Unforgettable Years in Yaping (Online Version)

Alice

During the Cultural Revolution in China, the rules of entering the universities were changed. The entrance examination system for the college was abolished. No high school graduates could directly enter the universities by taking exams without spending some years doing labor work or joining the army. Chairman Mao said, "There are a lot to do in the vast world." He meant to send youth like us to the countryside. Thus, Mao waved his hand and we followed. I graduated in the beginning of 1976 from high school at the age of 17 and immediately left Beijing for the countryside. We, as a five-people group, prior to our departure took pictures together in the heart of Beijing at Tian An Men Square. The five of us would stay together in the years that followed.

Photo A-1: The five of us in front of National Museum of Chinese History in Tian An Men square. That's me in the front row, far left.

Photo A-2: Three beautiful girls including me on the far right, in front of Tian An Men, still looked like kids, but were looking forward to our future. Later on the three of us had always been sleeping together on the same single big bed in the countryside for two to three years.

At the end of March 1976, we took the train from Beijing to Shaanxi province. On the day of departure, the Beijing Railway Station was packed with people who came to say goodbye to their family, friends and loved ones who were leaving for the poorly developed northwestern part of China to do the farm work. My family had no relatives in Beijing. Only my parents, and a young teacher who was my father's coworker, came to send me off. We stood in front of the train for a while and suddenly someone said that the train was about to leave. Everyone tried to squeeze up to the train. The young teacher carried my big bags and tried real hard to push away the crowd for me. I finally squeezed into the train. 

Then I went through the compartments one after the other to look for my classmates. After I found them, I looked outside and couldn't see where my parents were. To make matters worse my classmates noticed on my back that my winter coat was torn. The train started to move and I suddenly couldn't help but cry. Our group leader named M (I prefer not to mention the real name here.) was a girl who was one year older than I was. She was already a communist party member and at the time more mature than the rest of us. After she talked to me for a while, I started to feel a lot better. She then took out her sewing package with needles and threads and started to sew my coat. The torn part was too long for her to finish the sewing until the train reached its destination of Xi'an. The stitches were done back and forth, just like the railroad tracks. So we joked that it symbolized our railway journey from Beijing to Xi'an. 

There were totally about 100 people on the train going to north part of Shaanxi province that year. We talked to each other and got to know each other more on the train. We would leave to various counties soon. Therefore, we wrote farewell messages and encouragement notes on each other's diary notebooks.

Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, is a big city. We stayed there for two days. The provincial leaders talked to us and also treated us some very nice meals. We visited some famous sight seeing places in Xi'an as well. 

Saying goodbye to Xi'an, we took a long-distance bus heading to a small city called Yan'an, which was considered Mao's revolutionary holy land. Yan'an is in the northern part of Shaanxi province surrounded by loess plateaus. The bus was bumpy on the non-paved winding roads throughout the mountains. Some people had brought radios with them. We noticed that the radios with 5, or 6 or 7 transistors stopped working in the mountain area due to the relatively low sensitivity. Only the radios with 9 transistors, which were considered high-end at the time, would still work. Most of us did not have that kind of high quality radios, which meant we would lose the contact with the outside world once we were in the countryside.

We were warmly welcomed at Yan'an by a huge crowd, around 10,000 people. The dresses of young men and women were very colorful. The young men were wearing white towels on their heads, yellow clothes and green pants, and the young women were in pink clothes and green pants. They were dancing with the deafening sounds of drums and firecrackers. Yan'an City was bigger than I had imagined. We stayed in Yan'an Hotel and were treated with nice meals such as fish, meat, chicken, tofu, bean sprouts, vermicelli, potatoes, green peppers, etc. A guy who had already lived there for a few years suggested that we should buy a wool felt at the local store for 10 Yuan (Chinese money, also called RMB) each to prevent humidity when sleeping in the countryside.

Photo A-3: Since we were there in Yan'an already, why not take a picture in front of the revolutionary holy pagoda.

