I used to be a "private teacher"

Article | Mou Shuhui

I came to this world amidst the rumbling artillery fire of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.

I heard from my old mother that on May 16, 1951, when the moon had just risen, a very thin baby was born in the east room of three mud houses. That was me. .

It is difficult for children to have a sense of autonomy, let alone memories in their infancy.

The adobe house in my impression is the west room, and the north room is occupied by my grandparents. The west room is very small, less than 9 meters from north to south and less than 3 meters in depth. The earthen kang is built against the Nanshan Mountain. Due to years of smoke and fire, the walls are smoked black, and the reed foil above the stove is often stained with smoke oil. If it falls, especially when you lift the lid of the pot after cooking, a piece of sludge may fall into the pot.

Although my family was poor, I was still very happy as a child. There is a garden in front of the third grandfather's door. Every spring, in order to replace the kang, mud houses, and repair houses, people pull in a lot of soil and pile it up like a hill. A few of us children played the "China America" ??game on this mound. Whoever occupied the top of the hill (the top of the mound) would win. Children often use a bamboo pole or straw as a gun and make a charge. In retrospect, it may be influenced by the idea of ??resisting U.S. aggression, aiding Korea, and defending the country.

I remember one winter, my friends and I were smoking on the ice in Laowan in front of our house and accidentally fell into the ice water. It sank quickly. Brother Shujie and Uncle Jinxiu got a wooden board to step on and pulled me up. My cotton trousers and cotton jacket were soaked through. If an adult hadn't seen it, my life would have been in danger. They took me home, and my mother lit a fire and baked my clothes while I sat naked around the kang. Since I didn’t have a second set of cotton-padded clothes, I had to wait until they were dried before wearing this one. This was my first life-threatening experience.

When I was about five or six years old, one afternoon, my younger brother took a piece of cake, about the size of an egg, and accidentally dropped the cake into the water tank in front of the door. The water tank in front of the door was surrounded by wheat straw and Surrounded by straw (for fear of freezing the vat in winter). As soon as I saw it, I used a spoon to fish out the pancakes that fell into the jar for my brother. Due to the depth of the water, the water tank was surrounded by straw and firewood, and because I was young, I couldn't reach the pancakes that fell at the bottom of the tank. As soon as I tried to fish it deep, my whole body fell upside down. At this time, my mother was weaving in the north room, which may be the fulfillment of my mother's instinct or inspiration. When she heard the noise, she immediately left the loom. When she saw that I had fallen into the water tank, she grabbed my legs and lifted me up. It is truly a great mother's love to have me today.

Speaking of childhood, I have to talk about the home in my memory.

The old house I grew up in was the West House. There was a tall locust tree on both sides of the south corner door in front of the door. Under the locust tree in front of the south window of the west room, my parents placed the harvested peanuts there and surrounded them with foil. When I'm hungry, I often dig out a few peanuts with my little hands to eat. Once I dig out a small hole in the reed foil and my father finds it, he will move the straw foil, lest he break it open and eat it again.

Due to poverty, I still can’t recall any decent furniture. The only thing I have is a large standing cabinet, which is still in use today. I can't tell whether it was my mother's dowry or whether it was shared among my brothers. The spoon I remember is not made of iron or copper, but made of wood, called a horse spoon - the head is like a horse's head, and the handle is like a horse's tail. There is also a thermos bottle made of bamboo skin, and there is nothing else.

In summer, there are many mosquitoes and the house is hot. I often sleep in the north room. There is no mosquito net, and the bites are unbearable, so I light a fire with mugwort to repel the mosquitoes. In the winter, if there is no firewood to burn the kang, I light a dustpan. Light a small amount of soft firewood in front of the kang, use a dustpan to fan the hot air into the bed, and use the hot air to quickly get into the bed. This was probably a poor creation of that era.

The Chinese New Year is particularly joyful for children. Every year on the 20th or 25th of the twelfth lunar month at the "Huahua Street" New Year's Fair, my brother and I would go to handle cases and provide services for the New Year's goods sellers. In particular, we provide services to merchants selling pepper, aniseed, and firecrackers. Sometimes the money is wasted if they don’t use it. If they use it, they give us a firecracker or 10 or 20 cents.

