Throw rocks upwards and watch your head.

--- Mongolian proverb

Gong Lamei was the first ethnic minority dressed woman in the 3rd Battalion of the 181st Regiment. Her arrival aroused the curiosity of the employees of the company, especially the female employees. They all looked for all kinds of excuses and came to look at Uncle Niu's lover.

Gong Lamei looked to be about 30 years old, with a round face, fair skin, kind eyebrows, a green hijab on her head, a black cotton shirt and pants, and handmade black cotton shoes on her feet. The toe of the shoe is embroidered with a bright red peony flower.

Niu Mulan looked to be about 10 years old, with long black and thick hair, two small braids, and a cotton coat of floral cloth, cotton pants and a pair of thick cotton shoes. With eyes that revealed stubbornness and a sharp glow, she watched every stranger warily.

Since the company's establishment was full, Gong Lamei and other women who had come to her husbands one after another temporarily served as family members of the workers, cooking at home and taking care of the children.

Niu Wanshan led Niu Mulan to the primary school in the camp and enrolled her in school. When he saw the principal of the elementary school, he couldn't help but be stunned: Isn't this Teacher Yu Dachuan who he met on the train last year?

He asked in surprise, "Teacher Yu, why are you here?" ”

Yu Dachuan said with a smile: "I voluntarily signed up here to support the education of the group. Is this your daughter? What grade are you in? ”

Niu Wanshan replied: "She just came from her hometown in Gansu and hasn't gone to school for a day." ”

Yu Dachuan sighed: "Oh, such a big child hasn't gone to school yet? Let's start with the first grade. ”

11-year-old Niu Mulan became a first-grade student at Camp 3 Primary School. She was the oldest and tallest student in the class. However, she is gifted and intelligent, serious and eager to learn, and she learned all the knowledge in the textbook in less than two months.

Yu Dachuan asked Niu Mulan to skip the grade to the second grade, and also made her the class president.

In the autumn of 1964, the film projection team of the regimental headquarters came to the battalion headquarters of the 3rd battalion. They dug two pits in the clearing, planted two wooden poles in the pits, and hung a white cloth between the wooden poles, which they said was a screen.

When the sky darkened in the evening, the workers who had eaten dinner sat in front of the screen with their own small benches and horses.

Niu Mulan had dinner early, knowing that Niu Wanshan was going to play basketball for a while, so she pulled the pregnant Gong Lamei to the square and waited to watch a movie.

The movie is finally showing. is based on the opera feature film "Mending the Pot" filmed in Hunan Flower Drum Opera.

On the screen, Li Gu, who has a charming face and a slender figure, sings and dances. On the field, Gong Lamei's stomach had bursts of colic. She couldn't hold on, so she had to let Niu Mulan accompany her home, and asked her neighbor Ma Xiuying to hurry up and find the health center.

At about nine o'clock in the evening, Gong Lamei gave birth to a boy. This child is different from other children, he was born with a full head of black hair. The black hair covered his little ears.

This is Niu Wanshan's first child. The Chinese name he gave his child was Niu Jianxin, which means to build Xinjiang. A week later, he invited Ma Yumin to his home again.

According to the scriptures, the child was given a Hui name, Yusuf.

12-year-old Niu Mulan is very happy to have a younger brother who is a dragon like herself. Every day after school, she helped her mother take care of her younger brother and called him one by one.

Although Niu Wanshan was a class member of the lower middle peasants, several uncles were landlords or bully landlords, and they also fought to the death with the Red Army's Western Route Army and the People's Liberation Army. As soon as he thought of these troublesome things, he suddenly felt empty in his heart, so he had to restrain his usual witty and humorous style, and try to remain restrained and cautious in front of everyone.

In 1967, the XPCC decided to solve the worries of its employees and turned all their family members who had not officially participated in the work into XPCC employees. As a result, Gong Lamei became an employee of the Corps. She sent the 3-year-old Jianxin to the company's nursery, and once again proudly carried a shovel and went to work in the field with the employees of the 14th company.

Gong Lamei stood on the ground, looking at the endless fields and the tractors and seeders rumbling on the fields, as well as the rows of poplar trees, and then thinking about the high slopes and deep ditches and palm-sized fields of Gayindai, and marveling at the vastness and richness of the land of Xinjiang from the depths of her heart.

