After the liberation of China in 49 years, due to war and other factors, the trend of large-scale flight to Hong Kong has emerged. According to the Hong Kong Annual Report, in the early 50s of the last century, more than 750,000 residents from the mainland poured into Hong Kong due to the war. In 1952, 32-year-old Zhang Ailing walked across the Luohu Bridge in Bao'an County under the scorching sun and came to Hong Kong. Behind her, the rumors and legends in the Huhai apartment were obliterated by the overwhelming slogans and slogans, and her figure faded away from the country.

This is just a rehearsal of the mass exodus from Hong Kong after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Under the communalized "big pot rice" model, everything was returned to the public, such as personal property, all gold and silver jewelry had to be reported to the government and then deposited in the bank, which greatly hurt the people's enthusiasm for production. In the era of "preferring the grass of socialism to the seedlings of capitalism", many desperate people, with a feeling of incomprehension and unwillingness, began to flee to Hong Kong in a desperate way, especially along the Lingnan route.

The largest number of people fled here. In particular, Pengcheng was still called Bao'an County at that time, and it became an uninhabited village, with ten rooms and nine empty, and one village escaped to the point that only one lame man was left. In order to shelter the smugglers, the local government has built more than 100 new shelters, but they are often overcrowded.

In 1962, due to three years of natural disasters, a large number of people who could not eat fled to Hong Kong like a tidal wave. At that time, rumors spread that "the British Queen's birthday will be released (on the border) for three days" and "the Third World War is about to be fought", and many people felt that fleeing Hong Kong was the way out. Another person sent money to his family soon after successfully escaping Hong Kong, and others were full of longing when they saw it. Risking your life against all odds.

The frenzy of fleeing Hong Kong in 1962 was not unrelated to the great famine in the mainland. In the Pearl River Delta region, in order to solve the problem of food shortage, people have sent letters to relatives and friends in Hong Kong for help. Relatives and friends in Hong Kong put the food in zinc-iron boxes and sealed them, wrapped the boxes tightly with towels or cloths, wrote their names and addresses, and sent them back to the mainland through the post office. Due to political considerations, the mainland once ordered a ban on the entry of postal parcels, so all postal parcels were turned back to Hong Kong. People don't have anything to eat, so they naturally think about running out. Other than that. At that time, when Hong Kong's economy was taking off, in order to solve the problem of labor shortage during the period of rapid economic development, the British authorities in Hong Kong began to implement a new identity card application policy (commonly known as the "barrier policy"). Under the new policy, Hong Kong identity cards will be issued to those who successfully arrive in urban areas and are able to work. This is in fact a disguised recognition of the "legal" status of illegal immigrants. For illegal immigrants, it is undoubtedly an "amnesty". As a result, the trend of fleeing Hong Kong has intensified. During the "Cultural Revolution", the trend of "fleeing Hong Kong" increased unabated.

In 66, ten years of turmoil broke out. From the end of the 60s of the 20th century. A large number of educated youths who cut in line in Pengcheng began to choose to smuggle into Hong Kong, taking a big gamble with their youth and fate with a desperate mentality. In the Yangcheng area, "as soon as I woke up in the morning, I found that a few educated youths around me were gone."

Although the intellectuals at that time received "ideological education" every day, and their concept of Hong Kong was also "a capitalist fancy world" and "a paradise for the rich and a hell for the poor," they often secretly listened to RTHK in private. In addition, from time to time, Hong Kong people return to their hometowns to visit relatives, bringing back "novel" items and experiences, such as wafers, plastic raincoats, etc., all of which make many educated youths who have no way to return to the city see a new ray of light in their lives from Hong Kong.

Since 1955, when the phenomenon of Hong Kong fled from Hong Kong, there have been four large-scale waves of Hong Kong flight in Pengcheng's history, namely in 1957, 1962, 1972 and 1979, with a total of 560,000 people (times); The participants came from 12 provinces and 62 cities (counties) across the country, including Lingnan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi.

Most of those who fled Hong Kong were peasants, but also some urban residents, students, young intellectuals, workers, and even military personnel. In terms of political composition, the majority of the people are ordinary people, and there are also members of the Communist Youth League, Communist Party members, and even cadres of the Communist Party of China. According to a data from Pengcheng City, by 1978, there were 557 cadres in the city who fled Hong Kong, and 183 escaped; Forty cadres at or above the deputy section level in the municipal organs have fled.

In those days, smuggling was an open secret. If someone succeeds in smuggling, the family will not only not avoid suspicion, but will show off in front of outsiders, and even good deeds will hold a feast and set off firecrackers to celebrate. In the Shawan Brigade in Panyu, Yangcheng, there was also a smuggling incident headed by the production team leader, with the participation of the party branch secretary and the security director. When they fled, dozens of villagers even went to the beach to feed them. The Xincun Fishery Brigade of Aotou Commune in Huiyang has a total of more than 560 people, and 112 people have successfully smuggled in just a few months. Of the six members of the party branch of the brigade, except for one woman, the remaining five were smuggled to Hong Kong.

In 1980, the special economic zone was first established in Pengcheng, where the "escape from Hong Kong" was the most serious, thus opening the prelude to the reform and opening up aimed at making the people rich.

