ba Hong; after that, Ba Hong went to a separate performance, and when he returned, Mo Guixin was no longer alive.To Bahong's deep sorrow, the pit where Mo Guixin was buried was dug by Bahong and several other actors.At that time, the task of the cultural and educational team was to dig graves in "Sun Hill" besides arranging "revolutionary dramas".Rows of death pits were dug in advance in spring, summer, and autumn to avoid insufficient graves for burying the dead in winter.Bahong also did the work of burying the dead, and he put the corpses on stretchers from the main hospital and went straight to "Sun Hill".If it catches up with the winter when the "big smoke cannon" is flying, the corpse will be frozen hard, and the corpse bearer will turn the corpse into the ditch in front of the pit, and then carry the stretcher back, Mo Guixin's fate is no exception. A loyal soul remained on that cold soil.After a few shovels of yellow sand covered him, he went to heaven. When I first arrived at Qinghe Farm, I thought it was more humane than Xingkai Lake. Sometimes when work was over, I would see coffins loaded on flatbed carts slowly moving along the farm road to "586" in the dim twilight. Each sub-scene is to bury the dead at night).Later, the old account revealed the mystery to me: how can there be so much wood for criminals to make coffins? Just went down to the pit.After burying the dead, pull back the coffin cover and cover other dead ghosts.Sometimes too many people died of starvation, and one coffin cover was not enough, so they simply wrapped it in bedding, rolled it up with a mat tube outside, lay side by side on the cart, and pulled it to "586".I don't quite believe the old account's words. Once when I was loading dry rice into a car, I quietly verified the authenticity with the handlebar.He smiled jokingly at me like a handlebar: "Are you new here? There is really only a bottomless coffin, and it was a trick for passers-by to see!" (In my novel "Turtle Monument", I wrote this a detail). It turned out that this was humanity in disguise. I deeply felt my naivety and ignorance.I even imagined that one day I might be covered up and dragged to "586", because I could hear the news of the farm pulling dead people out every day.In order to resist hunger and survive, when the team started work and finished work, people kept running out of the queue, squatting there to pull out a wild garlic or pick a missed radish head, rubbing it on their clothes impatiently, and stuffing it into mouth; those who are not too eager to "import", put the wild things picked up on the road into their pockets, and eat them after they are cooked in the pot at night.This has become a conditioned reflex for everyone. When walking, the eyes are always looking for the side of the road like looking for silver.I didn't have the courage to run out of the queue to dig wild food, but when I turned over the vegetable field with a shovel, I put the cabbage roots I found in my pocket, and went back to cook the cabbage roots to satisfy my hunger.In early winter, every time it’s time for dinner, fires are shining in every corner of the wall. Fortunately, there are reeds everywhere in Qinghe Farm. We gather a handful of them as dry firewood, put an aluminum pot between two bricks, and start eating “additional meals.” "coming. Remember, once the drainage ditch was dredged to deepen the water capacity of the ditch.The employed "Second Labor Reform" team (discharged labor camps, who live in red brick houses outside the barbed wire) is next to our work section digging river mud, and a "Second Labor Reform" work section named Liu Yue happened to be next to me. boundary.I was working with my head down, when I heard the sound of "crack cluck" in my ears, I turned my head to look intentionally or unintentionally, and it made me dumbfounded. The tail of the fish outside swayed from side to side, making a clucking sound (a few years later, I saw a scene in the movie "Bitter Love", which was exactly the same as the scene where Liu Yue devoured live fish without hesitation).I was afraid that he would be embarrassed, so I pretended to be nonchalant and continued to work, but he yelled at me instead: "Hey! There are fish in the ditch. We lack animal fat. Although this thing smells a little muddy, but It’s fine if you can satisfy your hunger!” Hearing this man’s mobilization, I felt very uncomfortable, but thinking about it, if he wasn’t so hungry, would he have chewed a live fish raw? "To survive is to win" is the catchphrase of the reformers here. Isn't it very materialistic? In order to be able to survive, hunger forces the bottommost people to return to primitive life.Needless to say, other types of prisoners, such as intellectuals, have also gradually lost their noble skin and revealed their original form. The engineer Xiao Naixin mentioned above scolded hooligans so harshly in Tucheng, but in Tucheng Once when we were standing in line at night, I witnessed him catching winged mole crickets flying towards the light, and stuffing one into his mouth until the captain yelled at him. Afterwards, I asked Xiao Naixin, "What's the smell?" "I didn't get any taste from the food, I just stuffed it into my mouth." He said, "The stomach is always like a bottomless