A century of poverty

Chapter 48 Watching a Movie!

Before the village had electric lights, after dinner when it got dark, all of us except my eldest brother would stay inside because it was dark outside. Even going to the toilet required a companion before we dared to go out.

Once, my third sister and I went out into the courtyard together. When we came back, she walked quickly ahead of me. She went into the house, and I had just entered the door when she suddenly shouted, "Third Aunt is here!" as if she was running.

I was so frightened that I screamed and fled to the kang (a heated brick bed), and it took me a long time to calm down.

She was happy and enjoying the pleasure.

When my third sister turned fourteen, she started working in the production team, and every night she had to go to the team headquarters to record her work points. The family didn't dare let her go alone, so they asked me to accompany her. On the way there, we would always run into other people going out to record their work points, just like us. Team Four was on North Street, and Teams Three and Two were south of West Alley. On the way back, we usually didn't see anyone, because we came back late from the long distance. So, the section from West Alley north to the bottom of the big slope was the scariest part, because we often heard the older folks say there were wolves in the North Gully, with pairs of green eyes that swayed like lanterns. They also said there were foxes that practiced alchemy, but we never encountered any. However, one time was very frightening. When we reached this section, because the roadside was all empty courtyards, and the road was at the bottom of the gully, far from the houses and without any lights, two people passed by us. They were like shadows, their arms and legs moving like puppets. We were so scared we didn't dare speak, our pores bulged, and we could only hear our own breathing. I could tell my third sister was also extremely nervous. They passed us and disappeared before we even reached the bottom of the big slope. "They must be ghosts," we thought to ourselves.

When we got to the big slope, I could clearly feel that my third sister had recovered, while I was still shrouded in fear.

Movies, a completely new thing, have entered the countryside and our lives.

I heard the village was showing a movie that night, and everyone, young and old, was eager to see it. After I finished dinner, my older siblings were no longer home, and the house was unusually quiet. I wanted to go to the movies too, but my mom comforted me, saying not to worry, she'd take me in a bit. I was overjoyed; it was such a rare treat for my mom to take me to the movies. From far away, I could hear a "beep, beep, beep" sound, and when we got closer, I realized it was the generator from the projection team.

The movie was showing "News Brief." Chairman Mao was meeting with African friends. The audience was very excited to see the great leader in person for the first time. A shadowy figure shook hands with Chairman Mao. Just as everyone was wondering what was going on, the figure spoke, revealing white teeth. "My God! There are people this dark-skinned!" The audience stirred. Many people had never known that there were people with dark skin.

After the news briefing, the main feature was probably "Railway Guards." Trains rumbled along, and people sang joyfully: "Hey la la la la, hey la la la, colorful clouds in the sky, red flowers blooming on the ground..."

It was a live performance, a real train show. I wondered where this person came from. I went to look behind the screen, but there was no one there. It was the same screen. Many elderly people and children, like me, went to look for the person behind the screen, but all they saw was the back of the screen.

The movie was new to me, and I asked my mom, "Where did this person come from?" My mom pointed to the projector and said, "They came out from over there. Didn't you see that bright light?" Sure enough, when the movie ended and the film was changed, the lights went out, and the screen was just a white sheet.

My second brother is in fifth grade and is under a lot of academic pressure. He told his mother, "Mom, don't make me study anymore. I listen carefully in class and feel like I understand, but I forget everything as soon as I walk out of the school gate after school." His mother knows that he is an honest child and never misbehaves, but his academic performance is not ideal. Therefore, the teacher has also communicated with the family.

Seeing that his second brother honestly explained his reasons for not going to school, the family agreed. His second brother was finally freed from the pressure of school. Despite not being a good student, he was very interested in stacking stones. When the boundary wall between his neighbor's yard and the east yard collapsed due to rain, he quickly went and rebuilt it exactly as it had been, with the joints fitting together perfectly. You couldn't tell that it was a child's work.

When he joined the team, there was work to build stones for the festival. Everyone wanted to include him in the work. He could build stones without being told, he loved to do it, and he did it well.

At the beginning of the new year, my aunt's son Lixian, my aunt's son Dainan, and I reached school age. Lixian was two people taller than me and sat in the back, while Dainan and I were shorter and sat in the first row. At this time, the teacher of Zhangzhuangtuo Primary School was Wei Hezhi, Peng Xiangzhi's sister-in-law. Peng Xiangzhi had moved away with her husband.

After learning pinyin, the first lesson is "Long Live Chairman Mao".

