Chapter 30 The mental journey of rebuilding the worldview

Written by: Southern Metropolis Daily Han Fudong Time: October 6, 2008 On the way to visit Dazhai, there were rumors that the college entrance examination would be resumed, and our group of advanced educated youths began to discuss whether to take the exam or not.At that time, I felt like I was running away from the front line of Dazhai in agriculture. The impact of the success of the big contract on me is the collapse of my worldview.From the time I wrote the biography of Chen Yonggui, I was forced to engage in history, to go back and rebuild the world view, and until now, I have continued to add bricks and tiles.

Going to the mountains and going to the countryside is the fate of a generation of educated youth in China.Wu Si caught up with the tail of this movement. The organized and large-scale "going to the countryside" movement began at the end of 1968. Mao Zedong issued an instruction that "it is necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants." "I was still a child at that time, so I didn't understand much." However, the influence of slogans such as "the vast world can do a lot" still made Wu Si full of longing for the countryside.After graduating from high school, he finally had the opportunity to practice his ideal.

At this time, educated young people have returned to the city in various names, and many of them fought bloody and tearful.But Wu Si, an advanced educated youth, is immersed in his ideal world, determined to learn from Chen Yonggui's competition. In October 1978, the National Work Conference on the Going to the Countryside for Educated Youth decided to stop the movement of going to the countryside and properly arrange the return of the educated youth to the city and employment issues.At this time, Wu Si was already sitting in the classroom of the Chinese Department of Renmin University of China, starting a new life.When he left the countryside, his heartfelt joy confused him.

This confusion has persisted for many years.A former so-called "ultra-left" model of advanced educated youth, in the torrent of information and knowledge after the reform and opening up, began to rebuild his own conceptual building. Before entering university in 1978, I was always an "extreme left" element.From the Red Soldier platoon leader, the Red Guard platoon leader to the Youth League branch secretary, all the squad cadres have always used "ultra-left" ideas to educate others, and the most effective result is to use "ultra-left" ideas to educate themselves. After graduating from high school in 1976, as an urban educated youth, he usually had to go to the mountains and the countryside.According to the policy at that time, there were several situations where you could not jump in the queue, such as the only child, or the age difference between the two children in the family was more than 6 years old.I and another classmate are under care and can stay in the city.But our heads are full of Mao Zedong Thought, and we are clamoring to go to the countryside to jump in the queue.

We open the map of China to pick, and we are ready to apply for wherever it is difficult.At that time, Tibet and Yan'an were the most popular.After picking and choosing, I finally went to the suburbs of Beijing.Because the mother of the classmate with me was already very old at that time, she came to me and told me that if you go to Yan'an, he will definitely go to Yan'an, what should I do at such an old age?We really can't convince him, so we persuade you.As long as you don't go to Yan'an, he won't go either. ——Because it was related to another family, I felt that the responsibility was heavy, so I stopped insisting and chose the poorest mountain village in the suburbs of Beijing arranged by the school.

When I was in the second grade of elementary school, the "Cultural Revolution" began.My mother is teaching at a university. One day I took my younger brother to play outside. I heard gongs and drums from afar. It was very lively. I went over and saw a group of people parading the street.There are a few people in front wearing tall hats and signs hanging on their chests, and one of them is my mother.My brother and I were so scared that we ran home and watched the parade pass by our house through the cracks in the curtains.For me, this day marks the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution".

Our house was raided three times.I watched quite lively from the side.The house was turned upside down, and many things that I didn't know before were turned up.The child's feeling of ransacking the house is not so scary, but rather amusing: Oh, why is there such a thing? After that, my mother and I went to the May 7th Cadre School of the Ministry of Commerce in Wen'an County, Hebei Province, and stayed there for two years.My father is in the national defense science and technology system. He wears the hat of "class dissident". My mother is probably a "reactionary academic authority" or "revisionist seedling". Any unit, at any rate, must be at the bureau level to be a "capitalist roader".Soon they will not be the focus of criticism.

