Chapter 7 5. Waiting for you forever, how far is forever? !

Spring goes and spring returns, cold comes and summer goes.The revolution finally succeeded. In August 1949, the 18th Army of the Fourth Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched into Xingguo County.The People's Liberation Army was the Red Army back then.When the news came, Chi Yuhua combed her hair and washed her face, and ran overnight to inquire about her husband's whereabouts.She watched and inquired for three days on the side of Gaoxingxu, the only way the army must pass, but neither found her husband nor did she have accurate information about her husband.

Comrade, have you seen Li Cailian?Chi Yuhua asked the same question to all the troops. Troops in the back.Almost all soldiers answered this way. Chi Yuhua was not discouraged. A man who looked like an official said to her: The whole of China has not been liberated yet, maybe he led the troops to fight elsewhere. Chi Yuhua believed this.The revolution has not been successful until the whole of China has been liberated.Cailian didn't come back so soon.The Red Army is back after all.Chi Yuhua knew that the long-awaited husband was about to be reunited.But other people's husbands have come back, why hasn't my own husband come back.She asked everyone she met, and took the trouble to inquire about her husband.

The revolution has not succeeded.She was tired of asking too many questions, so a kind person comforted her with a white lie: Now to resist US aggression and aid Korea, your husband leads troops to fight in North Korea, and he will come back after the war. When someone else's husband of the Red Army became a division commander or army commander, she felt lost when she saw it and returned to her hometown in glory.There were conflicts at work, and some people deliberately sarcastically said: "Your husband has become a high-ranking official outside, so I don't want you anymore. No one wants you." Whenever she heard this, she felt very uncomfortable and couldn't sleep for several nights.

There is also some information about Li Cailian, which made her even more tormented to find her husband from thousands of miles away. Once, she heard that Li Cailian was seriously injured in the war and was rescued by the people in the mountains of a certain county. The people of that family kept him disabled as their son-in-law.Chi Yuhua didn't quite believe this information, but she couldn't help but believe it, after all, Li Cailian hadn't returned for a long time, and she decided to visit her for several months, seeing is believing. In late autumn, Chi Yuhua carried a bamboo bamboo basket like visiting relatives, which contained fried potatoes and rice crackers, taro buns, Dengzhan cakes, and strings of snow-white stir-fried hot skins strung on bamboo strips... Four or five The journey of the sky is full of countless guesses.

She figured it out, she is not a stingy person: Li Cailian should be her husband, but he can also be someone else's husband with the same reason: maybe because someone saved Li Cailian's life, Li Cailian is repaying her kindness; maybe he is disabled , unable to walk, unable to go home; another possibility is... After getting out of the car, she walked in the desolate mountains, winding and bumpy mountain roads, and at the creases of a mountain, there was a stockade of five or six families. She inquired and found Li Cailian's home. There, in a small farmyard, Li Cailian leaned on crutches and was feeding the chickens with her body behind her back, making a series of calls to the chickens: "clack-clack-cluck--", surrounded by two children.

Cailian Cailian - Chi Yuhua cried out, tears pouring down, sobbing like a roar, put down the basket and burden, and rushed forward. Li Cailian turned around and slapped——a pair of crutches fell to the ground, and the two hugged each other, weeping with their heads in each other's arms, and weeping together.After a long time, a woman next to him coughed heavily.After crying, the two looked at each other carefully, but they didn't know each other. Why, aren't you Li Cailian? Yes, I am Li Cailian. Did you join the Red Army? Yes, I joined the Red Army and was seriously wounded in the war.

Yes, he is Li Cailian, and Li Cailian of the Red Army, but he is not the Li Cailian she longs for. Chi Yuhua can't remember clearly, this is the first Li Cailian he found, and the first non-Li Cailian. 28 Seek, seek, never stop seeking... After the Long March of the Red Army, among the 12 members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in the Central Soviet Area, the whereabouts of Li Cailian were the only ones whose whereabouts were unclear.He is a senior cadre of the party, so he can't just be so unclear and his whereabouts are unknown. In fact, various departments have been searching for Li Cailian intermittently.

