New Year’s Day on the Gobi Desert

New Year’s Day in the Gobi Desert

Author: Dou Xiaopeng

Whenever the Spring Festival approaches, I will think of the time spent in the Gobi Desert many years ago The first New Year's Day.

At the end of 1958, as the situation in Tibet became tense, the upper-level reactionary groups in Tibet planned to launch a rebellion. The 76th Automobile Regiment, where I was a member, was ordered to move from Lanzhou to the Gobi New City Golmud under the Kunlun Mountains, and prepare to participate in the counter-insurgency battle. I was a driver at the time.

Golmud is a new city that started with six tents in 1953. At that time, many units still lived in tents. It was surrounded by an endless desert, and not far to the south was the snow-capped Kunlun Mountains. After we arranged our home, it was the Spring Festival of 1959 in a blink of an eye. It was my first time to celebrate the Spring Festival in the Gobi Desert, and many things left me with unforgettable memories.

Eating dumplings: The bed board is used as a table and the basin is used as a pot

Eating dumplings during the Spring Festival is a traditional habit of the Chinese people. For this reason, the group requires each catering unit to provide everyone with a meal of dumplings. Eating dumplings is not a difficult task, but for us who have just settled in the Gobi Desert, it is not an easy task. Meat and vegetables are not produced locally, and there is no meat or vegetables to buy. The vegetables we eat are all bought from Lanzhou City, which is two thousand miles away. It takes about five days to travel by car, and the vegetables brought there are often frozen and rotten. Half, and they are all rough vegetables such as radishes, cabbage, and potatoes.

In order to eat dumplings on the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year, the cooking class put a lot of effort into preparing cabbage and frozen meat stuffing for everyone. At everyone's request, the cooking class distributed the prepared noodles and dumpling fillings to each class to make, cook and eat by themselves.

Our squad leader Chang Jinhua was from Hebei who joined the army in 1953. He immediately mobilized us "before the war": "Comrades, we must overcome all difficulties and show the strength to cross the Kunlun Mountains. Complete this task of eating dumplings resolutely and quickly!" We said eagerly: "Don't worry, I promise to eat the dumplings!"

But soon the problem came, making dumplings. There is no furniture. I originally looked for a table that could be used as a chopping board, but there was no table in the entire platoon. So Shanxi veteran Ren Zhixing found a relatively flat bed board in the warehouse, scrubbed it clean, and used it as a chopping board. There was no rolling pin, so Shaanxi veteran Ji Suocheng found a jacking rod used in cars. This iron thing was very long and heavy and could not be used at all. I can't roll out a single dumpling wrapper. So Ji Suocheng took advantage of the Shaanxi people's expertise in rolling noodles. He spread the noodles on the "chopping board" and rolled them out as thinly as the size of a tabletop. Then he folded them up and placed an enamel cup for drinking water upside down on the surface. Press hard with your hands, and four round dumpling wrappers will be formed, evenly sized and fast.

After a lot of fighting, all kinds of dumplings were made. Looking at the dumplings all over the bed, how to transport them to the kitchen 500 meters away for cooking became a problem again. Some people were too greedy to wait and suggested, "Why don't we just cook on the stove!" The stove is for our heating, and there is one in every house.

"Where is the pot? Where is the pot?" I asked.

Squad leader Chang waved his hand: "Find a good washbasin and cook in it!" I immediately recommended: "Before moving from Lanzhou, I saw Ren Zhixing bought a new washbasin... It's just, I wonder if he has used it. Is it dirty?”

“Take it out then!” the squad leader ordered. Ren Zhixing reluctantly took out his washbasin from under the bed, washed it twice inside and out, poured water in it, and put it on the stove to burn. And found another basin to use as a pot lid.

"You coward, why didn't you tell me earlier!" Ji Suocheng scolded and continued to eat dumplings in his mouth. Ren Zhixing grabbed his bowl and said, "If you don't like it, don't eat it!"

At this time, no one cared about the basin issue, and everyone ate more deliciously than the other.

In the end, even the dumpling soup "in the pot" was consumed.

Maybe I made it myself. Everyone said that this dumpling was more delicious than the previous dumplings.

Playing social fire: Sensation throughout Golmud

The Spring Festival in the Gobi New City of Golmud is cold and lonely. This place is called "Tent City" and "Soldier City" There were no entertainment facilities or projects at all, so after eating dumplings we played poker in the house. After a while, the sound of gongs and drums suddenly came from outside. I threw down the poker and ran out to take a look. It turned out that it was the fire brigade of the first regiment of the brother army - the automobile.

