Chapter 28 The End of the Seventh Era
Furong Town has fairs this spring, which is not quite the same as in the past.In the past, when fairs were held, people in the mountains would go to the "black market" to sell wild game, fur and medicinal materials. They had to have eyes in the back of their heads to keep an eye out for signs of trouble.Grain, camellia oil, peanuts, soybeans, cotton, ramie, timber, live pigs, cattle and sheep, etc. are called the "three types of materials" that are purchased and sold by the state and are strictly prohibited from being listed.As for pork and beef, even the members of the commune seldom touch meat a few times throughout the year. The pigs they raise are ordered to buy while they are still suckling. pork".Each urban population gets half a catty of meat tickets per month, and sometimes they have to entrust someone to buy them through the back door.Interestingly enough, newspapers and "Reference News" promote modern medical truths about the lack and poverty of such materials: animal fats and cholesterol are high in content, which can easily cause arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and heart disease. All countries advocate a light diet, eat more grains and vegetables, and plant fiber is beneficial to the human body.The red face may die suddenly one day, but the yellow skin can live for a long time and prolong life...
Time really seems to be doing magic! It has only been a little over two years since the "Gang of Four" fell, but the people in the mountain town seem to have entered a new generation.Now Furong Town has fairs, on the thirtieth day of January, and every sixteenth day of every tenth, those younger sisters of the Yao family and eldest sisters of the Zhuang family who are dressed in brightly colored silver ornaments, those young children of the Han family who are dressed in neat clothes, Smiling sister-in-laws and men in charge with big money purses in their waists are either in small groups or in pairs, or they are carrying tender and juicy seasonal cabbage, or carrying baskets full of green duck eggs , hemp shell chicken, or pushing a chicken bus, which is loaded with fresh fish products from communes and brigade companies, or riding a bicycle with a hip-hop female passenger on the back seat... People travel from the main roads and small roads of the four townships Come here, occupy three feet of ground in the new and old streets of Furong Town, set up stalls and gather trade.The flow of people, the river of people, and the buzzing sound of the city resounded through the huge mountain town... The most eye-catching thing on the fair is the new rice and meat shops.White rice, red rice, brown rice, organic rice, baskets and baskets are lined up for people to choose and bargain.The new policy allows commune members to sell surplus grain, oil, agricultural and sideline products in the market after completing the national procurement and distribution tasks.The meat shop is even more spectacular. The wooden chopping boards are lined up in two long rows, just like holding a trade fair or competition for members’ families to raise pigs, and see who has fat fat on the chopping board, and thin-skinned and tender meat. "Old cousin! I'm afraid this pig will cost around three hundred?" "Three, five hundred! It's not worth raising any longer."
Oh, it’s full of fat wax gourds, too little lean meat, and women think it’s greasy...” “Your comrade is really hard on people’s hearts. Don’t think about it. Too fat, complaining about the lack of meat!" It's really a folk song to sing on which mountain. Even on days when there is no fair, the pork in the old shops in Xinjie is sold from daylight to dark. New contradictions in production, supply and marketing have emerged: members have to pay pigs , the food station does not accept. The reason is that the town is small, there is no cold storage, and the private pork can’t be sold. How can the public slaughter pigs get a market? Compared with previous years, the supply and marketing relationship has been reversed... People don't know what the "four modernizations" are, but they have already tasted the sweetness in terms of their own interests.
No immediate worries, but long-term concerns.The old shadow has not been eliminated from people's minds, and there are still lingering fears.People are still worrying and talking about whether the claws of the extreme left will suddenly appear one night to snuff out this flourishing vitality.Slogans and slogans, struggles and movements, will they expand again to fill people's lives and replace the necessities of survival such as oil, salt, firewood and rice...the shadows do exist.After Wang Qiushe, the owner of the hanging house, went crazy, he wandered around the new street and the old street every day, with golden badges hanging on the front of his ragged clothes, shouting in a desolate voice:
"Don't forget—!"
"'Cultural Revolution', come again in five or six years——!"
"Class struggle, life and death—!"
The voice of Crazy Wang is a ghost, a ghost, wandering in Furong Town.Adults and children in the town, when they saw Crazy Wang during the day, they ran into the house and closed the shop door quickly; when they heard his screams at night, their hearts became numb and their whole body trembled.Hu Yuyin, who was already a waiter at the rice and tofu shop in Qingshiban Street, heard Crazy Wang's cry, and accidentally knocked down the soup bowl.The family of the director of the tax office and the family of the director of the supply and marketing cooperative who had recently implemented the policy and returned to the town even cried when they heard the cry, making it difficult to fall asleep at night... Landlords hanging on their feet are still a big scourge in Furong Town.
The neighbors in the mountain town are suspicious and cursing.
"Sister Fu Rong" caressed Xiao Junjun's childish head, worrying: "Crazy Wang won't die from freezing or starving, how long will he live?"
Li Mangeng's woman "Five Claws" also asked: "Crazy Wang, who cuts his head and beats the cannon, still wants to be the mayor and party secretary, and drive us to do quotation exercises and dance loyalty?"
Li Mangeng, secretary of the party branch of the township brigade, said: "You deserve it! We are a new society with a party leader. A person like Wang Qiushe will not be successful after all. The lesson is profound!"
Gu Yanshan, secretary of the town committee and "Northern Soldier", is busy managing the Furong River and Yuye River. He didn't make any comments in this regard. He only planned to send someone to send Wang Qiushe to the state mental hospital for treatment immediately. .
Qin Shutian, deputy director of the County Cultural Center, recently returned to Furong Town to collect folk songs, and said a very well-informed saying: "Which big city and small town nowadays do not have a few lunatics wandering and shouting? They are a sad and deplorable end of an era."
From July 18, 1980 to August 4, the first draft was in Mangshan;
Organized in the Literature Workshop of the National Writers Association in early September;
In October, it was revised at No. 166, Chaonei Street, Beijing.