Chapter 55 Miraculous Sanmenxia City

I sat close to the window.The earth is warm spring shade.For half a day, the train ran along the original valley of the loess.In front of several dome-shaped cave doors embedded in the earth wall, one or two trees in full bloom lean against one or two peach blossoms, which look particularly intoxicatingly red in the light shade of the twilight.Scattered small pieces of high and low wheat fields are so tender and soft that one wants to reach out and touch them gently.Between the original valleys in the sky, pale lights like sparse stars flashed from time to time. My chest was filled with the scenes of the Sanmenxia Water Conservancy Project in the pictures and imaginations, and I felt shocked and tense.During this half day, I gazed at the endless loess plateau, reviewing all the legends and poems about the Yellow River that I remembered from ancient times to the present.It is the most violent and unruly dragon in the rivers and rivers on the land of our motherland!It galloped down from the top of the Kunlun Mountains, shouting and laughing wildly, scoured tens of thousands of feet of sand, flooded thousands of cities and villages, and swept away the lives and properties of tens of millions of people. .This evil dragon that has been uncontrollable since ancient times has made our heroic people tightly chained to the giant pillar of the sky in Sanmenxia!From then on, the turbulent and turbid yellow waves will turn into clear and slow-flowing green water, irrigating tens of thousands of hectares of fertile fields for the people in a peaceful and gentle manner, stimulating millions of kilowatts of electricity, and carrying the rafts that come and go. ... What a great and gratifying thing this is; how heroic and lovely the people who subdued the evil dragon are.

It was getting dark.There is Sanmenxia Station in front of me, and I thought nervously: We are almost at the foot of the dam.Looking up, there are stacks of scaffolding high above the sky, with continuous lights as bright as day, people coming and going on the dam above and below the dam, and the sound of machines roaring, shaking mountains and shaking mountains... At the station, everything I imagined did not appear in front of me!In the fresh and cool night air, there is a brightly lit city. What kind of place is this? Why have I never heard of it! A big car took us through this brand-new modern city on a wide road, lined with neat trees and street lights, tall buildings one after another, and finally sent us into a place with ten In the compound of several large and small buildings, it stopped in front of a small building.

It's funny to say that we arrived in Zhengzhou in mid-March and found that spring there arrived ten days earlier than in Beijing.The pink willows are green, the sun is shining on the body, and it is warm.Therefore, when we traveled from Zhengzhou to Dengfeng, we only took our spring clothes with us.The answer is: the weather is warm, so pack lightly.Unexpectedly, when we arrived in Dengfeng, we were encountering timely "babu rain". Every time we traveled, we braved the oncoming rain and wind, and several people caught cold. Everyone is wary.This time I went to Sanmenxia and went north again. I remembered that I lived in a tent at the Ming Tombs reservoir construction site last year, so I put on the cold clothes I brought.I am going to live in a tent tonight, lie down and listen to the "sounds and splashes" of the Yellow River water, and walk to the dam on the windy and sandy river tomorrow morning... At this time, I walked into this exquisite small building like a dream, with bright lights Below, everything is the latest equipment.After drinking fragrant tea and washing my face with hot water, I found that my body was extremely hot!Just as I was about to undress, I was summoned to another building for dinner.The waiters in white coats and hats greeted us very hospitablely in the magnificent restaurant.The young man who served me porridge with red dates spoke fluent Beijing dialect. I asked him where he lived, and he smiled and said, "I'm from Xitong County in Beijing—we have a lot of people from other provinces here."

That night I was lying on the soft bed, but I didn’t sleep well. Looking at the white walls and the gray sky outside the window, I felt that the more I lay down, the hotter I was. I lifted the quilt, got up, turned off the radiator, and turned on a Opening the window, the excited mind slowly calmed down. As soon as it was dawn, I got up immediately, washed up and walked out in a hurry.My companions who lived in several small buildings also got up early in excitement.In the faint morning light, there was little dew on the bushes. In the courtyard, there were a few Soviet children running and jumping, and there were also a few cars taking Soviet experts to the construction site.The sun is getting higher and the voices are getting more and more. Listening to the voices of young people walking around in the yard talking and laughing, there are accents from all provinces!

We walked towards the gate together, and I saw a screen-like yellow mountain in the sky from a distance.Some of my companions corrected me, saying that this is not a mountain, but the Loess Plateau.The original names here include Yidaoyuan, Erdaoyuan and so on. I suddenly remembered Leyouyuan and Wuzhangyuan in Tang poetry, which must be the image.When we go out of the gate and look left and right, we are standing on the latest and most beautiful picture! Mayor Liu of Sanmenxia City told us: This brand new city that emerged miraculously was originally a small station next to the railway track, a Huixing Town with only more than 30,000 residents.When on April 13, 1957, in the quiet and precipitous Sanmenxia Valley, the earth-shattering first shot to conquer the Yellow River sounded, the city serving this great project was like a garden full of flowers, responding With the sound of spring thunder, sprouts sprouted everywhere.Soldiers who conquered the Yellow River from all corners of the country settled here.Around their construction work and living welfare, various satellite constructions have grown up rapidly.The first thing to establish is the business network, machinery supply and so on.There are more than 4,000 service personnel in the commercial system alone, and there are 6,000 to 7,000 kinds of products.The non-staple food industry has also developed rapidly. The local farmers who used to only grow cotton and wheat now also plant more than 10,000 mu of vegetables. In addition, they also raise a large number of chickens to feed pigs to ensure that the dam workers are full and well-fed.Workers' clubs, hospitals, cinemas, theatres, nurseries, kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, secondary technical schools and universities were successively established.The population of this city has now reached 170,000, with a permanent population of over 130,000.Three more people's communes were established after August last year.In the city is the Lakeside People's Commune, on the construction site is the Da'an People's Commune, and there are suburban People's Commune.Nursery schools, kindergartens and collective canteens were first set up in communes in the city, freeing thousands of labor force women among the employees' family members to participate in various service productive labor, such as sewing, washing and dyeing, raising chickens, feeding pigs, and grinding. Tofu, raising bean sprouts, making shoes and so on.There are also more than 300 young women who participated in the construction of the dam and served as apprentices... The mutual strength and brilliance of Sanmenxia City and the Sanmenxia Dam construction site, we gradually started on the 30-kilometer road to the dam construction site. I realized it!This flat, wide, tree-lined road that zigzags across the Loess Plateau is the main artery for transporting dam construction materials.On both sides of the road, there are high and low terraced fields. The farmers are busy with spring plowing, and the cows are dragging their plows slowly back and forth on the steep hills amidst friendly shouts.Gradually, Da'an Village came into sight, and there were many "workers' houses" with neat white roofs gleaming in the sunlight.Finally, we meandered through many adobe huts to the Engineering Bureau on the river beach.

This is a neat yard with peonies and lilacs. (This place will be under the reservoir one year later. Of course, the loess hut was originally planned to be demolished. Even the big trees next to the house and the peonies and cloves will be removed.) Comrade Zhang Haifeng, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Engineering Bureau, took us Visit the construction site model, pick up the stick to explain to us. I can't understand or remember many terms in geology and construction machinery. Only an ancient story is still shining in my memory!If I remember correctly, it means that at some geological age, a "diorite porphyrin" rock more than 1,000 meters long and 100 meters wide suddenly burst out from the ground, lying in the middle of the river.The two banks were originally towering stone walls. The Yellow River drove down from the upper reaches, and was suddenly caught in the middle of the stone wall and blocked by this stone sill. , Tens of millions of years of claw-splitting horn tentacles smashed this huge rock into jagged rocks, which were scattered among the three raging torrents.

These are the three gates of man, god, ghost, and natural danger.These strange rocks were given majestic or gentle names by later generations according to their images, such as "mainstay", "lion head", "dressing table" and so on.After the electric bombardment of the conquering army, now only the mainstay is still exposed, and Zhanggong Island has a corner, and the rest have become the foundation of the dam. We had a very lively and hearty lunch, and we toasted frequently. A few Soviet experts sitting next to us kept nodding and smiling at us, and we also raised our glasses to thank them.After the meal, we got into the car one after another and drove straight to the bottom of the dam.

Under the gentle wind and the scorching sun, we climbed to the majestic dam head - how should I describe it?This is not a world where people work hard with their hands and shoulders, but a world where huge machines work, a world where people flexibly manipulate huge machines to work for them.The big girl with double braids and the young guy are sitting lightly on the console, spurring the two sets of construction systems connected end to end on the construction site-concrete production system and machinery manufacturing and maintenance system.A series of trains loaded with sand, gravel and cement arrived at the construction site through the Longhai Railway. The sand, gravel and cement were mixed in an automated "mixing building", and then the concrete was transported to the dam site by a team of dump trucks. The crane lifted the concrete into the air and poured buckets into the large wooden formwork of the dam body.Workers work in three shifts, day and night.But standing on the high dam like the Great Wall surrounded by these two mountains and the river flowing, I didn't see the "chaos of people coming and going" as I imagined. I only saw the crane rotating silently, and I didn't see the "heavy Stacked scaffolding", only thousands of comb-like steel bars are neatly arranged... everything looks majestic, calm and solemn.Thousands of heroic workers are manipulating more than 7,000 construction machines up and down, far, near, and around the dam, on machines, trains, cars, and on the bases of auxiliary enterprises. Building materials from more than 50 provinces and cities in China and ten countries including the Soviet Union. …Under the aggressive slogan of "fight hard for three years, try to stop the flood one year in advance, generate electricity half a year in advance, and complete the project one year in advance", the battle to conquer the Yellow River became more tense and calmer.This tense and calm atmosphere, I felt on the dam, is: before the victory, the tens of thousands of troops crushed the city, and the solemn atmosphere of the horns without sound; In the symphony orchestra of tens of thousands of people, each person nervously holds his drumsticks and bows, and concentrates on the conductor's stick tip. When the stick tip is raised, all the voices will be played in unison, majesticly and harmoniously. A triumphant song resounding through the sky!

We bid farewell to the Sanmenxia construction site with a strange sense of wonder and satisfaction. Just like other great projects that have been completed on the land of the motherland, we have strong confidence in the early flood prevention, power generation and completion of the Sanmenxia Project. I'm planning how to visit this brightly lit, majestic flood control dam early on, and the vast reservoir with hundreds of miles of mirror-flat lakes. On the way back to the city, everyone discussed enthusiastically: the planning and construction of this unprecedentedly huge Sanmenxia Water Conservancy Project is really not easy!From Chairman Mao's inspection of the Yellow River to the Soviet experts assisting in the survey, design, and construction, how many meticulous preparations and organizations were there; how many manpower and material resources from all over the country and friendly countries have twisted this miracle into a tenacious bond. Dragon's steel cable——Sanmenxia City, which serves the Sanmenxia construction site, is a powerful part of this steel cable!

When we came out for the pilgrimage, this miraculous city was already ablaze with thousands of lights.We stepped on the stones on the stretching road under construction, looking at the orderly lights and shadows in the tall buildings.Finally, I walked to the bustling commercial area, passed the cafeteria full of laughter, the barber shop... and entered the tall department store, where there was a constant stream of people coming and going.When we were huddled close together at the counter, choosing fleece vests, an old lady from Guangdong persuaded us in an imprecise northern dialect: "Buy one, this is a new product, there are no such products in Beijing's department stores." When I picked up a delicate peach-shaped soap box by the plastic counter, the Sichuan accent The salesman picked up the box and said with a proud smile: "This is the latest product from Shanghai, which is not available in Beijing—as usual, the latest and best products are delivered to us first!"

I felt hot in my heart, took the package, and walked out the door silently. What a kind emotion, what a great care!The kindness and care are mutual.After the completion of the Sanmenxia Project, the heroic workers will head to new construction sites on the land of the motherland, while Sanmenxia City, which supports and protects the construction of the Sanmenxia Project, will continue to grow and develop, accepting the power generated by the Sanmenxia Hydropower Station, and becoming a better city. Greatly updated industrial cities... In fact, in every corner of the motherland, such as Qaidam, such as Karamay, such as... miraculous cities like Sanmenxia are emerging all the time.Such miracles have become everyday life in our country. When I found myself living in the latest and most beautiful country where beautiful fairy tales and miracles become daily life, looking up at the starry sky, I almost wanted to sing out loud! August 15, 1959, Beijing. We Woke Up Spring". )