Chapter 9 Nine

That day, Walker obviously left with a bad mood. I didn't expect my father to overhear my conversation with Walker outside the door.After Walker left, my father came into the room, pointed at me and yelled at me: "Don't burn your buns, you boy! You fucking went to Shanghai from the Great Northern Wilderness to study at university, and then assigned to Beijing from Shanghai, more than 60 yuan a month. With a salary of RMB 1,000, even the bonus is at least 70 RMB, which is not less than my salary when I was a fourth-grade plasterer. I have a wife and a son. You are still dissatisfied with this and that, and you still encourage a foreigner. Go scold the cadres of the Communist Party! If I were the Communist Party, I would have the right to beat you as an active counter-revolutionary! Then send you to the Great Northern Wilderness for a lifetime of labor reform! Let’s see if you still burn your bags!..."

For my father's scolding, I just bowed my head and remained silent. My father also said: "Let me tell you, when you write articles in the future, you are only allowed to say that the Communist Party is good, you are not allowed to say that the Communist Party is not good, and you are not allowed to say a word of bad! The manuscript fee of more than 100 yuan for an article, no matter how good the party is, will not accept it." I paid you to scold it!" I am still silent. With such an old father, I often feel that speech at home is not free.Not to mention that I don't have a "reverse bone" in the back of my head, even if I have a so-called "reverse bone", and my old father "alarms me" every day, the "rebellious bone" will gradually turn into cartilage.What's more, I have no reason to harbor any deep-rooted hatred for our party?I just hope that it will be greater, purer, brighter and more correct.

But to show my father that I remembered his words, I picked my son up from the floor, kissed him, and said, "Dad will never be labeled as an active counter-revolutionary. The Communist Party today is no longer the Communist Party of the past." ! Grandpa’s worries are unnecessary.” But the son struggled from my arms to his wife, and said in a childlike voice: "Mom, hold me, touch me!..." The next Saturday, when Walker came again, he brought a toy to his son, a yellow, fluffy puppy that could bark.Said it was bought at the "Friendship Store". The wife asked, "Is there a refrigerator there?"

Walker replied: "Yes. There is a Hitachi refrigerator with double doors. Do you want to buy it?" I gave my wife a look, and my wife immediately replied: "No, we have already entrusted someone else to buy it." Walker said: "If you can't buy it, I'll buy it for you." I said, "You can buy it." The son dragged out a cardboard box from under the bed, and placed all the toys inside on the floor: airplanes, trains, cannons, tanks, puppies, kittens...etc., in a long row. My son dug out a small badge of Chairman Mao from somewhere, which was quite new.

Walker coaxed the chairman badge from his son with a bunch of keys, and said while admiring it: "I only heard that there was such a big Chairman Mao badge during the 'Cultural Revolution' in China, and it's the first time I saw it today!" After admiring it for a while, he held it and asked his son: "Do you know who this is?" The two-and-a-half-year-old son replied, "Big Fatty!" He snatched the badge from Walker and rolled it on the floor to play. I was very angry, picked up the badge from the ground, and raised my hand to hit my son.The wife quickly took the son away and said, "Why are you beating the child? When he was born, Chairman Mao had been dead for five years. It is his fault if he doesn't know who Chairman Mao is?"

I raised my hand and slowly put it down. I thought to myself: Every generation has the admiration of one generation.This is history.History has its own laws, independent of human will.When my son grows up in the future, he will of course know what kind of historical figure Mao Zedong was.But whether they will worship Chairman Mao or not is hard to say.Maybe he admires a football player, a movie star, a philosopher, an artist, a writer, a singer, a musician, or a fashion model, or a reformer, or someone very, very rich... Let him choose for himself! The spirit and thought of his generation deserve greater freedom than ours.

As for the spirit and thought, the civilization of the entire human society represented by it can be summed up in only two words—freedom. Without spiritual freedom and freedom of thought, the so-called social civilization is nothing but words written on a dusty table, which are wiped off with a rag when the table is wiped. When my son was scolded by me and saw that I was going to beat him, he cried in fright, crying very aggrieved.His wife took him to a neighbor's house. Seeing me pondering, Walker asked, "What are you thinking?" I said, "I'm thinking about worship."