In 1937, when Xiang Ying went to Yan'an to report to the Central Committee on the three-year guerrilla war on the border between Jiangxi and Guangdong, he mentioned that Li Cailian was one of the main military leaders who stayed and persisted in the struggle. It is said that Li Cailian is from Xingguo, Jiangxi. Before the "Cultural Revolution", Feng Wenbin, member of the Central Committee and director of the Party History Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, came to Jiangxi and asked the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee: "Where did Li Cailian go?" For this reason, Wu Yunzhong, director of the Party History Office of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, made a special trip to Xingguo to investigate Li Cailian whereabouts.During the revolution in the Soviet area, Wu Yunzhong worked in the "Fujian Provincial Committee of the Lesser Communist Party" and heard Li Cailian give a report in Fujian.Li Cailian's eloquent accent has a Xingguo accent. In May 1986, Wu Yunzhong came to Xingguo County again to look for Li Cailian's whereabouts.

Xingguo County immediately began to search for Li Cailian's job, and found two Li Cailian at once: one was a young county trade union chairman, and the other was a young rural woman.Wu Yunzhong laughed when he heard this, and said that Li Cailian was an old Red Army soldier.Later, a certain department of the central government received a report that another female Red Army soldier Li Cailian was found in Fujian, which made people laugh and cry.All the old comrades in the Central Committee know that Li Cailian is a gay man!The search for Lee Jae-ryeon is being carried out tirelessly in various places.

The Party History Office of the Ganzhou Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China established the "Li Cailian Research Group".They set their sights on the old Red Army. Zhang Aiping wrote back, explaining her relationship with Li Cailian and Li Cailian's original position, etc., but her whereabouts were unknown after the Red Army's Long March.Chen Pixian wrote back saying that Li Cailian might have been killed by a guard (the original letters are kept in Xingguo County Martyrs Cemetery). During the search, Ling Buji, deputy director of the Party History Office of the Ganzhou Prefectural Committee, found an important material from the archives.During the rectification movement in Yan'an, Zhong Min, who served as secretary of the Tingrui Special Committee and political commissar and detachment leader of the Tingrui guerrilla during the three-year guerrilla warfare in southern Jiangxi, specially wrote an article recalling the situation of breaking through the 9th route in Yudu.The materials explain in more detail how Li Cailian's team was dispersed by the Kuomintang army on the way to Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Li Cailian turned back to Ruijin and joined Zhongmin in the guerrilla in Tongbo Mountain. (Zhong Min later recalled this paragraph in the article "Blood Spilled on Tongbo Mountain").

