Chapter 5 3. Love to do small movements in class

I went to kindergarten and primary school in Zijin Primary School.This is a private school, very close to my house, just two turns off a short cobbled road.In the last school year of primary school, Zijin Primary School was changed from private to public in the public-private partnership movement.Strangely, the name of the school was also changed to Yanhai Road No. 2 Primary School, although it was clearly on Zijin Road, not Yanhai Road.I think the name of Zijin Primary School sounds nice, but changing the name makes me uncomfortable.After I graduated, the road there was expanded and merged into Henan South Road, and the name of the school was changed to Henan South Road No. 2 Primary School.The day the school changed to public, I came home from school and saw people beating gongs and drums on the street. Uncle Mao stood at the door of No. 120 with a serious expression and set off firecrackers. His socks factory was also jointly owned.

In the early days of liberation, there were constant political movements. In addition to public-private partnerships, there were three anti-five antis that left an impression.When I was about seven or eight years old, my father took me to the tax office where he worked, and an uncle asked me with a smile, "Do you want to see tigers?" I nodded, and he led me to the door of a room and pushed the door open.I was afraid, but found that there was no tiger in the house, only a few people similar to this uncle sitting or standing.These people, he told me, were tigers.I was baffled, and I only found out many years later that the embezzlers were called tigers at that time.

There is a kindergarten attached to Zijin Primary School, which was called Kindergarten Class at that time, and I was sent there when I was three years old.It is said that the age of three is a dividing line. At this time, there may be a special process in the development of the brain, which activates the memory function, and at the same time forgets the things before the age of three and completely seals them in the unconscious.My earliest memories can only be traced back to when I was in kindergarten at the age of three.I remember that the teacher, surnamed Yu, was a gentle woman in her thirties, wearing a pair of short-sighted glasses.I entered the kindergarten class at the same time as my sister who was two years older than me. In order to take care of me, the teacher arranged her seat next to mine.However, this ignorant younger brother always bullies his sister, and fights with her sister during class.The teacher moved her seat away, but I would still leave my seat to fight with her. In the end, the teacher had to put us in different classes.

At that time, children in the kindergarten class also had to take the exam, and if they passed, they could be promoted to the first grade.I remember a scene during the exam: I was sitting at the desk, the teacher and my mother were standing beside me, and I took a pencil and scribbled on the exam paper until the blanks were filled.Now it is difficult for me to speculate why I did this at that time, because I must have recognized some characters by then.Of course, I failed, effectively repeating a grade.Afterwards, I stayed at home for half a year, and then went to kindergarten for another half year before I became a primary school student.If I don't repeat a grade, I will not be five years old when I enter elementary school, but should be four years old.It was just liberated that year, and there was no age limit for primary school.Emancipation was undoubtedly the biggest event that happened that year, but I have no memory of it.In my memory, the only thing that can be connected with it is that the banknotes issued during the Kuomintang period cannot be used.There are boxes of brand-new small denomination banknotes like this at home, neatly bundled one after another. My father said they were counterfeit banknotes, and gave us some to play with from time to time, and it took a long time to play them all.Later, I learned that inflation was serious on the eve of liberation, and these banknotes were worthless in the first place.

When I was in elementary school, I was already liberated, and there were many public schools. The tuition fee for each semester was six yuan, while the tuition fee for Zijin Primary School was twenty-four yuan.However, my father thought that the teaching quality of this elementary school was good, so he let me go on.However, I enjoy the treatment of tuition reduction and exemption, and pay eight yuan per semester.In fact, the school is very small, only a small two-story building and some bungalows, and there is almost no open space.The principal is a lady surnamed Wang, who is always very strict. Once, she called me into her office and gave me a hard reprimand for something.I was terrified of her, but fortunately I seldom saw her.Whenever I walked to the school gate along the route to school in my memory, what appeared in front of me was not the principal, but Teacher Li who taught physical education.At that time, Teacher Li was already a white-haired old woman, wearing thick glasses like the bottom of a bottle, and she loved children very much. She would sit at the school gate when it was time to go to school, greeting and joking with every student cordially.