pit." "Can't you restrain yourself a little?" "Your old mother sent you food by mail. I'm a lonely ghost, who cares? I can only survive in adversity!" He replied eloquently, "I don't steal, and I don't touch it. It's not shameful to eat wild food." "I'm worried that you ate something poisonous and broke your stomach." "I can't control that much anymore," he said. Soon, news came from the Sixth Squadron that an old right was critically ill. His name was Lu Fengnian, and he was born in Shiliyangchang before liberation. According to Mao Zedong's class analysis method, he belonged to the out-and-out bourgeoisie.When he was about to graduate from the Beijing Institute of Agricultural Machinery, he caught up with the anti-rightist struggle. He made a speech on the issue of democratic dictatorship and "experts" and "experts", and was put on a rightist iron hat and sent to a labor reform farm.The old man, a young master who would not find honey sweet, actually ate the five poisons here. He put a snake, a frog, a toad and a mouse he caught into a small aluminum pot. Cooked and ate.During the night, he began to vomit and diarrhoea, shaking all over.Hours later, he was delirious and dying.Thanks to a "Second Labor Reform" (a worker who stays in the field after serving his sentence) doctor in the infirmary of the branch, he tried his best to rescue him, and finally snatched him back from the arms of death.Because I often meet him while cooking in the corner, although we are not in the same squadron, we still know each other well.One day, after work, I went to visit him in his dormitory. Although he was conscious, his complexion was sallow.On the edge of the kang, I said, "How can you indiscriminately eat the five poisons?" "Hungry." His voice was very weak. "Then you can't eat Hesse nonsense!" "I know the epilepsy toad is poisonous, so I washed it a few times after peeling it off." "That snake might as well be a poisonous snake.  … "I opened it up and threw away the internal organs." All I could do was to say a few words of consolation, and then hurried back. Afterwards, when he got better, he didn’t change his habit of cooking small animals, but he didn’t dare to throw the toad into the aluminum pot anymore. up.Up to now, the appearance of his aluminum pot with the broken edge is still very clear in my memory: it was smoked charcoal black by the reed fire, and there is only one pot ear left on it (in the novella (White Clouds Falling from the Sky), I borrowed the image of this cauldron). His fate is like this broken cauldron, leaving history with an incomplete story, which will be described in detail later. Faced with all kinds of tragedies caused by hunger, the kind-hearted reform-through-labor cadres pretended to turn a blind eye.For example, the trainer nicknamed "Yao Bodhisattva" and Captain Liu with a fake gold tooth occasionally mentioned two sentences when giving lectures in front of the queue, "Don't set fire to blacken the courtyard wall" and "There are orders from above not to light fire for cooking." "wild animals" and so on, these are just official articles, in fact, it is a kind of sympathetic acquiescence for hungry prisoners to cook wild vegetables to satisfy their hunger. More precisely, he said that in the era when famine swept the country, hunger also endangered those law-abiding cadres Families, their family dormitories are just outside the trench, and we can clearly see the green vegetable leaves and dried radishes drying under the eaves of their houses.Based on such harsh facts, it is quite logical for them to turn a blind eye to the prisoner's ignition and cooking. But by no means all cadres have this kind of heart.Once I was on sick leave in the cell due to a toothache, and I saw some elderly patients suffering from edema cooking something in a pot.At this time, a director with pockmarks on his face (I can't remember his surname) came to the dormitory yard. He saw someone cooking in the corner, walked forward angrily, and used all the broken pots with big heads. The shoe kicked over.Out of one of the broken pots was a shoe sole, and the long and harsh voice scolded: "Why are you cooking this? Are you trying to vilify the dictatorship of the proletariat?" The swollen bowed its head Lumpy explained: "No one sent me food, I'm hungry." "Can this shoe sole be food?" I just stared at the sole of the shoe that was about to boil into mud, reluctant to throw it on the garbage dump, and said repeatedly: "Didn't the Red Army also eat cotton wool when they crossed the grass?" He picked up the sole and threw it hard towards the toilet. The sole was broken, and only the broken half was thrown out. The other half was still in the hands of the director. He threw the half of the sole on the ground, stomped his feet, and walked away. . I squatted under the wall and witnessed the pot-kicking incident with my own eyes, and I only felt that the sick toothache hurt even more.What made my heart tremble even more was that after the director of the pockmarked field left, the old man staggered with two swollen legs, picked up the half of the shoe again, and went to find another place to light the fire with the aluminum pot between them.The next day, I found out why the prickly-faced director kicked the