A lost member of the Red Army surnamed Lin once asked Hu Yuchun during the implementation of the policy: "Do you know the whereabouts of Li Cailian? His wife Chi Yuhua always comes to me and asks me to help her find Li Cailian." Said to Hu Yuchun: "Chi Yuhua made me headache. The fact that her husband Li Cailian was a member of the Central Committee could not be implemented. In the end, he was not even a martyr... I asked Chi Yuhua many times to investigate the historical facts of the Soviet area, and Chi Yuhua also had many Next time I came to the county to inquire about Li Cailian's whereabouts from relevant departments." Hu Yuchun immediately reported the situation to Wu Yunzhong. Li Cailian's wife is still alive? The setting sun casts a long afterglow from the top of Qin'e Mountain, the clear Lixi River is shimmering, and the farmhouses in the distance are already curling up with smoke.Ninety-year-old Chi Yuhua moved a bundle of firewood to the stove to prepare a fire, then walked to the gate with a thoughtful mind, and looked across the creek.This look is a full 67 spring and autumn. On this day, Chi Yuhua saw a dark figure appearing in the direction of the county seat again, so he couldn't help but greet him. Jiaofu Village is located about 25 kilometers northwest of Xingguo County. It is a remote mountainous area with narrow roads, deep forests and slippery moss. There is only a simple mechanical farming road that leads to it crookedly with ups and downs.When Comrade Hu Yuchun from the County Party History Office inquired around, he came to the gray alley in Lixi Village.No one expected that an old lady picking beans had noticed them.Across the river, it was Chi Yuhua who stepped on the "Tiger Leaping Stone" to greet him early and ask. "Excuse me, are you from the 'Taiwan Affairs Office'?" "We are from the Party History Office, and we came to Chi Yuhua to inquire about Li Cailian." The comrades from the Party History Office looked at this strange old lady and replied with some doubts. "Cai Lian, where is Cai Lian, where is Cai Lian?!" Chi Yuhua lost his feelings, and called out, tears welling up in his eyes.When it comes to Li Cailian, her eyes are bright and her face is flushed. She is in her 70s like a girl in her 20s. "Li Cailian may have died." "Cailian, Cailian—" a handful of beans fell on the "Tiger Leaping Stone".Lixi was scattered from the stone and flowed along the water.Chi Yuhua's call turned into a long and low moan: "Cai Lian—Cai Lian—" Every strand of her hair trembled with the excitement from the depths of her heart.How could Li Cailian die, how could Li Cailian die? !Oh, people in eight villages in ten miles know, people in three towns and six towns know: there is a handsome woman in Jiaofu Village who has been waiting for her husband to become the Red Army for 67 years.A full 67 years!The old girl was born tender and green, pitifully young and without a husband, she was like mustard greens in the garden, blooming steadily and empty in her stomach. Pot bottom ash and rotten clothes can't stop the beauty of pretty girls.Xingguo is the hometown of folk songs in China. The unstoppable love songs linger in Chi Yuhua's ears day and night. After twenty miles or thirty years, if you don't love Lang Lang, you will stay still. When the old sister is old, she asks Lang Lang to go away. During this period, dozens of people proposed to her, and 7 strong young people married her, but they were all rejected by Chi Yuhua, who was unreasonable and only accepted death. I have a husband, how can I fall in love with him!Boundless years, endless waiting.After a long life of suffering, today, her waiting has finally come to fruition.But what kind of result is this? This is a result that is more cruel than no result. No, Cailian is not dead, Cailian is definitely not dead!Chi Yuhua calmed down, and firmly denied the news of Cailian's death.She ran to an unpainted wooden box in the corner to get evidence, yes, her words were by no means groundless.She once wrote to Cai Chang, chairman of the All-China Women's Federation, and Mao Zedong, chairman of the Republic, and received serious and responsible replies. This is an unpainted fir box, which has been stained by the years, and the white wooden box has turned black.She found Li Cailian's letter from the bottom of the box.Stationery, envelopes, stamps, and postmarks all prove her history from 1933 to 1934.These three envelopes were later borrowed by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications many times to participate in stamp exhibitions and became the most precious stamp products in our country.The most precious postage contains the most precious emotion of our revolutionaries. "Cailian said when he left that he would definitely come back to reunite with my husband and wife in a few decades..." This