At that time, there were more than four or five regiments of troops stationed along both sides of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway in Golmud. In addition to several automobile regiments, there were also military depots, hospitals, warehouses, and service, road and communication troops. The car group was stationed on a beach in the southern section of Golmud. Although they had been in Golmud for several years, they still lived in tents. From a distance, the military tents looked like white mushrooms on the Gobi Desert. Despite the hardships of life, revolutionary optimism filled the military camp and beyond. Most of the officers and soldiers in this regiment are from Shaanxi. People in Shaanxi like to sing Qin Opera. As a jingle goes, "Eight hundred miles of Qinchuan are filled with dust, and 30 million old Shaanxi people roar together in Qin Opera." As an ancient opera, Qin Opera is loved by the masses in Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qingxin and Xinjiang regions. In order to liven up the life of the army, the leaders of the Automobile Regiment spent money to establish an amateur Qin Opera troupe in the regiment and purchased a full set of musical instruments, props and costumes, such as the robes, golden helmets, black gauze, phoenix crowns, dresses, etc. of various civil servants and generals. , everything; and has successively trained various actors and actresses, including officers, soldiers, employees and family members. They have rehearsed many big plays over the past few years. During this Spring Festival, these comrades in the automobile army who had just put down the steering wheel rushed out another Shehuo.

Walking in front of the Shehuo team is the majestic gong and drum team, followed by several characters from Qin Opera: there are the black-faced Bao Gong, Qin Xianglian and Chen Shimei in "The Case of Guillotine"; The fisherman Hu Fenglian, Tian Yuchuan and Lu Gongzi in "Mountain"; there are Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan in "Wudianpo"; there are Su Wu and Li Ling in "Su Wu Shepherd" and so on. Finally, there is the costumed Yangko team of workers, peasants, soldiers, students, and merchants. The queue stretched nearly a hundred meters long and was really lively.

In Golmud, which lacks cultural life, and in the Gobi New City on the first day of the Lunar New Year, this social fire team seemed to appear out of nowhere and immediately attracted everyone's attention. More and more people followed like a snowball. After the Shehuo team performed in our group, they went to the 22nd Hospital, the Qinghai-Tibet Highway Administration Bureau, and finally went to the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, which only has a few mud houses, to express their condolences. Wherever they went, the streets were empty, and it caused a sensation throughout Golmud. .

I followed the Shehuo Team to watch their performances again and again, forgetting my fatigue and the cold. This military camp social fire team has brought a touch of warmth to the snowy plateau and a youthful atmosphere to the new Gobi city. I said in my heart: This first Spring Festival in the Gobi Desert has not been in vain!

Watching a movie: It took four times to finish a movie

On the night of the first day of the Lunar New Year, the group showed everyone the movie "The Story of Liubao" in the square.

On a winter night on the plateau, the temperature drops to minus 30 degrees Celsius. Each of us was dressed in "four skins" (fur hat, fur coat, leather gloves, fur shoes) and sat neatly in the square with a homemade wooden stool, waiting for a spiritual feast. Normally, everyone drives along the Qinghai-Tibet line in the wind and snow, often "the engine starts ringing at five o'clock in the morning, and we camp at midnight." It is rare to get together like this, so we are very energetic.

After the group leader wished everyone a happy New Year, the movie started. However, after a while, the image on the screen began to become dim, the sound became distorted, and then became blurry.

What's going on?

It turned out to be insufficient power.

At that time, the electricity was generated by the regiment itself. Due to insufficient equipment, the electricity generated was just enough for lighting, but it was unable to be used for showing movies.

During the interruption of the movie, in order to prevent everyone from being frozen, the chief of the military affairs department issued the command: "Everyone stand up and stamp your feet on the spot!"

The projection team originally had a There was a generator, but it was too noisy and they were afraid it would affect everyone watching the movie, so they didn't use it. Now I had to restart my own generator to provide power. About a quarter of an hour later, the movie started again.

As the plot of the movie developed, just as everyone was enjoying the beautiful interlude "That sunny day is coming, my eighteen-year-old brother wants to join the army", the screen went dark again.

The projectionist used the microphone to tell everyone: "Comrades, we have three units running movies tonight. The next movies haven't come yet. Please wait patiently for a while."

It turns out that "The Story of Liubao" will be screened by three units in turns tonight, and the subsequent films will not be available until Golmud Station has screened them. Taking this opportunity, everyone once again "stomped their feet in place" to drive away the cold.

Just when everyone was getting impatient, the last two boxes of films were delivered. The two projectionists hurriedly loaded the reversed films into projectors A and B respectively. A few minutes later, the movie started again.

But after only five or six minutes, everyone felt something was wrong: it didn’t connect with the previous plot. Someone started shouting: Wrong! Wrong!

It turns out that the projectionist made a mistake just now and put the last box of films that should be installed in machine B into machine A. As a result, when machine A was turned on, the end of the story had been reached.

So, the machine was turned off again. This time the connection was faster. In less than half a minute, the B camera was turned on and the movie started again.

It took four screenings of a movie to finish. Although it is not perfect, it has added a lot of topics to our New Year and brought an end to the first day of the New Year.