Among all the people from Beijing, twelve of us were allocated to Zichang County, five from my school, Tsinghua High School, and seven from other schools in Beijing. Zichang was named after a general of the Red Army in northern Shaanxi. Zichang was his hometown and he died many years ago even before Mao came to this area in the 1930s. Since Zichang was one of the poorest counties in Yan'an, there had been no distribution of Beijing high school graduates to settle there in the past. We were the first ones. Director of the Zichang County Youth Office came to Yan'an to welcome us. The military representative (During certain period of Cultural Revolution, Mao sent representatives from the army to all the schools to be in charge there), here is called Z, escorted us all the way from Beijing to Zichang.

Photo A-4: We, 12 people in this photo went to Zichang County. I'm the far left in the first row. The Director of the Zichang County Youth Office is the second from right hand side in the first row. The military representative Z is the second from the left hand side in the back row.

Photo A-5: We walked through the crowd in the street of Zichang downtown. See my small face in the picture? I was the 7th in the girl's single column.

When our bus arrived at Zichang, we saw the county leaders with many local people waiting there to express their warm welcome. Zichang downtown was very small and there was only one unpaved street with several small shops. We got off the bus, followed the leaders and walked through the crowds towards the county guesthouse. The next day after we stayed at the guesthouse for one night, we left the county town to the villages. Five of us from Tsinghua went to Yaping Village and the other seven went to another village.

Photo A-6: This is the photo taken with the county leaders at the entrance of the county guesthouse.

We were also warmly welcomed by the villagers. The welcoming ceremony was held at night in the schoolyard of Yaping Elementary School. There were many people standing in the dark. On behalf of the village party branch, the party secretary, whom I will call H here, gave us a selection of Mao's works and farming tools, such as hoes, shovels, spades, shoulder carrying poles, water buckets, etc.

Photo A-7: The first day in Yaping, we were given the farming tools.

During Mao's time, everything was collectively owned in the village. The management hierarchy in the countryside was like this: County government->Commune->Brigade->Squad. One brigade could have several small villages and one squad was normally corresponding to one natural village. At that time, there were more than 900 people in Yaping Brigade, including two villages. Yaping was one of them. There were more than 600 people in Yaping and around 300 in another village. We lived and worked in Yaping. The villagers who worked daily were mainly divided into several groups: the mountain group, the plains group, and the infrastructure team. Yaping is mainly mountainous, 400 acres of land, with 333 acres of mountainous land, 67 acres of plains. All mountains surrounding the village belonged to Yaping. Some pieces of land in the mountains were far away from the village. Most of the time I already felt exhausted by walking there before starting the real labor work. The main crops were sorghums, corns, millers, potatoes, and some wheat. The yield of planting wheat is tremendously low, and the best yield of wheat planted in plains was only about 600 kg per acre. Not having enough food was a big problem there at that time. The villagers lived in the cave-like houses with the doors opening on the front end of the house. The cave dwelling houses were usually built by digging big holes on the south-facing slope, facing the sun, and facing one piece of open land that would be used as the front yard. Families having better financial situation would use stones or bricks to build the interface.

Photo A-8: Part of the mountains and houses at Yaping in the 70s.

Photo A-9: Some cave-like houses at Yaping in the 70s.

The first thing we did was planting a cypress tree on the top of one mountain, which was organized by the village party secretary H and the Commune Youth League secretary, whom I call S here. We were expected to be like that tree to put the roots in the soil of Yaping, which means we were supposed to be there in our lifetime and contribute to building a new Yaping. It was a great challenge for me to carry two buckets of water each time from the bottom of the mountain to the top to water the tree. The road up to the mountain was steep. I was so exhausted, but couldn't rest somewhere on the way because there was no such a flat place to put down the buckets. I had to hold my breath and kept going until I reached the top of the mountain.

Photo A-10: Cypress tree planted on the top of one mountain

We also lived in the cave-like houses as local villagers did. The cave was owned by a stonemason whose whole family relocated somewhere else. It was actually a suite. Two boys lived in the inner room, and the outer room was the kitchen for the five of us. The three girls lived in a bungalow that belonged to the party secretary's family. In those two to three years in Yaping, we, five youths, got along very well and had good relationships. I don't recall if we had any big conflicts or arguments. We helped each other and always jointly owned and shared the foods or other things together. This was mainly due to our group leader. She took the lead and took care of everyone.