is Li Cailian and Chi Yuhua's wedding vows, and this is their life-and-death contract!For this sentence, Chi Yuhua willingly and patiently waited for his whole life.She took out a white cotton double-breasted gown from the wooden box, which was a gift from Li Cailian when she married her.I am reluctant to wear it on weekdays, but only willing to look at it. After looking at it for a long time and seeing it dirty, I wash it carefully.It has been more than half a century, and the gift from my sweetheart is still intact. Seeing the thing she loves is like seeing the person she loves, a few strands of warmth and tenderness remain in her heart for a long time. "Cailian is not dead. He must be doing underground party work in Taiwan." From the bottom of the box, Chi Yuhua found the letter she wrote to Comrade Mao Zedong, the letter Mao Zedong forwarded to Comrade Cai Chang, and the letter Cai Chang gave her. reply.She even dug out a letter addressed to Mr. Li XX from Taiwan... Chi Yuhua found a notebook that was so yellow and black.Find, find, find.For more than half a century, Chi Yuhua has searched for Li Cailian countless times through various means. This notebook contains a series of footprints of her search, and it contains strands of true love between her, an ordinary woman, and the supreme leader of the Republic. In the spring of 1953, Chi Yuhua, as a female cadre in the Soviet area, went to Nanchang Bayi Revolutionary University to participate in a training course organized by the Provincial Women's Federation.Whenever she had a chance, she asked around for Li Cailian's whereabouts.Someone gave her an idea. It stands to reason that your husband should be a high-ranking official. Why don't you write a letter and ask Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong became chairman.Yes, I should write a letter and ask him.He knew Li Cailian and was educated and would write a reply. As expected, Chi Yuhua asked someone to write a letter to Chairman Mao Zedong.Chairman Mao Zedong forwarded the letter to Cai Chang, chairman of the China Women's Federation.Soon, Cai Chang wrote a reply to Chi Yuhua: ... your letter to Chairman Mao has been forwarded to us for processing.Regarding your question of finding your lover Li Cailian, we have forwarded the brief history you wrote to the General Political Department of the Military and Political Commission... I hope you will wait patiently and work with peace of mind... That is to say, Li Cailian will be back!The reply from the highest level of the Republic made Chi Yuhua feel warm. She stubbornly believed that Li Cailian was carrying out a great and secret work.What kind of work is this?All friends are happy for her and help her guess.During the revolution in the Soviet area, when Cai Chang was the head of the organization of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and the head of the White Area Work, Li Cailian worked part-time in the White Area Work Department under her.So, is Li Cailian still working in the white areas?There is only one result of repeated guessing: Li Cailian is now doing underground party work in Taiwan. Where is Taiwan?Someone found a map for Chi Yuhua.After being pointed out by someone, she saw that Taiwan and the mainland were separated by a sea, but Chi Yuhua had no concept of the sea.She said: Oh, not far away, there are two pairs of rivers. After that, Chi Yuhua waited and watched quietly.She didn't work in Baishoukong either. For decades, she successively served as the director of the District Women's Federation, the deputy head of the township, and the village women's director until she was 73 years old.As an old revolutionary, she gave up all opportunities for promotion.No matter the job promotion or promotion, he only wants to watch over the village head.She knew that her husband might come back at any time, and she couldn't go far, and she couldn't miss any more opportunities. For 67 years, the earthen house she lived in was low, damp, and dark. She was so poor that she didn't have any electrical appliances, a mosquito net, or even a decent bench. There was only a dark pot with vegetables and rice cooked.For decades, she struggled alone, sometimes suffering from hunger for years without food.But she worked hard with her shriveled body, squeezed money out of her teeth to support the country's construction.There are 19 certificates of commendation conspicuously pasted on the wall of the poor and bare family: activists of land reform, activists of subscribing national debt, activists of unified purchase and marketing, model pig raising, activists of socialist construction, model kindergarten teachers, March 8 red flag Hands... She said that Li Cailian was working hard on the front line, but she had to be active at home; Li Cailian was an official outside, and she had to make