Walker asked again: "Do you still worship Chairman Mao?" I pondered for a long time and said, "Worship is the childhood psychology of human beings. The season of worship in our generation has passed." So our topic naturally talked about Chairman Mao's merits and demerits.I said: "I still think that Chairman Mao is a great figure in Chinese history from ancient times to the present. He is also a great figure in world history." "But you just said that the worship season of your generation has passed..." Walker expressed his confusion. I didn't know how to explain it to him.

I fell into contemplation again, looking back at the psychological and thought process of our generation. There seem to be millions of children's voices singing such a song in my ears: the children of our new China, the pioneers of our new youth, Unite, Inherited from our father and brother, Don't be afraid of hardships or heavy burdens, strive for the construction of new China, learn from the great leader Mao Zedong... Our generation grew up singing this song.The red scarf is our pride.The Young Pioneers Salute expresses our high respect for beautiful things.The drums of the Young Pioneers excited our childish innocence.Most of my generation didn't know what chocolate was in childhood, childhood and even adolescence.Fifty people's toys combined are not as many as the son's toys.A new dress makes us jump for joy.The new clothes are bought by my father or mother, but we all generally think that Chairman Mao and the Communist Party should be most grateful.Without Chairman Mao, there would be no Communist Party.Without the Communist Party, there would be no new clothes.Our fathers religiously stamped this "birthmark" on our minds.The whole society is afraid that we forget that there is only one meaning for us to come to this world and survive - to repay kindness.Later we grew up.And we began to sing another song: We young men, with a burning heart, to fight for the truth,

Wherever there is difficulty, there is us, loyal to the people, Not afraid of thousands of difficulties and dangers, not afraid of high mountains and deep seas, hold high the banner of revolution, Mountain Dew rolls forward forever, always forward! …We sang this song through three years of natural disasters.The stomachs of most of our generation have digested wild vegetables, grass seeds, and leaves.And "artificial meat", bean cakes, and chaff are good things in our opinion.But when we sang the "Youth March", our voices were loud and clear, and we were not short of breath.

