Life Insights: Educated Youth Years

What are the glorious years of life? Are you rich? Is it powerful? Still famous? . In fact, everyone, at different age groups, may have different views.

I am a man in his late teens. I also often like to recall my past life. I was also invited to write a small essay titled "Collections of Time". When I sat at my desk, I carefully searched through my memory for the most unforgettable time period in my life. It was still the green years in the countryside in the late 1960s.

It was very bitter at that time, very bitter. An eighteen-year-old boy was suddenly thrown from the city to the countryside. Planting rice, cutting wheat, plowing fields, and driving water. Braving the wind and rain, it is said to be exposed to the sun and steaming at night. There are only twenty-eight pounds of grain per month. In other words, there are only twenty kilograms of rice. Not enough to eat at all. After work, you have to carry water for cooking, cooking, planting vegetables, watering and fertilizing. That was really difficult and painful. Think about today's college students, who are twenty years old. Their parents send them to the dormitory and make their beds. Give enough pocket money. So happy. We had a job at that time, and a strong laborer was worth 10 points. It costs 74 cents for a day's work. We are educated youths sent to the countryside, novices. I'm pretty good. Each day I was rated 8 points of work, which meant I earned 60 cents a day.

When I went to the countryside, I did not go with my classmates, but chose to stay with relatives. Returned to my hometown of Yangluo, Xinzhou. Lived in the old house with my cousin's family. At first I was eating in a pot. It’s been less than a month, maybe it’s because I eat too much. Was separated. I fired it myself. Poor boy who had nothing to do in Wuhan suddenly had to cook for himself, and he even had to cook an earthen stove in the countryside. It will either dry out, burn, or turn off the heat. That's a big mess. Because I just went to the countryside and didn’t know how to grow vegetables. The villagers told me that the grass seeds in the fields can be pickled and eaten. They don't eat it themselves, they plant it in the fields and use it as green manure. I don't care anymore. A basket was cut and a vat was pickled. One day my father came to visit me in the countryside. When I went to the kitchen, I saw a jar of pickled grass seeds. I saw him hiding aside and secretly wiping tears!

It’s probably because young people don’t know what it’s like to be sad! Although this doesn't feel too painful. I became familiar with the young people of the same age in the village. They would take the initiative to help me burn the stove, so that I wouldn't have to rush up and down. He will also teach me how to grow vegetables. Occasionally, I would be given some pickles and radish to help me. We hung out and became good friends.

They are simple and refreshing, humorous, and often make people laugh. Once we were digging a bomb shelter on a hillside. A villager herding cattle stopped by. I looked at the slogan posted next to the air raid shelter. He said to himself: Firstly, if you are not afraid of hardship, and secondly, if you are not afraid of death, then what example can you make by digging air-raid shelters? I was dumbfounded and speechless. Sweat, sweat, sweat, still!

One of the most unforgettable things for me was that a good friend of mine from the same village was going on a blind date. Not a single decent piece of clothing. I lent him a pair of my polyester trousers. Later, when he returned the pants, he saw me lying on the bed. Know I'm sick. After a while, he brought me a bowl of soup from their house. There are noodles, eggs, and even a chicken leg inside. I refused to eat chicken legs, which were very precious in the countryside at that time. But he insisted that I eat, put down the bowl and left. The next day when I went to his house to return the bowl, I heard his mother scolding him. "You gave away the chicken legs. After a while, your partner comes to your door for the first time. What do you think you will do?" I heard him murmuring: "Isn't there another one?" When I heard this, I couldn't help but shed tears. This unforgettable feeling remains to this day.

There is a saying that I understand deeply: Living with simple people can purify your soul!

I stayed in the countryside for one year and eight months, and was drafted to work as a worker in the Echeng Shipyard. When he was 40 years old, his family was transferred back to Wuhan, and he started a business from scratch with no tiles on the roof and no standing cones on the bottom. You can imagine how difficult it was. But with the bottom of the bowl of wine in rural areas, any difficulty can be overcome.

So I say that my most glorious years were during my time in the lower countryside.