Chapter 42 Farmer's son Ma Mingfang

Ma Mingfang and I are from the same village and belong to the same family. In terms of generations, I call him Ye.I've only seen him once.This was circa the early 1950s.At that time, just a few years after the liberation of the whole country, it was the most comfortable and peaceful life for the common people. There were hundreds of households in the village. When they heard that Ma Mingfang had come home to visit the elderly, the whole village rushed to tell each other as if it was a happy event.On the second day after Ma Mingfang returned home, he went door to door to visit his fellow villagers.

Uncle Six's house is a big yard, and several families live in the yard.As soon as Ma Mingfang walked up the slope, people surrounded him in the yard, and the surrounding villagers also entered the yard, and there were more and more people.Uncle Six moved a bench for Ma Mingfang to sit down. He even said that he was not tired, he was not tired, he had better stand.As he spoke, he helped an elderly man in his seventies or eighties beside him to sit on a stool.When the honest farmer was happy, he didn't know what to say to the high official in front of him, the chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Government. He just asked "you are back" and "have you eaten yet?".Ma Mingfang said, "I'm back, I'm back, I ate money and food, it's delicious." He took Uncle Liu's hand and said, you are still the same, seeing you is like going back to when we were young when we were chopping firewood and gathering grass .You are better than me at chopping firewood, I can often beat you with a stick stick (a stick stick is just playing yellow money, use two hemp coins, one side is yang, the other side is yin, raise it in the air with your hand, and then press it under your hand , asking people to guess Yin-Yang characters, similar to today’s football referee asking the captain to flip a coin at the beginning of the game).At this point, the sixth uncle, fifth uncle, fourth dad, and people of the same age as Ma Mingfang immediately surrounded Ma Mingfang, as if they had returned to their childhood, some pulled their arms, some patted their shoulders, and insisted on talking with Ma Mingfang. He played a few more games and competed.Ma Mingfang even said that he will play in the future, and he will play in the future.Uncle Six refused to obey, and went straight to pick his armpit.Ma Mingfang laughed so hard, tears streaming down his face, he said: "You Ma Liu, you are still a ghost, I won't play with you anymore, I lost a lot of money." He pointed, "Let them (Ma Mingfang's entourage) ) write it down in the account, can I take the salary and send it to you?" Everyone in the yard laughed.Ma Mingfang said.Today I will open a foreign meat photo for you.First take a photo together, then take a photo as a family, and then take a single photo.Country people, who have only heard of taking pictures, who have seen them before, suddenly fell silent.Ma Mingfang took a lot of pictures with everyone, and then he asked a lot of parents to make short stories.Some people want to go out to do something with Ma Mingfang, and some people ask Ma Mingfang to lure his son out.This was the real hope of the peasants at that time.Ma Mingfang said, you are wrong again, our loess slope is so good, and the crops are so good, as a worker and cadre, Li does not have the freedom to farm the land like you.The dolls are just at the age of studying, study hard, and you will have your business to do in the future.I was in the second grade of elementary school at the time, and I didn't understand the feelings of the peasants Ma Mingfang grew up with, but I still remember that the expression Ma Mingfang showed when he said these words came from the heart.It is true that he is nostalgic for his childhood, his hometown, his peasants, and the yellow land under the blue sky and white clouds.

This is the first time Ma Mingfang has returned to his hometown to visit relatives after liberation, and it is also the last time to say goodbye to his fellow villagers.During the ten years of catastrophe, I thought of what Ma Mingfang said time and time again, it is better to be a farmer, or to deal with the land freely.Ma Mingfang was brutally persecuted to death by Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four" during the "Cultural Revolution".He followed the Communist Party from birth to death for decades. He did not die under the guns of the Kuomintang, but died tragically in the clutches of the "comrades" in his own camp.He died, and his little daughter went crazy, running around the streets of Beijing.Later, the Party Central Committee rehabilitated him, but he himself did not see it!