progress at home.She should not only be Li Cailian's wife and lover, but also Li Cailian's true comrade. Chi Yuhua is not only waiting for love, but also unremittingly fighting for her ideal.Through joys and sorrows, life and death will never forget each other, how poor and rich her life is! In 67 years, 24,400 days and nights, how difficult it is to make up minutes and seconds.Her affection, her love, her youth and beauty are all faithfully melted in the boundless waiting.It is difficult for contemporary people to understand, or even imagine, the waiting of more than half a century.Even Chi Yuhua himself was shocked by this "Love Guinness".Yes, I always feel that Li Cailian will come back tomorrow, why have I waited so long. Many records are created and refreshed inadvertently.Waiting for you forever and waiting for you until tomorrow are actually the same concept. Flash forward decades.In the 1990s, from explaining the release of Taiwan to talking about Taiwan's return.She repeatedly asked people about Taiwan, and also went to the county office to inquire about her husband: Is there anyone named Li in Taiwan?I never tire of asking her, fascinated, and some well-intentioned people comforted her with white lies: XX from the Taiwan government is surnamed Li, and it may be your husband's pseudonym. Although she still doesn't understand the countdown, perhaps no one is more sincerely and eagerly looking forward to Taiwan's return than her. Li XX.People are obsessed with love.Chi Yuhua silently remembered this alias.I heard that we can communicate with Taiwan by mail. After thinking twice, Chi Yuhua, who became more and more sluggish, finally wrote a letter to Li XX quietly at the age of 86: Received by Li XX, Taiwan Province.On Wei Day, she put the letter into the mailbox in Wei Town. Dear Li XX, hello, I am your married wife Chi Yuhua.I didn’t realize that we were separated for sixty-two years, and we never saw each other. We broke up in Ningdu. I just went home and I was determined to work in the land department of Jiangxi Province, because I couldn’t go to work because De (got) got sick. where.I never told you, just my mistakes and shortcomings, please give me more (forgive)... There are too many words, the pen is too blunt, how can I write down the feelings like springs and waterfalls!Chi Yuhua wanted to tell Li Cailian that he not only had a son, but also grandsons and granddaughters. At the age of 46, Chi Yuhua went through menopause.She is very uncomfortable being single. She is sorry that Li Cailian did not give birth to children, but Li Cailian, a revolutionary, should not be left behind.Therefore, she decided to continue the incense to the revolutionaries, and tried to adopt a son for Li Cailian.However, since ancient times, the countryside has favored sons over daughters, who is willing to give away boys!Furthermore, adoption is marriage. You have no rights, no money, no power, no labor, no family, and your own life is poor, so why would someone be greedy when they give their children to you. After more than ten years of hard work, Chi Yuhua only adopted a boy in his sixties.A boy with good hands and feet couldn't be adopted, so she adopted a disabled child with a handicapped body and a stupid brain.Dividing one's meal to two made Chi Yuhua's life even harder.No matter how hard or tired he is, Chi Yuhua has been born of hard work since he was a child.Sometimes, she hasn't tasted meat for a year, and she hasn't made a new dress in decades.The first time the author interviewed her was in early winter. She wore 9 pieces of unlined clothing, all of which were covered with patches.I invited her to have a meal together, and she ate seven or eight pieces of fat meat, a dozen big meatballs, two bowls of rice and many dishes.Some people said that she could eat very well, and tears welled up in my eyes, and I said, "It must be because she hasn't eaten meat for a long time that she can eat so well." When I went to the county to inquire about Li Cailian, some cadres said that she was always wearing torn clothes. Slandering the Party, she replied coldly: Do you know what the Party is?It stands to reason that Chi Yuhua can eat better and stop wearing old clothes.Even if Li Cailian's identity as a senior CCP cadre is not confirmed, the history of Chi Yuhua himself serving as an inspector of the CCP Yangyin County Committee is clearly written in the county annals.According to the policy, she can enjoy the treatment of veteran cadres.However, she did not reach out to the party. Li Cailian is alive if she is not dead, and if she is not alive, she is dead.Whether it is life or death, you have to use your own strength to continue the incense of the revolution.More than ten years later, Chi Yuhua used the nearly 10,000 yuan he had saved to find a silly woman as a wife for his