The Ups and Downs of the Commoners 2 Page #11

This book is the second volume of the novel "The Ups and Downs of the Commoners". It will tell you about caused by the disastrous consequences of the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement in China in the middle of the last century to the livelihood of the Commoners, as well as the difficult path of study of the protagonist of this book, Fang Zhengben.

• Novel

								

Last night, Fang Zhengben met the school canteen to provide pork for students, still 90 grams of fresh pork per person. Previously, he had been informed that he would go home for home leave the next day. He thought that this time he could finally bring his mother a few slices of pork back. At dinner, he put a piece of meat in front of him that he had been assigned, but  he kept sending white rice to his mouth. Seeing other students eating deliciously, he had stretched his chopsticks into the bowl of with only a few pieces of meat several times, but every time at this time, his mother's sallow face and his little brother's deeply sunken eyes would always appear in front of his eyes, so he retracted the chopsticks again and again. In order not to let the classmates at the same table know, he deliberately controlled the speed of eating very slowly. It wasn't until the other students had finished eating and walked out of the cafeteria that he went to the vegetable field to pick two mustard leaves, poured that a few pieces of meat on it, carefully wrapped them, and took them back to the bedroom and put them in the nightstand he had brought. Only before returning home today, he took it out, put it in his bag, and brought it home to express a son's filial piety to his mother.
Since Wang Qihui returned from Chengdu this spring, she has not seen what pork looks like, not even smelled the smell of pork. Due to prolonged starvation, she had become extremely weak and had completely lost the ability to participate in manual labor, so she did not go to work in the field for many days. She desperately needs nutrients, just as a long-dry crop needs to be nourished by rain. Being able to get a little pork to supplement nutrition was really something she hoped for, but in the face of the few pieces of pork her son had saved from between his teeth, she looked at her son with a reproachful look and said, "There is only this little thing, why don't you eat it? How can you bring it back to me?" Fang Zhengben said: "Mom, in this family, you always take care of this and that all day, but you don't take care of yourself. Now, among the whole family, you are the worst in health and need the most nutrition, so whenever I eat meat at school, I want to bring it back for you, but the time is always not right, only this time in time for the holiday, I will bring it back for you." When he saying that, his eyes moist again.
Listening to his son's words, Wang Qihui felt a gratified and a pang of sadness. Thankfully, the son is already sensible, filial piety, and knows to think about others; it is sad that as a mother, you cannot create happiness for your son, and let an underage son save a few pieces of meat from   his teeth to honor himself. "My God! How will so?" She took the vegetable leaf bag with trembling hands, and two lines of bitter tears fell on the vegetable leaf...
Fang Zhengben was busy persuading on the side: "Mom, don't be sad, let's eat it!" Wang Qihui held back her tears and said, "Let's eat together when your older brother comes back!" Fang Zhengben said: "This thing is already quantity is less, it is not enough to fill the between your teeth, you don't have to wait for my older brother. Besides, my older brother was on the reservoir some time ago, and life was always a little better than at home."  At this time, Fang Zhengzhong was already staring straight at the pork, and kept shouting in his mouth: "Meat! Meat!" Wang Qihui hurriedly separated a piece of meat and fed it to Fang Zhengzhong's mouth. Then, she divided a piece of it herself, put it in her mouth, and slowly melted it by the heat in her mouth.
The mother and son didn't have time to wait for the cold pork to be heated and so eaten. In fact, they did not have the conditions to heat up it at that time. At this time, Wang Qihui said: "Oh, it seems that it is time to go to the canteen to eat." After that, she closed the door and went to the public canteen together.
Fang Zhengqing came back from work and was waiting in the public canteen for his mother and little brother to come to eat, and seeing that Fang Zhengben had returned, he greeted him and took the clay basin to get the food. What he received today was a dozen cooked sweet potatoes that were not too large. Because sweet potatoes are being dug in the countryside at this time, mountain people have always had the saying of "Sweet potatoes are food for half a year", so naturally sweet potatoes should be used as the main food. However, the number of sweet potatoes they can receive per meal is very limited. Because although production was partially resumed at the beginning of this year, there were not many crops sown, and there was no field management at all, so the harvest would not be good. In addition, the leaders of the commune also learned to "thin water and long flow", stipulating that one person could only arrange 1.25 kilograms of raw sweet potatoes a day. A meal of less than 500 grams of raw sweet potatoes, wash off the soil, cut off its ends, remove a little rotten, do not dare to remove the sweet potato skin, cook and distribute to each person with a scale, so is no more than 0.25 kg of cooked sweet potatoes, but they can only eat like this.
Back at home, Wang Qihui still lit castor beans worn on bamboo skewers for lighting.
When Fang Zhengben returned to school the next day for self-study at night, Teacher Tang came to the classroom and announced: "Students! According to the notice of the grain station, from now on, the grain supplied to us will be changed from rice to sweet potatoes. Since the state implemented a planned supply of food for school students, this grain has always been matched with coarse and fine grains in a certain proportion. The proportion of rations of coarse grains is generally 30 per cent, and sometimes 40 per cent. As we all know, some time ago, the grain station supplied us with fine grain, but now it is the season of digging sweet potatoes in the countryside, and naturally we should be supplied with sweet potatoes. However, the meaning of the grain station is to let us go to the field to dig sweet potatoes ourselves. There are several advantages to this: first, it is conducive to cultivating our labor concepts and habits; the second is to solve the current problem of insufficient rural labor; the third is to reduce the transit link through the grain station, and sweet potatoes are easier to store. Therefore, the school decided that from tomorrow, the whole school will suspend classes for a week and go to the countryside to dig sweet potatoes. Let's get ready." Later, he explained some old sayings about observing discipline when going out, such as paying attention to personal image and safeguarding collective honor.

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