Ma Mingfang's life is a life of revolution and a life of dedication to the working people. I heard from my father and other old people in the village that when Ma Mingfang was in middle school, he suddenly stopped going to school. It was later learned that he joined the underground Communist Party and started a revolution.One year's New Year's Eve, the day when the family was reunited, Ma Mingfang dared not go home. Under the cover of night, he hid in a sheep pen. The courtyard and cave dwellings, and the faint figures of people under the light in the cave dwellings can also be seen through the windows.It is the custom of the people in my hometown to light incense before meals to thank God, to post couplets in the sheep pen, and to place incense burners to pray for God's blessing.When the third uncle went to the sheepfold to light incense, he suddenly saw a man squatting among the sheep. After a closer look, it was Ma Mingfang. The third uncle asked him to come to his house for the New Year's dinner, but he insisted on refusing.The third uncle said, wait a minute, I'll bring you food.He said, no, don't say I'm here.During the time of a pot of smoke, the third uncle sent the rice to the sheep pen, and he was no longer to be found.On this frigid New Year's Eve, no one knew where Ma Mingfang spent the night and how he survived it.

My mother told me about two incidents in which Ma Mingfang died in the revolution.This all happened in our village (Yejiacha, Yangjiagou Township, Mizhi County).Once Ma Mingfang was at home, and a group of KMT county government servants entered the village and walked to the half slope of his house. Ma Mingfang went out from the north gate of his courtyard, ran up the mountain and escaped.My mother said that at that time Ma Mingfang was small and thin, and he ran very fast, and he had to climb over the mountain ridge in a flash; another time, Gao Laoba, the county government servant, and two thugs caught Ma Mingfang in a part of our village and wanted to drag him away. All of a sudden alarmed the villagers.Farmer Ma Jixiong picked up a donkey skewer, went up and fought with Gao Laoba and others, and everyone cheered and cheered. Ma Mingfang escaped again in the confusion.After this accident, no one in the village saw Ma Mingfang again.

It is also widely rumored in the village that once, in Suide, Ma Mingfang and his underground party comrades held a meeting in a cave dwelling, and some security team from the Kuomintang surrounded the yard.Ma Mingfang and others jumped out from the back window of the cave and went up the mountain along the ravine. When the security team chased them to the fork in the ravine, they asked a rural woman who was working, did you see any young people?Answer: I see it.Where did you go?The woman pointed to another ravine and said, going there.The ravine the woman pointed to was completely opposite to the direction Ma Mingfang and the others were going.Ma Mingfang escaped again.

After the liberation of the whole country, Ma Mingfang became the secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee and the third secretary of the Northwest Bureau.After the Northwest Region was abolished, Ma Mingfang entered Beijing and became a minister of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.My sixth uncle's son, Ma Shinian, suffered from eye disease and went to Beijing to seek medical treatment and stayed at Ma Mingfang's house.Shi Nian told me several times that Ma Mingfang's life in Beijing was very simple, and he was just like our peasants. When eating, if a grain of rice fell on the dining table, he would pick it up and eat it.Once, the millet grains in Shi Nian's bowl of porridge were not clean, and Ma Mingfang asked, you child, have you heard your father say that the bottom of the bowl is not clean, and you want to find a pockmarked wife when you grow up? I don't feel sorry for these few grains of millet, because I am afraid that you will marry a pockmarked daughter-in-law in the future, and that will be ugly.After speaking, I laughed out loud.This old story, which was told to children at the dining table by generations of illiterate elders, was moved to the dining table of a minister of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. What an unforgettable event!Shi Nian also said that he really wanted to ride in a car at that time, to experience what it was like to ride in a car.Ma Mingfang said, the car is allocated to me for work, and it is not good for you to use it.

The rural farmers who live in our village for dozens of miles all know that Ma Mingfang has become a high-ranking official. People in front of and behind the village want to ask Ma Mingfang to find a job. This feeling is understandable.But Ma Mingfang is very principled, and has never opened this "door" or used this "right".Like everyone else, he still misses the food from his hometown after entering Beijing, so he asked someone to hire a chef from our village to cook for him.The chef stayed at Ma Mingfang's house for a few years, but his household registration could not go to Beijing, nor could his wife go to Beijing, so he had to go back home to work in farming.To this day, the grandchildren of the old chef are still asking: "The old man has been at Ma Mingfang's house for a long time, why didn't he set up his household registration in Beijing? With our household registration, we have already become Beijingers!" Old chef, what do you say to me today? Can the children and grandchildren clarify this issue?

This is the story I heard from the peasants about a great communist veteran, Comrade Ma Mingfang, a proletarian revolutionary of the older generation of our party.Truthfully recorded, in order to express my respect and commemoration of him.