Chapter 51 Part Three, Part 1 (1) - Changzhi Anecdote: Days and Nights of Billet Workers and Millers

Daxinzhuang Labor Reform Farm is a "grocery store".In addition to farming, it also has many types of work that have nothing to do with farming.What surprised me the most is that it has a chemical workshop for the production of bleaching powder and a milling workshop.As for making green bricks and firing bricks, it was established temporarily for the purpose of building a carbon tetrachloride plant. When I first arrived at this reform-through-labor camp on the outskirts of Changzhi City, the first thing I saw were bare trees. It was summer, when the flowers were red and the leaves were green. It is the heads of "nun" and "monk"; the few remaining leaves are also curled around the waist, withered and yellow in appearance.This left a gloomy impression on those of us who first arrived in Daxinzhuang.

Just like in the mine, nearly ten households of our "double labor reform" lived in a small village outside the site, while the "big troop" lived in cells in the courtyard.The peasant family I live in is surnamed Chang. They make a living from farming, and their family life is subsistence.Perhaps it was because of the worries in his life that we lost the friendship with Wang Tiejiang's family. Although this place is close to Changzhi, there is still no running water, and we still have to go to the well to fetch water for cooking.Before we left the mine, we prepared our own buckets; a fellow from Fujian named Chen Xingfa gave me a pair of bamboo and wooden poles when we said goodbye to the mine.Therefore, we can also count pots and basins in terms of living utensils.ladle.The bowls are all ready, and there is no need to ask for help from the fellow villagers.

As the old saying goes, before soldiers and horses move, food and grass go first.Just like building a mine in Jinpu Mountain, to build a chemical plant, you must first have a factory building—and to build a factory building, you need not only labor, but also a large number of bricks and tiles.So we were transferred to the "Second Labor Reform" who came here.Except for the female and older male models who went to Daejeon, most of the labor was put into the labor of making bricks, firing bricks and parts factories.In order to compete for time and speed, the brick kiln is also implemented in three shifts day and night; there is no rest for people and horses, so the brick kiln, which is only separated from the bleaching powder workshop by a wall, is still brightly lit at night.

My task is to pull the blank car.As long as the billet cutting machine keeps turning, the billet car I pull runs back and forth like a revolving lantern. On a large flatbed cart, I pull nearly a hundred pieces of wet billets and trot all the way without any slack. ——Because the billet cutting machine does not wait for anyone, unless it stops running due to insufficient soil supply, every person who pulls the billet car should never want to rest.Liu Si gave the machine a name, calling it a "meat grinder" that exhausts people to death.I am a piece of meat in this "meat grinder". When I am out of breath, I often can't help but think of Jianyuan Jun, who buried his backbone in Jinpu Mountain, and the analogy when he pulled the earth truck in Quwola-we are not as good as Lao She The camel Xiangzi described by Mr.Yes, although it is hard to pull a cart, he is a free man. He can pull if he wants to, and he can leave the handlebar if he doesn’t want to.We are like a part of the blank cutting machine, as long as it does not fail, you can run on the high and low road!Anyway, as long as there are lights on the road leading to the billet yard to illuminate you, this kind of primitive labor like a donkey turning around a mill will never end.

If you catch up with the night shift, you can have a cool time, but if you take the afternoon shift, you will suffer.The sun hangs above the head like a big ball of fire, and the only pair of underpants on the body are soaked with sweat—it is not possible to be naked here like in the Chadian Farm, so we simply have a naked battle; so we went to the shed Those few seconds are the time for the pullers to wipe their sweat.It’s so easy to look forward to the thunder and lightning in the sky, and the heavy rain pouring down. That’s your job too. The “camels” pulling the carts put down the billets and go to the billet shed to pour the billets on the shelves—the purpose is to let the wet billets Air-dry early so that it can be fired into the kiln.

As for the work of dry-burning bricks and producing bricks in the large wheel kiln with 12 kiln holes, it is even more miserable. I was fortunate not to be assigned to work in the kiln, but one day, Zhang Hanwen, who was in charge of producing bricks in the large kiln, (That is, the carpenter who built Zhang Hu's coffin in Quwo) fell ill, and I was temporarily sent to his shift, which can be regarded as a taste of it.The bricks fired in the kiln still carry the residual heat after extinguishing the fire; coupled with the high temperature in the kiln, entering the large kiln is like entering an oven. The sun cannot be seen here, but the fire of the kiln By my side; that kind of high-intensity heat wave can burn adobe into bricks, and of course it can also burn people into ashes.Therefore, producing bricks in the big kiln is really like Monkey King entering the Flame Mountain—a myth that does not exist, but the barbecue and cooking in the big wheel kiln is the reality of the labor reform team.The kiln worker pulls the bricks out of the kiln with a special wooden frame cart. The kiln worker has to stand in front of the pile of fired bricks and load them into the wooden frame cart one by one—the cart can hold 200 pieces. Bricks, the kiln workers have to load them for an hour to fill up the brick truck.And in one shift, you have to pull all the bricks out of the cave, because the next shift will be filled with new bricks—maybe it’s the first time I’ve worked out of the kiln, and when I replaced Zhang Hanwen’s shift, I Almost fainted in the hot kiln.

