Zhang Baotong, a golden student in his time

People who have come into contact with me and read my articles think that I have received a relatively systematic and rigorous school education. In fact, I didn't receive a lot of education in school, especially in primary and secondary education.

My family belongs to the Railway Engineering Bureau, and it is a mobile unit that repairs railways. When I was in first grade, I was in a railway family area not far from Pinglong Temple in Pucheng, Shaanxi. At that time, my father was at the Shuluo River Bridge. There are only two classes in our children's primary school, and it is still a duplex class. Grades 1 and 3 are in one class, and grades 2 and 4 are in one class. Every time the teacher finished giving a lecture to our first grade, he would ask us to do our homework and then give a lecture to the third grade students. At that time, there was no pressure at all to study, we were mainly playing, and learning was all piggybacking. So, except for those three classes a day, we never looked at writing.

At that time, our family area was in the middle of the countryside, and there were no people to be seen for miles or two. We spent the whole day playing in the family compound, sometimes helping my mother plant the fields, and following the older children to the farmer's field to pick some beans and alfalfa, because there was not enough food for the family at that time. Sometimes they steal watermelons from other people's fields. So, we are often chased by farmers. However, the fence of our compound was not high, and we ran into the compound and hid in our homes, causing the peasants to look everywhere in the compound, but they could not find it. Once, however, a classmate was caught stealing a watermelon by a farmer. The peasants stripped her naked, tied her in a melon patch, and whipped her with a belt. So, since then, we don't dare to steal watermelons.

I have only been in school for half a semester, and my family is in the area

We were very close to the artillery positions here, and we listened to the rumbling of the bombardment of Kinmen day and night. On the highway next to it, you can often see cars pulling cannons passing by, and there is a river called Minjiang River on the side of the road. We used to run to the river to play when we had enough of playing at school. My father was at the water station at the top of the mountain, and I had to go to deliver him food every day at noon and in the afternoon. There were no people on the mountain, and there were a lot of snakes on the road, so I was scared every time I went up the mountain.

My mom couldn't read and never cared about my studies. But except for the time when I first came here, I didn't pass the exam, and then I was the first in every exam. So, some parents asked my mom how I learned. My mom didn't know what to say, because she had never seen me read or study.

In less than a year in Nanping, the Agency moved to Miluo, Hunan Province, to build the bridge over the Luojiang River. Our children's school not only has a primary school, but also a secondary school. There are also many family areas and many students, so the students play marbles, cockfights, jump houses, and fall corners together all day long. At night, everyone split into two sides to hide and seek.

When he was in the third grade, he began to engage in **********, and the school and his family were divided into two factions, and they began to write large paper newspapers, hold criticism and fighting meetings, set up combat teams, and organize literary and artistic propaganda teams. The school began to close and make a revolution, so I stopped going to school. At this time, my brother had already transferred from Xianyang to the local junior high school. He played the flute very well and served as an accompaniment for the propaganda team. I learned to play the flute with him, and then I learned to play the harmonica. Actually, I couldn't read the sheet music at all, and I didn't teach it at school, but no matter what song I heard, I could almost blow it. I also love to hear them talk about international current events together. Most of the content is seen from the "Reference News". My brother also got a box of books from their school. At that time, the family was very poor, and no one would buy books for their children. So, it's really surprising to have so many books at once.

The first book I saw was called "Wise Foresight", which was the story of ** commanding a war in northern Shaanxi. There are also "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Wildfire Spring Breeze Fighting Ancient City". I remember watching "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" several times alone. At the time, I was only a third-grader, and I didn't know much about reading, so I was somehow able to read this kind of book.

My brother and the others also formed a combat team, and they also brought guns and grenades. I also followed my brother and them with small-caliber rifles to the reservoir next to the county seat to hunt wild ducks, and in their school to hunt school-fed pigeons. Once, I almost had a fatal disaster. That day, my brother and the others had a meeting in a dormitory, and I sat alone on the bed next to me, playing with semi-automatic rifles and grenades. Because in the movie, when throwing a grenade, you have to bite the fuse with your teeth and then throw it. So, I don't know that grenades are no longer bitten with teeth like that, but are thrown by hanging the guide loop on my finger. So, I hung the four rings of the four grenades in a bag with four fingers and hung them, not knowing that if the rings of one of the grenades were broken, it would to pieces, and the others around me would also be killed and injured. About an hour later, my brother was about to go to the toilet, and when he turned around and saw me playing with four grenades hanging from his fingers, his face changed color in fright, and he shouted loudly, "Put it down." When I put the grenade on the bed, my brother was so annoyed that he almost slapped me in the face.

Because my brother was on the wrong side at the time and couldn't go to high school, my brother worked at home. He went fishing every day, and he caught a lot of fish every day, and sometimes he caught too many fish to eat at home, so he gave them to his neighbors. Because our school is not in class, I also follow my brother to fish, catch frogs, and pick snails all day long, and follow my sister to dig wild vegetables, make edges and corners, and pick up ears of rice.

