Chapter 3 Childhood: Memories of Fire

In 1949, I was seven years old.My family lives near the Lion Mountain on the South Bank of Chongqing, and my residence is a dormitory building of the Customs.This small two-story building was built on a slope, and there were originally stairs connecting the upper and lower floors. Because it was divided between two families, the stairs were sealed off. My family lived on the upper floor and the other family lived on the lower floor.The floor of my house is roughly level with the ground on the slope, so a door was opened to lead to the slope, but the door and the slope were not directly connected, that is, the back wall of the small building was originally several meters away from the slope. The distance between the wall and the hillside forms a deep ditch, with water flowing through the bottom of the ditch, so a wooden bridge was set up between the door on the back wall of my house and the slope.On the slope where the wooden bridge passes, there is a small courtyard, and there are two simple huts, one is a kitchen for cooking, and the other is a toilet for toilets.There is a fence and a wooden door on one side of the small courtyard. The gate of my house is the wooden door. Family members and relatives and friends all enter and exit through the double-opened wooden door. Therefore, my house and the family downstairs do not have any shared doorways, so they are almost never. Do not communicate.

The structure of that small building is very simple, not to mention the shape, it just looks like a rectangle.But on our second floor, there is a rather large built-in balcony, which is very useful for our family.At that time, I had three older brothers, one older sister, and one younger uncle who lived with my parents since childhood, who was about the same age as my elder brother, and was born of my grandfather Liu Yunmen's second wife.When the family gets together, the house is not enough, and Chongqing is very hot in summer, and it is very uncomfortable for the brothers to squeeze into one room. Therefore, the elder brothers and the younger uncle often sleep on the balcony on the balcony during the hot summer. I also sometimes force myself to join in the fun with them, so in my childhood memory, this balcony is a very important stage.

Leaning on the railing of the balcony, you can clearly see the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Jialing River.The silhouette of the mountain city of Chongqing, half of which is covered by trees, and the part that is exposed, viewed from the balcony, generally looks like a right-angled triangle whose base is larger than the vertical side. Under the sun, it looks like a finely drawn color painting, and at night, thousands of lights are shining, and it will disappear without a trace in the rain... Decades later, these impressions of Chongqing city from the balcony are still vividly superimposed on the in my memory.

After the summer of 1949, the Kuomintang regime in Chongqing was already crumbling.Those high-ranking officials who could get air tickets all flew to Taiwan.The remaining defensive troops deserted and scattered.By the time autumn approached, Chongqing was practically in a semi-vacuum state.The arrival of the PLA is only a matter of time.At that time, the social order was chaotic, thieves were rampant, and strange things happened one after another.My family lives in the south bank, fortunately there are not many dead soldiers and thieves passing by our door, so we were able to save them.But my mother's anxiety at that time made me feel an extraordinary atmosphere at a young age.I remember one day a man broke into my courtyard, wearing a black robe and hat, dressed like a character on a stage, my mother stood on the wooden bridge of my house to deal with him, I shrank behind my mother’s waist, looking out, Between their questions and answers, I was terrified.The man called himself a Taoist priest and persuaded my mother to hand me over to him to take me away. It is said that the world is already in chaos, and it would be very bad for the family to keep me.Of course his mother would not listen to his nonsense, and finally sent him away.

September 2, 1949, I now find out from the perpetual calendar, is a Thursday.Only my mother, my nanny Peng Niang and I were at home that day.My father had to take a "customs boat" (motorboat) across the river to go to work in the city every day, and it was always dark before he could return home.At that time, my uncle had already moved out, my elder brother had joined the People’s Liberation Army in Guangzhou, my second brother went to Leshan Technical College, and my younger brother and sister lived in Bashu Middle School in the city.It was around noon, and after dinner, I ran to the balcony alone, moved a chair, climbed up to kneel down, and lay my arms on the balcony railing. As usual, I looked at the river and the mountain city across the river.

The sound of the river is mighty, as well as the mournful chant of the trackers.It was the endless symphony of life in my ears during my childhood. When I arrived in Beijing, my ears suddenly felt weightless. At night, I felt that the silence was unreasonable and my heart was empty.It took me a long time to realize that the quietness of Beijing is normal, but the uninterrupted sound of the river in Chongqing is a special case. I don’t know how long I lay down on the balcony, but I noticed that black smoke was rising from the dense houses on the other side of the river. The smoke column was getting bigger and bigger, and spread out, gradually forming a dark cloud.After a while, you can see the red tongue of fire, which seems to be licking greedily, what are you licking? Is there honey in the sky? I thought it was very interesting, so I turned my head and shouted into the room: "Mom! Peng Niang! Fire! Fire !" But Mom and Peng Niang didn't know what they were busy with at that time, they didn't pay attention at all.

My eyesight is very good, and I can still maintain a level of 1 to 5 in both eyes.At that time, I could see clearly some houses exposed on the opposite bank, and even the corridor dam outside the houses.At that time, the lower part of the mountain city was full of "houses on stilts".The crooked house on stilts is like some funny people squeezing me and you.I remember that some "houses on stilted feet" had very long poles inserted into the bank of the river, some bare-chested figures appeared in the windows of some "houses on stilted feet", and some had long clothes-drying poles protruding from the windows. , the tattered clothes hanging on it look like the "ten thousand national flags" hanging on a warship.

