Carrying buns to school

Carrying buns to school was a special life experience for rural children in the early 1970s. The three years recorded the ups and downs and joys and sorrows in our study journey, which left a strong mark in my mind and became a memory that will never go away in my life.

I graduated from primary school in 1986 and went to a rural area ten miles away to attend junior high school. After school started, I traveled back and forth from home to school for more than ten days. I was exhausted, exhausted, and a waste of time. I was late from time to time. I was criticized and reprimanded by the teacher several times, so I had to live in school.

We have to carry buns back home twice a week. We carry a bag of buns every Sunday afternoon when we go to school, and we finish them by Wednesday. We rush home to carry buns after school at noon. Mother knew that we would be back on Wednesday, so she steamed the steamed buns early and put them on the desk waiting for me. At that time, the family was very poor, and supplies were very scarce. Every household lacked food and clothing, and life was tight. Most of the time, I eat cornmeal dumplings, sorghum cake, sweet potatoes and other whole grains to satisfy my hunger. Only when relatives or guests come to the house can one eat a meal of white rice and thin noodles, let alone sauteed meat. My mother said that it was hard for me to study. It was when I was growing tall that she and my father always lived frugally and left the white wheat noodles they had saved for me. My mother tried every possible way to improve my life, sometimes steaming spicy flower rolls, sometimes steaming radish buns, and sometimes baking white noodle pot helmets. When I'm having a hard time, I'll be steamed with sorghum rolls (a layer of wheat noodles and a layer of sorghum noodles). Before leaving, he would not forget to use the medicine bottle of metamizole or tetracycline to put a bottle of "blended" water for me. Sometimes he would also use canned bottles to put some fried or pickled green and red chili peppers. These various kinds of steamed buns and dishes were all prepared for me by my mother who worked hard from dawn to dusk, which fully reflects my mother's good intentions and the greatness of maternal love.

The student stove is in the southwest corner of the school entrance, with only a small window selling rice. Zaofu are two middle-aged aunts who are strong, fat and plump. They cook two meals every morning and noon. They make soup in the morning and noodles at noon. The meals are the same every day. Mixed with soup and noodles, the clear soup is watery, lacks oil and spicy, and is pitifully thin. The dishes served in the two meals have been spinach or seasonal green leafy vegetables for many years, and no one has much appetite after seeing them. Although the food is simple, every meal time, there is always a crowd of people in front of the dining window. The students queuing up are like a long dancing dragon, shoulder to shoulder, densely packed, with teachers on duty every day to maintain order. There was too much monks and too little porridge. I could only buy one bowl of soup and noodles for a meal. Sometimes I'm unlucky and encounter a large chunk of noodles that is so undercooked that it's hard to swallow, leaving only four or five pieces of noodles and a clear noodle soup. It's just a drop in the bucket for a stomach that keeps screaming. At this time, the steamed buns we brought came in handy. We broke the steamed buns we brought from home into pieces and soaked them in a bowl. Although it was not a delicacy, we were so hungry that we ate and drank. , everyone ate with gusto, and finished talking after a few sips. Before leaving, he still laughed and joked a few words: "The steamed buns and kimchi soup will fill my hungry stomach. Mix the soup with slices to help me travel everywhere." The students took pleasure in suffering, enjoyed suffering, and lived a life of study and life full of hunger and cold.

The steamed buns my mother makes for me are usually baked Guokui and steamed steamed buns. The weather gets warmer in spring and hot in summer, so the pot helmets are resistant to mold and are not prone to mold. The storage time of steamed buns is short. When the temperature is high, they will become moldy and deteriorate in a day or two. So my mother would usually bake pot helmets for me in spring and summer, and steam steamed buns in autumn and winter. Even so, the steamed buns and pot helmets brought back sometimes become moldy and go bad, growing green and fuzzy hair. In poor days, food is scarce and gold is precious. Parents who have experienced the "low standard" period cherish food like gold and often teach us to cherish food. There is a poem in primary school classroom, "Who knows how hard it is to eat on the plate, every grain of it", so no one will waste food. We use a knife to peel off the green hair on the pot helmets or steamed buns bit by bit, leaving the good ones. The steamed buns were still eaten, and no one cared about whether they contained germs. They only wanted to fill their stomachs, and nothing was wasted.

Spring and summer are relatively easy. In late autumn, the temperature drops sharply, and people shiver under the wind and rain. Especially in winter, the biting northwest wind blows non-stop, there is ice and snow everywhere, and the wind is biting. The steamed buns that I brought back were as frozen as stone, and when I bit them with my teeth, they made a popping sound, and the ice oozed from my teeth after I took a bite. What made us most angry was that rats often "visited" the dormitory, and several small holes were bitten into the steamed buns and pockets hanging on the dormitory walls.

It eats up our food rations unscrupulously, and the classmates are gnashing their teeth in anger, but there is nothing they can do. There is no dinner in the school. After the evening self-study, the students return to the cold and ice cave-like bunk dormitory and sit huddled together to eat the steamed buns and food they brought with them. Students who are diligent and have a lackluster personality go to the teacher's stove and ask for some boiling water to make "drinks" (that is, put some salt and vinegar to soak the steamed buns) to eat, which can be regarded as a "summer" dinner. Most of the students were embarrassed and unwilling to go out due to the cold weather. So we all share the blessing, you eat two bites of my dry food Guokui stir-fried with green chili peppers; I take a bite of your steamed buns dipped in water (salt, vinegar and spicy together); you give me a steamed sweet potato, and I give you two soft persimmons. Everyone is united and friendly, helping each other, not talking about good or bad, regardless of personal gains and losses, pushing and joking, talking and laughing, and having fun. It adds endless fun and warmth to the cold and uncomfortable winter nights. What is even more unexpected is that several talented, naughty and lively classmates started their own wonderful performances: Xiaobo told an allegro and told a joke, Hai Long pretended to be a teacher and gracefully imitated the lesson in Shaanxi Mandarin, Ning Qiang He made faces and stuck out his tongue to scare people. Gao Xiang roared in a high-pitched and loud Daqin opera without saying a word... causing everyone to lean forward and laugh. A shabby dinner party turned into a stage where the Eight Immortals crossed the sea and showed their talents. The endless laughter and chatter in the boys' dormitory often arouses envy and jealousy from the girls next door. It also attracts kind-hearted scolding from the dormitory teacher: "It's such a cold day, why don't you go to bed early and go to bed with a warm quilt? Tell the world to do whatever you want." You are so happy that you can’t let go." The most naughty Xiaolong casually sang in a low voice: "You will never understand my happiness, my happiness is just humming and hawing indiscriminately..."

The time spent carrying buns to school has sharpened my will. It taught me how to be grateful to my parents, teachers and classmates; it allowed me to enjoy the pure and selfless friendship between my classmates; it made me understand the hardships and difficulties of life. What I carry on my back when I go to school is the hard and unbearable life in the past; what I carry on my back is the strong belief that knowledge can change my destiny and reading can make my life better; what I carry on my back is the deep and heavy expectations of my parents and teachers.

Time flies as time flies. Before I knew it, when I reached middle age, the scene of carrying steamed buns to school came to my mind from time to time, making me unforgettable in this life. For a farm boy who has faced the loess and turned his back to the sky for generations, if he wants to change his destiny, move towards a broader world, and realize his and his parents’ dream of jumping out of the farm gate, he can only do so by enduring all kinds of hardships, working hard, and studying hard. way out. "The edge of a sword emerges from the steel, and the fragrance of plum blossoms emerges from the bitter cold." There is no brilliance waiting for you in life, only the applause you get out of it. Don't cry out when you are suffering, keep quiet when you are in pain, endure hardships that ordinary people cannot endure, suffer crimes that ordinary people cannot bear, break out of the cocoon and become a butterfly, and be reborn in Nirvana, only then can you finally realize your dreams.