I hadn't been to school in almost two years. It wasn't until the school reopened and made a revolution that we went back to school. So, I didn't go to the fourth or fifth grade, so I went straight to the first year of junior high school. When I was in junior high school, at first, it was difficult to take math classes, because we didn't have classes in the fourth or fifth grade, and we didn't understand decimal fractions, so the teacher always tutored us and taught new lessons at the same time. However, the school only holds classes in the morning, and in the afternoon, it will either take students to the Miluo River or Hongqi Reservoir to swim, or organize students to study engineering and agriculture. During that time, I not only learned to swim, but also learned to cut hair, grow vegetables, and went to the county agricultural machinery factory for three months to engage in sand casting and lathe processing.

During this period, there were also things that made me feel ashamed and ridiculous for the rest of my life. Because of my good academic performance, I began to have some prestige among my classmates, and I was not as peaceful as I used to be, and I inadvertently made a big mistake. At that time, because of the threat and aggression of the Soviet Union, in order to prevent the Soviet Union from dropping the atomic bomb, the people of the whole country were preparing for war and preparing for famine, digging deep holes and accumulating grain. Under the guidance of our teachers, we also set aside half a day every day to dig air-raid shelters. As a result, a first-year high school teacher made a female student pregnant in a bomb shelter. This kind of thing is very strict in the matter, but the girl tried her best to protect the teacher, saying that she was willing. And the teacher is willing to marry a girl. The school had no choice but to expel the female students and send the teachers to the engineering team. At that time, the school revolutionary committee was controlled by some people who had made meritorious contributions to the rebellion. These people are very naïve in terms of politics and school management, so they conduct a thorough investigation in the school to see if there is any improper relationship between men and women. We, the ignorant students, were also affected. Therefore, we regard intimacy between men and women as a sin. Conduct secret reconnaissance of a pair of male and female classmates in the class who have a good relationship, and then carry out propaganda in the class.

I don't know who reported to the head teacher that we were in a small group. So, the school sent people down to investigate, and mobilized everyone to report and expose each other. Originally, this was initiated by my colleague, who had the highest prestige among his classmates. But he saved my life while swimming, so I was always grateful to him and refused to report him. However, he colluded with several other classmates to report me and another classmate. As a result, the two of us became the leaders of the small group. At that time, the class was called platoon, and the grade was called company. I first inspected my class, and then the school gathered all six platoons of students to listen to the two of us. I have always been honest and honest in class, and I have never been criticized by the teacher, but this time I was checked in front of all my classmates, and even my sister was watching me from the audience, because she was promoted from the sixth grade to junior high school, and I was promoted from the fifth grade to junior high school. It's such a shame! So, I cried so much before I even got on stage, I was just crying the whole time, and I didn't know what I was saying. But the school leaders and teachers saw that I was crying like that, so they didn't investigate whether my examination was profound.

Because I was too playful, I didn't take my studies seriously. One time it was a Saturday, and I wanted to go fishing with my brother, so I told him that there would be no classes that day. However, when I came back in the evening, my classmates came to my house and asked me why I didn't go to class, and said that the teacher would read everyone's essays tomorrow, and that the good ones should be copied with a brush and pasted on the wall outside. The title of the essay is "Criticism of the Uselessness of Reading". Usually I am most afraid of writing essays, because I think writing essays is too brain-consuming and cumbersome. So, this thing gave me a lot of headaches. At this time, my sister's classmate happened to be next to him, and as soon as he heard about this, he took the initiative to write an essay for you. Thankfully, I was relieved. After a while, she brought me a draft of an essay that she had written a long time ago. I hurriedly copied the text word for word. Unexpectedly, this essay became a model text, and the teacher read the explanation to the whole class, and copied it with a brush and pasted it on the wall outside the classroom. Strange to say, since then, I have started to like writing essays, and all of them are sample essays. In every exam, I was definitely the first in my class in Chinese and composition, and my math scores were always at the top, so I became a good student that my teachers liked.

Since my second year of junior high school, I suddenly became obsessed with playing table tennis, and since then, I have left all my qiē behind and wanted to play the ball in the county or district. I got up at 5 a.m. every morning, went to school with my classmates through barbed wire, climbed into the gym through the window, started practicing, and played until 10 o'clock at night before going home to sleep. Because of his obsession with playing, studying became a side hustle. In addition to keeping my eyes on the blackboard during class, as soon as the bell rang, I rushed out of the classroom and went to the gymnasium to grab the table. Although my academic performance has had ups and downs, I have always been relatively good, except for English and Chemistry, I am almost the first in my class in other subjects. I don't like English, I really can't learn chemistry. Therefore, these two courses are barely passing every exam. However, it didn't matter, because learning was not important at that time, and it was not always necessary to go to the countryside to learn well or badly.

By the time I got to high school, I played second place in table tennis in the county. His academic performance has always been in the top three in his class. I feel like I can go any further. However, the good times always pass quickly, and it doesn't take long for the student days to come to an end, and it's time to go to the countryside.

Although I graduated from high school, I only went to school for three years after five years of elementary school, and with the addition of two years of junior high school and two years of high school, the actual time I was in school was only seven years. So, I was only fifteen years old when I went to the countryside. After leaving school, I felt that the life of my student days was so beautiful, which made people miss and yearn for it incomparably. Therefore, after going down to the countryside, we often sang the song of the educated youth: Say goodbye to your hometown, goodbye daddy, the golden student era is gone, gone forever. Leaving school, parting with the girl, youthful and beautiful love, never coming back, not coming back.