Lighting firecrackers was one of the great pleasures of childhood. Because I was poor and couldn't afford firecrackers, I cut the woven firecrackers into pieces and set them off one by one. I never wanted to hang them up and set them off.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, before the sun sets, we start to invite grandparents. We light incense and burn paper and light firecrackers on the way to the tomb. Then we take "grandparents" home to celebrate the New Year. When we get home, we hang up the family tree. They burned paper, burned incense, smoked their heads, placed offerings, and then went home.

After dinner, people lit fires in front of their respective doors to illuminate the courtyard, and stood in front of the door with dried grain straw. After lighting, the whole family gathered around the fire to warm themselves. The adults talked about how they would keep their hands from freezing and their feet from cracking. They also said that in which direction corn and grass were poured, the harvest would be good in that direction.

Speaking of New Year’s Eve dinner, it’s incredible. My mother used sweet potato noodles to make the dough, and then used white bread to cover it; to make dumplings, she rarely ate cabbage fillings, but more carrot fillings. In the early morning of the 30s, she still had whole grains and drank carrot sticky porridge.

Being poor is also joyful. Every New Year's Eve, I often take a small lantern and play around (I usually never light the lantern to save fuel). Sometimes a pole is buried in the courtyard, an iron ring is tied to the top of the pole, and pine and cypress branches are tied to the top of the pole, and a small lantern is pulled up with a rope to illuminate the courtyard. It can be said to be bright under a high lamp.

Every time I open the gate of memory, the past events of childhood are like acting in a movie, and the scenes appear before my eyes, vividly. Many of my childhood friends have gone away, and some of them are really gone forever, but the things I experienced will always be engraved in my heart. I have an uncle named Bad Zi, whose nickname is Jin Liang. I used to play with him when I was young. When I was poor, Uncle Bad Zi would share some of the delicious food with me after he stole it. Once at the Yangliu Temple Fair, Uncle Bad Zi treated me to a meal of noodles.

Recalling the noodles when I was starving, they were simply the emperor’s delicacies.

In August 1964, I graduated from elementary school and entered middle school.

On the fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month, my parents prepared tuition, bedding and school supplies for me. I went to school with great joy.

Speaking of the tuition fees for middle school, I still can’t forget it. In 1964, life was still very difficult. There was often a shortage of food. Food shortages often occurred in spring. The main dry food was three-way noodles (cornmeal, sweet potato noodles and a small amount of flour). The family could only eat enough. The tuition fees for school have become a big problem for the family. The school asked me to pay 8 yuan and 40 cents, with tuition fees of 1.7 yuan, book fees of 3.4 yuan, and accommodation and miscellaneous fees of 3.3 yuan. Where can I get the money?

My father borrowed it everywhere but never borrowed it. I remember that my father was very sad that night, smoking under the dim light, while my mother was sewing clothes for me to prepare for school tomorrow. I watched the expressions of my parents from the sidelines, and my father was still holding his cigarette pipe and smoking. Suddenly, my mother's eyebrows relaxed, as if she smiled slightly. I asked my father if the tuition was enough? The father still said nothing, so he went out and left. I asked my mother again, and she said, "We have five silver dollars, keep one, and take the rest to school." The next day, I went to school with a few yuan and four silver dollars that my father had scraped together. The general affairs office of the school did not accept silver dollars, so I went to the bank to exchange the silver dollars. I exchanged the silver dollars for cash at Xindian Bank. At that time, one silver dollar was exchanged for a piece of thread, and I paid the tuition with the money borrowed from my father.

My mother has long since passed away. When I think of paying tuition for middle school, the four silver dollars my mother gave me as a dowry stick to my heart like a huge magnet. There is really no way! No matter how hard she had it, my mother would not take out the token of her marriage, which was a heartbreaking price to pay.

Whenever I recall the time when I went to middle school with four silver dollars, I will have an unforgettable emotion in my heart. Mother, you will never see your beloved dowry. Now my son is fond of antiques and has collected a few silver coins, but no matter how high the value is, it cannot be as high as the great maternal love that is as deep as the sea.

In 1969, Mai Hou of the Commune organized laborers to go to the river and stipulated that all young laborers over the age of 18 had the task of regulating the river.

I happened to be 18 years old that year. I was working as a farmer at home not long after I graduated from junior high school. I was a real member of the commune. The captain arranged for me to go to the river, and I accepted the task.