pot, because the municipal public security bureau wanted some important person to inspect the "West Wasteland", and in the morning, a few people left behind by the direct subordinate team used brushes to stain the yard with white mortar to blacken the courtyard. The walls are all whitewashed.But soon, the white wall turned into a black wall again, because the instinct of survival in hunger is very tenacious, which cannot be restrained by any order.The fate of the pock-marked field chief was not good either.I remember that it was the night when the reform-through-labor team ate dumplings during the Spring Festival, and gunshots were heard in every cell in the courtyard.The news that came out was that the head of the pockmarked field had an affair with the wife of a certain cadre, and the matter was exposed. The big guy shot himself in the middle of the night (it is also said that he shot the woman first, and then shot himself). Hungry people are not interested in scandalous cases, and survival is the first purpose of the prison cell. Under the command of this dominant nerve, toothpaste, tooth powder, shoe soles, and cotton wool are all eaten; as for whether to swallow these things? It has the effect of prolonging life. People don't care about it. As long as they put things in their stomachs, they can get mental anesthesia.Criminals do this, and intellectuals can't get away with it in order to survive in this environment. Zhang Xin, a former vocal music teacher at the Central Academy of Drama, when he goes to make porridge in the morning, he first squeezes a little toothpaste under the rice bowl, puts it on the cooked porridge, and then uses it. As soon as the chopsticks stir it, the porridge becomes extra thick.I don't know what chemical factors in the toothpaste have a coagulation effect, but it is true that the porridge thickens.Of course, according to the law of indestructibility of matter, the porridge thickened by adding toothpaste still has so much rice and produces so much heat, but mental illusion is needed to relieve oneself when hungry.My "similar", the former Beijing Film Director Ba Hong told me that he often caught snakes and ate them in the fields, peeled off the snake skin, and burned them with firewood sticks on the spot. Miles!Once his "kind" caught a snake on the ridge of the field and was about to skin it when the labor camp leader suddenly appeared in front of him. His first move was not to throw the snake away in a hurry, but to bite the snake with a "click" He lowered the triangle-shaped snake head, and quickly spit the snake head into the ditch under the ridge; the second action was to put the headless snake in his pocket, so that the snake had become his "import" before answering the captain's question.No matter how he said it, he didn't hand over the dead snake wriggling in his pocket. The captain verbally criticized a few words, and it was over if he went through the motions.As for eating vegetables in the vegetable field, eating raw rice when harvesting rice is even more commonplace.Although I'm not that hungry, it's not uncommon for me to pick some green leaves and put them in a thermos to satisfy my hunger, or when I'm working in the radish fields, it's not uncommon for me to steal a few radishes and eat them.In fact, radishes help digestion, and the more you eat, the hungrier you get. But at that time, almost no one considered the causal relationship in physiology. Having food in the stomach is the greatest spiritual comfort. In the 583 branch where I am, the squadron has about 100 people, and the edema caused by hunger accounts for about 1/2.Severe cases continued to die, and other sick patients could only move on the kang, but could not walk off the kang; even though some could walk, their legs were pressed into a big pit.The edema develops from bottom to top, and even the genitals of patients who are dying are terribly swollen, and their heads are swollen like old melons.In this situation, everyone was in danger, so they stuffed food into their mouths desperately to break free from the embrace of death. Here, I can't help writing about the bright spots and mildew spots of intellectuals' own qualities during the life and death of hunger.At that time, Ba Hong told me such a sad thing: There was a "rightist" named Lin Cheng, who was a talented student of Union Medical College.Due to the lack of medical personnel in Xingkai Lake, he was transferred to the prisoner team in the eighth subfield to work as a prison doctor shortly after he went to the second branch of Xingkai Lake to perform hard labor.Prison doctors in the labor reform unit are the most popular, because he not only treats the prisoners, but also treats the labor reform cadres.No matter in terms of living conditions and political benefits, they are very different from those of the old right who generally do hard labor.The house is a single room with a Dalian kang, and he eats small stoves for cadres instead of prisons. Compared with him, he still has a certain degree of freedom of movement. With a Red Cross medicine box on his back, he can set foot in every inch of the labor reform farm.Hunger does not exist for Lin Cheng, and reprimand does not exist for Lin Cheng. It is a job that criminals and political