Chapter 52 5. Guangxi Ziyuan County

Coming out of Dongting Lake Farm, my destination is Guangxi Resources.First take the train from Changsha to Guilin, and after staying overnight, take a long-distance bus at Guilin Bus Station the next morning.Sitting in the car, thinking that this car will take me to a place that is both strange and likely to stay for a lifetime, I feel both curious and lonely.At noon, we arrived at a small station called Baili Village, stopped for a rest, and the driver and passengers had lunch at the canteen on the station.In the following years, I revisited this situation many times. Baili Village is equivalent to the gateway of resources, and it is necessary to stop here when entering and exiting.Not far from Baili Village, the car entered the mountain.The mountains are getting deeper and higher, and the car bumps and circles on the winding mountain road.There is a cliff on one side, and a deep valley on the other. The road is narrow and uneven, and it is quite thrilling to miss a car head-on.The drizzle was misty outside the car window, like rain and fog, covering the mountains.At around four o'clock in the afternoon, I finally arrived in Ziyuan County, just in time for the public trial to adjourn, and the streets were full of people.

Ziyuan is a small county with a population of just over 100,000. It is located in the north of Guangxi and borders Hunan. The living habits and dialects of local farmers are also similar to Hunan.There are seven communes (townships) in the county, which are distributed in the Yuechengling Mountains.This is the place where the Red Army's Long March passed. Mao Zedong's "Long March" poem said "Five Ridges meandering with fine waves", and Yuecheng Ridge is one of the Five Ridges.The county town is very small, built on a mountain depression, surrounded by mountains when you look up, with only a few thousand residents, and only one street, which can be walked in a few minutes.After a year and a half of confinement on the farm, I felt relieved and happy to be suddenly free and able to move about as I pleased.In the first few days, I wandered the streets every day, walking from one end to the other, looking at the simple but brightly colored houses, seeing different faces, and feeling that everything was new.Resource is the birthplace of Zijiang, hence the name.This clear and rapid river has since become my close friend. I often stand on the bridge on the side of the county seat and watch the river flow northward with its never-ending roar.

Not long after arriving at the resource, one evening, I went into the mountain alone along a small stream.The valley is quiet, and the bright red azaleas are blooming by the stream, on the hillside, in the hands of the little girl collecting firewood.I found a waterfall in front of me, shining in the setting sun, so I ran over happily.The waterfall is several feet high, pouring down from the mouth of a dark spring, spraying snow-white droplets.The cliffs on both sides are covered with moss, and the milk vetch is embedded in the dark green moss like stars.The waterfall rushes into a deep pool that is so green that it turns black. If you throw a stone into it, you can't hear the sound of falling to the ground.I thought to myself, if this kind of scenery is near the busy city, it will definitely become a scenic spot, but it can only be unknown in this barren mountain, at most attracting an equally unknown outsider like me who accidentally landed here.Pushing things and people is the same reasoning, so I can't help but smile bitterly.It is said that resources have now become a tourist attraction, and tourists to Guilin often go to the mountains for a visit.If I were still working there today, I would definitely have a different feeling when I saw the tourists coming in droves.

In the year I arrived in the resource, there were as many as 60 college students assigned to this small county, most of whom graduated from local universities in Guangxi, but there were also several from famous schools across the country, including two from Peking University, two from Fudan University, and two from Zhongshan University. One person, Beijing Political and Legal Affairs one person.Most of these students were assigned to communes, usually primary and middle school teachers, and some were full-time Communist Youth League cadres in the commune.I was the most important one, and I was the only one who stayed in the political work group of the County Revolutionary Committee. After the organization resumed its old name, I served as the secretary of the Propaganda Department of the County Party Committee.At the time, this gratified my vanity quite a bit.It is probably very eye-catching for a young scholar like me to appear in the county and arrange to work in the county government.In a short time, almost half of the people in the county knew me, and people I didn't know often greeted me when I was walking on the road.However, later facts proved that this little triumph was just an illusion, and my temperament made me completely unsuitable to work in the county government.A simple fact is that although I worked in the Propaganda Department, I was never able to join the party. After four years, I was transferred to a county party school in a commune as a teacher.At the same time, some of the students who were assigned to the commune joined the party and became cadres. One became the deputy head of the organization department, and the other replaced me as a theoretical officer in the propaganda department.Of course, I soon saw the inevitability of the situation and didn't care.

Working in the county, going to the countryside is a common thing.I like going to the countryside. At first I found it fresh, but later I wanted to stay away from the trivial right and wrong of the county government and seek peace.The first time I went to the countryside was to the most remote and impoverished Liangshui Commune. The scene at that time is still vivid in my memory.Liangshui is Miao Township, with beautiful scenery. Two streams pass through the mountains and connect the villages.There are bridge pavilions built here and there on the stream, which is a major local feature.As the name suggests, the bridge pavilion is both a bridge and a pavilion, with a wooden structure and a tiled roof. There are two rows of benches inside the wooden railings on both sides. The villagers gather there before going to work and enjoy the cool summer night there.The folk customs are very simple, and most of the women and children have never been out of the country, so that I, who has two pieces of glass on my face, are almost regarded as a monster.Once, when I was walking in the mountains, three children came in front of me. The youngest one immediately turned his head and pressed his face to the hillside.I was afraid of scaring them, so I pretended not to see them, and walked over with a smile.Another time, when a few Miao girls wearing big earrings walked by me, they suddenly laughed shrilly and ran away.