But the May 7th Cadre School had to go, and the two factions fought against each other, ransacking each other's homes and fighting each other was nothing. At that time, everyone was generally affected, and we didn't feel strongly about the fighting and ransacking of our parents.The two factions fought and accused each other of being "royalists", so I couldn't figure out who was the real class enemy.At that time, I felt that my dad and the others were good, and the other party was a bastard, only reactionary, and he stood on my dad's side, so there was no way to draw a clear line with the parents.Originally, the child didn't understand this, but after the initial excitement passed, he was no longer interested.

The "Cultural Revolution" felt very happy, and no one cared about it.The adults go to work during the day and all have meetings at night, so the children are free.When we were in school, we memorized quotations from Chairman Mao, and we didn’t take exams for anything we learned. We spent all day outside doing things like catching crickets, stabbing toads, and shooting slingshots. Elementary school students are Red Guards, and they are not qualified to participate in the affairs of the Red Guards. You have to be a junior high school student to participate in any faction.By the time we were in middle school, the Red Guards had the potential to replace the Communist Youth League, and it had become a fairly formal organization. Everyone applied to join the Red Guards in batches.After a period of time, the Communist Youth League was restored, and the Red Guards became a peripheral organization of the Communist Youth League. The Communist Youth League became the core organization, and the Red Guards rejoined the Communist Youth League.It was already 1972 when we joined the Red Guards. The Red Guards began to be institutionalized and officialized, and they were no longer as impactful and rebellious as before.

The first set of books I read in this life was "A Spark Starts a Prairie", a group of revolutionary memoirs written by old Red Army soldiers and Lao Balu. Some of the stories were cruel.It feels very good, and it is full of war stories.The first novel I read was "The Song of Ouyang Hai", a very famous revolutionary novel.Our background is Mao Zedong Thought, and what we receive is the traditional education of revolution. After graduating from high school, I went to the countryside to jump in the queue. The real society, the poor and lower-middle peasants, and the imagination are far apart.The conditions are very difficult, and the daily value is thirty-five cents.At that time, the price of standard flour was 18.5 cents per catty, and they were bought with food stamps.That is to say, if a strong man uses his daily income to buy grain, he cannot buy two catties of white flour.Even if you don't drag your family with you, you still can't get enough to eat.When jumping in the queue, there was no oil, water, or meat, and two catties of white flour a day was not enough to eat.Once I ate noodles with fried sauce, and I ate a pound of nine taels in one meal. I was still not full, so I was reluctant to eat.

