Fengcheng old events

Chapter 49 The time of hunger
In the late summer of 64, Liu Jinrong was 14 years old and entered junior high school.

The junior high school is located in the commune, 25 miles away from Zhangjiabao. It is unrealistic to go to school on a day-to-day basis, so I have to live on campus.

The school is a large yard surrounded by large bungalows.Half are classrooms, teachers' offices, warehouses, and half are student dormitories and canteens.

The dormitory is a large miscellaneous room, a bit like a chariot and horse shop in the past. There is a Datong shop in the room, and the students live in rows on the kang.

Because there was no room for them, the school built a second floor with wood on top of the kang.

The school doesn't care about burning the kang, the students have to do it themselves.

In their spare time, the student union will organize the students to go out to collect firewood. If there is not enough firewood to burn, the students can only sleep in cold kangs in winter.

The cafeteria is just a big room, and the food is only corn porridge, not pastry.The dishes are radishes, stewed radishes, fried radishes, pickled radishes, and occasionally a meal of potatoes and cabbage.

You have to pay food in the cafeteria.

When school starts, I carry food from home and hand it over to the cafeteria. The cafeteria will exchange it for meal tickets according to the weight, and then use the meal tickets to eat every day.Eat as much as you pay.

There are dining groups during meals.

The students in a group sit around the table, and the group leader goes to pick up the food, and gives points to the students in the same group when he comes back.

It is said that you can eat as much as you pay, but in fact this is impossible. The students are all children, and no one will do the calculations.

In the past few years, there has been a nationwide food shortage, and the country's grain harvesting task must be guaranteed, and the food supply in the city must be guaranteed. On the contrary, the grain-growing rural areas have little surplus food.

At this moment, the oil and water department is in charge of the canteen, whether it is the canteen in the city or the canteen of a junior high school in this remote mountain valley.

In short, food has a place to go.

Every meal of the students is half a bowl of gruel with corn balls, a small pot of radish for several people, and a few pieces of pickles.

Boys are given more, because they are stronger and carry more food from home, but most of the time they are not enough to eat.

Liu Jinrong was thin and weak, and he didn't have much strength, so he couldn't carry too many things on his back.

If someone asked Liu Jinrong what it feels like to go to school at this time, she would definitely say, hungry.

I persisted in a state of hunger every day. I drank water when I was really hungry during the day. At night, I was so hungry that I couldn’t sleep. I went outside and walked along the road in a daze.

Zhangjiabao has a lot of junior high school students here, there are more than [-] people, and they all live here, and everyone who comes and goes is familiar with it.

In this era, the age of junior high school students is generally too old, and the difference is also large, because it is this kind of school in the mountain valley.

Fifteen or sixteen is normal, and the oldest third-year junior high school students are nineteen or twenty.In this era, graduating from junior high school is already considered literate, and high school students will properly go to work units to become cadres.

Liu Jinrong is 14 years old now, and he already understands a lot of things dimly.

Compared with college students who are still children in later generations, in this era, junior high school students are already adults, boys are already the main labor force in the family, and girls start to run the house, sewing, mending, washing and cleaning, and no one treats them or them as their own. children watch.

Even most rural families have started to talk about marriage at this time, and have started to find someone else for their children.

Among the male and female students in junior high school, there also began to have vague feelings of different relationships with classmates.

Among the male students in Zhangjiabao, there was one named Zhang Qingzhi, who was the oldest among his classmates at 19 years old.

Zhang Qingzhi is a very enthusiastic person. He always takes the initiative to help his classmates when they have something to do. He is usually enthusiastic and never plays tricks.

He is 1.7 meters tall, handsome, and loves to laugh. He is the branch of the Zhang family in Zhangjiabao, and he is the same grandfather as Mr. Zhang.

Zhang Qingzhi's father is the eldest in the family, and Mr. Zhang's father is the fourth eldest, uncle and cousin.

Zhang Qingzhi has six brothers and no girl. He is the third eldest. The two elder brothers above have all gone to the city, and two of the three younger brothers are in school, one in elementary school and one in junior high school. The youngest brother is just nine years old and is dumb.

His eldest brother is 26 years old, as old as his own uncle, works as a worker in the Benxi Iron and Steel Forging Plant, and is married in the city.

The second brother, 23, went to the city to join his eldest brother, who helped to take care of someone and also worked in some factory.

As the third child, Zhang Qingzhi is the oldest child in the family at the moment, and he is already 19 years old. He must be the main labor force in the family.

But in fact Zhang Qingzhi is restless and doesn't want to do farm work.All the work at home is done by the fourth and fifth children, and he is still in school at nineteen.

This made him very unpopular at home, being scolded by his father all the time, the old man looked down on this son from the bottom of his heart.

For some reason, Liu Jinrong and Zhang Qingzhi became acquaintances, friends, and talked together when they had nothing to do.

Wherever Zhang Qingzhi went, he didn't know whether he stole it or picked it up, but he could always find something to feed Liu Jinrong, and talked and strolled with her.

"Have you ever been on a train?"

"I did. I took the train when I came from Anton."

"I'm going to take the train and go to the city to find my elder brother."

"Stop studying? Then you will be in the city from now on?"

"I don't know. My dad at home doesn't like me, and I don't want to farm. Study? I'm stupid, I can't study well, and it doesn't make sense to read or not."

"Then what are you going to do when you go to the city? Will you come back later?"

"I don't know, I didn't think about it. My elder brother is nice to me. I went to see what he said. I will come back to you when I find something."

"Why are you looking for me?" Liu Jinrong rolled his eyes, and threw the small stone in his hand into the river, while Zhang Qingzhi squatted aside, laughing.

In October, Zhang Qingzhi left and went to the city to look for his elder brother, but never came back.

After the mid-term exam in November, Liu Jinrong, who has excellent grades, served as the study director of the student union, responsible for supervising the students' study and homework.

Time passed quickly, and Liu Jinrong returned to the days when he sat starving and starving by the river.When I was hungry, I wanted to take a bite when I saw the stone.

After a few heavy snowfalls, the time came to 65 years. Liu Jinrong was promoted to an official again and became the chairman of the school's student union. He cooperated with the teachers in student work and became a man of the school.

The junior high school student union in this era is a serious student organization, and it is a department that all leaders above should pay attention to.The old students who left the student union were all assigned jobs, and became the people who ate the royal food in the commune or county.

But even if you become a cadre, you should still be hungry, and you will not be given an extra spoonful of gruel just because you become a student cadre.

In Liu Jinrong's life, this period of junior high school life is the two years she remembers most, and she suffered from constant hunger for more than 600 days.

(End of this chapter)