During the six years of elementary school, my class teacher was always Lu Xiuqun.In addition to being the head teacher, she also teaches us Chinese.She is about forty years old, and she is also very strict with students. I am often criticized by her for my petty tricks in class.In my student handbook every semester, this shortcoming cannot be escaped, and I have become accustomed to it.Now I know that even if an adult sits for forty-five minutes, it is difficult not to make small movements, let alone a child, I know the absurdity of this request.Anyway, I can't get rid of this shortcoming in my life. Whenever my body loses its freedom, my hands can't help stealing a little freedom for my body.Teacher Lu sometimes praised me. She spread out my homework several times for the whole class to read, and praised the writing "like engraving".When I was in elementary school, my academic performance was mediocre, and I only received this kind of praise in my memory.But I studied easily and never felt any pressure.Going to elementary school at the age of five is completely competent. In our class, there are several children of my age, and I am not the youngest among them.More than ten years later, I have gone to Beijing to go to university, and Mr. Lu became the head teacher of one of my cousins.My cousin told me that Mr. Lu often talked about me and praised me for learning how to work hard.I can conclude that the impression of studying comes from the "like engraving" of the homework.At this time, Teacher Lu was close to retirement age. He had taught at least a few hundred students, and he still did not forget me. I couldn't help but be moved.It stands to reason that it is not easy for her to remember me, because I am not an active student, have never been a class leader, and have not had much contact with her.

When I was in elementary school, if boys and girls were sitting at the same desk, they would draw a line with chalk on the desk, and the two sides were not allowed to cross, which was called the 38th line.At that time, not long after the Korean War was over, the 38th Front was well-known to every household, and elementary school students were no exception.For several semesters, I was at the same table as a girl surnamed Dai.She was very aggressive and would often be provocative, stretching her elbow past the 38th parallel, then biting back and attacking me, elbowing me hard.I was deeply distressed by this, but I tried to bear it.Later, her attitude changed, and she was very friendly to me, often giving me something.Once, she gave me several comic books, all of which were published before liberation, and one of them was "Tarzan of the Apes".When I took it home, my father saw that it was a bad book and ordered me to return it all.Another time, she gave me a set of photos, a couple of naked men and women seemed to be wrestling, but they were actually demonstrations of sexual intercourse positions.I didn't understand it at the time. I was playing with it in my hand during class, but when Teacher Lu found out, she was trembling with anger and confiscated it immediately.

Father attaches great importance to our conduct and studies, and often checks our student handbook.The handbook records the results of each test. In order to stimulate the enthusiasm for learning, he announced a reward and punishment method to his sister, me and my sister. Every five points will be rewarded with five cents, and every two points will be deducted by five cents.At first he paid in cash, but after two or three weeks, he found that this method was not good for him, so he paid us too much pocket money, so he changed it to bookkeeping.In fact, we were each given only a small book for keeping accounts after that, and payment was indefinitely deferred.

In the memory of my elementary school days, the scene of Stalin's death is particularly clear.At that time, in public places in China, Stalin's photos were hung everywhere, so that the earliest picture I could draw was his head.That day, in the morning class, a female teacher surnamed Zhang told us that Stalin suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and was dying, but he has improved in the past two days.At this point, a teacher motioned for her to come over at the door of the classroom, and whispered a few words to her.She returned to the podium with a sad face and said: "Comrade Stalin passed away early this morning." When I got home from school, my mother was washing clothes. I told her the news, and she sighed and continued to wash clothes.In fact, I don't feel sad, but I feel that something so big has happened, and there must be something to do.I wrote the message on a small blackboard and hung it on the wall.I also ran to the street ahead of time, waiting for the moment when the whole country would whistle and mourn.When the mourning flute sounded, I saw pedestrians stopped, and a tricycle driver was clinging to a reed mat hut with his arms outstretched in a very strange posture.In my mind, Stalin's death is forever linked with the strange posture of the tricycle driver.

What remains in my memory is the toilet of Zijin Primary School, just because there was a news spread among the students that a big green-haired hand would suddenly stick out from the door of the toilet.The children were very serious when spreading the news, and no one doubted its authenticity, as if they all saw it with their own eyes.As a result, people were in panic for many days, and everyone tried to go to the toilet as little as possible, and fled as soon as possible after using the toilet.Once when I went to the toilet, a classmate from another class stood next to me. He was very thin and his skin was green. I clearly saw that his urine was also green.I suddenly felt that there was a mysterious connection between the big green hand and his green urine.