prisoners envy.But Lin Cheng didn't feel lucky about this. On the contrary, he felt that he and many intellectuals who devoted themselves to the construction of the country should not bear such labor punishment.For this reason, one day while he was making an inspection in the field, he hid behind a small soil slope alone, took out the surgical blade in the red medicine box, cut open the main artery of his leg, and protested with his death in the face of the surging Xingkai Lake. Seven years of "benevolent government" for intellectuals.He was born in a family of senior intellectuals, and the life creed of "a scholar can be killed but not humiliated" in the ancient tradition sneaked into his blood and every cell.He used his own death to erect a non-marble monument to the martyrs of this era in "Sun Hill". I don't have the courage to die. I am weak.The only thing that can be practiced is: cleanse oneself and respect one's conscience as much as possible. In such an environment, it is not easy to do this.I remember, it was the cold dew season in 1961, and the ancient agricultural proverb said that "in the tenth month of farming, sorghum is red", but the sorghum fields of Qinghe Farm lacked that drunken red color.This is a developed saline-alkali land, so it is not easy for sorghum to survive. Although the field is planted with alkali-resistant multi-eared sorghum, it is still difficult to see the red color of sorghum in the autumn sun in October.Although this is a year when sorghum is absolutely in short supply, the prisoners are still very enthusiastic about harvesting sorghum.It would be an exaggeration to compare the harvesting of sorghum to locusts flying into the crop field, because these swollen prison cells have neither the wings of locusts nor the ability to bounce across eight ridges; But no less than locusts crossing the border.They first folded the sorghum to the ground, spread a handkerchief on the head of the ears, and rubbed the sorghum grains with the soles of their shoes, and the sorghum grains rolled down; Shake the sorghum grains into your pockets.So and so, again and again, fortunately, there are green gauze tents covering the front, back, left, and right sides, so the hungry can certainly have a nice picnic.My stomach isn't used to chewing raw food—despite the allure it has for me—and I keep sticking the sweet sorghum stalks into my mouth as I cut the sorghum with a scythe in my hand, according to nutritional explanations The human body cannot lack sugar. The dwarf sorghum that does not grow tassels is almost as sweet as sugar cane. I think that supplementing the sugar in the human body may be more directly absorbed by the stomach than eating sorghum grains. The team leader who is the foreman is one of my kind, and he just pretends not to see these things.But when it was time to assemble and stand in line, he shouted my name in front of the line. "Is something wrong?" I asked in surprise. "Today is your 'duty star' (duty star is a synonym for duty, which means taking turns to be on duty for a week)." He said. There was a roar in my head, and I immediately understood the meaning: this is to let me perform inspection tasks here, to check out all the food that people carry.I pretended to be puzzled and kicked the ball back.I said: "Squad leader, 'star duty' refers to internal affairs and hygiene, and there is no responsibility for 'star duty' for things outside the prison compound." "You have to take care of the work too," he said. "Isn't this work done?" I retorted. "There is still a task you haven't completed." His attitude became arrogant. "What mission?" "The captain has given instructions that anyone who goes to work in the vegetable garden or grain field must be searched before they gather in line to return." I was anxious: "I'm sorry, I have never done this job before." "What?" He heard the sarcasm in my words, so he accused me, "If you haven't done it before, you have to learn to do it. What the government reforms is your and my reactionary thinking." "I just won't do it!" The voice was firm. "You can't do it!" "I just won't do it!" I reiterated my attitude again. In order to prevent him from suspecting that I stole the grain, I turned all the pockets of my clothes and showed him, "I have chewed sorghum stalks, and I didn't bring a single grain." Food, this is because my body is not swollen yet, and I can't swallow the raw sorghum grains!" During the quarrel, several puffy men with food on their bodies pleaded, "Little Captain, let's do this! In order not to embarrass you, when we get to the gate, if we see an inspection post, we will throw sorghum grains on the ground." Hey voles, if there is no inspection post, you can put up a leader and pretend not to know. How about it?" My burly and handsome "kind" took a step back when he saw how stiff things had become.He said: "Everyone has to think about it for me. The captain asked me to do this job. I have to be good to the government. I don't know that everyone is short of oil and water, but they have to let me get by. I have to be harsh. If there is an inspection post, the food will have to be thrown in the ditch, and if anyone brings the food, it is the 'duty star' who refuses to perform the search task, not my responsibility."