Unforgettable memories - memories of Renxing Primary School in Siping

I went to school in Renxing Primary School in Siping for a short time, but I left a deep memory. It was the place where I received my enlightenment education.

On the first day of school, my mother took me to school to register. Coming out of kindergarten and going to school is very easy and natural for me. This kind of relaxation is not like today's kindergartens, where everything is taught. You know how to do it when you get to school, so there is no need to study anymore. But it’s the same when facing teachers. I am a good and obedient boy.

I remember the day I reported for duty, it must have been 1962. I can’t remember the day. Anyway, the weather was sunny and the sun was shining brightly. On the first day of school, I entered through the school gate. The door should face south. It will no longer be like this when I go to school. There is a gap in the northwest corner of the school. Remember to enter through this gap. The first thing you see is that there is a toilet there. Initially, people entering the school through this gap.

On the day of admission, the school set up a row of tables on the playground, and the children were led by adults to fill in written information. Of course it was written by an adult. Unlike today's children, who have to take exams to enter school. Compared with today's children, it was really easy for us to go to school at that time.

The next day at school, I was assigned to Class 1. The class teacher’s surname was Wang. He seemed to have just become a teacher. He was young, had long braids, and was pretty. We called him Xiao Wang. Teacher, of course the small print came later.

Teacher Xiao Wang treats me very well, because I have been in kindergarten and know that teachers like children who abide by discipline and obedience. Therefore, I listen to the teacher very much and obey the rules. It seems that I was asked to be in charge for a while, taking care of queues and so on. My impression is that before class, when the bell rang, the students would line up at the door of the classroom. Shouting "take a break!" Often the girls' team performs better than the boys' team, so I ask the female students to go into the classroom first. The boys had objections and muttered to me behind my back: "It's too biased toward girls." "Why are you so good with girls?" Later, a girl took care of it, so I stopped taking care of it.

In my memory, the first classroom had windows that opened to the south. Bad boys often climbed up the windows and looked in, which affected the teaching. Teacher Xiao Wang even cried over this matter.

For some reason, Teacher Xiao Wang stopped teaching us and another Teacher Wang was replaced. This teacher is quite fat, we call her Big Belly Teacher. In fact, we didn’t understand her when she was pregnant, and we didn’t know she was on maternity leave until she stopped teaching us.

When Mr. Big Belly King taught us, he made us feel amiable. Therefore, when we are taught, the classroom is always quiet. It's a pity that she didn't teach for long before she went on maternity leave. One day, Teacher Wang did not come to class. At this time, a teacher whom he did not know came to say: "Your Teacher Wang will come to teach you soon. Just go to class with peace of mind."

We waited for a few days, and it really turned out that Teacher Wang will be our class teacher. But this Teacher Wang is not that Teacher Wang. This Teacher Wang is not as tall as the previous Teacher Wang, nor is he as good-looking and delicate as the first Teacher Wang. However, she is very powerful.

I can’t remember what this teacher Wang taught, but I was deeply impressed by her murderous attitude as soon as she came. As soon as we arrived in our class, we were struck with three axes:

The first ax was that boys and girls had to sit apart from each other. When she took over my class, all the students in the class sat randomly, and anyone could sit wherever they wanted. There is no management by the head teacher, and the subject teachers have no control. So after she came, the first blow was struck here. At that time, there were three classmates at a table. Some were two girls with one boy, and some were two boys with one girl. I was at a table with another boy, and the girl between us was a girl named Qiao.

The second dance is very unique, it is a dance between boys and girls. During recess, students must go to the playground to dance. The students, one male and one female, join hands and form a large circle. After completing the circle, they start dancing. When dancing, men and women must match each other. Students who come out to dance must find someone with a different surname to dance before they are qualified. I remember the lyrics of a dance about looking for friends: "Looking for friends, looking for friends, find a good friend, salute, shake hands, we are all good friends. Thank you, goodbye!" "Two tigers, two Tigers run very fast. One has no tail and the other has no head. It’s really strange.”

At first a boy went to jump, and he walked up to another boy and wanted to ask him to jump. As a result, the teacher shouted from the side: "Go find a girl!" The classmate had no choice but to dance with a girl next to him.

I will definitely go down and jump too. As for holding whose hand to jump, I have no memory at all.

The third step is to stand for punishment. During class, students who slip up in conversation will be called to the front and punished to stand. It feels a bit like showing off to others. However, the high-pressure methods used by Teacher Wang only temporarily subdued us. As time went by, the feeling of standing in front became less embarrassing. I remember that I was made to stand. I can’t remember which classmate it was. He was asked to stand in front while the teacher lectured, and he acted strangely on the side. At first, the classmates laughed quietly, but then they couldn’t hold it in anymore and started laughing. The teacher was stunned, wondering why he was so ridiculous. Then he remembered that the classmate standing next to him was winking and making a grimace, so he immediately asked him to stand facing the wall.

Teacher Wang’s high-pressure policy failed to fundamentally solve the problem, so it did not last long, and soon the class became chaotic again. Until I later transferred to Renxing No. 2 Primary School, the class was still in a state of chaos.

So, when I was in Renxing Primary School, I had three teachers, all named Wang. This left a deep impression on me.

