I accurately remember that it was the turn of the spring and summer of 1980, when I lived in Baqiao, the east gate of ancient Chang'an, an ancient town that has always been used to bid farewell to Mokesao people. One day, a few young people wearing a strange pair of pants suddenly appeared in the town, causing surprise and noise among people from all walks of life in the town.

It was a kind of strange-shaped pants that no one had ever seen, the trouser legs and crotch above the knees and the waistband were particularly narrow, tightly wrapping the thighs, buttocks and lower abdomen, young men and women wearing this kind of pants, or thick or slender thighs in their original shapes, or fat or thin two-petal buttocks are also prominent, or plump or shriveled lower abdomen has a kind of infinite temptation. From the knee down to the top of the foot, the trouser tube gradually widens and expands, like a horn with a thin mouth. As soon as these pants were put on the town, they were invariably named bell bottoms, with an appropriate and catchy image.

The first young men and women to wear these bell bottoms walked through the streets of the town with fruit peels, vegetable leaves and horse manure lassa, and people stopped to gaze as if they were admiring a circus harlequin. They were then given the common nickname of "amateur overseas Chinese", which means that only overseas Chinese who have lived overseas for a long time wear such fancy and strange clothes, but they are just young workers in a factory near the town, so they are given a gentle ridicule, not authentic overseas Chinese but only "amateurs". However, the young men and women ignored it, and walked straight through the streets of the town, which were dominated by gray, black and blue tunics, carrying a VCR playing songs, and the melody of the music and the soft and soft tune of the singers also made people sound strange. Later, the young men in bell-bottomed trousers and carrying VCRs swaggered through the town, the women preferred to wear their long hair loose over their shoulders and backs, unbraided, and the men's hair was kept long, covering their necks and collars up to their shoulders. Not only are these pants unprecedented, but such long hair and hairstyles have not been seen in decades. The characters with faces in the town, as well as the carts and vegetable sellers, all expressed their disdain and disdain in the most common and concise sentence in the guan: look at those goods!

I now have to confess how I really felt when I faced bell bottoms and long hair.

When I first saw my thighs and ass tightened by bell bottoms, I was surprised and then uttered a few ridiculous words, and when this trendy pants and hairstyle challenged the single Zhongshan suit and single hairstyle of the unified Chinese for thirty years, I habitually developed feelings of rejection. However, in the midst of all kinds of ridicule and contempt formed by my feelings of rejection, I suddenly reflected at a certain moment the historical details of cutting braids in Mr. Lu Xun's novel "The Storm", and wondered whether I had fallen into the category of old and young people who guarded braids. I had a hard time torn between habitual emotions and references of historical detail, when in fact I was not yet forty years old, and the biological demarcation should also belong to youth.

This disorder of the psychological order caused by habitual emotional rejection and rational acceptance has occurred from time to time since then. In particular, the controversy over long hair in bell bottoms, which is much more serious than the controversy over long hair in bell bottoms, such as "dividing the land into households" and "market economy", has been going on with such contradictions, disorders, and even pains.

In the spring of 1982, I went to the villages on the banks of the Wei River with a rural work group to implement the new policy of responsibility for agricultural production, carrying the No. 1 document of the CPC Central Committee in my arms. We held a general meeting of members to publicize documents, held a meeting of cadres, held a meeting of party members, and held a meeting of members to mobilize the masses step by step to make a plan as soon as possible on how to rationally distribute land to peasant households, and how to distribute and use livestock, public water conservancy facilities, and agricultural machinery. When I preached the spirit of the central policy to the grassroots cadres and members of the rural grassroots society, I paid full attention to it without compromising on it, and even answered the common misconceptions such as "I have worked hard for 20 years and returned to the pre-liberation period overnight." However, in terms of my true heart, I not only have something in common with them, but I also seem to have deeper worries. I'm trying to convince them and I'm trying to convince myself. I worked at the district and township levels for 20 years, including 10 years in the commune at that time, and what I did in the past ten years was to "learn from Dazhai", which was about class struggle and taking the sunny road of common prosperity, and what I criticized and prevented was "spontaneous capitalism". In addition to the ultra-"leftist" political concepts and policy regulations, and back to the original life ideals and ideological theories of cooperation in the mid-50s, it was difficult for me to explain to myself for a while the practice of dividing up the land and pulling cattle home, and I used the spirit of the central documents to persuade those old party members to "reform the old land" and "cooperate with the old people." Only I knew the awkwardness.

