The Ups and Downs of the Commoners 2 Page #3

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

								

"There is no Jade Emperor in the sky,
 There is no Dragon King on the ground.
I am the Jade Emperor!
I am the Dragon King!
Order the three mountains and five mountains to open the way,
I'm coming! ”
Before the evening self-study, Teacher Tang came to the classroom to find the class leader Xie Fanghua and said, "Xie Fanghua, you go to the office with me to get some kerosene." Xie Fanghua immediately followed Teacher Tang to the office and found Master Xiao, the school worker.         Teacher Tang said to Master Xiao: "Master Xiao, this is our class leader Xie Fanghua.  He came to collect kerosene for our class's Night self-learning. He will always come to collect it in the future!" Master Xiao saw that he was a freshman in the first grade of junior high school, and it was brought by Teacher Tang himself, so he gave a priority. He looked at the number of students in Grade 1962 Class 1, junior high school, calculated according to eight kerosene lamps, each with 125 grams of kerosene, gave 1 kilogram of kerosene, divided it into two large glass bottles, took out a few wicks, and put them in Teacher  Tang's hands.
Xie Fanghua carried two bottles of kerosene and returned to the classroom with Teacher Tang. Teacher Tang said to Xie Fanghua again: "The kerosene lamps are all under the lecture table, you take them all out and fill kerosene to each lamp." Be careful not to overfill!" According to the teacher's instructions, Xie Fanghua put two bottles of kerosene on the lecture table, took out eight kerosene lamps from the storage cabinet under the lecture table, and filled kerosene to them one by one. Teacher Tang put down the wick in his hand and said to the class: "We taught ourselves at night and six classmates shared a kerosene lamp. Six students next to each other put two desks together, with kerosene lamps placed in the middle. Before you use this kerosene lamp, wipe its shade clean." After showing his classmates how to wipe the lampshade, he continued, "If there is no wick, come to the front and get it. Everyone should read carefully and do homework during self-study at night, and they must not speak, let alone make loud noises, and needless I to say, you cannot leave their seats casually."
Xie Fanghua filled each lamp with kerosene, and each group went to the front to collect the lamp, wipe the lampshade, change the wick, and light the lamp. The eight Mobil lamps were soon lit, and the classroom immediately lit up.
Teacher Tang walked around the classroom and saw that everything was normal, and emphasized: "Students must abide by discipline and keep quiet during evening self-study.  The class cadres I designated today should take the lead and take responsibility seriously!"  He said and went back to the office.
After Teacher Tang left, the classroom was still silent. If an embroidery needle falls on the ground, you can hear the sound it makes when it touches the ground. All you can hear is the "rustlingr" of the nib running on the paper and the sound of classmates flipping through books.
Thursday afternoon was the labor class for Grade 1962 Class 1. Before the end of the fourth class in the morning, Teacher Tang came to the classroom to make arrangements. He appointed five girls to the school kitchen to help wash and cut vegetables, and arranged for two male students to go to the school pig farm to help raise pigs, and then said to the remaining students: "The rest of the students, come with me go to plant vegetables in our class's vegetable field.        Since last year, the production team near our school has allocated a large area of land for us to grow vegetables.     The vegetables we usually eat are self-sufficient through these vegetable fields.        In the first half of the year, pumpkins and eggplants were planted in the field, and now these pumpkin vines and eggplant stalks have withered.        Our task today is to pull out eggplant stalks and pumpkin vines, dig the soil and plant Swiss chards. After a while, Xie Fanghua, Fan Zhengkun, Zhu Zihong and several other taller classmates went to the school's tool storage room to get a few loads of manure buckets and carry two loads of manure from the school toilet. When the vegetables are ready, you go to the rice fields near the vegetable field to fetch water and water the newly planted Swiss chard with a little manure. The rest of the students went go to our class's tool storage room, picked up the hoes you brought to school, and went to the vegetable field to pluck out the eggplant stalks and pumpkin vines in the field, and then dug the soil and planted vegetables." He then said to Zhu Zihong: "Zhu Zihong, today is my arrangement for you, and the future labor will be arranged by you."
After Teacher Tang was arranged, the students went their separate ways, so he took the remaining thirty or so students to the vegetable field of the class, dug the soil and planted Swiss chard.
Before the Swiss chard seedlings were planted, the bell for the end of class sounded in the school. When the students heard it, they were anxious. Teacher Tang hurriedly shouted: "Don't be in a hurry, hold on, and finish planting these vegetable seedlings. Your food is there, no one eats yours!" Everyone had to endure until the Swiss chard was planted and watered, and then they packed up their tools and went back to school for dinner.
The next day is Friday. It's a day to celebrate, as the Student Dining Hall will give students a chance to eat pork. This is the first time they has eaten meat since entering school, and it is also the first time Fang Zhengben has eaten meat dishes since returning from a construction site in Chengdu this spring. By the fourth class, the smell of twice-cooked pork from the school's kitchen wafted into the classroom, causing the students sitting in the classroom to not even hear what the teacher was saying. When the teacher announced the end of class, the students rushed to the dining hall as if they were participating in a 100-meter race.
In the middle of each table is a bowl of twice cooked pork. According to classmates who helped at the pig farm during labor classes, this  was  workers in the school kitchen boiled the rotten vegetable leaves  and the manure taken from toilets for fed to pigs, and then slaughtered them and get  pork. Although this method of feeding pigs makes people living in normal years feel nauseous, but it is a common method of raising pigs in all institutions and schools nowadays, and it can be called a pioneering achievement of the "Great Leap Forward", so the students did not dislike this pork because it was fed with human feces, but regarded it as very precious.
Everyone places their own bowls in the middle of the table, and the students in charge of distributing the dishes carefully distribute meat to each bowl. The students at the same table all stared at the 8 bowls with their eyes wide open, constantly judging which bowl had more or which bowl was missing. The students who distributed the dishes made some adjustments according to everyone's opinions until everyone felt that it was fair. Then everyone took back their own bowls and ate the pork fragrantly.

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes