The mother is a typical rural woman, who is particularly industrious and able to endure hardships. Her father works in school, and she is in charge of everything in the family, from planting in the field and chopping firewood in the mountains, to laundry, cooking, sewing and mending. It is not uncommon for a burden of one or two hundred catties to be carried home from the fields and mountains.

My mother was ordinary, she never taught us homework, she didn't make toys for us, and her memories were full of toil, either walking on the road with her burden, or working in the fields, or chopping wood in the mountains, or washing clothes by the river, or cooking in front of the stove, walking empty-handed almost never before, occasionally sitting down, and doing needlework in her hands.

My mother was the eldest of their five siblings and read the most, and was sent to the Yecheng branch of Jiangxi Communist Labor University in this county to study, with a three-year education system, part-time work and study, and studied barefoot doctors.

Jiangxi Communist Labor University is referred to as Jiangxi Communist University, and its establishment is very legendary. It is unique in the country, only one in Jiangxi, founded in 1958, restructured in 1980, and has existed for more than 20 years, setting a record of opening 108 branch schools in Jiangxi and cultivating more than 200,000 graduates.

It is the condensation of the collective memory of a generation, including the mother, who works and studies part-time, and the friendship between classmates is quite deep.

There is a continuation of historical ignorance, my father went to college at the age of 23, and I was admitted to the military academy at the age of 23. In the three years of high school, the school I studied was the Jiangxi Gongda Yecheng Branch where my mother used to study, but when I was studying, it had been renamed Yecheng Vocational School.

The collective memory of a generation has a great impact on future generations, and by chance, from a colleague who has taught in Yecheng Vocational School for more than ten years, he learned about the rise and fall of Jiangxi Communist University.

This colleague is one year younger than me, is the child of the staff of Yecheng Vocational School, from the county No. 2 middle school was admitted to Yichun Normal College, after graduation, "where to come and where to go", and was assigned back to Yecheng Vocational School to teach, in his words, he is a Gongda, has indelible feelings and memories of the Yecheng Gongda branch.

According to him, in 1957, there was a surge of cadres going to the mountains and going to the countryside, and reclamation farms were built all over the country. For example, in Jiangxi, in the winter of 1957 alone, the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee mobilized and dispatched 50,000 cadres to the mountains and countryside to develop and build mountainous areas.

At that time, some farmers in Jiangxi's reclamation farms had low education and had difficulty mastering technology. It was against this social background that the Jiangxi Communist Labor University was founded.

In May 1958, Wang Dongxing, who was delegated from the central government to Jiangxi to serve as vice governor and director of the Department of Agricultural Reclamation, visited the great man while attending a meeting in Beijing and reported on the establishment of agricultural and forestry technical schools in various reclamation farms in Jiangxi.

The great man, who had a soft spot for the countryside and the peasants, was very interested in it, and said to Governor Wang Dongxing, "Would you like to go back and discuss with Governor Shao Shiping about setting up some schools so that the peasants who can't afford to go to school can go to school?"

The words of the great man were regarded as expectations and entrustment, and when he returned to Jiangxi, Governor Wang Dongxing discussed with Governor Shao Shiping, who had studied in the Soviet Union, and talked about the "Eastern Labor University" in Moscow that the elites of the two parties, such as Chiang Ching-kuo and other elites, had studied together, and Governor Shao said, "I think Jiangxi can also run a labor university." ”

Therefore, on June 9, 1958, the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial People's Committee of the Communist Party of China made the "Decision on the Establishment of Jiangxi Provincial Labor University", the purpose of which is to cultivate a large number of talents who are red and professional in communism, popularize the scientific and technological revolution and cultural revolution, and build a prosperous and happy communist new mountainous area.

On August 1, 1958, the general school of the Communist University was established in Meiling, a suburb of Nanchang City, and 30 branches of the Communist University were established all over the province, announcing the formal establishment of Jiangxi Communist Labor University.

At that time, it was reported that there were 11,000 students in the main campus and branch of the university, of which 92.7% were workers and peasants and their children, and it was known as a new type of university founded by following the educational ideas of great men. The majors offered involve agriculture, forestry, livestock, animal husbandry, medicine, industry, agricultural machinery, accounting, teachers, etc., and all kinds are diverse and complete.

