A short story about the construction of the northwest by the youth in the 1960s.

Heyang, the northernmost part of the 800-mile Qinchuan, is a thousand-year-old county seat in the transitional zone between the plain and the mountainous area. In the early 1960s, like other places in the northwest, it was barren, barren, closed and backward. Incomplete city walls, wrapped in the county seat with less than 10,000 people, have no intersection, four streets are narrow and asymmetrical, and dirt roads mixed with muck are bumpy and not straight. The city on the loess dry garden is high in the north and low in the south, with two sides facing the slope and two sides facing the ditch. When it rains heavily, the river overflows and half the city suffers. There are only a handful of merchant shops, and they are also deserted. As soon as it gets dark, there are fewer pedestrians on the street, except for the hoarse cries in front of the yamen (also the Xinxian government), which reverberate in the night sky: "Fried bean jelly" and "shredded chicken wonton" ...

I don't know if it was like this in Nanjun at that time, but I'm sure there will never be wild wolves in the middle of the night. In addition, most of the people I want to talk about are from Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. From a beautiful southern city to a remote northwest town, they feel that there is no way from heaven to hell, but this contrast is unimaginable to outsiders. There are no banks, telephones and basic facilities in modern society. Although it has been liberated for many years, people in small towns are still spreading their traditional lifestyle. Old cotton-padded jacket, big underpants and spinning shoes, as soon as they met, they said, have you eaten? Savings and loans, telegrams and telephones, intravenous injections, these new things, have not been seen or even heard of for generations.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in response to the call of the state, a large number of scientific and technological personnel came all the way to the northwest to support its construction. Some recipients come from big cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou. The northbound train passes through Anhui, Shandong and Henan for three days and three nights. After arriving in Xi 'an, it was transferred to a bus (Gass truck) and ferried across the Weihe River. It was bumpy for more than ten hours, and it was dark before it reached Heyang. In fact, the hardships of the journey are only temporary. In the following days, we will face long-term and unimaginable hardships, such as soil, water, climate, diet, customs and so on. , is completely another world.