The picture deeply embedded in my memory is that the tongues of fire at the waist of the mountain city are connected together. It cannot be said to be a red tongue, but a rolling red dragon. The smoke and dust on the flames are like an overturned ink bottle. The large paper is soaked freely.However, although I can see clearly on the other side that there is a big fire burning, I can clearly see that the people in the "houses on stilted feet" below are completely unaware and are continuing their original activities. On a small dam in front of a house, there was a man lying leisurely on a cool chair, shaking a big cattail fan...

Mom and Peng Niang finally came to the balcony amidst my yelling. They looked at the other side and knew something was wrong, and even said: "Sin, sin!" However, when they shook their heads and left, they did not panic. Because there are frequent fires in Chongqing, they just thought there was another big fire. But the fire that day burned more and more evil.A few hours later, the right-angled triangle half of the mountain city that I could see from the balcony of my house was almost completely shrouded in fire and smoke, and I could clearly see how the burning houses on the upper floors collapsed with flames, The houses on the lower floor were immediately engulfed in flames.The person lying on the cool chair was nowhere to be seen, and the dam was already full of burning objects that rolled down.The worst thing was the "houses on stilts" along the river, which fell into the river almost instantly with flames.Some sailboats probably wanted to come to the shore to save people, but soon one or two were ignited by the flying burning objects, and the rest hurried away.There are more and more ants-like fleeing people on the riverside. I saw that when the burning objects splashed and splashed into the riverside and even the river water, some "ants" had to go all out to rush into the river water. Finally, some people only showed up in the river water. Silkworm-like black hair... Later, I heard that some people did not want to be roasted to death, and finally drowned. It was really a dire situation!

A seven-year-old child witnessed this horrific scene, but he couldn't understand what was going on.The current retelling uses the words and techniques I have now, trying to restore the impressions and feelings at that time, but it is very difficult.I can only assure readers that there is indeed such information stored in memory. How mother and Peng Niang became anxious, I don’t know. In short, when I found tears in my mother’s eyes, and Peng Niang, who was always calm, also trembled, I realized that the fire on the other side not only Countless "ants" were burned to death, and it also endangered the safety of my father, younger brother and sister.As soon as I understood it in my heart, I cried "wow". This is the only way a seven-year-old child can get rid of the sense of crisis.

At that time, there was no phone at home, and there was no way to contact my father and the others, so I had to resign myself to fate.Dad didn't come home that night, and there was no news from my brothers and sisters.Mom and Peng Niang stayed up all night.The fire on the other side looked even more terrifying in the night sky.The heat of the flames was forced by the wind, and the sparks were also scattered across the river. People downstairs began to pour water on the walls of the buildings, just in case.Mom and Peng Niang have more than enough heart but not enough energy, so they are looking forward to the fire.I was tired from crying, and finally fell asleep in my mother's arms. She hugged me for a long time before putting me on the bed. Dad finally showed up the next day, and then my siblings came home.The "September 2nd Fire" in the mountain city destroyed the homes of countless ordinary people, and the parents of Yang Suzhen, a classmate of my sister, died tragically in the sea of ​​fire. Was the "September 2nd Fire" a huge fire caused by ordinary people's careless use of fire (the fire protection system at that time was already paralyzed), or was it the remnants of the Kuomintang regime who deliberately set fire to create panic and used it to The destruction of materials that may fall into the hands of the People's Liberation Army is said to be the result of two factors intertwined. On October 1, 1949, before the People's Liberation Army entered the mountain city, in Beijing, the founding of the People's Republic of China had been declared.Our family gathered around a tube radio on that balcony and heard the live broadcast from Beijing.Looking at the other side of the river, there are still some places in the devastated mountain city that are still smoking after the disaster. Around the end of the year, the People’s Liberation Army came to the mountain city. People played waist drums and danced Yangko. In the primary school on the South Bank, people had a party with the People’s Liberation Army. They sang "Unity is Strength" while spinning and dancing. At the end of the song, the ring tightened, which meant unity. There is no gap, and a child is raised in the middle, and the child is waving a small five-star red flag. I acted as the role that was raised high. I was so happy and proud at that moment! My father, Liu Tianyan, was originally the general affairs director of the old Chongqing Customs, but because he properly and completely preserved and maintained all the property of Chongqing Customs on the eve of liberation (it was not damaged in the "September 2nd Fire") , to welcome the arrival of the PLA. Therefore, after liberation, he was not only immediately absorbed as a member of the reception team of Chongqing Customs, but also was immediately transferred to be the head of the new General Administration of Customs when the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China was established in Beijing on the grounds that he was progressive in thinking, decent, and proficient in business. Deputy Director of the Statistics Department.In this way, in the spring of 1950, my father took my mother, my younger brother, my sister and I, first took a ship through the Three Gorges, Kuimen to Wuhan, and then arrived in Beijing by train.Since then, I have settled in Beijing, and it has been 56 years in a flash.