Company commander Lu Cannon has been promoted to battalion commander. He came to the labor site of the 14th Company to inspect and guide the work. When he saw Gong Lamei wearing a hijab, he shouted loudly: "Gong Lamei, quickly take off your hijab." You are now a revolutionary worker of the Corps, and you must look like a revolutionary soldier, and you can no longer wear the clothes of feudal and conservative thinking. ”

Gong Lamei knew that she could not violate the discipline of the company, so she slowly took off her hijab and tucked it into the pocket of her clothes. Suddenly exposing her hair in front of outsiders, she felt awkward and embarrassed, as if she had no clothes on.

Gong Lamei cherishes her hard-won work very much. She goes out early and returns late every day, except for doing her own work, that is, taking care of her husband and two children, and she never participates in the spontaneous political activities of the employees unless she has to attend meetings.

One day, Niu Wanshan received a letter from his younger brother Niu Jianshan.

In the letter, Niu Jianshan told his brother and sister-in-law that their whole family, Niu Yinshan's family and Ga Sofei's family had also come to Xinjiang, and that they had settled down in Yining County, Yili Prefecture, and had become farmers.

Niu Wanshan and Gong Lamei were very happy about the good fate of their brothers, and quickly asked Niu Mulan, who was in the fifth grade of primary school, to write a reply letter to congratulate them on their arrival and welcome them to have the opportunity to visit relatives in Altay.

At that time, the XPCC implemented a ration supply system. Food, clothing and household items are distributed by the government. The employees all wore green military uniforms, military pants and green rubber shoes. Each wears a green military cap. Compared to regular army uniforms, they only have no collar badges on their collars and no red 5-pointed star cockades on their hats.

Soon, the leaders of the 3rd Battalion believed that the Gansu workers and ethnic minorities of the 14th Company were too concentrated, and that it was easy to form gangs of fellow villagers and that it would be difficult to manage them in their work, so they dispersed some of them to the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th companies.

Ma Yumin's family stayed in the 14th Company. Ma Xiuying's family was assigned to 19 companies. Niu Wanshan and Gong Lamei were assigned to the most remote 17th Company. They packed the bedding and some living utensils at home into 3 cardboard boxes, carried Niu Jianxin and Niu Mulan, and moved to the 17th Company in a carriage.

17 Company is also called a sugar factory. It is said that the 3rd Battalion used to grow a large number of sugar beets here, and built a small factory to make white sugar from sugar beets. Because the quality of the white sugar produced was not up to standard, the sugar factory was quickly closed. However, the name Sugar Mill has been retained as a place name.

Since many workers have families and cook at home, the company's canteen does not need so many cooks. So, the company commander arranged for Niu Wanshan to be the squad leader of the cart class. The cart squad caught up with the horse-drawn carts to transport seeds and fertilizer to the fields in the spring, and then transported the harvested grain from the fields to the company in the fall.

Gong Lamei was assigned to work in the 17th platoon of the 2nd platoon. The leader of Class 2 is a young woman from Shanghai. Her name is Gu Meidi.

Speaking of the youth in the branches, there is also a historical background.

In October 1954, the CPC Central Committee ordered a total of 175,000 officers and men of the People's Liberation Army stationed in Xinjiang to collectively transfer to work on the spot and set up the Production and Construction Corps to undertake the mission entrusted by the central authorities.

With the rapid development of land reclamation, farms and factories are clearly feeling a shortage of personnel. The XPCC leaders quickly made a decision to mobilize young people from the interior to support the frontiers, sending cadres to the interior to organize peasants, workers, and students to come to the XPCC, and mobilizing all units and workers to submit letters to the interior to solicit relatives and friends to come to Xinjiang.

Soon after, a large number of junior and senior high school graduates from Hebei, Henan, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Guangdong came to Xinjiang, and the XPCC's workforce was rapidly expanded, and the age structure and cultural structure were also fundamentally changed. The appearance of the Production and Construction Corps is changing with each passing day, and various undertakings are thriving day by day.

