Same-Lovers (Novella) Zhang Baotong 2017.8.6

We boarded the train from Weinan to Xi'an on the afternoon of the fourth day, and when we arrived in Xi'an, it was already evening, and as soon as we got out of the train car, my mother fell on the platform and cried loudly. Seeing the tourists watching in three layers and three outside the outside, I was so frightened that I also cried. By the time the leaders of Xi'an Station arrived, my mother had already fainted on the ground. They quickly carried my mom to a break room.

For the past few days, my mother has been crying because the pillar of the family has fallen and the person she loves the most is gone. Originally, the station leader did not agree with my mother to see my father's body, but my mother was desperate to see my father again, so the leader had to take someone to accompany my mother to the funeral home to see my father. However, all my mother and I saw was a glass coffin with a body completely wrapped tightly in the red carpet. My mother frantically threw herself to see clearly, but was immediately taken away by the people next to her.

At that time, my father's salary was more than 50 yuan, and the pension for my brother, sister and me was half of the salary, that is, 29.5 yuan per month. In addition, the station leader told my mother that no matter what conditions she proposed, she would try to meet them. My mom said she was going to work, and her three children were going to have to work when they grew up. The station leaders agreed to let the three children take over the work, but did not agree to let my mother come to work at the station because my mother is small feet and illiterate.

Originally, the station also gave my family a sum of relief, but my damn grandfather, who had already come out of the cell at some point, hurried to the station and confidently wanted to deal with the aftermath on behalf of our family, my mother was a woman and had no education, so I had to ask my grandfather to come forward to negotiate with the station. After my grandfather left, when my mother went to the station to receive the pension and relief, the station leader said that my grandfather had already taken all the money.

During the rainstorm season of 1961, two people died in our family in a week, and when my mother took me back to the Luohe Bridge empty-handed, my mother felt that she couldn't survive. She sat by the river and wept. When she was at Xi'an Station, she was mourning my father's death, but now, she is crying about how she should live in the future. I think that when my mother used her blood-soaked three-inch golden lotus to walk for more than three months to find my father, she never cried when she encountered all kinds of hardships, but today, she cried to death, because at that time she had a beautiful vision of life and deep love for my father, and she had incomparable courage in her heart and infinite strength in her body. But now, everything is shattered.

After my father died, we couldn't live by the Luohe Bridge anymore. We used to stay here because of my dad and he would definitely come back and bring us to Xi'an. But now that he's gone, no one will take care of us anymore. Moreover, the Agency will leave the area after the bridge is repaired. Now we have only one way to go, which is to go back to our hometown in Daze Township.

Daze Township was the site of Chen Sheng's Wu Guang uprising, and their uprising led to the fall of the Qin Dynasty. This is also the battlefield of the Huaihai War, where the main force of the national army, Huang Wei's corps, was defeated and sunk in the sand. These momentous historical events will be remembered forever. In Daze Township, there are also many houses and houses of our family, as well as large pear orchards and jujube forests, and of course, my mother's mother-in-law. However, my mother hated her mother-in-law so much that she didn't want to go back, and she didn't want our three children to go back to the countryside.

Another reason why my mom didn't want us to go back to my hometown was that it was so poor. My grandmother, my mother's mother died of illness because of old age and frailty, her three daughters all married away from home, and her only son went to Xinjiang to work and was left unattended. Although my uncle sent her some money and food stamps, they were intercepted by the people of the production team, and the sick and hungry old man came to the canteen of the production team to beg for food, but people threw them out. When the old man returned home, he starved to death.

I went back to my hometown with my mother once when I was 10 years old. The houses in my hometown are dilapidated, some of them are living in relatives, and some of them have been used as warehouses for the production team. The pear grove, which is bigger than a football field, and the date palm trees are managed by a cousin. I heard from my mother that the pears over there are very famous, because Dangshan is next to our house. However, when we returned home, my cousin had already sold out of pears, and we didn't even see a single pear pit. Because my dad didn't have any relatives and her mother-in-law was dead, we almost all lived at my uncle's house. My uncle's family is very poor, and every meal is to cook a big pot of sweet potatoes, and when the sweet potatoes are cooked, a bowl is a meal for one person, and he does not need a table or chopsticks. I followed my uncle down to the fields to watch them work, once when they used a rake to dig out the corn roots in the field, shook off the soil from the roots, and then dried them for firewood, because it was still difficult to burn firewood there, and once when the men in their team were red potatoes. Sweet potatoes were piled up on the edge of the ground, and several people used their shoulders to carry large scales to give red potatoes to each household. Men and women from all walks of life are busy transporting sweet potatoes to their homes in large and small baskets. According to my uncle, this is the family's ration for eight months of the year. This means that they eat sweet potatoes every day for eight months of the year. So, when I go back to my hometown in the future, I will shake my head.

Because I followed my mother back to my hometown, I realized why my mother refused to go back to her hometown when she died. My hometown was so poor, and in the years of natural disasters, I don't know how many people starved to death, and no one who came out of his hometown wanted to go back there. Until the early 80s, many beggars from our hometown could still be seen in restaurants in major cities near Anhui. Therefore, in 1978, I was not surprised to see the news that 18 peasants in Xiaogang Village, Fengyang County, had taken great risks to make life and death cases and put their red handprints on the land contract responsibility form.