Back to 1978

Chapter 1 Before opening the book

The idea of ​​writing this book probably dates back to a day last year when my father gathered relatives scattered all over the country who had not seen each other for several years due to the epidemic to return to his hometown for a small reunion.

I remember when the wine was served, there were four or five tables for the adults alone, not to mention the children who were running around the house playing. It was as lively as New Year's Day.

While the women were busy cooking and exchanging cooking skills, and the men were gathered together chatting while waiting for dinner, an elder sitting on the sofa in the living room asked me while I was fiddling with my phone, "What novel are you writing? Tell me about it."

I said I wanted to write an American story, an American story starting from 1982, a story about a young American man from a very poor family who worked hard to make money and change his life.

The elder asked in a simple manner, then it should not be written well, right?
After all, American things should be written about by Americans, and you Chinese should write about Chinese things. It's a pity that you were not born in 1982 and didn't know anything. Back then, things here were much more interesting than they are now.

I just smiled and replied, what's the fun of that? Then I changed the subject and asked about the other party's favorite topic of fishing. When the other party heard about fishing, he didn't continue to argue with me whether it was interesting at that time, but started to show off his own achievements.

Later, dinner was served. As the oldest of this generation, I sat at a table with my peers and brothers-in-law, drinking. With each glass of wine, we swallowed down the hardships of life in the past two years. Then, I looked up, smiled, watched the little ones running around the table, and placed my hopes on the future.

I thought that on that day, the first people to get drunk should be us middle-aged men with elderly parents and young children. After all, it was rare for us to sit together with a group of like-minded peers, drinking and smoking, and trying to forget the pressure of life at that moment.

Unexpectedly, the first to get drunk were the old guys at the table. They were in high spirits. Even my father, who had quit drinking for many years, picked up the white wine glass and drank it all in one gulp. His face was red. My mother was so scared that she couldn't sit still. She didn't even bother to reminisce with her sisters-in-law. She came out several times and stood in the corner of the living room, looking at my drunken father with worry in her eyes.

I stood up and tried to persuade my father to drink less, but he waved me away in disgust. The elder who had asked me the question before remembered our previous conversation and said drunkenly to the old guys at the table, "At that time, I told Shaozi that I couldn't understand what he wrote about Americans in 1982, so I asked him to write a story about the Chinese, but he said it was boring. I told him that our time was more interesting than it is now, but he didn't believe it!"

What? !

To the drunken fathers, this sentence was like a bomb exploding on the table. My father and I glared at me. I was grabbed by three or four big hands and pressed down at the table. I sat down obediently like a primary school student, accepting the contempt and lessons from my parents.

"Those were more interesting than now! What have you young men in your 30s and 40s seen now? Have you seen a gun? Have you been abroad? Have you been abroad with a gun? I have! Have you seen foreigners? Have you fought against them? I killed South Vietnamese monkeys! I got the second-class merit at the risk of my life, and then I was transferred to the city! There is a saying in storytelling that fame can only be achieved by riding on horses and fighting for a good family background! What's the matter, your second uncle, wasn't my life more interesting than you guys'?"

"At that time, Wang Laoqi and I made a bet on eating steamed bread. We put a pole full of steamed bread with half a piece of pickled cabbage. I ate all of it, while he only ate two-thirds of it. He lost all the pickled eggs he brought with him to me! The next day, he was not convinced and made another bet to see who could transport more earth. I was young and hot-tempered at that time, so I really gave it my all. When I was working on the last load, I was so tired that my throat was salty and my legs couldn't bend! I thought I would vomit blood and die if I pulled one more load! In the end, Wang Laoqi lost his pants and bedding to me! The earth I transported that day broke the previous single-person transportation record for river workers. After the completion of the work, the county issued me a certificate, the model of the county's youth labor model. Among the more than 10,000 people who participated in the river workers' campaign, this is the only one! I am the only one who has it!"