The very first lesson stumped me. The teacher wrote five large characters on the blackboard, and after we memorized them, we copied them. The first character stumped me; no matter how I tried, the vertical hook didn't look right. I wrote the next four characters, but I still couldn't get the vertical hook right. I could write the horizontal, vertical, left-falling, and right-falling strokes, but the vertical hook wasn't a vertical-horizontal combination; I just couldn't draw that beautiful curve. What was I going to do? I was so anxious that my forehead and palms were sweating, but I still couldn't write it. I looked to my left, right, and behind me; everyone seemed to have written them easily, except for me. I glanced at my deskmate, Dai Nan; her two little hands were tightly clutching her notebook. I felt anxious and uneasy. When I got home from school, I told my mother, "Mom, I don't want to go to school anymore. I don't want to go to school."

My mother asked why, and I said, "Going to school is too hard, and I'm embarrassed because I can't write." My mother said, "It's okay, it's normal not to be able to write when you first start school, you'll learn slowly. Going to school is a big deal, don't say you don't want to go to school..." My mother explained a lot of reasons to me, and although I didn't understand them very well, I could tell that not going to school was not an option, and that going to school was a necessary experience in the process of growing up.

I gave up the idea of ​​not going to school and persisted in attending. Before I knew it, I had overcome the difficulty.

By the time we reached second grade, Zhangzhuangtuo Primary School had closed down, and the brigade headquarters was relocated to the south end of the village. We all went to study at Liuzhuangtuo University. At the university, all the students from the five villages were together. There were many people, and it was separated by Zhaozhuangtuo, so the journey was quite far.

In my eyes, the university truly lived up to its name. Entering through the east gate and looking west, there were three long rows of buildings, separating two playgrounds, which were surrounded by weeping willows. Each row of buildings had about ten rooms. The north row had classrooms for grades four, five, and six; the south row on the west side had classrooms for grades two and three; and the two rooms on the east side were the school-run factory. The middle row had offices and classrooms for two junior high classes.

To the west of the front playground is a stage, which serves as the rostrum for meetings. There are billiard tables on the east and west sides. The back playground is where all teachers and students do their morning exercises.

To the left of the main gate is the area where the school collects manure when students are required to do so. Every winter, the school starts collecting manure, with each student having a quota. If they don't meet their quota, they are actually suspended from school to collect manure to make up for it.

When I was in Honjo, I simply carried a schoolbag made of a piece of cloth folded in half and sewn together, along with a pencil stub and a few erasers, which I scattered inside the bag before going to school.

When I went to university, my family gave me my second brother's old schoolbag, pencil case, and a small vertical knife. I didn't like it. The schoolbag was old and worn out, and the pencil case was a wooden rectangle with almost equal sides. The lid was a pull-out type, not smooth, and often slipped and jammed when opening or closing. When I took it out and put it on my desk, some classmates laughed and said it looked like a "coffin." Even when it was inside the schoolbag, it stretched the bag too much, with protruding edges.

I especially envied my classmates' flat, folding pencil cases with multiplication tables printed on the lids, which were inconspicuous in their schoolbags. When the teacher said "get out of class dismissed," they would put their pencils and erasers inside, tap them, and slam them shut with a "snap," feeling particularly cool.

The students all used horizontal knives, but I used the vertical knife that my second brother had used. The blade was small, only about the width of a fingertip, with no point of leverage, making it very difficult to sharpen pencils, especially the stubs. It was already hard to hold the pencil properly, and using this vertical knife made my thumb and forefinger ache terribly, and I still couldn't sharpen it well. I'd also want to go out and play after class, and I'd try to sharpen pencils while listening to the lesson. The teacher didn't like it, but never criticized me.

Upon arriving at university, my classmates from my village were scattered across various classes, and most of the new classmates were strangers. My family upbringing instilled in me the importance of honesty and integrity. Some of the boys from other villages were quite arrogant, glaring and speaking rudely, which made me feel uneasy and cautious. Especially a few boys from Liuzhuangtuo village, who acted with impunity, taking advantage of the fact that the university was in their village.

For some reason, the seating arrangement put boys and girls in the same row, which intensified my fear. Having spent a few days getting to know each other beforehand, I basically knew which classmates were mild-mannered and which were troublemakers.

When we lined up to sit, boys and girls stood in separate rows. I silently prayed that XXX wouldn't sit at the same table as me. And just as I feared, XXX from Liuzhuangtuo, the most troublesome student in our class, ended up sitting next to me. As soon as I sat down in the classroom, XXX started cursing, "Damn it, what bad luck, sitting with a sick little cat." I was extremely annoyed and didn't even glance at him, hiding in a corner of the desk away from him.

Most of the female students felt nervous about sitting like that. This seating arrangement only lasted for two or three days before it was changed back to girls sitting in one seat and boys sitting in another.