The tragedy of our generation at that time was that our enthusiasm for a "revolutionary idea" surpassed our enthusiasm for cultural knowledge, and any "revolutionary idea" without cultural knowledge as the foundation stone is almost the same as religious teachings.We don't understand this, and neither does society.The cultural education we have received has been soaked in the gray manganese oxide of "revolutionary thinking".And the whole connotation of all the "revolutionary thinking" education we have received can be summed up in only two words-love it!Be grateful!In the middle school political class, we gradually formed such a conclusion in our minds—the leader is the party. Therefore, our love and gratitude are all in one person.Clear and clear. Thus, during the "Cultural Revolution", our generation's love, admiration, admiration, and obedience reached the "brilliant apex" of "infinity".This is the frenzy of a whole generation, the confusion of a whole generation.And the confusion and fanaticism of a whole generation of youth, to the society, is a hurricane, a fire, a tide, a raging tide, a force that breaks through everything!We were tired when it was all over.When we are tired, we start to think hard.When we think, we begin to truly grow into adults.When we grow up, we feel lost.We only feel angry when we are lost.When we are angry, we are disappointed.When we feel disappointed, we wake up.When we are awakened, we think we have the right to condemn! Let me ask, who is more hollow than the spiritual loss caused by this generation?Who has felt a greater disappointment than this generation?Who has condemned it more violently than this generation? However, today, when China's history has turned a new page, when I talked about Chairman Mao with my peers, almost everyone said something like this: "Chairman Mao is a great man after all. figure." The evaluation of history is so justly reflected in our generation.We are no longer slaves to history.We use history as our eyes.We use our thoughts to make the end of this period of Chinese history.It will not only be written in various historical or political textbooks with words, it will be written in our psychological process and ideological process with our social behavior of yesterday and tomorrow. I told Walker such a thing: Not long ago, I went to a certain factory in a certain city in Henan Province to experience life, and saw a wooden sign erected in front of a lathe with three red letters "Glorious Car" written on it.I thought the young worker operating the lathe was a model worker, but when I asked, he was not.It turned out that a certain leading comrade from the Central Committee had visited this factory, shook hands with this worker, and had a few words with him. Yin asked, "Who ordered this sign to be erected?" The answer was: "It was decided by the factory party committee." Ask again: "Does it not affect the line of sight?" The answer: "Of course it affects." Ask again: "What if there is an accident?" The young worker was silent. Ask: "You don't like to put up this sign in front of your lathe, do you?" Say: "How can I answer you?" I told him that he should explain his interests to the leader and suggested that the leader remove the sign. He said: "How can such a suggestion be brought to the leadership?" I said, "Then I will mention it to the leader for you." He panicked: "Don't, the leader will think I said something to you that shouldn't be said." I said, "Don't worry, I won't say a word about you." I went to the leaders of this factory and hoped that they would remove the wooden sign. They didn't take it seriously, and looked at me with unwilling eyes.I said: "This is not only my hope, but also my criticism. Every Chinese has the right to criticize this kind of thing today. First, the sign is erected in front of the lathe. It is dusty and unsightly. Wiping it every day adds a small nuisance to the workers. They don't say it and they don't like it. The reverence is counterproductive if it is not voluntary. Second, it blocks the light , also blocks the workers' sight, violates the production safety regulations, and may become a hidden danger of some unfortunate accidents. Third, the central leaders must not know about your practice, and will criticize you if they know about it. Fourth, sooner or later it will be To be removed. Remove it early, take the initiative. Remove it later, be passive. It is better to remove it early than later. Fifth, it stands there without any practical significance.” They looked at each other for a while, and one of them said: “We will remove that The sign has not been up there for a long time. When it was there, there was no need to explain anything, everyone understood it. If we decide to remove it, we must explain a few words, right? It’s not appropriate not to explain it? But how can we tell the workers? do you explain?" Tradition is an invisible force.People generally feel at ease when doing things according to "tradition".But certain "traditions" are also often a corrupting force.It is with the help of this power that the imperial decree of the feudal emperor's yellow silk evolved into the "supreme instruction",... I think that when they erected the wooden sign beside the lathe, they undoubtedly had much less piety in their hearts than a superstitious old woman worshiping a Bodhisattva, otherwise they would never have said such a dilemma to me.They just habitually followed a "tradition" during the "Cultural Revolution".It was wood before it was erected, and it became a "sacred object" after it was erected.If it is removed again, it will be suspected of blasphemy.I thought about it for a while, and then said to them: "Don't be embarrassed, it's a trivial matter. I have the best of all three, and I promise to do it to your satisfaction." When I left the factory a few days later, they took the initiative to ask me if the "best of all three" strategy had been implemented? I answered and implemented it. They then asked why? I told them that I had written a letter to the General Office of the Central Committee, asking them to transfer it to the central leadership for instructions, and they just followed through. They were dumbfounded, dazed, and stunned. I smiled and said: "The removal of the 'Glorious' card was personally instructed by the leading comrades of the Central Committee, which shows that the leading comrades of the Central Committee set an example to oppose the personality cult and the Communist demeanor of personality worship. It is only necessary to convey this instruction to the workers without any explanation. This is a beauty. The workers receive an on-the-spot education against personality superstition and personality worship. Do you still have any dissatisfaction?" Walker couldn't help laughing when he heard what I said. A month later, I accompanied Walker to Badaling.It