Chapter 8 2. "If the wife is good to oneself, then the land is good to the peasants"

Mr. Ma Yunlong is my friend, how old is I. During the "Cultural Revolution", he hated the "Gang of Four"'s deeds that harmed the country and the people, and put it into words, so he was charged with crimes.He once told me a few people and things in prison, and it has been a long time, and I almost forgot all of them.Only two of them are memorable: the farmers and the land. It is said that there was an old farmer who was in prison with Mr. Ma back then.Taciturn, very gentle.One has never stolen, two has not robbed, three has not raped, and never murdered and set fire.I have never had any political views in my mind.

The "crime" of this old farmer is purely because of the land. Because it used to belong to his three acres of land. Before liberation, he was a sharecropper. At the beginning of liberation, he was an activist in land reform. Later, naturally, it was divided into three acres of land.The comrades in the land reform working group prefer him as an activist in the land reform movement, and the land assigned to him is good. When a land certificate with a big red seal was handed over to him, when a wooden stake with his name on it was smashed into the land boundary, when he was sure that the three mu of land really belonged to him, and this ancestor had never owned it for generations The farmers who had landed knelt on the three acres of land and cried.

It was like something out of some early revolutionary movie. But his tears are not the same tears as the actors' tears. God seemed to deliberately play tricks on this farmer. The two years after the land was allocated were either flood or drought.The land is in vain, and the labor is in vain.During those two years, the farmer did not get much crops from a piece of land that belonged to him. Then, China's rural areas entered the period of primary society. The so-called junior cooperatives are several farmers who establish mutual aid groups on a voluntary basis, integrate their land together, cultivate together, harvest together, and distribute according to work.

The farmer does not join any mutual aid groups. He thought, finally he has a piece of land that belongs to him, and it is a good land. He has not harvested a crop of good crops with his own hands, so how can he be willing to return to the group? Yes, he was so reluctant.Just like a little girl, it wasn't long before she got her own doll, and she was so curious that she was reluctant to put the doll into someone else's gang and "play house" with others. Since it is voluntary, he will not enter, and others will do nothing to him. In the next two years, relying on the good weather and good weather, he relied on his hard work to reap a good harvest on his land.

He is proud and conceited. If I don't join the junior cooperative, won't my land treat me badly?Then why am I still in? At this time, China's rural areas entered the period of high-level society. Senior clubs are still based on the principle of voluntariness.Involuntary, in the eyes of the rural cadres, it is undoubtedly a peasant without socialist consciousness.As a result, this peasant who did not even join the high-level cooperatives, this activist during the land reform period, became an ideologically backward element in the countryside during the socialist period. If you fall behind, you fall behind.He doesn't care.Now that he owns his own land, he has no interest in striving for political awareness anymore.He only wants to plant the three acres of land that belongs to him with his own hard work.

The Gaoshe period was nothing more than a particularly brief transitional period in rural China.In a blink of an eye, in 1958, the period of the People's Commune began. We Chinese all know that the so-called "people's commune" means that the land is owned by the collective, so farmers have a second title called "commune members" - "commune members are all sunflowers", this is the people's commune member. People's communes are no longer a matter of voluntary or involuntary. The land ownership certificate with the big red seal issued during the land reform period, or another kind of title deed, was confiscated again in some rural areas and burned, which is called the "second revolution."The first time was against the orders of the landlord class, and the land deeds of the landlords were burned.This second time, the peasants persecuted their private thoughts and burned the land deeds issued to them by the government during the land reform period.In some rural areas, the land deeds were not burned, but it is obviously meaningless, unless the person wants to keep it as a souvenir.Whether willingly or unwillingly, it has to be changed anyway.

The farmer we mentioned earlier, but he is not. He said, "The government did not say that the land certificate issued to me was invalid. It would be illegal for anyone to burn it. It would be illegal for anyone who forcibly takes it away from me." According to his thinking, as long as the land certificate is still in his hands, the three acres of land will always be his own. The village cadres told him that the government had already issued the spirit of the document, and the land had been returned to the public. He retorted: "I don't understand the spirit. Where are the documents? Show me!"

The officials at the village level couldn’t produce such high-level documents, so he thought it was on his side, and said: “If you admit that your wife is yours, then you have to admit that the land is still yours!” Not even joining the people's communes is no longer a question of backward thinking, but a serious question of fighting against rural socialism. But after all, he was a tenant farmer, a person with the lowest class status in the village, and the village cadres still couldn't help him. He has no choice but to let him practice the way of capitalist privatization alone! After discussing with the village cadres, they came up with a brilliant way to deal with him.

They announced to him in public: "Do you think that with the title deed in your hand, you can plant the three acres of land forever as you want? But all the village roads in the village are collectivized. You want to It’s okay to run all the way to the dark on the private road, then don’t take our collectivized village road in the future!” When he heard it, he was dumbfounded. But he was also stubborn at the same time-didn't he want me to not be able to go to my land and plant it?Then I will leave this village! That night he left his hometown and wandered to other places. For a farmer like him, wandering anywhere is not a long-term solution!

But he is strong, not afraid of getting dirty, tired, or discriminated against. He actually lived in a foreign country for several years and saved a lot of money. How did you save the money? It is a partnership with others, digging up dung in the city, pressing it into dung cakes, and selling the carts for money.At that time, there was a shortage of chemical fertilizers in the countryside, and a cart of dung cakes could sell for 20 to 30 yuan.But that's actually illegal.Because feces are valuable, public toilets in cities are not accessible to anyone.Doing that deed is also an act of robbery, and the crime is "stealing dung".The excrement thieves steal secretly in the middle of the night.

