Help me

I was very sad to hear the news of my mother’s death. I love my mother, especially her hardworking life. There are many things that I will always remember.

My family is a sharecropper. His ancestral home is Shaoguan, Guangdong, and he is a guest. He moved to Ma'anchang, Yilong County, Sichuan when "Huguang filled up Sichuan". We have been farming for landlords for generations, our family is poor, and the friends we associate with are all honest poor farmers. The mother gave birth to thirteen children in one day. Because the family was poor and could not feed them all, only eight were left, and those who were born later were forced to drown. This is such a tragic, sad and helpless thing in the mother's heart! The mother raised eight children single-handedly. But most of her time was taken up by housework and farming, and she could not take care of her children more, so she had to let them crawl in the fields.

Mother is a good labor. For as long as I can remember, I have always gotten up before dawn. There are more than 20 people in the family, and the women cook in shifts for a year. After my mother cooked the rice, she also had to farm, grow vegetables, feed pigs, raise silkworms, and spin cotton. Because she is tall and strong, she can also carry water and dung.

My mother works hard all day long. When I was four or five years old, I naturally helped her by her side. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I could not only pick and carry, but also farm. I remember that when I came home from school, I would often see my mother sweating on the stove cooking, so I would quietly put away my books and go fetch water or herd cows. In some seasons, I study in the morning and farm in the afternoon; when the farming season is busy, I work with my mother in the fields all day long. During this period, my mother taught me a lot of production knowledge.

The life of a tenant family is naturally difficult, but because of the mother's intelligence and ability, she can barely get by. We used tung seed oil to light lamps, and ate pea rice, vegetable rice, sweet potato rice, and multigrain rice. The oil extracted from rapeseed was used as seasoning in the rice. This kind of food that the landlords and rich families would not even look at, but my mother was able to make it delicious for the whole family. Only when there is a good harvest can we sew some new clothes, and the clothes are also produced by ourselves. My mother spun the thread herself, asked someone to weave it into cloth, and dyed it. We called it "home-woven cloth" and it was as thick as a copper coin. One set of clothes is worn by the eldest brother, and the second and third eldest children still wear it.

A hard-working family is disciplined and organized. My grandfather was a Chinese-style farmer. He had to plow the fields until he was eighty or ninety years old. If he didn't plow the fields, he would get sick. He continued to work in the fields until shortly before his death. Grandmother is the organizer of the family, and all production affairs are managed and assigned by her. Every New Year's Eve, she is assigned a year's worth of work. Every day before dawn, my mother is the first to get up, and then she hears the sound of my grandfather getting up. Then everyone leaves the bed, those who feed the pigs, those who chop wood chop wood, and those who carry water. My mother is very hardworking and uncomplaining in the family. She has a kind personality and has never hit or scolded us or quarreled with anyone. Therefore, although in such a big family, the elders, younger ones, uncles, and sisters-in-law get along harmoniously. My mother sympathizes with the poor - this is a simple class consciousness. Although she is not rich, she still helps and takes care of her relatives who are poorer than herself. She herself is very economical. My father sometimes smoked cigarettes and drank some wine; my mother controlled us and didn't allow us to get into it. My mother's hard-working and frugal habits and her generous and kind attitude still leave a deep impression on me.

But disaster will not happen to Chinese farmers just because they are peaceful. Around the Gengzi Year (1900), Sichuan suffered from successive droughts. Many farmers were hungry and bankrupt, and had to go out in droves to "eat the rich". I saw with my own eyes that six to seven hundred peasants in rags and their wives and children were brutally beaten by the so-called officers and soldiers, with blood splattering for forty or fifty miles, and their cries shaking the sky. During these years, my family also encountered more difficulties. We only ate some leafy vegetables and sorghum, and never had any white rice all year round. Especially in the year of Yiwei (1895), the landlords oppressed the tenants and demanded an increase in the rent on the land they rented. Because they could not do it, they took advantage of the New Year's Eve to threaten my family to give up the tenants and force us to move. In tragic circumstances, our family was separated all night long, crying. From then on, my family was forced to live in two places. There was a shortage of manpower, there was a natural disaster, and the crops were not harvested. This was the most tragic experience for my family. My mother was not discouraged, but her sympathy for the poor farmers and her aversion to those who were unkind to the rich became even stronger.