The first thing I took the initiative to do in the countryside was to engage in communist Saturday voluntary labor, which was taught by Lenin in "The Great Pioneering Work".Before we went to the countryside, Chairman Mao was criticizing bourgeois legal rights. On the one hand, he criticized the eight-level salary system and distribution according to work, saying that they were based on personal selfishness.On the other hand, some new things have also been established. The focus is on the Saturday voluntary labor advocated by Lenin, which is considered to be based on the conscious discipline of the masses and labor based on revolutionary heroism.The gradual expansion of this kind of selfless labor is the real foundation of a communist society, and only this kind of creative and conscious labor can create higher labor productivity than capitalism. Everyone started to imitate.After I went to the countryside, I copied this set of things and organized members of the Communist Youth League and youth commandos to do voluntary labor on Saturdays.After organizing it three or four times, everyone lost their enthusiasm and began to attack me, saying that I was trying to gain fame and use the masses to make myself famous and climb up the ladder.As a result, voluntary labor could not continue, and the communist labor experiment was frustrated. Later, I became the deputy instructor of the production team, managing the water in the team.When the farmers were watering their private plots, the production team was also watering the wheat fields. When there was a conflict between the two, who would water first?According to Mao Zedong Thought, it is to put the public before the private, and even to be selfless.I will let the collective pour first.But at that time, the farmers were all digging water secretly. As long as I was not around, he would dig the canal and divert the water to the private plot.Once there was a conflict, and I even got into a fight with someone.In the end, I found that I was caught in the vast ocean of the people's war. As soon as I turned around, people would dig the drain, and they pretended not to see each other, but I was alone.I can't watch the water all day long. Later, when the team committee was held, everyone discussed what to do. I still insisted on putting public affairs first and then private interests. After the team finished watering, I would water the farmers' private plots.Most of the members at the meeting said that during the day the team waters, and at night the farmers water.I am the far left, and most cadres are one step behind me.My claim is unsupported. People's commune members are always lazy, and probably don't even use half of their energy when digging the ground.When I go to work, I work as a foreign worker, and after work, I work as a frontrunner in the private plot.I tried my best to urge the members to work more, but I was repeatedly frustrated. No matter how I took the lead and tried my best, they couldn't keep up.The cadres of the production team were not so enthusiastic about collective affairs. At that time, I was the leader. Those team cadres would quit when they encountered a little setback. In October 1976, the "Gang of Four" was arrested.We small "leftists" feel that capitalism may be restored, but we are not sure. We don't know what is going on at the top and cannot judge.Besides, we don't have a good impression of the empty words and big words that are unique to the "Gang of Four". In 1977, I joined the Beijing advanced educated youth tour group to visit Dazhai.After visiting Dazhai, several educated youths in Changping lived in the county party committee guest house.At that time, there were four or five people discussing whether Dazhai's set of things would work or not.When we were in Dazhai, we were full of enthusiasm and confidence. As soon as we left Xiyang County, the temperature dropped by half, and it was only 20% in Beijing.When I returned to the village the next day, I guess the enthusiasm for this trip to Dazhai disappeared, and the temperature dropped back to zero.Everyone said that when they saw the members of the commune in our village, they didn't work hard, they were lazy and selfish, and they wished they could whip them, just like animals. At this time, an educated youth who applied to go to the countryside to become a farmer after graduating from university interjected that there was an educated youth in Inner Mongolia who wrote a book. This sentence was simply outrageous at the time, the standard revisionist line, the restoration of capitalism.But you can feel that this kind of proposition has a powerful force of truth. If it is true, China’s agriculture will definitely be good, there must be enough food, and farmers must work hard. At that time, the air seemed to freeze, and no one spoke.I don't know how long I was silent, I said, the guy who said this was arrested, right?She said grab it. This person is called Zhang Musheng. I think what he said makes sense, but I never dare to think of doing this.At that time, the furthest I dared to think was to expand the area of ​​private plots.Regarding Zhang Musheng's arrest, I felt at the time that if people who said such things were not arrested, why is it natural? At that time, I felt that the college entrance examination gave me the feeling that I had escaped from the front line of agricultural studies in Dazhai. On the way to visit Dazhai, there were rumors that the college entrance examination would be resumed. A group of advanced educated youths began to discuss whether to take the exam or not.Most people are tempted, but there seems to be none who are determined not to take the exam.The wavering elements on the left said that even if the exam cannot be taken this year, then the position is too soft, and it will be decided whether to take the exam in the next year or not.I belong to the left side, and I didn't take the exam back then, and I didn't review it. At that time, I felt like I was running away from the front line of Dazhai in agriculture.It wasn't until the end of the year that they all passed the exams that I couldn't bear the pressure and started to prepare for the exams quietly, wishing I could secretly, and started to read some high school