Soon after Mai, more than a dozen laborers from the team came to the Zhaowanghe construction site and lived in Li Taifeng Village. At that time, I had just graduated and had never built a river before. There were three major tasks on the construction site: carts, shovels, and hooks. None of them were light. I remember that year when teams five and six were working together, a villager in team five saw that I was a freshly finished school student and couldn’t do it, so he mocked me for being a pot-bellied man who could eat but not do it. I was very vain and unwilling to face reality, so I went home in anger. When the elder brother learned about it, he said: "Don't go, I will dig the river for you."

My brother went to the construction site and I stayed at home. My brother is a good worker. He can do all kinds of things like stripping slabs, building walls, and pushing carts. When he arrived at the construction site, he started a competition with the villager. He pushed a cart without tripping, handed out a big shovel for each cart, went uphill without pulling a hook, and trotted on tiptoe. In the end, the villager who competed was convinced.

Looking back, that villager was actually joking. He was not trained to do forced labor by digging rivers and building embankments. He had just finished school, and whether he could eat or not work was a completely realistic portrayal.

During the summer construction of the river, it rained heavily and the construction was stopped. I worked for eleven days and then came back. This was the first and only time I built a river in my life. Twenty years later, I became a construction organizer in Shangdahe and completed the task of river management in different ways.

The villager who joked with me has passed away long ago, but I still admire him very much. He is a good, loyal, honest and capable member.

In January 1972, I became a private teacher. Earn four yuan a month. Due to the pressure of life, I teach during the day and have to go to the fields to pull weeds and collect firewood after school. Outside of teaching, pulling weeds and collecting firewood has become an indispensable part. Without firewood, I can't cook, and it's difficult to eat and cook.

During those years when I was a private teacher, I had just gotten married and had just separated. Life was hard. The old man was poor. He didn’t have any decent furniture. He only had a big basket of dried sweet potatoes and twenty kilograms of wheat. . The kind-hearted grandpa gave me dozens of kilograms of millet. In view of the hardship, I also pulled grass to feed the sheep, and sold some money to buy oil, salt, sauce and vinegar.

I taught for less than four years from January 1972 to September 1975. As for teaching, it was even more difficult. Due to the turmoil, the normal teaching order was broken, and socialist propaganda was everywhere. , do not want the seedlings of capitalism and preach that reading is useless. In 1974, the movie "Split" was screened across the country. Students imitated Huang Shuai and Zhang Tiesheng and turned in blank papers in the exams. I remember that I was a fourth-grade Chinese teacher, and the fourth-grade students at the water conservancy school were catching up with Huang Shuai. No matter how hard I taught him, the students just refused to learn. They often ran away while talking, leaving only a few honest girls. . Some go to the wild to steal melons, some hide and seek, dig tunnels, and just don't learn. Looking at the 24 students now, they basically have no academic achievements and have not been admitted to college. They are typical victims and victims of the "study is useless" theory.

Students are deeply affected by the theory that "you can go to college even if you hand in blank papers, and studying is useless". They only play without studying, and mess around. In order to attract students to take good classes in class, I give them Students tell battle stories. Some students still remember that the Shuhui teacher talked about Li Xiangyang (the protagonist of "Plain Guerrilla") every time he was in class. Recalling that it was not caused by any one person, it was probably due to society.

Mou Shuhui, male, born in June 1951, Han nationality, member of the Communist Party of China, a native of Shuiwu Village, Wangfenglou Town, Pingyuan County, Shandong Province. He has successively served as a private teacher, director of the commune cultural station, deputy head of the township government, member of the township party committee, deputy secretary, chairman of the presidium of the township people's congress, and chief clerk of the Pingyuan County Letters and Calls Bureau. He has been rated as an advanced individual at the city and county level many times. An outstanding Communist Party member and a good public servant of the people. He concurrently serves as a researcher of the Pingyuan County History and Culture Research Association, a quality education consultant for primary and secondary school students in Pingyuan County, a cultural and history specialist of the Dezhou City Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the Chinese Mou Culture Research Association. He has published nearly 100 articles in many newspapers and websites such as "Farmers Daily", "United Daily News", "Dezhou Daily", "Changhe Morning News", "Dezhou Evening News", "Dezhou TV News", etc., and has been reported by many news media His cultural achievements and articles have been selected and published in many books and journals.

Yidianhao Yuhe Weilan

The content of this article was published by the author of Yidianhao and does not represent the position of Qilu Yidian.