In the past few years, the main school and each branch school have cultivated a large number of farms and forest farms, providing the school with a base for teaching, production and scientific research, and also providing the school with a source of funds for running a school, and at the same time laying the foundation for students' self-sufficient production.

According to incomplete statistics at the end of January 1959, there were 66 school-run farms, 40 forest farms, and 243 factories in the province, and the cultivated land area operated by the school was 42,750 mu, which became the base for cultivating rural construction in mountainous areas, and solved the problem of insufficient funds for running schools.

In 1961, on the third anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the great man personally wrote a congratulatory letter to the Communist Party of China, which was the famous "730 Instructions". In his letter, the great man said: "I am fully in favor of your cause. Part-time work and study, work-study, do not want a penny of the state, primary schools, middle schools, and universities are available, scattered in various hills of the province, and a few are on flat land. Such a school is indeed very good. ”

From 1958 to 1961, the general school of the Communist University began to implement unified enrollment throughout the country, and students with a high level of Chinese proficiency could enter the main school of the Communist University.

The branch school recruits students according to the actual situation, the students are mainly from the rural areas, the education level is uneven, and even the illiterate who do not have any knowledge and culture can enter the study, and the illiterate generally enter the preparatory class first, and after two years of basic knowledge learning, they begin to study specific majors.

In 1964, the branch schools of Jiangxi Gongda reached the highest peak in history, with 108 branch campuses opened in various places, and the number of students in the university was as high as 50,000 that year under the condition of low higher education, showing a thriving scene.

Except for the main campus of the Communist University and a few branch campuses, the graduates of the other branches had to return to the rural areas, which sent a large number of talents to the rural areas in the backward areas at that time, and many of them became the backbone of rural construction.

At that time, when the rural masses generally had a low level of education and backward production skills, the establishment of the branch of the Communist University of China played a very great role in promoting the construction of rural areas in mountainous areas.

In fact, most of the heads of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Forestry and other departments in various parts of Jiangxi have graduated from the Communist Party of China. At the main campus of the Communist University, some graduates of the University can even stay on to teach or be assigned to local branches after graduation.

Marshal Zhu De personally sent his nephew Zhu Junshu to the main school of the Communist University to study, and Liu Shaoqi was full of enthusiasm to affirm that the Communist University was a part-time work-study model, which was very suitable for the actual situation in the countryside at that time.

The Jiangxi Communist Labor University was regarded as an effective model for the construction of mountainous areas, and the state gave the greatest support, almost giving what it wanted, and making up for what it lacked.

In that era of material shortage, even a brigade in the countryside only had one large tractor, while on the farm to which the branch belonged, rice transplanters, harvesters, seeders, and all kinds of agricultural machinery were already everywhere.

However, it has to be said that in the political environment at that time, the Communist University was also a university with distinctive class characteristics, and not all people could enter the Communist University. To enter the Communist Congress, you must have a letter of introduction issued by the local ** or commune, and if you have a bad background, you may not be able to pass the "political examination" and be rejected from the door.

According to the information provided by the History Museum of Agricultural University, from 1958 to 1980, there were more than 210,000 students who graduated from the university, including 10,563 graduates from the main university and 202966 from the branch school.

In 1980, the college entrance examination was resumed, and the Yecheng branch ended its historical mission and was assigned to the county, and the "Fengxin County No. 3 Middle School" was established on the basis of the original site, which was changed from a university to a high school. In 1981, the vocational school was declared, and at the end of the year or the following year, the State Education Commission approved the establishment, and the name was "Yecheng Vocational School".

With the end of the historical mission of the Yecheng Branch, the farms and forest farms that originally belonged to it were also divided, leaving only a very small part for teaching. Shortly after we graduated from school, the factory that belonged to the school was also dismantled.

Around the beginning of this century, the school was moved from Yecheng to the county seat, and the name of "Yecheng Vocational School" was retained. From then on, it has nothing to do with "labor" or production, and concentrates on teaching, cultivating students and technical talents. It is generally referred to as Yecheng Vocational School, and it often follows the previous name, referred to as No. 3 Middle School.

The establishment of farms and forest farms has been retained until now, such as the current Shangfu Town, and there is also a Dongfeng Reclamation Farm and a Dagang Farm in the jurisdiction. Dongfeng Reclamation Farm belongs to the county, and Dagang Farm belongs to the provincial administration.