Chapter 48 1. Nanwan Lake

One dark night, several motorized wooden boats docked with difficulty in the wind and rain, and unloaded a group of students.We carried luggage on our shoulders, drenched in the rain, stumbled and stepped on the muddy ground, and came to a desolate place.There was nothing to see around, only a few low huts showing dim lights.The door was very low, and we ducked in, squatting and lying on several planks indiscriminately.Thus began the life of re-education. This is a piece of land created by embankment in Dongting Lake. It is named Nanwan Lake, which means to carry forward the spirit of Nanniwan.It was deserted, with only one agricultural reclamation unit stationed here, and there was a reform-through-labor farm nearby.In order to accept students, the army established some student companies, and sent soldiers to serve as cadres at the company and platoon level.I found the letters from that period, and accidentally found that there were still two envelopes with the address of the company I belonged to: the No. 1 Company of the 6939 Troops in Yuanjiang, Hunan.

The initial task is to settle down.It used to be an open space, and the small thatched huts were temporarily built for us to live in. Now we need to build a formal barracks.Except for linoleum, the materials used to build houses are all local materials, and there are three types in total: straw, reed stalks, and mud.A lot of straw ropes are rubbed out with straw, and then wrapped around the reed poles, one by one inserted into the mud, and mud is pasted on both sides to form a wall.The top is made in the same way, covered with linoleum and straw, and it becomes a house.There are four rows in the whole company, each row has a long room, and two rows of Datong shops are set up in the room, which becomes our residence.

Then immediately put into heavy labor.Dig four or five meters down on the mud to create a waterway. The mud is piled up on both sides, one side is built into a canal, and the other side is built into a road.After digging out a layer of topsoil, there are layers of silt underneath. The soil is tight and sticky, as if there is a suction force, which firmly sucks the inserted shovel.The further you dig, the thinner the mud becomes, and your legs are stuck inside, sinking under the irresistible force of gravity, and it is difficult to pull it out with bare hands, not to mention the burden of a hundred catties on your shoulders.Because the mud was too sticky, it stuck to the dustpan and couldn't be poured out, so the burden was always heavy.There are eight student companies in our regiment, and the sixth company is a girl company. At the beginning, they also did the same job. Many girls couldn't move at all, so they sat in the mud and cried.Winter is coming, and the winter in the Lake District is very strange. Suddenly there is a thunderstorm, the lightning cuts through the sky, and the thunder rattles the windows.After the thunderstorm, it was a continuous cloudy and rainy day. In the freezing wind, snow and rain, we wore cotton-padded clothes on our upper body and only a pair of shorts on our lower body, and we were still immersed in the cold mud to work.I never dreamed that the work was so heavy. After a day, my whole body fell apart. I didn't have the strength to wash up, and I fell asleep with my body covered in mud.

However, at that time, after all, I was young, and I gradually got used to it, and felt that my physical strength was obviously increasing.After the spring of the second year, our main task was to grow rice. Compared with digging waterways, field work was much easier. In May, for more than ten days in a row, I bent over to plant rice every day, and I didn't feel too tired.I'm a novice, I can't plug in at all at the beginning, but I can be called an expert after a few days.My fingers are moving as fast as the shuttle on the loom, my eyes are only on a small piece of paddy field and seedlings under my nose, and I don’t think about anything. I straighten up and take a rest when I’m tired, and I see a large piece of green in front of me. I am really happy.I like field labor. Although this kind of labor is mechanical and monotonous, it brings people close to the land and life, and makes the mind and heart pure.

There are many small creatures in the lake area.When digging waterways, soft-shelled turtles were often found hidden in the mud, and when they were found, they were thrown away. No one thought of taking them back to make soup.There are fish in every small ditch. If you block out a section with mud, and then scoop up the water, you will return with a full load.In spring, water snakes crawl around.Once, before going to work in the morning, I picked up the rain boots outside the house and was about to put them on, when a small snake crawled out of them.Snakes are the most common creatures when working in paddy fields.When a small overseas Chinese student saw a snake, he picked it up, broke it with his hands, took out the snake gall and immediately swallowed it into his stomach.Water snakes are non-venomous, so I am no longer afraid of them gradually, but I still hate leeches.I have never seen so many leeches anywhere else.Once I finished work, I went down to the lake to take a bath, and stood for a while in the grass in the shallow water on the shore. When I got ashore, the classmates next to me screamed.I looked down and saw a leg bleeding, covered with dozens of leech bites.