Therefore, as soon as I saw the chimney of the 40-meter-high big wheel kiln, I immediately remembered the memory of bricks coming out of the kiln——Ruotong made alchemy in Laojun's furnace.I worked in the brick kiln for more than three months, because the chemical plant was about to start up and there was an urgent need for mechanical parts. Some educated people were selected from the factory to work as mechanics in a parts factory converted from a large temple.I was selected, so I was transferred to the milling workshop of the parts factory as a miller after I had just gotten acquainted with the drawing car technology.I remember that at that time there was an old right surnamed Sun, who was from Shanghai and came from a polytechnic school; there was also an old right named Zhang Dazhong, who was from Fengtai, a suburb of Beijing, and used to be a teacher.Both of them were well versed in the business of lathes, and were therefore my master, and I their apprentice.I barely passed algebra and had a record of zeros in my algebra class when I was a child. Standing in front of an end mill and doing calculations is really a small talent. It's an act of pulling seedlings to encourage growth.

I remember that when the captain talked to me, I truthfully told him my difficulties.He said: "Your hand could write articles in the past, why can't you do this job!" I sincerely begged and said: "That's two-way work, starting from work, you'd better let me pull the blank car." He was a little unhappy: "This is not only a need for work, but also to take care of you. Don't you feel tired from the work of the brick kiln?" "It doesn't matter if I'm tired. I'm telling the truth. I really can't grasp the performance of the milling machine, especially the end milling machine. It requires a mathematical mind."

He immediately reprimanded me with a stern face as if he had discovered some flaw in me: "Since you don't understand, how do you know that it needs to be calculated! I see that you have been reformed for so many years, but you haven't changed your reactionary intellectual attitude." Qing Gao. You have to do it if you do it, and you have to do it if you don’t!" Unexpectedly, for my sincerity, what he got in his eyes was counter evidence, which made me feel miserable.Among some reform-through-labor cadres, there is indeed a reverse mode of reasoning: take the false as the true, and the true as the false.The more you say you can't do it, the more he thinks you can do it - the more you say you can't do it, the more he thinks you can't do it.If I want to argue any further, I'm just asking for trouble.It was in this situation that I became an incompetent miller.It is a pity that in the days when I opened the end mill to make mechanical parts, I have produced many defective products.I remember, the most serious time, within 8 hours of a night shift, I broke two milling cutters in succession.Fortunately, the two rightist masters who manage me can still understand my difficulties, otherwise it would be very easy to label me as deliberately sabotaging production.What was performed in Quwo was "Fried Beans and Pans for Each Other"; what was performed here is mutual support - the old right among intellectuals, like the shadows of clouds in the sky, some are willing to be white clouds and dogs, and some do everything possible to fight against each other in class struggle. In the fatigue bombing, the pursuit of self-freedom like idle clouds.In my perception, Zhang Hesun, who was in the same group as me, belonged to the latter type.After getting acquainted with them, I realized that there are many of their kind here.Among them, Zhu Xi with the oldest revolutionary qualifications is a rightist from the press and publishing industry, Tan Qifei from the old Shanghai Jiaotong University, Luo Jinsheng, an engineer from the chemical industry system, Lu Shoudong, an X-ray expert from the Children's Hospital, and the Beijing Institute of Technology. Cao Dashi and Wang Jikun who graduated from colleges and universities in Beijing, He Chengwei and Wang Zhongren, cadres, teachers, and employees from government agencies—there is also an old right Jiang Baochen who I only met once but will never forget.We met at Daluweitang next to the old disabled team in Chadian. He once took me to meet the dying esthetician Lu Ying in the old disabled team.

They are all "forced labor" elements, and their crimes are lighter than those of reeducation through labor. However, no matter what "element" you are during the "Cultural Revolution", before Lin Biao's No. 1 combat readiness order was issued, they first went to Tiantanghe Farm, and then went to Chadian Farm; after the "No. 1 Order" was promulgated, they, like us, came to Daxinzhuang Farm back and forth.Since I have been working in the big wheel kiln, and the big wheel kiln is outside the big wall, I have not met many old rightists; now I go to the parts factory where intellectuals are dense, and I know that in the "big shift", Shanxi has become "Trash bins", all kinds of "unstable elements", have all been dumped in Shanxi.