"Your father was a militia platoon leader at the age of sixteen. Do you know how he got there? At that time, there were more than 200 people in the team, and they all wanted to elect him as the production team leader of our team. The brigade secretary came over and said that he was too young, so why not make him a youth team leader and militia platoon leader first? Your father was fooled by a few bullets. When he was sixteen, there happened to be a big earthquake. Your father jumped up and called your grandma, your grandfather, and your aunts, and fled with your aunt, who was the youngest at the time, on his back. Then he went door to door in the third team, shouting for everyone to flee, and saved a lot of people. Later, the state distributed building materials for building simple houses, and there were other production teams that did not receive the materials. The anxious bad boys in the team wanted to take our team's supplies and wanted to steal the supplies first to build their own houses, and then compensate them when their team's supplies arrived. The captain of our production team was a coward at that time. Your father rushed up with a pickaxe and said that whoever dared to touch our team's supplies would be killed today! One kid was still not convinced and just said "dare you" your father swung the pickaxe at his head. The guy raised his arm to block it, but his arm was broken. No one dared to raise his hand again. Because of this incident, the whole team unanimously nominated him to be the captain of our team. In the end, he was fooled by a few bullets and chose the militia platoon leader. "

"I've been listening to you guys nagging for a long time. You're under pressure. What's the big deal? Worrying about the elderly getting sick, your children getting bad grades, and not making money at work? That's bullshit. What's pressure? Just try it out. Which family didn't have relatives who died in the earthquake? They lost their homes and the sky collapsed. Didn't we survive it? We were only 16 or 17 years old at that time. We cried while learning to build a makeshift house from the people sent by the commune. At that time, I was thinking, what's the point of building it? My parents are gone! After surviving and building a makeshift house, I still have to rebuild my own home and learn to set up a household. Isn't the pressure greater than yours? Compared with us at that time, be content!"

"Do you know how we, a bunch of young boys, solved the problem of having no food to eat at that time? Let me tell you, if it were you, you would have starved to death. We made our own homemade guns. At that time, the country encouraged people to hand in guns. If you handed in a gun, you would be rewarded with five catties of grain and three ounces of oil. We saved up those old-fashioned muzzle-loading hunting rifles. Don't worry about whether the reloading speed of that thing is slow or not. The barrel will explode after a few shots. But if it is filled with iron sand and stones within five steps, it will definitely be able to hit someone and make him disabled for life. It is absolutely lethal. So when we had no food, we would secretly save up a handful of guns and turn them in every few months, saying that we dug them up. At the beginning, the head of the commune's armed forces department kept his word and rewarded us with food and oil. Later, the head of the commune's armed forces department was replaced by someone who had left our village. He was an elder who knew us well, and he talked to us directly. This is the last time. If you use your fire sticks that can't even kill rabbits with one shot to cheat me of food, I will send you all to jail as swindlers!"

"Don't always think that just because you've been to a big city for a few years you're like us, you haven't seen the world. Your dad was the first one in our city to go to the Special Administrative Region, but he was in the top five. Didn't you write about Hong Kong Island? Didn't you ask your dad? He was only one step away from going there. He was really just one step away and he would be a Hong Kong Islander. Why didn't he go when he could? When he came back that time, he brought a lot of foreign stuff, including Zippo lighters, Teresa Teng tapes, digital watches, and Hong Kong shirts. His clothes played an important role in your mom marrying him."

"I couldn't find a wife here back then. There were many people in my family but few laborers. My parents were sick and couldn't do much work. They earned few work points and had little money all year round, so local girls didn't like them. Then a matchmaker said she would introduce me to a girl from the mountainous area in Sichuan. The girl had a cousin who followed the army, and her husband retired and settled here. We have a lot of land here, but their hometown is in the mountainous area and there isn't much land, so they wanted her sister to marry here as well. Having a sister from her natal family can help them take care of each other locally. The original plan was to take her sister to live in her house, and then find a matchmaker locally. The matchmaker introduced me to someone, but my sister didn't agree to come in the end. The matchmaker who introduced me to someone was not very good either. She collected the introduction fee from my family in advance, but the deal didn't work out and the girl didn't come. Normally, the matchmaker should have refunded the introduction fee, but she didn't want to, saying that she was from Sichuan. There was a niece in my hometown, and she helped introduce me to someone. At that time, in the 80s, I was stupid and only wanted a wife. The matchmaker wrote to my hometown in Sichuan, and the other party actually replied, but there was a condition. I had to go to Sichuan for a blind date to see if I was suitable. But it happened that the matchmaker broke her leg while working and couldn't go back with me. She asked me to take her letter and photo and go to Sichuan thousands of miles away to find a wife by myself. Before that, I had never even left our city. The farthest I had been was the city. At the age of , all I thought about was getting a wife. I gritted my teeth, took the letter of introduction, household registration booklet and dry food, bought a train ticket and rushed to Sichuan. How was it? I was there for more than two months. Although I didn't marry the matchmaker's niece in the end, I married the girl from my niece's neighbor's house! Otherwise, how could you have an old aunt! Can you do it in your place? You must still be single! "