One night, when it was late at night after a general meeting in one village, I rode my bicycle back to the station. Driving on the dirt road in the countryside, the sound of frogs in the lotus pond in the rice field is like an overwhelming net. I suddenly thought of some memorable episodes in "The History of Entrepreneurship" and was so shocked that I almost tumbled off my bicycle into a wheat field by the roadside. What am I doing? Am I not having an awkward relationship with Liu Qing, whom I have admired and revered for decades? Isn't everything I am trying to do now by the Wei River just destroying the sacred agricultural cooperatives that he worked so the toad beaches on both sides of the Chang'an River? In the mid-50s, county and township cadres were active in the villages for many years, helping the peasants to establish agricultural production cooperatives, integrate land into cooperatives, and combine livestock in troughs in accordance with the central authorities' instructions on cooperativeization. Since then, Liu Qing has lived in the countryside of Chang'an, participated in the whole process of the agricultural cooperative movement, and created the novel "History of Entrepreneurship" that I once memorized for a long time. Liu Qing's essays and features more truly and vividly describe his thoughts and emotions in the process of the birth of the agricultural society, and there are still touching and tear-jerking stories about Liu Qing's help in the agricultural society to solve various problems in Huangfu Village and Toad Beach...... I can hardly avoid the grim reality that Liu Qing was trying to build the ideal lifestyle in Chang'an Village, and I am now also working day and night to destroy and destroy it, the sooner and as thoroughly as possible. Liu Qing persuaded the peasants to hand over their land and livestock to the collectives to manage and raise, but now I have to mobilize the peasants to classify the land as self-employed and bring the cattle and horses home to raise by drawing lots. Everything I do now and what Liu Qing did back then happen to be a reaction and a reincarnation of each other. The emotional contradictions and complex psychological feelings encountered by the development of life itself are obviously not my personal private feelings, but the tragedy and lamentation of historical changes, and the reality and historical thinking I am facing can obviously no longer follow Liu Qing's original line of thought. This is a new opportunity that life has given me, and it happens to be at such a major turning point in Chinese society. I am a little more painful and complicated than Liu Qing, and a little more lucky.

In the course of several years of great discussion and experimentation in the final establishment of a market economy, I once again experienced the mental process of implementing the responsibility system as if I had seen long hair in bell bottoms. Looking back on the ideological process of the past 20 years from the discussion of the "criterion of truth" to the present day, I have summarized myself in this formula: tear--in-and-tear-break again-fall again, and then look forward to the pleasure of a new rupturation. When a new proposition of life arises, I always first fall into habitual dependence on the original concept, and then there is a painful process of peeling it off, and then I have the strength to tear off the old concept of habitual dependence. Each of these processes of falling into and tearing off is actually the disorder of the old psychological order caused by the change of social concepts, and then after a period of stripping, abandonment and renewal, a new order is formed in the psychology. The same is true of the problem of braids in "The Storm", as is the long hair in bell bottoms, "responsible fields" and "market economy" decades later. As this continues to happen, China has made progress, the pace of China's development has been greatly accelerated, and the Chinese people of all nationalities have made progress in civilization. I've also improved.

Several more years have passed, and I can finally systematically and completely read the texts of speeches and articles since the new period. In the past, many of his important speeches were issued in internal documents to a limited extent, and more often than not, the key words of some of his most incisive speeches were circulated among the people through various channels, and even had some mysterious overtones. Whether it is partial or complete "Deng Xuan", I have actually only read one quintessential thought, which is called seeking truth from facts, and its antonym should be "bookism".

According to the scientific attitude of seeking truth from facts, almost all the "movements" after liberation have been denied, and all the unlucky people who have been "moved" have regained their rights as citizens. I often feel that once we have violated seeking truth from facts, we still think that the absurd disaster we have fallen into is sacred. Once we have regained the spirit of seeking truth from facts, we will not be able to recover the immeasurable losses that have been made, even if we beat our chests. There is a succinct exposition without any embellishment: "Seeking truth from facts is the essence of Marxism. Promote this, not the book. The success of our reform and opening up does not depend on our books, but on practice and seeking truth from facts. Seeking truth from facts is the only way to understand the world and correctly promote the development of life, and the root cause of violating the spirit of seeking truth from facts is the "book", because it is not facing the reality of society and life, but turning its back on the reality of life, and only the "book" is followed.

As far as my limited memory goes, seeking truth from facts was a well-known slogan put forward by Mao ** in Yan'an, and "Against Fundamentalism" is still a historical textbook by Mao ** that summarizes the fatal losses caused by the ultra-"leftist" line to the Red Army. Unfortunately, however, in his later years, Mao, who put forward the slogan of seeking truth from facts, violated the scientific attitude of seeking truth from facts, fell into the "bookism" that he once hated, and directly arranged the "book" of "class struggle" into tragedies such as "anti-rightism", "anti-rightism" and "*****". On the contrary, he clearly recognized the fallacy of the "book" when he was in trouble, and abandoned the "book" that caused continuous disasters to the country and the people with the courage of a giant, and truly restored the scientific connotation of seeking truth from facts advocated by Mao, thus saving China. How hard it is to know the truth!

The turmoil caused by braids in "The Storm" was caused by the disruption of the psychological order formed by the Chinese of that era in accordance with the feudal "book"; the turmoil caused by bell bottoms and long hair in the ancient town of Baqiao was caused by the disturbance of the psychological and aesthetic stereotypes formed by the original "book" of people in the ancient town like me, such as "gray, black, and blue" tunics; and the different repercussions caused by the "responsibility field" and "market economy" were also formed by the original "book...... Strip away the rotten "books", break the mindset formed by the old "books", disrupt the rigid psychological order, let fresh blood flow, and let the thinking spread its most energetic wings...... You need to learn new knowledge, starting with updating the knowledge structure.

September 18, 1998 in Yongcun