Liberate Yourself Chapter 37

1

After my father was beaten to the right, our family was kicked out of the western-style villa on Gaolan Road. I can no longer see the large balcony facing the window and the outer wall with stone eggs. The small garden with flowers and grass under the window has almost become people's memory.

The kind of elegance, serenity, and book spirit that Gao Lan's road exudes from his bones may never be repaired again.

The endless Gaolan Road carries too much vicissitudes and too many memories of me. I believe that this kind of memory will never belong to me, so the urge to record in words is born. Although some of them are only memories of my childhood, if I can confirm each other with limited memories, I can still piece together the childhood experiences of past and present life. I am very satisfied.

Our siblings must be used to living on Chengdu South Road.

On that road, my little girl and I picked up the cigarette butts on the roadside. My big brother made a cigarette machine. I peeled the shredded tobacco from the cigarette butts and made them into handmade cigarettes. We have regular customers, that is the lonely lady who lives in the attic of the three-story building. The lonely old lady looks very kind. It is said that one of her adopted children is a movie star. She must be a rich man when she was young. Because her earlobe looks terrible. The earrings she wore were taken away. There were two tears in the earlobe, indicating that she was robbed twice. If it is ordinary earrings, the robber may not treat her very cruelly. There is a portrait of the Virgin in her little attic, she does not believe in Buddha.

Our family can't afford rice, only brown rice. My mother said that brown rice is better than rice and it is fuller. In fact, sometimes brown rice is difficult to eat at home. Mother always buys a lot of pumpkins, and eating pumpkins at home is a staple food. Sometimes, I have to go to the vegetable market to steal some tofu and then use tofu to make cakes. In fact, stealing tofu residue is public to me. Farmers who transport tofu dregs also donated some of them to me. They told me that the tofu was transported to the country to feed the pigs.

After my little brother died of illness, our three siblings became more friendly. At that time, my little girl had not yet gone to school, and I was only in the second grade of elementary school. But I already know that this society is not fair. The same is true of human beings, which must be graded. This level is revolutionary and counter-revolutionary. The revolutionary family is glorious. Otherwise, it is the enemy of society and the garbage of society.

2

My teenager was spent during the Great Leap Forward.

At that time, in the alley, the neighborhood committee opened a kindergarten. The residents committee mobilized residents to donate table and chair toys for the kindergarten. Ronghua, the eldest son of Wu's mom who lives in the pavilion, is of the same age as me. Ronghua told me that his mother donated a rocking horse in the house. The trojan is half tall, the horse is white, and the saddle is painted red and green. That was played by Ronghua as a child.

But just after the kindergarten was opened, the Trojan was not sent to the kindergarten, but actually appeared in a house near the alley. The hostess was the head of the kindergarten. One of her daughters was riding on it, and the other two daughters were around, attracting a large group of children in the alley.

Because the neighborhood committee asked each family to write a name on the donation when they were making donations, his father wrote Ronghua's name on the Trojan's face. When the Trojan appeared, he recognized it immediately, except that the place where his name was originally written was darkened with ink. He approached and looked twice, and the hostess immediately called the child home.

From now on I can no longer see the children of her family riding a wooden horse in the alley. I asked Ronghua: "Do your parents know?"

He said to me: "I know. But I didn't go to them for comment." It wasn't until later that I learned that Ronghua's father had opened a tailor shop before liberation and was classified as a small owner by the government. Everything in the family of the exploiting class is exploited. How dare they judge it?

3

The days in kindergarten are boring. At that time, the teachers were all housewives who joined the work during the Great Leap Forward. After all, they lacked professional knowledge, neither told stories nor taught. The professor's most famous song is "Good Socialism". That song was very popular during the Great Leap Forward. About "only eighty-three hands." No one knows, no one knows. The songwriter is Li Huanzhi. I still remember the lyrics of the song: "Socialism is good/Socialism is good/Socialists are in a high position/Reactions are overthrown/Imperialism escapes with its tail/People’s national unity/New socialist construction "Climax" Even fat aunts living in the kitchen below my house can sing.

Fat aunt is fat, like a mountain, but her husband is very thin, like dry wood. We call the fat aunt "aunt" and her husband "uncle". The aunt is responsible for cooking in the kindergarten. Uncle is a chef in a restaurant. He can make spring rolls and teach neighbors to make spring rolls.

In the era of the Great Leap Forward, in order to liberate women’s productivity, this street also organized a number of production groups, calling on housewives to go out and engage in revolutionary work. I remember that there was a movie "Forever Spring", Zhang Ruifang and Wen Xiying starring the male and female protagonists. It said how the heroine got rid of the resistance of her mother-in-law and her husband and joined the society to work.

There is a temple next to the alley, which was later changed to a paper flower factory. The production team's job is to make paper silk flowers. Women who can enter the production group have many paper flowers at home. Some boys will steal some paper silk flowers and give them to the girls. At that time, it was a glorious thing to work in the production team.

However, my mother never went out to work. The main reason is that the old lady who lives in the street building and is responsible for the street production team is very bad. On the one hand, she thinks my mother is a member of the family of bad elements. On the other hand, she assigned the work to her relatives and neighbors.

4

Remember when I was in elementary school, the head teacher sent a question to every student in the class: "Did your mother go to work?"

Some classmates whose mothers took part in the work answered their questions with high chests and very proud expressions, so they were praised by the teachers. When asked about me, I could only lower my head and whisper, "Not yet."

The teacher will keep asking: "Why doesn't your mother work? Want to live on government relief?"

I had to blush without squeaking. The teacher will say in front of the class: "You and your mother must draw a line with your father. As long as awareness is raised, your mother will find a job."

Mother failed to find a job in the production team, but she tenaciously faced the test of a difficult life. Difficulties did not overwhelm us.