"It's like you guys have never been to other places. I went to Shanghai with the Agricultural Machinery Station. I saw that Shanghai was not a place for people to live. Don't think it's a big city now. When I went there, I was shocked. There were a lot of men, women, and children queuing up at the entrance of the alley early in the morning to empty their shit pots. They were so poor. There was no toilet at home. They had to poop inside the house. It smelled..."

"Don't talk about that while eating and drinking, isn't it disgusting? Let me tell you, at that time I used a bicycle to carry 500 kilograms of goods, and rode nearly 100 miles in winter. Have you ever seen that even my military coat was soaked through with sweat? In the middle of winter, I was covered in smoke. The captain was scared and thought that my coat was set on fire by the cigarette butt. How can young people nowadays do this..."

"That's nothing. One year I went to Beishan with a tractor from the agricultural machinery station to pull stones..."

Slowly, they started arguing with each other again. They didn't bother to hold me down. Instead, I had no intention of getting up. I sat in my seat, quietly listening to a group of old guys, the youngest of whom was in their fifties and had gray hair on their temples, talking loudly about their youth. When they spoke, they smiled brightly and there was light in their eyes.

Even my mother, my aunts, and my uncles came out of the room when they heard them talking loudly about the past. They listened to them talking about the past, and the women would smile and chime in from time to time.

Those smiling faces make me believe that they must have been very happy when they were young.

That noon, I listened to a lot of stories about our parents’ past at the dinner table. They drank to their heart’s content and left with their families at dusk.

Not long after that, I ran back to my hometown for some trivial matters. At that time, my father had returned to the familiar self. He spoke very little and would only speak when asked. He did not drink alcohol, but only tea. He would listen to an old song or a storytelling while painting on the drawing table.

While he was taking a tea break, I asked him about the past events they talked about at the table that day. My father looked at the fields outside the window in silence for a moment, then nodded slightly and looked at me again: That's it.

Have you been to the SAR? Are you just one step away from going to Hong Kong Island?

I am more concerned about this issue because I live in the northern province, tens of thousands of miles away from Hong Kong Island. I have written stories about Hong Kong Island before and have collected countless information about it. Unexpectedly, I was so negligent that I didn't even know that my father almost had an intersection with it.

At that time, I was recommended to follow the truck to deliver supplies to Hong Kong, and the delivery was in Bao'an. The delivery warehouse was on this side of Bao'an and on the other side was Hong Kong. If I wanted to run over, it should be quite easy, because at that time the dealer selling foreign goods secretly said, if you want to go over, give him three or five hundred, and he can help take me over secretly.

Then why didn't you go over?

Let’s not talk about the fact that I don’t have that much money. Even if I did, I would have believed it. What if it was a scam? And why would I go there? Abandon your grandma, your grandpa, and your aunts? I didn’t even think about going there at that time.
Wouldn’t it be the same if I went there to earn money and sent it back?

At that time, our village didn't have running water. When I left, your grandparents were in poor health, your aunts were young, and our family didn't even have anyone who could fetch water. Moreover, we were just poor at that time, not to the point where we had to leave our hometown to survive.

You didn't tell me at all?
When I was young, I liked to brag about this to my friends. When I got older, I was too lazy to mention it. Besides, you wouldn’t understand what I said. I was only happy to brag to my peers. Otherwise, what’s there to be proud of when I ate a steamed bread with a pole and won only a few pickled eggs? At most, you would think I was a big eater and a complete glutton. Or if I told you that your uncle found a Sichuanese wife, you might not think it was strange, but people at that time would think it was amazing. Now, when people hear that I have been to the Special Administrative Region, they would think that I went there, what’s there to say? The high-speed rail is well developed and it’s convenient to go anywhere. They can’t understand what was there to talk about when I went to the Special Administrative Region at that time.

I find it quite interesting now. How about, Dad, can you tell me about our family’s past?