disabled adopted son.For this reason, she renounced her bridal chamber (a black hole in the name), and used it as a bridal chamber for her adopted son, while she moved to live in the original cowshed. To make matters worse, Chi Yuhua, who is in his eighties, has become the main labor force of the family of three.As the age increases, the burden on the shoulders also increases.When the daughter-in-law gave birth to one child, she became the main labor force for a family of four, and when the daughter-in-law gave birth to three children, she became the main labor force for a family of six.Later, she enjoyed the treatment of a martyr's family and received a monthly subsidy of five yuan. As time went by, the five yuan increased to eight yuan, ten yuan, twelve yuan... more than one hundred yuan.This is the most important and stable income to support a family of six. Farming, growing vegetables, chopping firewood, raising pigs, washing clothes, taking excrement and urine with the child, often while cooking with the child in her arms, she stuffed the shriveled nipple into the grandson's mouth to stop crying: oh oh, my son Don't cry---. Being an old grandmother and an old mother... When she was in her 80s, she still picked firewood and walked more than 50 miles to the county town to sell it.Neighbors told the author: Not only did her silly daughter-in-law not know how to love her hard-working mother-in-law, she sometimes didn’t let her have enough to eat.Once, the author came to a mountain village to interview Chi Yuhua. She had been ill for more than ten days and hadn't eaten a grain of rice for three whole days. In order to continue the line of incense for the revolutionary Li Cailian, Chi Yuhua lived an inhuman life and tortured himself to the point where he was already out of shape.The white-haired Chi Yuhua was getting shorter and shorter under the burden of life, and became dark, thin and small.Her faith and will never changed a bit. No, Cailian is not dead, Cailian is definitely not dead!Chi Yuhua once again firmly denied the news of Li Cailian's death.Her firmness and her evidence made the comrades of the Party History Office rather doubt their own news. Here, on this threshold, he stands outside the threshold and I stand inside the threshold.Cai Lian swears by the sky and the earth, asking me to wait until he comes, twenty or thirty years, fifty or sixty years, and one hundred years, he will definitely come home to reunite with me and fulfill his vow here.I also invited Master Tiandi to testify, and I will definitely wait for him to come back at home until he is a hundred years old.Those who swear to the sky will do it, and those who swear to the sky will definitely do it!This threshold—this is a thrilling, unparalleled threshold!Since Chi Yuhua stepped on the sill to visit every day, the threshold that was originally three inches thick and one foot high had already formed a large curved arc, and the bottom of the arc was more than an inch away.Isn't this threshold worn out by the years is Chi Yuhua's worn youth and destiny?During the interview, looking at the threshold that was about to break, the author was very worried, and suddenly thought: this threshold is the incarnation of Chi Yuhua, once the threshold is broken, Chi Yuhua and her watch will also disappear together. "Do you think Cailian will come back?" Chi Yuhua lifted up his dirty skirt to wipe away his tears, staring at the author with a pair of dark eyes and asked. "Should be back," I hesitated a little, but then added firmly: "I will definitely come back!" Tears flowed down Chi Yuhua's wrinkled and age-spotted face.Her eyes were a little cloudy, her voice was a little hoarse, but she still revealed her firm belief. "My ears are very good, and I can hear everything clearly; my eyes are very good, and I can thread a needle; my feet are also very good, and I can walk ten or twenty miles of mountain roads. I didn't wait until Cailian came back. I will not die. I will wait for him Wait until Taiwan returns, wait until 100 years old, and I will wait until he returns at 100 years old, until he returns." His white hair was gray, and the wrinkles on his face were as deep as those on a mountain.After all the vicissitudes, 91-year-old Chi Yuhua is thin and thin, with strong bones. Her cry is still loud and clear, echoing in the valleys and mountains with the mountain wind. After five interviews, the last time I left Jiaofu Village by stepping on the Tiger Leaping Stone on Lixi River, it was already the fifth early spring of the new millennium.The author looked back, Chi Yuhua was waving goodbye.In those flowing years, you can clearly see that the 200-year-old earthen house by the stream has cracked a few big cracks, like big black eyes watching the world silently. I thought: that is Chi Yuhua who has frozen.