My mother's painful words and the many injustices I witnessed with my own eyes inspired me to resist oppression and pursue light in my childhood, and made me determined to find a new life.

I left my mother soon because I was studying. I am the son of a sharecropper family and I had no money to study. At that time, the oppression of the rural gentry and landlords and the arrogance of the government officials forced my mother and father to save money and cultivate a scholar to "support the family." I went to private school, took the imperial examination in the 31st year of Guangxu's reign (1905), and then went to study in Shunqing and Chengdu, which were further away. At this time, the tuition fees were all borrowed from here and there, totaling more than 200 yuan. It was not until I later became the brigade commander of the National Protectorate Army that I paid it back.

In the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu (1908), I came back from Chengdu and ran a higher primary school in Yilong County. I went home to see my mother two or three times a year. At that time, the conflict between old and new ideas was severe. We embraced the idea of ??scientific democracy and wanted to do something in our hometown, but the conservative gentry came out to oppose us. I decided to leave my hometown without telling my mother and go to Yunnan to join the New Army and the Tongmenghui. After I arrived in Yunnan, I learned from letters home that my mother not only had no objection to my move, but also gave me a lot of comfort.

From the first year of Xuantong (1909) to the present, I have never returned home once. Only in the eighth year of the Republic of China (1919) did I take my father and mother out. But they were used to working and felt uncomfortable leaving the land, so they returned home. My father died on the way home. My mother went home and continued working until the end.

The Chinese revolution continues to move forward, and so does my thinking. When I discovered the correct path of the Chinese revolution, I joined the Communist Party of China. The revolution failed and I was completely cut off from my family. My mother relied on the thirty acres of land to independently support the family's life. After the Anti-Japanese War, I could communicate with my family. My mother knew what I was doing, and she looked forward to the success of China's national liberation. She knew the difficulties of our party and still lived the life of a hard-working peasant woman at home. During the past seven years, I sent a few hundred yuan and a few photos of myself back to my mother. My mother is old, but she will always miss me, just as I will always miss her. Last year I received a letter from my nephew saying: "Grandma is eighty-five years old this year. Her spirit is not as healthy as it was last year, and her diet and daily life are not as good as before. I really hope to see you and talk about the scene after farewell." But I devoted myself to the national war of resistance. Career, Jing failed to repay his mother's hope.

The biggest characteristic of my mother is that she has never been away from labor in her life. My mother was still cooking on the stove a minute before she gave birth to me. Even in his old age, he still loves production. Last year, another nephew's letter home said: "Due to old age, my grandmother is not as healthy as in previous years, but she still does not work hard, and she especially likes to spin cotton."

I should thank my mother for teaching her Give me experience in fighting against difficulties. I have experienced hardships in my family, which has enabled me to never feel or be intimidated by difficulties in more than thirty years of military and revolutionary life. My mother gave me a strong body and a hard-working habit, so that I never felt tired.

I should thank my mother. She taught me the knowledge of production and the will to revolution, and encouraged me to embark on the road of revolution in the future. On this road, I realize more and more day by day: only this kind of knowledge and this kind of will are the most precious possessions in the world. My mother has left me now, and I will never be able to see her again. This grief is irreparable. My mother is an ordinary person, she is just one of the millions of working people in China, but it is these millions of people who create and create the history of China. How can I repay my mother's kindness? I will continue to be loyal to our nation and people, and to the hope of our nation and people - the Communist Party of China, so that people who live like my mother can live a happy life. This is what I can do, and I will definitely do it.

May my mother rest in peace underground!

Xie Yao, School of Science, "We are pulling China’s cart"