The birth of the SEZ has given hope to the broad masses of the people, and it has also brought to an abrupt halt the trend of "fleeing Hong Kong" for 30 years. A few days after the promulgation of the SAR Regulations, the phenomenon of smuggling and fleeing from the SAR that had plagued the SAR the most suddenly disappeared! Indeed, the thousands of people hiding behind the big rocks in Wutong Mountain and in the woods ready to flee have completely disappeared!

He Junyao knew these very well, even more than the old man in front of him. The old man is a first-hand experiencer, and he has access to a lot of information.

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The old man seemed to remember what happened when he was a child, and smiled, "I think about the grand occasion when Sanjiang was used as a swimming ground: hundreds of citizens were in the water of the Hongjiang River to keep fit, and the slogans were shouted extremely loudly, and the real intention behind it was tacitly known to everyone: for the sake of a long trip that might happen at any time - smuggling across the border defense line and fleeing to Hong Kong." Then his face became heavy again, "Looking back at the way he came, there were hundreds of corpses floating on the sea, and the bloody sea breeze wiped out any trace of life on this land. Those who look at the glimmer of light before dawn are hairy. ”

The old man said in a heavy tone, "And this extremely risky trend of escaping Hong Kong has also given birth to a new profession - "corpse pulling". In its heyday, there were more than 200 "corpse pullers" active in Pengcheng. I remember hearing from the smugglers that at the end of the 70s, the Pengcheng Shekou Maritime Police Station used to stipulate that for every corpse of a smuggler buried by a "corpse puller", he could go to Shekou Commune to receive 15 yuan in labor fees. There was once an old man who, at most, received 750 yuan from the commune on one day, and of the 50 bodies he buried, four were his relatives. "It's embarrassing and emotional." In fact, the main reason is poverty and hunger, which caused the wave of flight from Hong Kong. People risk their lives to gamble on tomorrow. ”

For a moment, the room was silent, and the ticking of the clock could be heard. In the 70s, it was those who fled Hong Kong, mainly educated youths, who were sent to poor and remote areas, because their material and spiritual lives were extremely poor, and they could not bear the pain of heavy physical labor and leaving their hometowns, so they rushed to Hong Kong desperately. Compared with the popular "North Drift" and "South Drift" in later generations, this group of educated youths who smuggled into Hong Kong have been "Hong Kong drifters" for a long time.

"However, even if it is so, it will not stop the people who have fled to Hong Kong one after another." The old man continued, "We arrived in Pengcheng on foot, and if we are not familiar with the place, we can't secretly inquire about how to smuggle in!" We don't know when to go into the water and when to go into the water, but when we scratch our heads, we found a ray of light, and I remember that at that time, in order to cope with the increasingly severe wave of escaping Hong Kong, the local government also thought of such a way. On Wutong Mountain, which had fled to Hong Kong, there was a village called Xikeng, where Bao'an County was determined to "wage a battle to the death" and build Xikeng Village into an "anti-smuggling red flag village".

There was an upsurge in the village to study Chairman Mao's writings. The walls in front of the village and behind the village are painted with large slogans: "Hold high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought and march forward bravely!" At the edge of the well in the field, a quotation card was also inserted with the phrase "grasp the revolution and promote production". As soon as it gets dark, the villagers are organized to sing, and most of the songs are "The Sea Sails by the Helmsman" and "Chairman Mao's Book I Favorite to Read" and so on. For a time, Xikeng Village became a well-known "red flag" in Bao'an County and even Lingnan Province. We stayed in the name of visiting and studying. But not long after, this carefully constructed "fortress of socialist education" also collapsed. ”

"Old man, you're treacherous." Cheng Shixi quipped. "Since it is a Hongqi village that is anti-smuggling, it knows how to smuggle people."

"Huh...... You are right, the best time to do this is between the third and eighteenth days of August and September. According to the law of the rise and fall of the tide, the locals summed up the proverb: the top of the water in the thirty-eighth day of the first month. During this time, the water is smooth, and you can swim to the opposite side without too much effort. The old man smiled and continued, "At that time, most of the young adults in Xikeng Village, including the anti-escape activists and militia cadres who fled to Hong Kong with us, and there was the largest "man" left in the group, and an 8-year-old boy. I remember when we were standing on the land of Hong Kong, a peasant woman who swam with us even left this sentence: "When I die, don't even blow my ashes back here!" "The real Hong Kong miracle was created with blood and tears by those of us who risked death to go to Liangshan."

How ruthless the peasant woman must be to say something like this, 'When I die, don't even blow the ashes back here.'" However, for those who have just set foot on the land of Hong Kong, the road ahead is not all smooth sailing.

The old man took a sip of tea and regained some of his spirits, "For those of us, Hong Kong is very good, but we don't have our own place, and we have no roots there. He paused and said, "I am not afraid of hardships and hardships, only the blessings that I can't enjoy, there is no suffering that I can't bear, I just arrived in Hong Kong without an ID card, and those of us started from the bottom of the society, endured all the white eyes, worked hard, and slowly integrated into the mainstream society." However, these are not terrible for us, but ...... are terrible" (to be continued. )