Mum’s female craftsmanship has been recognized by the neighborhood, and more people come to find her mother to make clothes. When making clothes, mothers can cut not only ordinary clothes but also thin fabrics.

Thin and light fabrics cannot be reduced. It is best to cut the table generously. My family doesn't have a big table, so my brother made a larger board for his mother. When the mother wants to cut, she will let me move the cutting board and the table to the table together, and the mother will cut clothes on this big cutting board. She will lay a thick cotton cloth on the cutting board as a base to prevent the fabric from slipping. She always draws two lines perpendicular to each other along the left and right sides of the base fabric as the bottom line. When cutting, the warp and weft of the fabric are aligned with the baseline. Mom said: "In this way, the cloth line will not be skewed."

I often help my mother wipe the cloth, and she always says to me: "Don’t cling to your hands. If you mess up like this, it’s not easy to correct the wire." I usually hold the cloth with both hands, and then learn like my mother, using my mouth Blow, because the cloth is very thin, the natural lock is straight.

When cutting, my mother is very serious, just like doing beautiful crafts. I sometimes make small toys cut into fabric toys. But my mother can calculate. Each time she cuts, the most time she spends is counting fabrics. She will save every piece of cloth. These fabrics can make school bags for me and my little sister. There are also pants, vests and other clothes, which are also made by the mother using these preserved fabrics. The smallest piece of fabric is not allowed to be thrown away, and can be used for hard linings or soles. These tasks are my tasks.

I learned to burn, and strictly speaking, it was making trouble. The first is that the mixing ratio of flour and water must be correct, and then the fire source must be mastered when burning. It cannot be too violent or underpowered. When burning the paste, be careful not to bubble, stick to the bottom, and do not clump in the middle.

In this way, in my future life, I get a new experience: I can't take the liberty to the boss, nor can I stick the pot to the subordinates, of course, don't condense together. Maybe by doing this, you can make a uniform paste. Unfortunately, Huohou is difficult to master, because Huohou will never be in his own hands. In this society, when the wind rises, the wind rises, and when the fire rises, the sky rises. The booming China may still have a hundred years of history. People will understand.

5

Mother also has a craft, that is knitting sweaters and various fabrics. She used a needle to knit the sweater. She always calculates the knitting size of various parts of the top first, and then stitches from the bottom edge, of course, according to the calculated bust, horizontal density and sewing consumption. The number of long lines, the number of long straight lines and the direct density are the key points to pay attention to. Others include shoulder width needle count, horizontal dense stitch consumption (needle), total shoulder line number, shoulder shoulder needle collection needle number, shoulder shoulder needle collection method, etc. Anyway, the needle receivable number should be collected.

Mothers use two types of long bamboo needles and short bamboo needles, each of which has 8 kinds of thicknesses from 14 to 7. Pay 4 each. When the long bamboo needle breaks, I am responsible for changing it to a short bamboo needle, which is also available.

At that time, children often played a game called "game stick". I will use the bamboo needles discarded by my mother to play with my sister instead of playing sticks.

Mother embroidery needs a frame for embroidery, a circular embroidery tool made of bamboo. At the beginning, these scaffolds used by my mother were also made by hand. Later, some of the stretchers broke down, and I changed them into small stretchers again, becoming a toy commonly used by my sister.

Most of the patterns when mother embroidered were drawn by myself. There are patterns such as mandarin duck and goldfish, as well as peony and chrysanthemum. Not only did I learn to paint, but I also understood that most of the embroidery patterns were continuous pens, so I learned to cut paper, cut window grilles, and then engraved paper. Use a pen to draw the characters on the back of the waxed paper first. There must be a connection point in the line, and the line cannot be broken. Then he placed the drawn pattern on a pad made of iron for writing, and engraved the paper with a knife modified from an old saw blade.

Those engravers are all made by my brother for me. Later, he made wood carving knives and stone carving knives for me. I learned wood carving, seal and seal carving. My brother even made a black steel carving knife for me. I used this carving knife and had carved several copper seals. The easiest engraving is to engrave small things like boats and kiosks with chalk. Of course, engraving rubber is also a pleasure.

6

Another fun is making dough. Steamed buns at home, let me learn to noodles, fermentation and kneading. After kneading the dough, I often don’t make those standard buns according to the regulations. I will use the dough to make fish, crabs, turtles, villains, rabbits, kittens, etc., and even make aircraft cannons. Once these noodles are put on the cage, I am looking forward to it.

The characteristic steamed buns will always be praised by neighbors, and the sister will also be particularly happy. However, I will also be disappointed. I often have some face-painted works such as villains, cannons, airplanes, etc. When I get out of the cage, I find that I have missing arms, broken legs, or folded my wings and dropped the barrel. .

But since I fell in love with noodles, I also learned to make dumplings, wontons, and even make dumpling skins and noodles. After a slight improvement in my family, I also learned to make egg rolls, spring rolls and dumplings, including cured bacon and homemade sausages.

The neighbor in the front wing on the ground floor is Zhixian Mama, who also makes homemade sweet sauce. These sauces are made with flour, sugar, etc. in a large jar. She will distribute homemade sweet sauce to her neighbors. However, I dare not eat it, because I was disgusted to see those big jars for making sauce.

She comes from Shaoxing. When she is making sauces, she puts several thick layers of gauze on the dough batter stored in a large jar. These gauze are old masks removed. On these gauze, she will find some chicken feces to cover it, and then put it in the summer sun. How dare I eat these sweet sauces?

However, Zhixian Mama was very kind and almost never quarreled with her neighbors. She has three sons, and the boss is two years younger than my sister. Her husband is the most glorious figure in Shikumen where we live. He is a party member and the workshop director in the factory. It is also the most prestigious among neighbors.