Photo A-11: The cave-like house we lived in, me at far left in the photo.

During the day, we worked in the fields. At night when the moon was very bright, we would carry stones from the riverbank to the hillsides for building new houses. Sometimes we worked till 11 pm. In wintertime, there was not much to do for the crops. We would shovel the dirt in the mountains to make so called man-made plains so that the rainwater could be better maintained in the soil for the better crops in the future years. We also built dams to collect the rainwater for the dry seasons. Most of the time I was so exhausted and lack of sleep. Whenever there was a chance, I would take a nap. I often fell asleep during the half-hour break time in the fields.

Photo A-12: On top of one mountain in Yaping planning future for the village

Photo A-13: On top of a mountain in Yaping with the party secretary H after a day of labor work

Photo A-14: Our group leader M was doing labor work with the youth team of the village to build the so-called man-made plains.

The villagers had treated us just like their own family members. The shoes we worn had plastic soles, which were very slippery when walking on the rugged paths through the mountain. Several women in the village specially made cloth shoes for us. They were all hand-made stitch by stitch. They gave us the best tools to use. Furthermore, they often offered us their most precious food even though they didn't have enough food for themselves at that time. Besides the collectively owned land, each household was given a small piece of land to plant whatever they like. We, five of us, as one household, also had a small piece of land. We grew some vegetables on it. However, we were normally too tired to care about it. Some villagers often came to help on our veggie land.

In the first year, we could obtain corn and wheat flour from the government owned stores according to the government policy at the time. From the second year onwards, we were on our own. We earned credit scores through daily work in the fields. The village distributed grains, vegetables planted on the collectively owned land to families based on the household head count. At the end of the year, total cash money collectively earned for the whole year, minus the amount reserved for the Brigade, would be distributed to each person proportional to the total credit scores the person earned.

Photo A-15: A young man on the right hand side, one of our group members, was having discussion with the local people. See Mao's quotation on the wall, which was typical during the years of Cultural Revolution.

Yaping was a village in the countryside. There were no shops or convenient store in the village before we went there. The villagers had to go to the county town miles away to buy some daily necessities such as salt, oil for the kerosene lamp, etc. Later, the village leaders decided to open a convenient store to ease the life of the villagers. At one time I was assigned to take the responsibility of the store. Because the store was located on the side of the road, there were many customers besides the villagers such as nearby miners. Therefore the sales volume was quite large, roughly 700 to 1000 Yuan (RMB) per month. My goods included cigarettes, alcohol, kerosene, salt, saccharin, school supplies, labor tools, etc., as well as apples. The fastest selling goods were apple, salt, kerosene and cigarettes. The village farmers normally could not afford to buy cigarettes and apples. They were sold to the people who earned wages or salaries such as factory workers, miners, and people who worked for the government. The villagers often consumed tobaccos planted by themselves in the fields of Yaping. The profit earned from the store, if there were any, would be like: 40% went to the Brigade, 60% went to the Commune. I would not get any money but earn credit scores like other villagers. Everyday I worked in the fields early morning before breakfast, and then worked in the store during the day. In the evening or at night I participated labor work with others again.

I purchased goods from the county downtown and often delivered them on my own by pulling a two-wheel cart. On the way to the town, I had to cross a small creek. There was no bridge at that time. The water in the creek was not deep. There were some small boulder stones put in the water so that people could step on them to cross the creek. Going to the town with empty cart was no problem for me. When I came back, the cart was heavy with the goods. If no one helped to push it, it might have high chance to turn over into the water. Every time I got to the riverside, I stopped and waited for help. People passing by, no matter who they were, whether they knew me or not, all helped me push the cart across the creek, and then helped me push up the slope of the riverbank. How many times had I got helped? It was impossible to count.

On my way to the town, I often carried a fairly amount of cash with me alone for buying the goods, but I never worried about being robbed. On my way back, my cart was fully loaded with goods with no cover on it. If someone wanted to grab anything and run away, I had no way to chase that person and also take care of my other goods. Such things had never happened to me even though the people from that area were so poor. That was so amazing!