In the compound where my family lives, children of similar age are all put into the same class. The room to the north of my house is for girls, and the room to the south is for boys. Further south is the second child of the Qian family. I forget his name. He was once in the first class. When I was in the second grade, I kept him for another year. On the opposite side, Lao Yang's mother and daughter are both in our class, and they are one year apart. Because we live close by, I have a good relationship with his nephew. His father went to Gansu to support the border area in his early years, leaving him in the northeast. He always felt a little outcast at his grandparents' house. He dug wild vegetables every day, mainly gray vegetables and string vegetables. One small bag a day. It's not for people to eat, it's for feeding pigs. If I have nothing to do, I will pick it for him. Now that I think about it, I helped him so much with the pigs he raised, but I never ate a bite of his pork. I remember that during the Cultural Revolution, Siping was divided into two factions: the red faction and the commune faction. He supports the Commune faction. One day, he went to the tile-roofed house behind my house to write slogans. One of them was "Siping Commune is good!" But he didn't know how to write it. He actually pulled out one character and wrote the slogan "Siping Commune is good!" Always clearly visible. This slogan did not disappear until the late 1990s when the building was built. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, he returned to his father's house. Later, when he called back once, his accent changed. He spoke a local dialect and couldn't understand anything at all. There was a saying he told me was a curse word: "Ah, there's a chance you can read it——, rattling." I have forgotten what it means now.

There is a flat-roofed house to the west of Lao Yang’s house. There is a classmate named Wu here. The house opposite her house is named Fu. It seems that the third son of Fu’s family is also in our class. Unfortunately, he is the same as the second boy of Lao Qian’s family. , all downgraded. There is a girl in our class in Fu Jia Nan. I forgot her last name. To the north of the Wu family, there are the second son of the Di family and the eldest son of the Dong family whose door faces the corner building of the Second Hospital. There is a main house with blue bricks and tiles on the south side of my yard, and the first house on the east side is the second son of the Zhang family. The second son of the Ma family, the second family to the west.

There is a toilet across from the Di family to the south, which is the blue brick house of the Gao family. There are people named Xu and Zhang in the courtyard who are both from our class, and there is also a boy named Gouzi. There is a pressurized water well in their yard, and I go here to collect water every day. Later, Lao Yang's house across the street had water pipes and he agreed that we could pick up the water at his house. Then I no longer have to be burdened to walk so far. At first, Erchuzi’s family also lived here. The Sun family is further south.

I remember that in the southeast corner of the Xu family compound, there was a door that opened to the east, facing the Han family in Zhao Laohan's small building. They are two siblings. My sister is a classmate in our class. I went to her house to play. One time I played hide and seek. Our classmates who went there have all hidden themselves, but I haven’t found a place yet. When the time came, I suddenly got into the stove pit of her house. The person I was looking for searched inside and outside the house several times but couldn't find me. Later, I couldn't stay any longer and got out on my own. Later, when I entered the house, I found out that her stove was still on, but it was just turned on. Thank goodness there were no cinders, otherwise I would have been burned.

Our large courtyard is divided into two small courtyards. I counted as many as nineteen classmates.

In Renxing Primary School, I may be in a lower grade and have never participated in any labor. But every winter and winter vacation, I collect horse manure, a job I have done before. At first I was in front of my house, but there wasn’t much horse manure and there were a lot of people picking it up. So I started walking away. Finally found Nanqiao Cave. Get up early and go out every day. At that time, the only means of transportation in the city was horse-drawn carriages. And when the horse goes uphill and exerts force, it will be pulled out. Therefore, horse manure in bridge holes is particularly easy to pick up. Every day I go home with a big basket full.

When school is about to start, go to school and hand in excrement. The guard teacher will give you a excrement ticket when you see a basket. It seems like I pay the most shit tickets every year. So much so that I was transferred to Renxing for two hours, and even took a vacation during the first winter vacation. When school started, I went to school and asked the teacher where to hand in the manure. He told me: "No!" That year I had to take the horse manure I picked up to Renxing Primary School. From now on, bid farewell to the activity of picking up excrement.

Another activity is to kill mice and hand in the tails of mice. At that time, in the summer, I would go out to the city to hunt mice, but I never caught any. I have never completed this task. Once I went to hunt mice with my friends. After passing the shooting range, we arrived at the northeast side of the medical school. At that time, except for the two rooms in the medical school, there were no other houses here. I remember that it was a crop field with a high step and many uneven pits. Only the medical school has a few tile-roofed buildings. We used shovels to dig here and there in the ditches and bumps. It's all a matter of luck. If you really see a big mouse, you may not be able to defeat it. That day, I didn't know why, I was so lucky, and suddenly a little mouse popped out. I was so quick that I went up to get the shovel and killed the mouse in one go. Just cut off the tail with the tip of a spade and wrap it in paper. This is the only time I have completed the task of handing in the rat tail.

Because we all knew at that time that Siping was a key area for plague prevention. I am afraid of rats and have no choice but to fight in this state. When I put the mouse tail in my pocket, the neighbor sister said something, which scared me so much that I quickly threw away the wrapped mouse tail. The elder sister saw that I was really scared, so she took back her words and reassured me that it would be fine as long as I didn't touch it. After thinking about it, I really didn't touch it with my hand, so I dared to pick up the paper bag.

There are many stories about Renxing Primary School, but unfortunately I only remember this little. Moreover, this memory is something I often think of.