摘要：That year,I carried a backpack and a green canvas travel bag, riding a hand tractor, bumping along the way to the rural area where

That year,I carried a backpack and a green canvas travel bag, riding a hand tractor, bumping along the way to the rural area where I was to be stationed. The sun beat down fiercely, and the water in my canteen had long been finished.

"Fellow villager, I'm so thirsty I can't take it anymore, I'm about to get heatstroke. Let's stop and find some water to drink."

The young man driving the tractor turned his head and said, "There's only water from the field ditches here. Would you drink that?"

"I'd drink ditch water—better than dying of thirst."

The villager stopped the tractor and took me down to a paddy field by the roadside depression. The water in the ditch barely covered the back of my hand. He lay down, slurped up a few mouthfuls, wiped his mouth, and said, "You drink."

I walked to where he had drunk, frowned, and couldn't help but ask, "Why are there so many little bugs in this water?"

"How can there not be bugs in water? It's flowing water, it's fine."

I shook my head. "Forget it. How much farther to the commune?"

"Not far, just seven or eight li. We'll be there in no time. I know you city folks can't stomach it. Hold on a little longer."

I had no choice but to wet a towel in the water and drape it over my head to cool down before climbing back onto the hand tractor.

By the time we reached the commune, it was already past 1 p.m. Without a word, I gulped down a large ladle of cold water and immediately felt much better. Huo Xiaoguang, the cultural and education committee member and director of the educated youth office, received me. He had the commune canteen cook make me a bowl of noodles and brought out a plate of sweet potatoes. I ate until my stomach was bloated before putting down my chopsticks.

Director Huo, seeing I had finished, came over to chat. "Xiao Song, your surname is quite rare."

"Yes," I nodded. "The Book of Han: Biographies of Confucian Scholars mentions, 'Lu Xusheng was skilled at performing rites.' 'Song' is the same as 'Rong,' meaning adept at ceremonial etiquette. His descendants took it as their surname."

"You're quite learned," Director Huo said with a pleased expression.

"I wouldn’t say learned. My parents were both teachers—they raised me strictly."

"No wonder. A scholarly family like yours, being sent down here is too much of a hardship for you."

"I requested to come here myself."

"What? You asked to come here? Most educated youths assigned here run back within days. Staying three months a year is already considered good. Didn’t you know this is the poorest place in the province?"

"I’d heard. I like challenges." At the time, I was still an ardent young man filled with the "great ideal of liberating all humanity," so I had written a letter of determination, asking to be sent to the hardest place to battle the elements with the poor and lower-middle peasants and change the backward face of the countryside.

"You’re really not afraid of hardship?" I faintly sensed Director Huo’s skepticism.

I squared my shoulders. "When you think of hardship, remember the Red Army’s 25,000-li Long March; when you think of exhaustion, remember the revolutionary forebears!"

Director Huo laughed, stood up, patted my shoulder, and said, "Good lad. Not bad, not bad. Come, let’s talk in my office."

Director Huo’s office was a single-story house with a desk, a large filing cabinet, a wooden chair, and a bench.

He had me sit on the bench and said, "If you’re really not planning to run back to the city, I’d like to give you a particularly tough task. I wonder if you’d dare take it."

I stood at attention. "Whatever the task, I promise I won’t bend even if Mount Tai crushes me! My father’s an old revolutionary—I grew up with a rural wet nurse during the supply system era. I’m not afraid of any hardship."

"Sit, sit," he said, joining me on the bench. "The hardest part here isn’t the tough living conditions or the exhausting labor—it’s that the poor and lower-middle peasants are uneducated and lack class consciousness. We have a remote production team here called Hedong Team. It’s far from the brigade’s central primary school, separated by a river. The commune has long wanted to set up a village school there but could never find a teacher. You seem quite educated. If you can start a village school there, it’d be a great achievement."

"Just me?"

"Yes, just you for now. Do you think it’s too difficult?"

"No difficulties. Though I’d like to do labor too."

"This would contribute far more than labor. If you really want to work, you can always join the team. Let me explain the terms: the commune will subsidize you 10 yuan a month, covering all school expenses, including office supplies. The production team will credit you 10 work points a day, with no deductions during winter and summer breaks. Whether you want to do labor is up to you, but no additional work points will be given."