Once I needed to buy a barrel of oil from the town. The barrel was very heavy and I had no way to pull it back to the village on a two-wheel cart by myself. The Brigade assigned an old man with a donkey carriage to help me get the barrel back. We had to cross the entire town to reach the store that sold the barrel. When we were just about to enter the town, the old man told me that he wanted to visit some places in town and asked me to go with the carriage alone to pick up the barrel. "I don't know how to manage the donkey," I said. "Don't worry. The donkey knows the way." He tried to comfort me. Then I followed the donkey carriage to enter the town, being nervous all the time. The donkey kept walking in the middle of the street. A big truck was behind us and the driver kept pushing the horn, but the donkey did not give its way. I tried real hard to push the donkey to the side and also tried all the voice commands that I heard from the old man before, but all the efforts were in vain. The truck driver got so angry, "if you don't know how to do it, just stay at home!" He yelled at me. Finally the donkey and I came out of the town from the other end. The place was getting closer. "How could I stop the donkey right at the place?" I started to worry again. "If the donkey keeps going and going, I will be very miserable. I have to follow it to God knows where." All sorts of imaginations came to my mind. As we arrived the place, the miracle appeared. As if God guided the donkey, the donkey stopped going. Wow, what a clever animal! After the barrel was loaded onto the carriage, the old man appeared with his shopping satisfaction showing on his face. I felt so relieved and of course there were no more surprises on the way back.

Watermelon and a kind of small melon were produced in Yaping. During the melon seasons I sold the melons for the village a few times. For the first time, I went with an old man to the county town to sell the melons. We were at the gate of the town. Melons from Yaping had very good reputations in town and many people liked their sweet and waterish taste. The sales went quite well. As we were working the old man went into the town to do his shopping and left me alone with our melon cart. There were some other people nearby selling other goods as well. Suddenly all of them ran away with their goods. A guy knocked my cart and said, "Don't you know you are not supposed to sell goods here? " "People from Beijing are also making trouble?" he added. I realized that he was one of the town officers who were in charge of the farmer's market. "I really don't know that," I replied. Then he told me that I should sell my melons in a designated area at the other side of the town and pay the sales tax as well. This time he forgave me without getting me a fine. "No more next time!" he said. The next time the village leader asked me to go to the town to sell melons again, I told him my past experience and asked some money to pay taxes. "Don't you know our village's situation? I don't have money for you, but you have to sell the melon." he said to me. Having no other options, I took a cart of melons and went to the town. I went to the same place. Obviously I was not supposed to. This time I was mindful all the time. Whenever I saw people around me starting to run away, I pulled my cart and followed them. Hiding at the corner of the outside town wall, I waited until the town officer went away and then came out to continue my small business.

When I sold melons in the village, the villagers didn't have to pay for it. I was like a bookkeeper, just wrote down the name and how much they owed. At the end of the year, the money would be deducted from their yearly earning. Once I was selling melons in the village, a woman passed by me, kindly offering me an ear of cooked corn. I was busy with both of my hands. She then just put the corncob into my mouth and left. After I was done with my work and took out the corncob, my mouth wouldn't close. My lower jaw was dislocated. I felt not only pain but also embarrassed because I lost control of my saliva. People around me worried but no one knew what to do. Later, someone called the nearby iron factory for help. A guy came with a truck and drove me to the county town. On the way to the county hospital near the entrance of the town, we saw a doctor passing by carrying two buckets of water. We stopped the truck and asked the doctor for help. He put down his water buckets, let me sit down on the curbside and examined my jaw. And then with one hand holding my face, he used the other hand to push my jaw back to the right position. The whole thing lasted less than two minutes. Without going to the hospital, my jaw problem was fixed even though the doctor was not on duty that day.

Photo A-16: Reading a newspaper during break time

There were several dams built during those years. After a big dam was built, it collected a fare amount of rainwater and formed a small reservoir. On a one hot day when we passed by the dam after work in the field, we, three girls from Beijing, felt like getting into the water. We jumped into the small reservoir and started to swim. Several young girls in the village bravely followed us. This caused a crowd of married women to watch and gossip along the shore. Due to the influence of some old local culture, young girls swimming in the water was seen as a sinister thing, but we just ignored it and enjoyed the cool water in the reservoir. A principal of a high school in Zichang heard about it. He supported girl swimming very much. He invited me to go to his school to teach the female students swimming. There were no swimming pools in the entire county and also no reservoirs near that high school. Instead, we went to a canal. But the water was too shallow for us to float and I only could teach some of the basic movements of breaststroke. From the high school back to the village, I took a mini tractor sitting in the trunk. Even the road was so bumpy, I still fell a deep sleep due to lacking of sleep for many days. I didn't wake up until the tractor hit the sidewalk curb and the engine turned off. The driver fell asleep, too! Oh, we were lucky it happened when the tractor was going through the downtown area. Otherwise we might have fallen into the ravine. Such a close call!

On July 6, 1977, the Yan'an area had a catastrophic flood that was rare in history. The rain kept pouring non-stop at that night. The dams we built before quickly rushed away. However, the whole village was still in deep sleep. One villager woke up and found out that the situation was not good. He shouted outside and knocked at our door. The group leader M and I both woke up. We rushed out into the heavy rain to inform the Brigade leaders. Then someone blew a trumpet to wake up the whole village. People came out of their houses and moved towards the high lands. 17 acres of crops were washed away and one family lost all the belongings. The creek that went through the village was usually not deep so that people could walk through bare foot without much trouble. When the flood came, it was like a beast trying to vanish everything. The villagers were busy moving their belongings, and I, with the help of some villagers, was also busy transferring the goods from the village's convenient store to a high land. I could do little about watching all the goods during the move. After the flood subsided and all the goods were moved back to the store, I did a thorough check on everything. It was amazing that nothing was missing.

Photo A-17: I joined the commune basketball team. Can you tell which one is me in the photo?

On September 13, 1977, I suddenly felt very sick. I had a fever of 40.3 degrees Celsius, lying on the bed. The "barefoot doctor" (those who got simple training in medical field and served the village people in countryside) in the village gave me an injection every day to reduce the fever. Some Chinese traditional methods were also applied to me such as using needles to release blood from my fingers and my back, fire cupping and scraping treatment on my back. Several days had passed, but I was not getting any better. I became weaker and weaker. Suddenly I remembered I had a few small bottles of purple medicine that my parents gave to me and told me before I left Beijing that I could take them for an emergency to save my life. Then I asked someone to help me dig out this medicine from one of my suitcases. Finally, the high fever subsided. But as a result of one-week high fever, I was having a headache and low fever for a long time. At that time, the Zichang County was infected with the virus, typhoid, and encephalitis. The Director of the Zichang County Youth Office was a lady. She was very concerned about me and took me to the county hospital to see a doctor. Fortunately I only got flu without any other infections. I was relieved. She then kept me in her office in the town for a few more days so that I could have better food and rest there until I got fully recovered.

Photo A-18: This photo was taken with the school children (front row) at Yaping School. Now one of them is the village leader, others left the village for their jobs elsewhere.

After Mao passed away, at the end of 1977, China resumed the college entrance examination system. Five of us took the exams and were all admitted to the university in 1978 and 1979. I was admitted to Beihang University in 1978. When it was the time to say goodbye, the village leaders gave me a notebook on behalf of the whole village. On the title page they wrote:
To Yu Jie (my Chinese name):
Two and a half years working together with you,
Today is the day to say goodbye.
Never forget your initial ambition,
And wish you reaching even higher peak.

Photo A-19: This is the award I received from the village committee during those years.

I suffered a lot, but I also felt the kindness from the local people there. Yaping Village was one stop in my life journey that will remain in my heart forever.

Many years have passed. No matter where I went, the memory of Zichang and Yaping often came to my mind. With the increase of my age, the feelings of homesickness were getting heavier and heavier. I missed Yaping. I missed Zichang. I visited back Yaping in 1982 and 2010. In the summer of 2014, I came to Yaping for the third time and made an important decision in my life. That was: I would quit my job and returned to Yaping School to teach. After many contacts and support from all parties, in December 2014, I successfully entered the Yaping School and started my two years volunteer teaching work.