Going to the frontier and going to the place where the motherland needs it most became the loudest slogan of the aspiring young people in the country at that time.

In the spring of 1959, in light of the situation and requirements of Xinjiang, the state decided to mobilize a number of young and middle-aged people from the interior to participate in the construction of Xinjiang during the period of the second five-year plan. Subsequently, young people from Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangsu came to Xinjiang one after another.

Since 1963, 100,000 young intellectuals from Shanghai and Tianjin have come to Xinjiang.

As soon as they arrived in Xinjiang, they immediately rushed to the cause of socialist construction in the agricultural and pastoral areas, the production and construction corps, and the industrial and transportation capital construction. They were not afraid of difficulties, humbly learned from the local masses, and soon mastered the use of cantuman and learned to drive large carts, and became the backbone and main force of the movement to build water conservancy and open up wasteland and cultivate land.

In 1966, the college entrance examination was suspended. Many secondary school graduates are neither able to get into college nor have jobs to arrange.

On December 22, 1968, the People's Daily published an article entitled "We also have two hands, and we don't eat idle in the city". The article cites the instruction that "it is very necessary for young intellectuals to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and middle peasants ......." The whole country began to distribute middle school graduates to the rural areas in an organized manner, and a vigorous movement was launched to go to the mountains and go to the countryside. All the junior high and high school students who were in school at that time came to the countryside. Among them, the three classes of students in 1966, 1967, and 1968 were later called the old three classes

More than 16 million young intellectuals have gone to the countryside, and about 10 percent of the urban population has moved to the countryside. This is a rare migration from urban to rural areas in modern human history.

The 3rd Battalion also brought in a lot of young people from Shanghai and Tianjin. They are simple, lively, knowledgeable, youthful, and have the foreign spirit of urban people. They are undoubtedly a beautiful scenery in the corps, where the vast majority of peasant backgrounds are born.

Gu Meidi is a native of Hongkou District, Shanghai, and served as the squad leader of the 2nd squad after coming to the 3rd Battalion. She is different from most intellectual youths, steady, generous, and silent.

Once, the battalion commander Lu Dacang jokingly said to her: "What name have you obtained?" Gu Meidi is to take care of the American emperor! When you are young, you don't like to talk and laugh, but like an old woman in the countryside. ”

The speaker has no intention, but the listener has the intention. Although Gu Meidi quickly changed her name to Gu Aihua, the old woman has since become her nickname.

When the workers saw that others called her "old woman", she was not angry, and they all started calling her nickname without hesitation. Over time, people only know that there is a very capable "old woman" of Shanghai educated youth in the 17th Company of the 3rd Battalion, but they don't remember Gu Aihua who used to be named Gu Meidi.

The 3rd Battalion was originally a struggle between Yonghong and the Red 2nd Division, but later turned into a struggle between demobilized soldiers and intellectuals from bad backgrounds. They sent a letter to Shanghai's Hongkou District to investigate the family situation of the educated youth. As a result, several people came from bourgeois families, including "old women".

They called the few intellectuals from bad backgrounds to the company office for interrogation.

The others honestly bowed their heads and confessed their guilt, and immediately expressed their determination to make a clear break with the bourgeois family and accept the supervision and criticism of the revolutionary rebel organizations. Only the "old woman" was alone with a blushing face and not saying a word.

A rebel leader interrogated for a long time, and when he saw the "old woman", she just didn't speak. Annoyed, he raised his right hand and slapped the "old woman" in the face.

Suddenly, the room was stunned.

The "old woman" took out a white handkerchief from her coat pocket, gently wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, and still did not say a word.

The next morning, the body of the "old woman" was found in a frozen canal.

People are privately saying that the "old woman" couldn't figure it out after being beaten last night, maybe she drank pesticides, her heart burned so much that she ran into the ice water channel in the middle of the night to cool down.

Gong Lamei saw that her squad leader died at such a young age, and then thought that the "old woman" usually treats people and works fairly, and is as kind as when she was the team leader in Gayindai, she felt very sad in her heart and couldn't help shedding tears.

Good friend Ma Xiuzhen dissuaded her and said: "Eldest sister, you are pregnant, you can't be too sad, otherwise it will affect your body." ”