Father, a topic that will never be forgotten

It’s Father’s Day again, and it’s the time when topics about fathers are flying all over the place.

I would like to try to write more about my father on this Father’s Day to commemorate my father who died young.

My father was born in a poor Hakka family in the Lingnan Mountains. Because the family was too poor, within a few days of his birth, he was given to the family of a childless patriarch of the same surname in a neighboring village. Some people also say that he was sold as a son to the patriarch's family by his alcoholic biological father, and the past has long been lost.

My grandma, to be precise, is my father’s adoptive mother. From the moment she held her newborn father in her arms, she regarded the young child as her own flesh and blood. She kept stressing throughout her life that her father should have been her son, but he was accidentally born into the wrong child. She did her best to protect and care for her son who was "wrongly born" throughout her life.

No one knows my father’s real birthday. The date recorded in the file is the day when grandma hugged him for the first time.

My father was born with intelligence, and he showed talents beyond his peers at a young age. He is the youngest student in elementary school but has the best grades. His father's grades were so good that the principal waived his tuition and asked him to teach lower-grade students. In elementary school, the Chinese language teacher who was an underground party member of the Communist Party of China spread progressive ideas and revolutionary principles to the boy's father, and developed him into a peripheral member of the underground party.

When I graduated from elementary school, my grandfather asked my father to go to Nanyang to learn rattan crafts and earn a living like most young adults in his hometown. My father, who had already accepted progressive ideas, resolutely refused to comply. It was my grandmother who intervened and ensured that my father would not need a single copper from the family for his future studies, so my grandfather reluctantly agreed that my father would continue his studies.

In order to help her father raise funds for his studies, after finishing all the work at home every day, grandma would light a small oil lamp, spin an ancient spinning wheel, spin and weave, and save up money to take home. Go to the market to sell money, and then buy the cheapest paper and pen for my father. A pen tip with three copper plates tied to a thin bamboo branch is the pen my father most often uses. The rough paper cut from newspapers when printed in a printing factory was the paper my father most commonly used.

My father was admitted to the county high school with excellent results, and with the absolute advantage of always being the first in the school, he received a full scholarship along the way and successfully graduated from the county high school. Grandma wanted to make a new set of clothes for her outstanding son to replace his clothes and pants, which had long been short. However, his father asked grandma to use the money from the new clothes to buy him a "fountain pen." A rural boy wearing ill-fitting coarse cloth clothes finally owned his first real pen.

When mentioning this pen, my father’s eyes shone with joy. Even though he later owned many pens of different brands, including the American Parker gold pen that was all the rage at that time, none of them ever made him so excited.

My father, a young man who played grapefruit like a football on the field ridge, successfully entered Sun Yat-sen University with his own efforts and excellent results, and became a young college student at that time. In my father's photo album, there is a group photo from that year. The young father is in the middle, surrounded by obviously tall and older young people. I thought it was a photo of my father and his teachers, but I didn’t expect that the photos were all his classmates.

The father who was admitted to Sun Yat-sen University also had another identity-at that time, he was already an underground party member of the Communist Party of China.

My father thrived in college. Faced with professors who were basically returning from overseas, teaching in English and writing on the blackboard in English, my father who came from the countryside still ranked among the best in the class. He excelled academically, and his classmates from wealthy families often asked him to write their homework for a fee. The father, who has a pretty face and has good looks, actively participated in the activities of progressive groups and once played female roles in progressive drama performances when there were not enough female actors.

That year, the underground party organization suffered devastating damage, and my father was ordered to evacuate. He joined the army, joined the Dongjiang Column as a college student, went up to the mountains to fight guerrillas, and directly participated in the fight against the Japanese invaders.

That was the lowest and darkest period of the Anti-Japanese War.

The guerrillas in the mountains lacked food and clothing. They often had enough to eat and no clothing to cover their bodies. My father said that in the most difficult times, it was common to have nothing to eat all day long, and it was common to be ragged and unkempt. Mosquito bites and insect bites are a trivial matter, but some comrades suffered from ulcers all over their bodies but could not be treated. They were tortured and in so much pain that it was unbearable to see.

After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, according to the results of the Chongqing negotiations, the commanders and fighters of the Dongjiang Column were to take a US warship to the Shandong Liberated Area. When a group of skinny, sallow-looking men with tattered clothes and messy beards and hair, who looked like beggars but were full of energy and with piercing eyes, appeared on the deck of a U.S. warship, the American sailors were stunned. They never imagined that the Dongjiang Column, which gave the Japanese invading Lingnan troops a headache but could not contain, would look like this.

The U.S. military did not allow my father and the others to carry weapons on board the ship, and forced each of them to clean up their personal hygiene and receive vaccinations. In order to prevent the US military from setting a trap, the warriors of the Dongjiang Column fought wits and courage with the American soldiers to ensure the integrity and basic combat effectiveness of the group.

As the ship sailed into the vast sea, on July 1st, my father and his comrades held a celebration on the deck of a US warship under the watchful eyes of US sailors. My father heard the discussions of the American soldiers with his own ears. He didn't understand what these people who looked like skeletons and could be blown away by a gust of wind were excited about.