From my side, at the beginning I also did not adapt to the living habits of the villagers, so I couldn't help but look embarrassed.I lived in a poor family with many children. On the first day I arrived, I saw the housewife put some grasshoppers in a pot, soaked them in boiling water, and then poured them into the pot. I asked curiously, "Can grasshoppers feed pigs? " She didn't answer.At dinner, there was a bowl of dry-fried grasshoppers on the table, and I suddenly realized that I regretted my slip of the tongue.Another time during lunch, I went to the kitchen to add food, and the lid of the pot was half open, revealing the lower half of a kitten, and I quickly dragged it out.Opening the lid of the pot, I couldn't help but step back, and another kitten was squatting inside and eating calmly.How to do it?After hesitating for a while, I decided to add another bowl, and went back to the dining table without saying a word.This family is really bitter, a few peppers are roasted in the stove, then smashed, sprinkled with a pinch of salt, it is the dish for dinner, basically every meal.However, I have always been very happy. After getting along for a long time, my family likes me very much.Especially the 19-year-old daughter, who is very happy every time she sees me, always has a sweet smile on her face, and happily teaches me to speak Miao dialect.I lived in this family for a month. When we were leaving, the host took my hand, his eyes were red, and he murmured: "I'm sorry..." I knew he was guilty of his family's poverty, so I hurriedly stopped him from saying go down.I was wondering that I didn't see the daughter, but she appeared and gave me a bag of freshly roasted hot peanuts.She wore patch clothes every day, and now she specially changed into a new one to see me off, and she was unhappy because of my departure.I was very moved, but I couldn't say a word to comfort her.

Later, I went to the countryside a lot, visiting many villages in the seven townships of the county.It is rainy in the south, and the usual scene is that I wear a bamboo hat and straw sandals on my feet, walking alone on the mountain path.The mountainous area is vast and sparsely populated, and the villages are often far apart. Sometimes it takes a long time to go to a certain place for a meeting.I also stayed in a production team for a whole year.The team was not far from the county seat, and the farmers and I went to the public toilets in the city to pick up excrement and brought it back to the village as fertilizer, and I didn't feel embarrassed.Most of the cadres in the county have gone to the countryside and generally do not participate in labor. After all, I am a student and have a strong sense of reform, so I often work with farmers.Once, it was midsummer, I was cutting grain in the field, and I was very thirsty. I saw the farmer use his hands to shake off the floating objects in the water and drink the water in the rice field. I followed suit. .In the county office, because I refused to obey orders, my superiors always criticized me for being proud.Farmers have the opposite evaluation of me, they all say that I don't put on the airs of a college student and treat others the most equal.I also like being with honest peasants, which is much more pleasant than dealing with those self-righteous petty officials.Only the meeting of the production team is something I can never get used to, especially in winter, the windows of the meeting room are closed, wet firewood is burning, the smoke is so thick that I can't open my eyes, it is noisy, and it often lasts until midnight, and then breaks up without making a decision.

Often in the countryside, I have a personal perception of the difficulties of farmers.A large part of their difficulties was caused by the coercive orders of the cadres, which were prominently manifested in two things.One is the so-called scientific farming, which enforces the promotion of double-cropping rice and corresponding dwarf rice varieties.The secretary of the prefectural party committee and the political commissar of the military division came to a certain brigade and ordered to plow off all the seven thousand catties of high-stalked seeds that had been sown. , I want to plow it all out, so you can learn a lesson!" A gust of wind blew down, set the tone, and followed through on layer by layer: "I have to plant whatever is harvested or not!" When I went to a production team, the team leader told me that last year He has planted 20 mu of double-cropping rice, but there is no harvest. This year he wants to plant less, but the hard task is 80 mu, not less than one mu.The other is Dasha’s sideline business, which is all judged as capitalist tendencies.The director of the county agricultural office led a team to a production brigade, and I was among them, and was sent to a production team.During the winter slack season, some production teams set up kilns to burn lime and sell the burned lime. This was a common way for local farmers to increase their income, but the director declared that it was a serious capitalist tendency and ordered to stop it.The production team leader told me that without burning lime, the farmers would have no money and would not be able to survive even a year, and asked me what to do.I called a meeting of the whole team of farmers to discuss what to do.Of course, everyone agrees with the captain.I said, since this is the case, we will act according to everyone's opinions.After the lime was burnt, I reported it. Naturally, I was criticized by the director as a typical rightist.The director was famous for his firm policy implementation and his ruthlessness towards farmers. He once personally led the militiamen to pull out the single-crop rice planted by some production teams.

I have lived in Ziyuan for eight and a half years, and one of my gains is that I have a little perceptual understanding of China's rural issues.In the past, I tended to imagine the countryside as a peach blossom garden far away from politics. In fact, it was absurd. Chinese farmers were subject to too many constraints, and the biggest constraints at that time came from politics.In the name of criticizing the tendencies of capitalism, this kind of politics turns farmers into imaginary enemies and sets up numerous obstacles to farmers' normal economic activities.In fact, most of the suffering of Chinese farmers comes from man-made.Now the national conditions have changed a lot, but the peasants are still subject to too many other constraints.The solution to rural problems is simple and simple. The first step is to remove all kinds of unreasonable constraints imposed on farmers so that they can truly obtain economic freedom and equal citizenship.