For us students, someone described it like this at the time: "In the name of students, the treatment of cadres, the labor of farmers, and the discipline of soldiers." Because we received wages, we said that we were treated like cadres.Discipline is very strict, and the management is completely in accordance with the army. You have to ask for leave to buy a toothpaste in the store, and you have to queue up no matter where you go or do anything.Tired from working, no one cared about trimming their clothes, so they went to a small town a few kilometers away in tattered clothes. The peasants there teased and said: "College students are nerds in school, but beggars outside the school gate."

After arriving at the farm, the deadline for re-education has never been announced. No one knows how long we will stay here.After all, the environment and life are too monotonous, and people gradually become exhausted.The firepower of young people is booming, and they start to think about women, Xue Liulian has become the most poetic word in people's mouths.Usually when we get together, the most talked about is the wife issue, which is called the "big problem" when I am only in my twenties.Some students from Hunan have married wives, and when their wives come to visit relatives, they live in a hut in the company, and everyone is greedy.The student who slept in the bunk opposite me was very shameless, and often happily talked about the details of having sex with his wife.

I am still an idealist in love, and I sneer at all this with a smug nose.However, I am also tired of the monotonous and unchanging life and long for change.Therefore, in October 1969, when the army wanted to select some students to go to a nearby regular company for training for a month, I actively fought for it and was finally approved.I performed very well there, the cadres and soldiers liked me, and I was rewarded at the regimental level.The happiest thing is that I have had enough of the addiction to target shooting. I unexpectedly found that my marksmanship is quite accurate, and I can hit every shot in the prone position, and I rarely miss the target in the kneeling and standing positions.However, I did not expect to be infected with hepatitis virus during this trip.

Not long after returning to the student company, one day, I felt weak and had no appetite, so two classmates accompanied me to the infirmary of the regiment headquarters.When I got there, I checked my temperature and found that the temperature had reached 39 degrees. The medical staff asked the two students to send me to the division hospital immediately.The so-called sending me there also means that I have to walk by myself. I really don't know how I walked these few kilometers.The Shibu Hospital is also very simple, with a few thatched huts, no medical equipment, and even blood tests. I lived there and was treated as a cold.For eight or nine days, the high fever persisted, she did not eat or drink at all, she lived on transfusions, and passed out several times when she went to the toilet.I told the spirited dean that my illness was not like a cold, but a problem with the digestive system.He immediately said yes, saying it might be hepatitis.In fact, the symptoms of icteric hepatitis are extremely obvious, with a sallow complexion and greenish urine.

During those days when I was seriously ill, I lay on the hospital bed in a daze. My bed was facing the door, and there was a wooden board outside the door, which was the place where meals were distributed to the patients.One day, when it was time for dinner, my eyes suddenly lit up in a drowsy state, and I saw a beautiful face in the line of receiving meals.From then on, my bedridden life has meaning, just waiting for the time to eat, and taking a look at that face.After the high fever subsided, I could get up and move around, and I often saw that girl in the yard.She is one of several overseas Chinese girls from Indonesia living in the Shibu Hospital. They were working on another farm in the Dongting Lake area. They got a strange disease. One leg—just one leg—had no support, so When walking, you must bend your body sharply to one side.Such a beautiful face, with such a strange way of walking, made me feel so sorry for her, and I loved her all the more.Another girl noticed my thoughts and chatted with me about her as if casually, saying that she is a very selfish person.I stayed in the hospital for more than a month and never went back after I was discharged.It is said that the illnesses of these girls did not improve until the end of the exercise. I hope they will be cured later.

After I was discharged from the hospital, Lianli took care of me and stopped me from doing heavy work. I became a cowherd, and my task was to take care of a few buffaloes and prevent them from damaging the crops.It was a job made out of nothing, just for me, and the buffaloes were never actually left unattended, nor did they need to be.In the last two or three months of my stay on the farm, I sat by the pond every day, looking at the clouds in the sky and the book in my hand. I lived a very happy life with these buffaloes.