The Ups and Downs of the Commoners 2 Page #16

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

								

When the weekend came in anticipation, Xie Fanghua thought: tomorrow is Sunday, and according to the custom, before Sunday's self-study at night, I will go to the school office to get kerosenes. Isn't the kerosene saved last week just right for me to use? What a godsend! Thinking so, he has been waiting for night to fall since he returned from digging sweet potatoes. After dinner, he returned to his bedroom, climbed into his bed, and put his head on his right hand, and lay down on the bed to rest. No matter how his classmates spoke loudly, he didn't listen to a word. All he wanted was to hear the ringing tone for lights out as soon as possible.
The lights out bell finally rang. The triangular kerosene lamp hanging in the center of the dormitory was also extinguished by nearby classmates. After a week of going to the countryside to dig sweet potatoes, the students also quickly fell asleep.
When the his classmates were sound asleep, Xie Fanghua gently removed the schoolbag containing the kerosene bottle from the wall, crept out of the dormitory, and came to the classroom far away from the dormitory. Taking advantage of the dim moonlight that shone into the classroom through the glass window after being blocked by clouds and fog, he touched the front of the podium, gently opened the cabinet door under the lecture table, leaned over and struck a match inside the cabinet, and lit a lamp. The light is shrouded in a cabinet and does not spread outward. Xie Fanghua took advantage of this light to hurriedly pour all the kerosene in the other seven lamps into the glass bottle he brought himself, leaving only a small amount of kerosene in each lamp. In order to achieve "fairness", he lit another lamp and poured the kerosene from the eighth lamp into his own bottle.  In a panic, a lot of kerosene spilled on the bottom panel of the cabinet, but he couldn't take care of it. He then extinguished the lights, walked out of the classroom, followed the sidewalk lined with hibiscus, passed by the vicinity of the toilet, and he left the teaching building at the edge of the school behind him. Afterward, he disappeared safely into the vast night...
Xie Fanghua had planned to return to school before dawn, but his home was more than 15 kilometers away from the school, and he was not an adult after all, he had done a full day of manual labor during the day, and at night he could not sleep all night, and walking more than 30 kilometers. He was so tired! In the end, he didn't make it back to school before dawn and missed even breakfast.
To relieve fatigue, he slept in his bedroom for the morning.
After dinner, when it was time to get the kerosene as usual, he first went outside the office to inquire for a while to see if the other classes were still going to get the kerosene. However, to his disappointment, he waited for a long time and did not see a single class go to get kerosene. So he walked listlessly into the classroom.
After listening to Xie Fanghua's story, Teacher Tang angrily patted the table in front of him and said, "Xie Fanghua, Xie Fanghua, what do you want me to say about you?" How can you do such a stupid thing? Do you know what this behavior is? You are stealing! And it's theft of public property! ...... It's all over! You just wait to accept the punishment of the school!" Xie Fanghua's face was full of shame and buried his head lower. Teacher Tang breathed a sigh of relief and said, "In this way, and you go down and write a Self- criticism Text, and you must deeply understand the mistakes you have made."
Xie Fanghua came out of Teacher Tang's office and quietly wrote a Statement of repentance in the dormitory, which was quickly handed over to Teacher Tang.
Teacher Tang took his “Statement of repentance”, which reads:

Dear School Leaders,
I am Class 1, Grade 1962, junior high school student Xie Fanghua, male, 15 years old. Because I seeing that my family had never been able to buy kerosene to light the lamp, I was confused for a while, so I took the kerosene of the self-study at night our class. My theft of public property is very wrong. I will resolutely correct it in the future. Ask the school leaders to forgive me and give me a chance to correct my mistakes. Sincerely Salute!
Student  Xie Fanghua
                         November 10, 1959

After reading Xie Fanghua's “Statement of Repentance”, Teacher Tang said, "You put it here for me! After going down, you must seriously reflect on yourself and wait for the school to deal with it.”
Xie Fanghua walked out of the office, feeling uneasy all the time. He didn't know what kind of punishment the school would give him.
A few days later, Xie Fanghua carried his quilt roll and left the school silently. Before leaving, none of the teachers or classmates went to see him off. He was expelled from school! Since then, he has become a negative eaching material for Teacher Tang to ask the whole class to strengthen political study, improve ideological consciousness, and strive be both red and expert.

Chapter 40 

Since returning from digging sweet potatoes in the countryside, the school cafeteria no longer allows students to use enamel cups or clay pots to steam rice, but instead uses enamel basins to steam sweet potatoes for each meal, one basin per table. Seeing that there were very few steamed sweet potatoes in the porcelain basin, the students inevitably talked about it. The teacher in charge of managing the school cafeteria stood on the stage in front of the cafeteria and explained loudly: "Students, the sweet potatoes allocated to us by the grain station have been brought back, but everyone knows that sweet potatoes are very perishable. The grain station rationed it to us, and the more it rotted, the less we could eat, so during this time our canteen had to concentrate on eating sweet potatoes. Our current ration standard is 12 kilograms per person per month, which is converted into 1.6 kilograms per day for sweet potatoes, and the distribution is only 533 grams per meal, and then remove the soil on it and some rotten, and the ends of the sweet potatoes have to be cut off, so that there will definitely not be much to eat in each meal. On this issue, you have to understand that we can't help it. I also want to make it clear that there are many people eating in our school cafeteria, and boiling sweet potatoes is not an easy task. Sweet potatoes are not like rice, which can be divided at will, and the workers in the canteen cannot divide sweet potatoes into each student's cup, so they did not ask everyone to take porcelain cups and crockpots to steam, but weighed the sweet potatoes on each table and steamed them in an enamel basin, and then distributed them to each table. The specific way to eat is discussed by the students at the same table. Sweet potatoes are not easy to distribute, there are large and small, some students eat more, some eat less, don't requiring too much attention about it. In addition, the labor committee members of each class paid attention to the fact that in the future, several more students should be arranged to help cook in the canteen every day in labor classes, and the task is to wash sweet potatoes and cut sweet potatoes.” With the explanation of the affairs teacher, the students thought that they ate more in the canteen of the school than their parents in public canteen, so they stopped talking. So divide the sweet potatoes in the enamel basin into eight bowls, and divide the slightly larger sweet potatoes into several pieces with chopsticks. Until everyone agrees that it is fair.

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