Fortunately he was never caught once in several years. This is generally the case for people who have left their hometowns—once they have saved up some money, they will feel more deeply about their loved ones and homesickness. So in a certain year, Nian Gen'er, he appeared in the village with a half-fan pig on his back. Although his clothes were not brocade, and even a bit ragged, the expression on his face clearly showed the meaning of returning to his hometown in brocade. Son. After all, carrying half a pig! That year was already 1965, a year to remind people not to forget the class struggle.That year, the harvest in the team, that is, in the village, was very bad, half blamed on God, and half blamed on others.Men, women and children are all frowning, not knowing how to live in the coming Spring Festival, so as to live a more or less happy atmosphere. The appearance of our peasant brother made the villagers feel indignant.Look at him who is firmly on the road of capitalist privatization!How high-spirited and arrogant he is on the road of socialist collectivization! ——What kind of energy is there to be arrogant? To be precise, the indignation of the villagers was mainly caused by the half pig fan he carried on his back. They thought he was an open provocation, not only to them, but also to the path of rural collectivization, to socialism. Then someone stopped him and condemned him: "Since you insist on taking the road of privatization alone, why are you still stepping on the road of our socialist collectivization?" He was also annoyed, and said convincingly: "What do you want to do? It's just an ordinary rural dirt road, and no one is allowed to walk before liberation!" Listen, this is clearly an attack on socialism! Some villagers thought, what is there to show off when you carry half a pig back?How can you eat your pork without water? Without anyone's order, they took turns guarding a well in the village-people from his family were not allowed to draw water from the socialist well. The fact is that during the few years he was away from the village, not only his family’s three acres of land had already been owned by the collective, but everyone in his family who could participate in collective labor had already become members of the people’s commune.Moreover, the relationship with other members is quite good. It's all the fault of that half-fan pig, and his way of taking the road of capitalist privatization as if he was walking unrelentingly and with great vigor. As for the well, he was very clear—it was not created after socialism.It was an ancient well, which existed several lifetimes before liberation. His family members were not allowed to fetch water, and he became furious, jumping and cursing on the road to socialism. What are you scolding?It's nothing more than scolding the people in the village for not even talking about the nostalgia, and they have become completely impersonal. This scolding alarmed the village cadres. The village cadres got together to unify their thinking, and they all thought that this person should be educated. Back then, the most effective way to educate a person was to hold a criticism meeting. So the militia broke into his home and took him to the elementary school with his arms twisted upside down, where the whole village gathered to criticize him mercilessly.The boundaries between the criticism meeting and the criticism meeting were not very clear, especially in the countryside back then.As a result, batches were batched, and gradually it became a fight.He was forced to stand on a table.Those who fight must make those who are being fought bow their heads and confess their sins, and those who are being fought will become more and more dissatisfied with each other.As a result, those who fight are impatient, and those who are being fought are also impatient.People didn't pay attention, and he did an impulsive thing-the portrait of the great leader Chairman Mao was pasted on the wall behind him. He turned around suddenly, tore off the portrait of Chairman Mao, and then tore it, Tear up and say: "It doesn't count to tell you what to say! It doesn't matter to tell you to talk! If I had known what I am today, I would not have been so active back then!..." There was a silence, and there was no sound. He naturally regretted it a few minutes later, but it was too late. Everyone saw what he had done. That was a capital crime back then. Who would dare to suppress such a thing?No one dared. The village cadres reported to the commune overnight; the commune quickly reported to the county; the county thought the case was serious and reported it to the province. The next day, a police car drove up from the provincial capital and handcuffed him away with shiny handcuffs. He was fifty-six or seven years old that year. The half fan of pig that he carried back home for thousands of miles had not had time to eat a bite of the meat. Needless to say, he also failed to spend the Spring Festival at home that year. The dictatorship thought he had a good background, so they leniently punished him and sentenced him to life. He, who was an activist during the land reform period, unexpectedly became a "counter-revolutionary", and it was active. The villagers, including the village cadres, thought about it carefully afterwards, but they all recalled many advantages of him in his previous life.Such as kindness, such as helping others, such as loyalty, integrity, etc... His main shortcoming is that sometimes he is too determined to see problems, and he often goes all the way to the dark, not turning back until he hits the south wall, and not crying when he sees the coffin.All in all, too stubborn. The villagers all sighed for him because of his stubbornness, and they all regretted it a little-knowing his stubborn temper, why bother to criticize him so seriously? However, it was too late for their regrets. It had happened, it was over, and no one could mitigate a crime as serious as his. His family wisely renounced all kinship with him.What if it is unwise?If it is unwise, they will have to wait to be "family members of the current counter-revolutionaries". When my friend Ma Yunlong was imprisoned, he had been in prison for more than ten years.What earth-shaking events happened in the outside world, he didn't know much. He is already an old farmer who is almost seventy years old. However, he has never been able to farm land for several years in his life, although he was once a good farmer. Before liberation, it was because there was no land of their own to grow. After liberation, it was because they had owned their own land but had not had the time to take good care of the crops on their own land for a few years. He is almost seventy years old, and he has been locked up in prison and has become a little demented. He often looks alone in a corner, muttering the same sentence to himself: "If the wife belongs to me, then the land belongs to the farmer." As for the title deed, he had hidden it somewhere, probably even himself. One night, after a strange noise came from his throat, he died with his eyes closed. Perhaps, at the last moment of his life, he still wanted to say that sentence that he never tires of saying? That sentence, for him, seems to have become a classic line. Come to think of it, he is too a tragic character. Is it enough to be a classic tragic role? I have no basis to make a comment. Alas! I don't have anything else to say about him except woohoo. What comforts me for this farmer’s underground soul is that—now, in China, the right to cultivate the land belongs to the farmers completely again, and all agricultural taxes are reduced or exempted...