is the season when Wanshan in the suburbs of Beijing is red, the wind is sunny, the sky is high and the clouds are clear. Standing on the Great Wall, overlooking the four fields, looking far into the distance, you feel relaxed and happy.I leaned against the entrance of the Great Wall, smoking a cigarette, and told Walker the story of "Meng Jiangnu", who cried down the Great Wall in search of her husband from thousands of miles away. "It's so beautiful, it's so sad, and the love is so great! Meng Jiangnu's love should coexist with the Great Wall in future generations!" The young Swedish doctor of literature was so moved that tears were about to fall. Walker was about to take a photo for me, when suddenly a man sneaked up to us and asked Walker in a low voice, "Do you want to buy a badge of Chairman Mao? Want foreign exchange." "You sell badges of Chairman Mao?" Walker asked back in surprise. It was a young man, tall, wearing a camel-colored woolen suit and shiny leather shoes, almost spotless.The hairstyle is also very chic, and he wears wide-brimmed enamel-rimmed glasses.It looks quite bookish.I had already seen him circling among foreigners visiting the Great Wall, and I thought he was an accompanying interpreter, so I didn't pay special attention to it.I asked, "What do you do?" He squinted at me and said, "Why are you asking the bottom line? I'm doing business with this foreign gentleman, not you!" He turned to Walker and said, "Let you see the stuff first!" He unbuttoned his suit Unbutton it, and open the placket to Mike—on the lining of his suit and on his sweater, there are all kinds of Chairman Mao badges, large and small, showing us a "splendid eye". "Pay with one hand, deliver with one hand, not a penny of RMB!" The other party said, closing his "commodity window".The gentle doctor of Swedish literature suddenly cursed in extremely rough Chinese: "Go to hell!" "If you don't buy it, why are you swearing?!" The other party buttoned his pockets in a panic.I said, "You are really good at making money! Get out of here, or it will be no good for you!" "I'll get out, I'll get out, why bother? There's no such thing as benevolence and righteousness..." The man muttered, turned around and slipped away. Walker and I looked at each other, You Xing was wiped out. Walker whispered, "I want to go back." I said, "Then let's go." We walked down the Great Wall silently and left the Great Wall in Walker's car. As a Chinese, in front of my foreign friends, I no longer feel ashamed, but more sad. Humans have a bad psychology, we call it "revenge".History has a ruthless law, which is interpreted as "reversal" by historians, "going to the opposite" by philosophers, and "reincarnation" by superstitionists. The collapse of superstition is the tragedy of the gods.The loss of authority is the misfortune of great men. "One sentence is worth ten thousand sentences" cannot realize communism.Greed for money is bound to confuse the mind of a nation.The construction of "Chinese-style socialism" is a reflection on the "socialism" that "takes class struggle as the key link", but material civilization is not a twin that is born conjoined with spiritual civilization.That's why I am most disgusted by the promotion of the concept of "time is money" in various newspapers of our party and country. Time is history, life, the endless record of success and failure that continues forever, and the destiny of a country and a nation. Time means the existence of a person, a nation, a country.And the real meaning of the latter's existence is by no means covering the earth with money. Time does not equal money. "Time is money" is equivalent to saying "money is everything". So I thought of a saying circulating in Beijing - "One billion people, nine hundred million 'Kan', and one hundred million are still developing". Those who "talk"-"talk about the mountains" are also called. Although exaggerated to the point of sensationalism, it tells a certain "silhouette" of reality. Being rich may get rich quickly, but it does not necessarily make Chinese people more like modern people in the 1980s. Looking at the flying trees outside the car window all the way, many fragments of thoughts flashed in my mind. When he broke up with Walker, he said: "Calling the Chinese in front of you, I always feel that I have done you a serious injury." I said, "Never mind." he laughed. I can't laugh. He told me that he was going to Chongqing once. I asked him about business and private matters?how long? He said that he would "report" everything to me when he came back... Half a month later, Walker appeared at my house again. I entertained him with jujube porridge and fried rice cakes. I didn't take the initiative to ask him what he did in Chongqing, although I really wanted to know. Don't pry into other people's private affairs - I respect this western politeness. For some reason, I concluded that he went to Chongqing for some personal business. His face was filled with joy from the bottom of his heart, he seemed younger and more chic. After dinner, I smoke and he drinks tea.He doesn't smoke any more than I am interested in the best tea. He talks to me about the last few football games. When I watch a football game on TV, I can't get excited anyway.I told him frankly that there were only two things that could get me excited—reading books and fighting movies.It's useless to talk about love again. He expressed great doubts and asked, "You also watch fighting movies?" I said, "I love it! I don't know why, when I'm walking on the road, I often have some extremely weird thoughts, such as breaking a concrete utility pole with my palm, and using qigong to stop a speeding truck suddenly." Live or something..." He smiled happily.After laughing, he looked at my face and suddenly asked, "Why didn't you ask me?" I pretended to be puzzled and asked, "What do you ask?" He said, "Ask me what I did in Chongqing." I said, "You said you'd 'report' to me when you got back." He said: "If I don't 'report', why don't you ask?" I say yes." "I want you to ask me now," he said. I said, "If that's the case, let me ask—what did you do in Chongqing?" "For love," he said. "Love?..." I never expected this. "I fell in love with a Chongqing girl." He said solemnly. Only then did I see that what filled his face was not only joy, but also genuine happiness. He asked: "Do you still remember the conversation we had at the small restaurant in Zhujiajiao, Shanghai when we parted?" I replied: "Remember." yes, I remember.He once said that if he came to China again, he hoped to find a Chinese girl who would be his wife.And I hope I can help him find it.I think love depends on chance and fate. So I never fulfilled the obligations I undertook back then.After all, Walker is a foreigner, and there is always something wrong with introducing a good Chinese girl to a foreigner as his wife.