The natural beauty of the Jiangnan mountainous area intoxicated our entire family. However, we soon understood that this was not the paradise of our dreams. For our family, the hardships that followed were just a change in time and space.
Most of the workers in the copper mine came from the city, the army, or schools. Most of the mine managers were veterans who had participated in the revolution before the liberation. They came from the provincial government. The technicians were from technical institutes, and the middle-level officers were mostly military officers who had been transferred to civilian work. The frontline workers were production or technical backbones transferred from other mines, and many of them were university students who had just been assigned from school.
More than 70% of the people in the mine were young. In my eyes, these young men were so fashionable and unrestrained. They didn't wear pants like Dafutun, but suits, tunic suits, or work clothes. Their hair was not shaved with a razor, but a western-style parting or youth hairstyle. They were not wearing cloth-soled shoes that rural women wore, but leather shoes and enviable sneakers. Their teeth were snow-white, unlike the yellow teeth of the people of Physician Village.
The young women were even more elegant and beautiful. They wore curly hair or had short hair that reached their ears, unlike the women in the doctor's village who had their hair tied up like old women. They were dressed in snow-white robes and dresses, instead of the broad-breasted coats worn by the women of the doctor's village. They were wearing white socks and black leather shoes, unlike the women in the doctor's village who wore leggings and bound their feet.
When Mother led us, big and small, all carrying bags, like a group of beggars fleeing from famine, to appear in front of the people of the copper mine, we looked so embarrassed.
It was a hot summer day. After a few days of long-distance travel, we were all weak due to hunger and fatigue. We didn't wash our faces on the train full of refugees. The coal ash of the train mixed with sweat had already left black and white marks on our faces. It looked like we had all come out of the garbage dump.
The clothes that were soaked in sweat were stained with sweat, like dirty diapers that had never been washed. The bundle he was carrying was dirty and smelly from being dragged around the dirty floor of the train.
Our safe arrival made Dad extremely happy. While busy with the tattered things we carried, he kept nodding and greeting the people who knew each other in the workshop.
My father had also changed completely. He was wearing a work uniform, a work cap, and leather boots. With this outfit, people would not think that he was a blacksmith in the countryside a few months ago.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, my pants, bowl cut, and torn cloth shoes became uglier and uglier in front of my trousers, parting hair, and white sneakers. My face actually started to heat up. I wanted to go back to the doctor's village immediately. There were no white sneakers, no parting hair, and my face wouldn't heat up there.
"You're so poor that you came to the mine to beg for food?”Someone in the crowd who was watching the fun said. These words cut my young self-esteem like a knife. Coming out of the poor and backward rural environment of Doctor's Village, I began to feel humiliated and inferior for the first time in front of the huge difference in the level of civilization.
The copper mine hadn't had time to build a dormitory for family members yet, so very few employees brought their family members here. Only a few of the officers brought their family members, and they lived in the small courtyard of the mining department.
About 100 meters west of the canteen, there were two rows of brick houses that were not high. These were the collective dormitories arranged for the middle-level cadres, technicians, and newly assigned college students. Each room was 15 square meters and could accommodate eight people. This was a better treatment.
After the two rows of brick dormitories, there was a vegetable field to the west of the slope. At the west end of the vegetable field was a large simple shed. The roof frames of the shed were all connected with bamboo, and the outer wall was woven with small bamboo. The inner wall was covered with a thick layer of mud and grass pulp to block the wind. The inner wall was not covered with mud and grass pulp, so it was transparent and not soundproof. The roof was covered with straw, and the door was woven with bamboo. The door was tied to the bamboo column of the frame with iron wire. This was the most common simple house of that era--a bamboo tendon mud wall house.
This is the dormitory for ordinary workers. Before we came, Dad lived in a simple room dormitory.
Where would a family of six live? None of the mine's officials were willing to care about these trivial matters. When we first arrived at the mine that day, we piled our bags on the stage of the auditorium.
The stage floor was paved with yellow soil, and the sides were lined with bricks. The floor was very dry, so Dad asked the cadre to let us stay on the stage for the night.
The auditorium could not allow us to live there for a long time. The next day, we built a temporary shed in the forest at the east end of the auditorium, relying on a few pine trees. Dad tied the bamboo to four adjacent trunks two meters above the ground, covered the roof with a torn sheet, and became a shed.
Father also hit a few wooden stakes on the ground, nailed the crosspieces on the wooden stakes, split the bamboo in half into a bed board, and put it on the cross arm of the wooden stakes to become a bed.
We didn't have a pot, and we couldn't buy a pot. The kind people in the canteen lent us the porcelain pots that weren't used in the canteen. We picked up some broken bricks and a few big stones and built a stove in front of the shed to cook.
There was no lack of firewood here. Dead branches and leaves could be picked up at the edge of the shed. Every time Mother lit a fire, smoke would come out from the tree.
He didn't have a bowl either. His father sawed off the bamboo from the joints and scraped the thorns with a knife to make a bowl.
When there was no food to eat, Mother asked us brothers to pick up the discarded vegetable leaves by the stream and pond. When we were picking up leaves, the people by the pool would say,"Where did this beggar come from? Why did he come here to pick up leaves?"”，Those who knew would answer," Old Bull's family " or " Ah, I know, I'm so poor."
Ever since Mother led us into the copper mine, people surrounded us to watch the fun." Old Niu's family " and " poor to death ", these two sentences were like a curse fixed in people's mouths. When they saw us, they would involuntarily recite them. It's a curse that has made us the humblest and most despised in the copper mine.
The copper mine had no right to manage the household registration and food. This was managed by the agency dispatched by the county grain bureau. Although our household registration was transferred to the local area, it was still an agricultural household transferred from the countryside. It was as difficult as a toad trying to eat swan meat to transfer it to a household registration for commodity grain. At that time, it was said that society had long been equal, but in fact, it was just a series of people. People who entered the third, sixth, and ninth grades waited for the same time and blocked the door tightly. He did not give others the chance to squeeze in easily. We have to wait for three months before the grain station will provide us with food.
Father is a blacksmith, and his ration of food is 40 catties of meal tickets from the canteen every month. Before we came, Father could basically eat 60 to 70% full. Now that the whole family is here and there is no food supply, we can only rely on his meal tickets to feed the whole family. We only have one catty and three meters a day, and a meal is only a little more than four taels.
Father gave all the meal tickets to Mother. Every time it was time to eat, Mother would take out four liang of meal tickets and let us go to the canteen to get the rice back. He had already cooked a pot of vegetable soup in the shed. He poured the rice back into the pot and stirred it before boiling it. First, he gave my father a slightly thicker vegetable soup in a bamboo tube, and then gave the rest to us brothers. We wolfed down a few mouthfuls and finished it. It was impossible to be full, so we stared at the portion left for Father. When dad comes back, he always gives us some of his share. We brothers don't like father's bad temper, but when father was alive, whether it was during the famine years or later, he never enjoyed any food alone.
At that time, my sister was only two years old. We brothers didn't know how to take care of her and only cared about ourselves. My sister rarely ate her fill and was severely malnourished. She didn't develop normally and could only walk unsteadily when she was four years old. Later on, she continued to walk unsteadily until she died at the age of thirty-five.
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