Where to start?
You can start from whatever you want to talk about. Let’s talk about happy things first. When was your happiest moment?
There are several happiest things. Your birth is one of them. If I were to talk about the earliest, the first one should be when I was five or six years old. I could already remember things at that time. I remember that every morning my grandfather would hold a cane in one hand and hold my hand in the other to go to the street in our town for breakfast. I would have a piece of fried pancake and a bowl of tofu pudding, and he would eat half a salted duck egg more than me, plus two taels of wine. I thought it was so delicious at that time, and no matter how much I ate later, it didn’t taste as good as it did then.

Great grandfather was quite rich, right? You were five or six years old, probably in 1965 or 1966? What I ate for breakfast then was exactly the same as what I eat now. This is what I ate this morning.

It depends on how you put it. Although we were in the countryside at that time, your great grandfather was the principal of our primary school. The state paid him a salary, which was enough for him to eat fried pancakes every day in the countryside. At that time, it was cheap, and you could eat very good food for just a few cents. Besides, fried pancakes have always existed, but there was no individual business at that time. At that time, it was called a rural sideline business. You can understand it as a production team opening a breakfast stall and hiring people to sell breakfast. The money earned was counted as the collective income of the production team, and the breakfast seller was paid.

He was also a primary school principal? A cultured person?

Your great-grandfather was a scholar who was supported by the whole family at that time. His father and three brothers, a total of four rural families, supported him to study. Studying was expensive at that time, but fortunately your great-grandfather lived up to the family's expectations and was admitted to the best school in our area at that time, Nankai Middle School, now called Nankai University. After graduation, he was recommended by his teacher in a letter to work as a cultural teacher in the Radio School of Chiang Kai-shek's government. When he was young, he moved around with the school, and later moved to Chongqing to live a stable life. Chiang Kai-shek must have paid a lot of salaries to these teachers, and it was at that time that he had the confidence to marry your great-grandmother. Your great-grandmother was carrying two burdens, your grandfather and great aunt, at that time, and ordinary people could not afford to support them.

My great grandfather married a great grandmother with two children? In other words, my grandfather and my great grandfather have no blood relationship?
Your great-grandfather had a wife who was also a teacher. She was exhausted from moving around with the school and died of illness, but they had no children. Your great-grandmother moved from Hongnong to Chongqing with her two children after her husband died. Your great-grandfather had just rented a house in Chongqing at that time. He liked to invite friends and colleagues to his house for drinks all day to increase the popularity, but there was no woman at home, so the house was a mess and he needed someone to help clean it up. He didn't like country women with rough hands and feet, because he had a large collection of books and was afraid that country women didn't understand the value of books and would ruin them.

At that time, he asked his friends to find a woman who had worked as a maid in a wealthy family, or at least helped to tidy up the study and knew how to dry books, to be a nanny. Your great-grandmother was living with her relatives at that time, and she couldn't always eat the white rice of her relatives, so she accepted this job. She was a child bride chosen by a landlord in Hongnong for his son. She took care of the landlord's son since he was a child and grew up with him. Not only did she teach the landlord's son to study, she also taught him how to dress. The two grew up, got married and had two children, your great-aunt and your grandfather. But the man was taken away by his classmates when he was studying in the city. He became addicted to opium, and later to white flour. In this way, the family's little property was slowly replaced by white flour. When your grandfather couldn't even learn to walk, his biological father smoked to death, leaving them an orphan and a widow. Your great-grandmother simply made up her mind to sell the only remaining shabby house and went to Chongqing to live with her husband's cousin. At that time, the cousin married in Chongqing and her husband ran a restaurant. Your great-grandmother helped in the kitchen doing odd jobs. Your great-grandfather and his teacher friends often went to the restaurant to drink, and when they heard that they were looking for a nanny, the proprietress recommended your great-grandmother, and that's how she met your great-grandfather.

Before I could continue to ask about the follow-up story of my great-grandfather, my father's apprentice came to visit my father, and this rare long talk between father and son ended abruptly. But from that day on, I couldn't help but think of the red-faced and hearty memories of my parents at the wine table, my father's understatement at the tea table, the past of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, my father's fantastic long journey, that he was only one step away from Hong Kong Island, and what they said about the changes of this city, this town, this village, these families, and these faces.

The era that was originally gray and yellow in my mind seemed to come alive in an instant as they told my stories, making me feel that those years that I had not experienced were not boring, but very interesting, making me want to get closer to them.