"This is too good to be true," I said.

"Don’t say that yet. If you can stick it out for a year, I’ll put you forward for commendation, plus a reward."

Hedong Team’s captain, Gao Dahong, was a vigorous demobilized soldier in his thirties. We hit it off immediately, feeling like old friends reunited.

He first briefed me on the production team: they farmed over 400 mu of land, mostly highland, barren and without water sources. Wheat was sown widely but yielded little—about 150 jin per mu in an average year, 200 jin at best. Rice yielded 500 jin per mu at best, usually around 300 jin. The main crop was sweet potatoes, with soybeans, sesame, mung beans, and buckwheat as secondary crops.

The team had 52 households, 233 people, and about 40 school-age children. The youngest were seven or eight, the oldest fourteen or fifteen—most had never attended school. Other hardships could be endured, but the children’s education was the biggest headache. The commune had promised to solve it five years ago but kept delaying.

"You coming to teach is fantastic. But conditions here are poor. I’ll arrange for you to eat with Granny Liu, a 'five-guarantees' household. She was a maid for a landlord, childless and alone. She’s clean. The team will allocate your grain ration to her—you’ll eat what she eats. Okay?"

"Food’s no issue. Where’s the classroom?"

"There’s an old cowshed, also the team office. Last year, we built a new cowshed, so the old one’s free now. It can be the classroom. No desks—the kids can bring stools from home. Country kids are tough. You’ll live in the team office. The old dirt kang from the cowherd’s days is still there. You’ve got a quilt—just spread straw underneath. Okay?"

"Okay! I’d even sleep on the floor," I agreed readily.

Dinner was at Granny Liu’s—she made a bowl of dough strips with sesame leaves and sweet potato flour buns, all dark-colored, plus a bowl of homemade fermented beans.

I ate heartily. Granny Liu was talkative too. She said her biggest hardship was the lack of firewood—sometimes in winter, they had to use dried sweet potatoes as fuel to cook dried sweet potatoes, ending up with sweet potatoes both in and under the pot. She laughed as she spoke: "You’re a noble guest. I’m afraid you won’t be used to it."

I said, "It’s fine. I grew up tough too."

The village children were overjoyed to hear I was their teacher. They crowded around, asking questions: "You’re a public servant—do you ride buses for free?"

"I’m a sent-down educated youth, not a public servant. Even public servants buy tickets."

I asked, "The school has no desks. Can you bring extra stools from home?"

A 15-year-old boy named Dandan said, "Why bring stools? Watch me—I’ll solve the desk problem."

The next day, Dandan gathered the older kids. On the threshing ground outside the team office, they mixed cow dung with straw and mud, building rows of neat "desks" and "seats."

I marveled inwardly at the children’s creativity.

Textbooks were free from the commune. I bought some plywood to smooth the mud desks’ surfaces. Sitting at their handmade desks, the children began their earnest studies.

Dandan’s father was a mason, and Dandan had self-taught skills in painting birds and flowers. Whenever his father built stoves for others, Dandan would decorate them with magpies and other designs. I bought him a line-drawing album of birds and flowers and made him the art teacher. He taught seriously, and the students progressed quickly—I thought he was no worse than my own primary school art teacher.

To help the children learn characters faster, I didn’t stick rigidly to the textbooks but created a Rhymed Primer for Fast Literacy as a supplement. The first lesson went:

"A thousand li in a day, running swift,

Leading the charge, riding ahead,

One vigorous effort, truly brave,

One hand obscuring the sky, too sinister."

The teaching method was simple: students pointed at the characters as they read. Their enthusiasm was high, and they helped each other, completing one lesson a day. After three months, children aged six to fifteen knew anywhere from 300 to over 1,000 characters. I also taught them songs with a harmonica. The school thrived. Director Huo visited twice, praising me highly: "It’s a bit like a little Kangda University." To me, that was the highest praise I’d ever received.

Thinking of Nanniwan’s "ample food and clothing," I suggested to Captain Gao Dahong: Could the team sell us soybeans to make tofu? The students could sell it door-to-door in the mornings, giving part of the earnings to the team and keeping the rest as school funds.