textbooks. A college entrance examination was held at the end of 1977, and he entered school at the beginning of 1978. In the middle of 1978, I took another exam and entered school in October.Because the college entrance examination has just resumed, I don’t know how to fill in the volunteers, so I ranked them in the order of the universities I like. The one I want to go to is the National People’s Congress. The National People’s Congress has a “pure-bred” revolutionary taste, so the first choice is the Chinese Department of the National People’s Congress. Then I felt that Peking University was quite famous, so my second choice was the Chinese Department of Peking University, and my third choice seemed to be Nankai, the alma mater of Premier Zhou.I was not interested in history at the time, and felt that it was too useless to get into the pile of old papers. The practice of such a fiery revolutionary struggle was calling you. It is incomprehensible and too old-fashioned to refuse to accept the call of the people but to get into the pile of old papers.The Chinese department was the most popular department at that time, so I chose the Chinese department. My test scores were very high, and I entered the National People's Congress without any suspense.I thought I would be nostalgic for the countryside. I thought it didn't matter to me whether I could go to college or not.I always felt this way before the exam, and I didn't care much after the exam, thinking that I would fail the exam. When I received the admission notice, it was the season of autumn protection, and I sent people to guard the crops and fruits to prevent them from being stolen.Farmers are afraid of offending others, and we educated youths are outsiders, and I will turn my back on everyone if I catch them, so I let me protect the autumn.I also created a production team record of catching a thief in an average of three to five days. I was protecting autumn, and someone was looking for me everywhere, saying that I had passed the exam.I went to see it. The total score was 500 points. I got 398.5 points in the test. I heard that it was the second place in liberal arts in our county.I pretended to be calm.When I got back to the dormitory, I went out to patrol the mountains with a sickle, and when I walked to a place where there was no one outside the village, I suddenly felt ecstasy. Without panting, he jumped a few more highs and yelled a few times.After that, I was suddenly stunned, thinking: How could I be like this?Do I really want to leave the countryside so much?I was very surprised by my ecstasy. I don't think I care so much about it. I am very nostalgic about learning from Dazhai in agriculture.I am the deputy secretary of the brigade and the instructor of the production team. How can you be so ecstatic?Why am I like this?The ecstasy I felt at the time really took me by surprise. It's almost time to go to school, and I have found a successor in the village, and he has already taken office, but I just procrastinate and want to stand on the last post.People say, what are you doing, don't you go home?In fact, I was already in an awkward situation and felt like an outsider.In the end, it was the secretary of the brigade who sent me to the station, as if he still wanted to drive me away.School hadn't started yet, so I left the countryside a while earlier. After graduating from university, I was assigned to work in the Rural Policy Research Office of the Central Committee Secretariat of the Communist Party of China. In fact, I went to its official newspaper, the Peasant Daily.At that time, the Farmer's Daily was the editor-in-chief, and I was the deputy director of the editor-in-chief's office in the third year there.In the fourth year, I applied to the Ministry of Mass Industry and stayed for a year. I read letters and received petitions. In 1983, I went to the Ministry of Mass Industry to look through letters, and saw a letter saying that farmers in Kaifeng could not buy "linked fertilizer".Linked fertilizer refers to the chemical fertilizer that the state sells to farmers at a fair price after they sell cotton, wheat and other agricultural products at a fair price.As a result, the farmers in the Kaifeng area honestly sold cotton and wheat to the state at low prices, but they could not buy cheap chemical fertilizers within the plan, and could only buy high-priced chemical fertilizers on the market. I formed an investigation team with two other colleagues, starting from the Agricultural Resources Bureau of the Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, and investigated layer by layer.We found that there is another set of rules for this resource allocation, not as stated in the document.We made continuous reports and used a term called "internal regulations" in the reports, which was the predecessor of the later "hidden rules".The following year, the report won a National Good News Award. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of Commerce organized a joint investigation team to investigate this matter, and I am a member of their investigation team.I think we have made a great contribution to blocking an unhealthy trend and corruption.But when you look down, everything remains the same, nothing has changed.It's just that one or two people were unlucky, they met our guns and were dismissed.The newcomers continued to do that. This incident was a failure for me, and it stimulated me a lot.First of all, I know that China has another set of rules, and I have to pay attention to it, otherwise I will never know China.On the other hand, it feels that we can't solve too many problems by acting recklessly with moral enthusiasm.When I was the deputy director of the Ministry of Mass Industry, I contacted a large number of people to petition. I deeply felt that there are too many people who have been wronged in China. This problem is too big, and it is almost impossible to guarantee fairness and justice. After I went to the Peasant Daily, I still couldn't solve the problem of the theoretical foundation of understanding China, and I felt more and more that simply using Marxism-Leninism to explain China would not work.The whole reform and opening up was a deviation from certain ideas of Lenin-Stalinism, but it was a great success.The success of Lumpas has had the greatest impact on me.It turned out that I was so determined to learn from Dazhai, I tossed in a mess, made little progress, and was basically at a stalemate - because I worked hard, I could still move forward a step or two, but when I stopped for a while, I was squeezed back.When Deng Xiaoping came to power, farmers worked like clockwork, and China's grain production increased all of a sudden, and the lack of food became a surplus of food. You have to admit that this thing really works. I thought this thing worked, but it is a bourgeois thing. It mobilizes people's selfishness and selfishness, and it will make this society more intriguing and mercenary. Grain, too, can’t go that way.The reality is that farmers harvested more grain, but the atmosphere in the whole society became better and more relaxed, not more violent. After 1987, there was basically nothing to do in the countryside, and the system basically stabilized.I felt like there was no point in waiting.But it still didn't solve the problem of why I failed to learn from Dazhai.The failure of learning from Dazhai, my understanding of it, and my views on the future and history of rural China have always been a problem in my heart.The impact of the success of the big contract on me is the collapse of my worldview.What I have always wanted to do is to rebuild the concept system or worldview.My way of grasping the world has fallen apart, the world is a mess, and I want to rebuild the framework based on the countryside so that we can understand reality accurately and convincingly.Worldview reconstruction, this is a vague theme that I have personally read for more than ten years, and it is also my motivation for writing Chen Yonggui's biography. I am really interested in Chen Yonggui.Shanxi Xiyang County Archives has a lot of files about Chen Yonggui. I have been reading from the 1950s to the 1980s. I have read all the files related to Chen Yonggui in the past 30 years. I copy the files every day after dinner in the morning. When I got off work in the evening, I copied in the dark every day. There were two thick stacks of excerpts and copied materials, and I used a lot of ballpoint pen refills for copying materials. When I write the biography of Chen Yonggui, I just want to understand why I failed and why he succeeded?Later, I figured out that if his set of things were moved to my place, he would die.Then I felt that this day, it was not a crime of war.My heart is at ease.It’s not that I don’t work hard, it’s that his path can only be partially implemented in some cases when the strength in all aspects is strong, and that condition is too harsh, and it is impossible to have it everywhere in China.After writing Chen Yonggui, a disease in my heart was cured. When this was done, I went to the magazine.After publishing three issues in cooperation with Hong Kong Ming Pao Group, the magazine stopped publishing.Then it cooperated with Ming Pao Group to publish two batches of books.Next, Ming Pao Group's various businesses withdrew from the mainland, all cooperation was terminated, and we lost our jobs. In 1996, "Oriental" magazine was about to resume publication. I went there to run a trial issue, but it was not approved and died again.At that time, someone came to me and asked me to become the editor-in-chief of an economics magazine. The ideal at that time was to launch a Chinese "Fortune" in five or six years. Running "Fortune" was not too risky. of. But I have been tossing around for three or four years since 1993, doing one thing and smashing one thing, feeling that my hands are very smelly, and I will die if I touch anything.Looking back, those three or four years felt like being an editor, a magazine, and making wedding dresses for others in a daze.Asking me to spend another five or six years making wedding dresses for others deviates from my main line.I originally thought that after writing Chen Yonggui's biography, I could start a new life, forget about rural affairs and historical affairs, and understand everything.Then I bumped around like headless chickens, and after several years of bumping, I realized that my problem has not been solved, and my problem is still the reconstruction of the world view.I feel that running this economic magazine is not the same as what I want to do, it is not what I am most interested in, and it is not what I am most concerned about.I quit, I went home to read and write. I felt that my foundation was insufficient, so I started to read Ming history, and wanted to slowly collect information and write a monograph.Later, Liang Xiaoyan helped "Shanghai Literature" to make an appointment, and it came to me.At that time, my notes on the history of the Ming Dynasty already had millions of words, and I felt that it was trivial to deal with a few articles.Later, I sorted out the articles published in "Shanghai Literature" and some of my notes, and it became a book. After writing this book, I felt that the word "hidden rules" will definitely become popular. This word is too important. It took me so long to find an outlet for expression, and many people must be looking for it too.At that time, I listed at least seven or eight words, such as gray, internal, rules, regulations, etc., and combined them with each other, and finally felt that the word "hidden rules" was good.I often use this kind of combination of words to make up words, including the "law of blood reward" later. The market reaction of the "law of blood reward" is not as good as the "hidden rules", but in my opinion, its weight is heavier than the hidden rules.The law of blood reward refers to the calculation law of obtaining remuneration through violence, and refers to the destructive power that cannot be tolerated by productivity and production relations. It belongs to the same level as productivity. In it, it is a cornerstone of a deeper level. From the time I wrote the biography of Chen Yonggui, I was forced to engage in history, to go back and rebuild the world view, and until now, I have continued to add bricks and tiles.After the original world view collapsed, I tried to build a bigger, more beautiful, stronger and more livable concept building on the ruins.