So I started to go back to my hometown more often. I would go back whenever I could. When my father was free, I would chat with him. When he was not free, I would chat with the elders. I even went to the village entrance to sit down and chat with the old people basking in the sun by the wall. Then I would go from the village to the city to meet other old people. From this city to the neighboring city, I slowly collected the life experiences of these old people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Among them were farmers, workers, teachers, doctors, cadres, widowers who died alone, and couples with children and grandchildren...

Fortunately, when I listened, they were willing to tell me, so that I could hear one wonderful past event after another that I, as a later generation, could not simulate with my imagination. There are many things that I could not even imagine if they hadn't mentioned them.

Really, I couldn’t have imagined what many of them were going through if I hadn’t heard them talk about it with my own ears.

For example, I visited an old man introduced by a retired teacher. He was born in 1941 and lived in Tianjin. He is now retired and enjoying his old age. His residence is not big, but it is uniquely decorated. There are many vegetables, fruits and green plants planted in the yard. There is a small porcelain bust of a great man and some national flag, national emblem, commemorative coins and other ornaments in the living room. The first impression is that he comes from a very conservative and traditional revolutionary family. But this old man, who is old enough to be my grandfather, opened his mouth to chat with me, and what he said was: My ancestral home is Ningbo. I went to England by boat with my mother when I was one year old. Before I was ten years old, I settled in London, England with my parents. When I was ten years old, I returned to China with my family. My grandfather worked with Mr. Li Shutong in Lin'an.

If I hadn't seen the old man showing me a photo album of his mother holding him when he was three or four years old in front of the Big Ben in London, and a photo of his parents being welcomed back home, I would have thought that the old man was just bragging...

After all, I can't imagine how luxurious the family background of a person who could live abroad and make friends with famous figures in history books must have been in the old society.

When asked if the photo had any special meaning, he shook his head and said that his mother felt that Germany often bombed London at that time, and was worried that Big Ben would be destroyed by the Germans one day, so she took a photo with the group on purpose to avoid missing the scenery when she wanted to take photos in the future.

Regarding the fact that the old man's parents were able to hold their four-year-old son in front of the Big Ben in London for a photo in 1944, my feeling is that even though it is 2024 with convenient transportation, my parents are still unable to hold their -year-old son in front of the Big Ben in London for a photo.

Not to mention buying a property and settling down in London.

If he hadn't been liberated, he would have to be at the level of a local noble gentry. Who am I to be qualified to sit face to face and chat with an old man from such a family...

I think even now, many middle-class families in China who move to the UK may not be able to easily buy a house in London, but more than eighty years ago, this old man's family had easily achieved it.

I couldn't even imagine what this family experienced after returning to China, or whether their quality of life dropped too much. I didn't even know how to continue asking questions. Fortunately, he saw my confusion and said frankly that his parents were hardly affected during those special years after returning to China. In addition, they returned to China because they wanted to build a new China, but there was actually another factor: they couldn't eat well or get enough to eat in London.

Look, who would have thought that his family, who had bought a house and settled down in London, could not even have enough to eat?

The first few sentences we talked about even gave me an urge to create. I was ready to write a story about a rich Chinese man killing people in London after World War II, with an old man as the protagonist and some YY plots, in the style of Peaky Blinders. However, the words "not full" at the end directly shattered my newly-minted idea of ​​a London story, and I couldn't stick with it anymore, because it didn't conform to the logic of the story development.

That’s what I said, their experiences are always beyond my imagination. If I don’t hear them talk about it in person, I can’t imagine it at all just by thinking on my own.

Not having enough to eat may sound illogical, but it is the real experience of the elderly.

Now, I would like to try to put those people's experiences into my story as much as possible. They should not have been what I see now, silent, taciturn, indifferent, with only quiet aging in their lives. When they were young, they were also lively, cheerful, in their prime, full of energy and hope for life.

Of course, it is an online novel after all, and the most important thing is the refreshing reading experience. Well, yes, it is just a fictional novel that tries to look as realistic as possible, but is actually a YY fiction.

That’s right, this is a fictional novel, which is very important. Everything that happens in the book has nothing to do with reality, and the place names have no real references.

Finally, where should I start this fictional story?

Let’s start from the midsummer of 1978. It was the hottest time of July, frogs were croaking, cicadas were chirping, and the wind was blowing.

The protagonist of the story, Xie Hushan, who traveled through time, was planning his escape in the evening breeze of a summer night.

(End of this chapter)