Gao strongly supported the idea. The tofu workshop was soon up and running, doing brisk business. The tofu sold out in about an hour daily, earning around three yuan—a significant sum back then.

Tofu residue was initially shared among the students to take home as food. One day, Dandan had a brainstorm: "Teacher, why don’t we use the residue to raise a pig?"

I was thrilled and patted him. "Brilliant idea!"

I went to Dandan’s home to ask his father to help build a pigpen behind the classroom. There, I saw his sister walking with a stick, her face contorted in pain with each step. I asked what was wrong. His father said she had a sore on her leg.

"Why not go to the commune hospital?"

"Too far. We thought it’d heal in a few days, but it got worse."

I had a Barefoot Doctor’s Manual and a medical kit. Examining her leg, I found it swollen and red. Young and reckless, I volunteered to treat her. I lanced the sore, drained the pus, applied sulfa powder, bandaged it, and gave her a penicillin injection.

A few days later, her leg healed completely.

From then on, Dandan’s family took special interest in the school. Whatever delicacies they had, they shared some with me. In return, I gave them candies sent from home.

By New Year’s, the school’s pig had grown to over 150 jin. I had Captain Gao slaughter it, giving each household a jin of pork. The rest—meat, lard, and offal—was sold at the market to buy a sow. My ambitions grew—I wanted to start a pig farm.

My deeds drew the commune’s attention. Even the commune secretary came to visit. Once, rumors said the county magistrate would come, though he never did. Instead, I was transferred to be deputy principal at the central primary school.

First, I arranged for teachers there to bring their own food and take turns teaching at Hedong School for a week each. Sitting in on their classes, I noticed many mispronounced characters—like the whole school reading "photography" as "nieying." The worst was a teacher saying, "The Eighth Route Army marched valiantly across the Yalu River, drove out Japanese imperialism, and founded New China." Overestimating my reach, I sternly criticized such errors, mandating weekly professional development and group lesson planning.

That summer, I was summoned to a week-long on-site meeting in Guozhuang.

Guozhuang lay on the old Yellow River course, with terrible natural conditions—heavily saline-alkali land, low-lying, barren, and unproductive, driving many to leave. A folk rhyme went:

"Bald heads, old alkali gourd,

Ten sowings, nine no sprouts,

Plant a gourd, harvest half a bowl."

Party Secretary Guo Hongjie led land improvement—irrigating to leach the soil, then adding acidic soil to neutralize it. After years of hard work, Guozhuang’s yields soared, becoming a national "Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture" model.

There, I witnessed the thriving socialist countryside and heard Secretary Guo’s report: "Now we give our fields ample fertilizer and water, ending reliance on the heavens!" I was fired up.

At Guozhuang, I first saw a science exhibition from the University of Science and Technology of China. The "holographic images" stunned me—peering through a small hole, I saw holograms of artifacts as if they were real.

But upon returning to Hedong, ready to throw myself into work, I felt plunged into an ice cellar.

The pigs were gone. The sow had been due to deliver when I left—I’d entrusted her to Dandan’s father, leaving 20 yuan for emergencies.

During my absence, rumors spread quietly that I’d had an affair with Dandan’s sister.

She was engaged to a Zhu from Hexi. The rumors were vivid, and her fiancé came to confront the family. Denials led to a fight. In anger, Dandan’s sister said, "Even if I can’t be with him, I’ll never marry you." Her fiancé beat her, and his family wrecked the pigpen. The sow, startled, died in labor.

I then learned of long-standing clan conflicts between Hedong and Hexi, with feuds over water rights.

The central primary school’s principal was a Zhu. Fearing I’d usurp his position, he’d schemed against me.

After the beating, Dandan’s sister refused to marry into the Zhu family. Tensions escalated. A Zhu held office in the provincial agriculture department—even the commune relied on him for fertilizer allocations. Local cadres couldn’t afford to cross him.

Just then, a job assignment came up. Director Huo told me, "You’d better go. I know you’re ambitious. But rural affairs are complicated. You’re an outsider—it’s too much for you alone."

So I left Hedong.

Not long after, Dandan’s family moved to Henan to join relatives.

来源：小说讲坛