The warship sails into the Bohai Bay, heading to Yantai is the liberated area, and heading to Qingdao is the Kuomintang-controlled area. The warriors of the Dongjiang Column, who had been drifting at sea for several days, were unable to get in touch with the organization at all, and they didn't know whether the Americans would abide by the agreement and actually send them to the liberated areas? If they go to the liberated areas, the warriors of the Dongjiang Column are popular anti-Japanese heroes; if they go to the Kuomintang-controlled areas, they will directly become prisoners.

After so many years, the sight of my father’s fingers gently tracing across the map and the solemnity in his tone are still unforgettable to me.

My father and his comrades joined the field army and followed the army southward to participate in the famous Battle of Huaihai. My father told me in a relaxed tone that on the night before the general attack, heavy artillery fire extinguished the flickering candles in the fortifications, and everything was pitch black. The correspondent stepped over the vegetable basin on the ground. In order to prevent the leaders from having nothing to eat, the little correspondent picked up the dishes on the dirt floor in the dark and put them back into the vegetable basin as if nothing had happened. It wasn't until everyone had their mouths full of mud and were astonished that the little correspondent admitted his mistake.

That scene makes people laugh when they think about it.

When my father went south, he got a horse with a strange quirk. This horse must run to the front of the team. When it reaches the front, it automatically slows down and does not allow other horses to pass it. The most speechless thing is that it can also run sideways and try every means to stop other horses. The horse accompanied his father from Shandong to Jiangnan. In the mountains and ridges on the border between Jiangxi and Guangdong, it lost its footing and fell into an abyss, and unfortunately died. When I was a child, there was always a long canvas bag called a "horse bag" and two strange-shaped iron file boxes at home. These are the supplies that the horse once carried. Speaking of this silent comrade, I clearly saw tears flashing in my father's eyes.

The army advanced all the way to Guangdong, where my father was responsible for training young cadres. The young and veteran cadres are high-spirited and confident. He gave up the opportunity to be transferred to the Central Party School and recommended other comrades to serve in Beijing. After marrying his mother, his father not only gave up the opportunity to work in Beijing again, but also mobilized his mother, who had returned to work in the General Administration of Political Affairs after graduating from college, to go to the economically backward old areas to participate in the establishment of the New China Infantry School.

My father’s life was just as described in the elegiac couplet at his memorial service: “upright, selfless, fearless, conscientious, and fighting endlessly.” The medal on my father's chest is a witness to his glorious history. He never showed off, but I admired him from the bottom of my heart.

The three of us brothers and sisters were all born in military camps, but there was never a lack of scholarly atmosphere at home. The large bookcases in my father's study room were filled with all kinds of books. They used to be my favorite place to stop when I was a child.

My father is my mentor in studies and life.

I clearly remember my father standing in front of the large map posted on the wall at home, with tears in his eyes and a trembling voice as he recounted his past.

My father once helped me make slight modifications in my composition, which made the whole composition extraordinary. My father occasionally met me at home preparing to participate in a poetry recitation competition. He came over and gave me some pointers on tone, intonation, and emotional expression. I won the first prize directly in the competition. I remember that my father used his strong local accent to teach me some uncommon idioms more than once. The four characters were pronounced with perfect pronunciation. It was a very standard Mandarin pronunciation that surprised me.

I am the only girl among my brothers. When I was a child, my family always had two aunts. However, my father never doted on me or pampered me. I have been asked to help my aunt with simple housework since I was a child. I also personally led several of us children to make briquettes during holidays. My father once couldn't shake hands directly because his hands were full of black soot, so his old comrades who came to visit him during the holidays laughed at him as "he is a high-ranking cadre outside, but a hard worker at home." Most of my basic life skills come from my father’s words and deeds.

Back then, when I was getting together with my old comrades and drinking heavily, I heard everyone's praise for me. My father, who has always been modest and cautious, and a low-key person, said proudly: "I am proud of my daughter. "This sentence I overheard has always been hidden in my memory. It is also a powerful motivation that I never dare to give up my efforts easily. I hope I will always be the pride of my father!

When I got the college admission notice and was about to study thousands of miles away, my father didn’t let anyone in the family interfere. Necessary daily necessities, clothing, etc. were packed tightly into a large box. The heavy box is filled with father's love.

No matter what kind of hardships and blows he encountered in life and work, my father would always grit his teeth silently and bear it alone. When a new dawn appeared in life and everything was developing for the better, my father, who was only fifty-six years old, fell ill from overwork and died young!

I never imagined that when I was in college, my father waving goodbye on the train platform would be the last memory between us as father and daughter! The separation between life and death is heartbreaking and the scars of losing a loved one will never heal for a long time.

For many years, "father" has been an unforgettable topic. Every time I mention it, I can't help but burst into tears. I originally thought that this time I could calmly finish this article in memory of my father and commemorate Father's Day when my father was absent, but I still couldn't control the tears several times, and even cried endlessly.

I still couldn’t help shouting with tears in my eyes: Dad, I miss you!