Today, Erdaogou Shenchandui was especially lively.
The security militia had discovered the big-character posters plastered around the village during their patrol in the latter half of the night.
This day was October 16, 1970—the seventeenth day of the ninth lunar month. The moon was only missing a sliver at its edge, still shining bright.
The notices posted by Ning An and Xiao Juza used paper of various colors—old red paper, yellowed white, purplish red. Each sheet was very large, and there were many of them, impossible to miss.
The militiamen leaned in for a closer look and could roughly tell the content was related to the zhiqing. They had gone through literacy campaigns and recognized a few characters, but not many. Besides, although the moonlight was bright, it fell a bit short of what was needed for reading, so they didn’t examine the specific content closely.
The men exchanged glances. What was going on? Someone had posted big-character posters right outside the brigade headquarters, and they hadn’t heard a thing?
The zhiqing had only just arrived. Who would post big-character posters about them? Could there be something wrong with this batch of zhiqing? Or had they offended someone within a single day?
With these doubts in mind, the militiamen left the brigade headquarters and made a round of the village, discovering many more posters with the same content.
Their heads were starting to ache. Posting big-character posters wasn’t a problem in itself—it had been especially popular three or four years ago. The fervor had died down quite a bit in the past two years, but people still posted them now and then. But post them openly, in broad daylight—why post them in the middle of the night?
What’s more, this wasn’t even about the posters. Someone had been sneaking back and forth through the village at night without them noticing. If that person had been up to something bad, they wouldn’t have caught them either. This was unacceptable!
After making their round, the militiamen on patrol that night knocked on the door of the security director’s house, and then knocked on the door of the brigade leader’s house.
The brigade leader took out his own flashlight and, shining its light, read through the content of the notices. Then he fell into complete silence.
The militiamen felt a bit uneasy and asked, “Leader, what’s going on?”
The brigade leader said, “Doesn’t your patrol team have flashlights? If any of you had just turned on a flashlight and taken a proper look by its light, you wouldn’t have had to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night!”
These little rascals—to save a few batteries, they never willingly used their flashlights. It wasn’t as if they had to buy the batteries themselves. Did they really have to be so stingy?
The young militiamen chuckled sheepishly. “Well, uh, it’s just a habit. So what does it say?”
“What does it say? It says someone did a good deed. Let me tell you young folks—don’t go falling head over heels just because the zhiqing from the city are good-looking. They’ve already got partners.”
“Huh?”
“Huh, what! Don’t think I don’t know—you few went strolling over toward Zhiqingyuan today too. It’s written clearly right here: that zhiqing named Wang Baohong has a partner. She’s planning to go back to the city to get married and wouldn’t give the mud-legged farmers of our village a second glance. Don’t get any wrong ideas. Just because someone smiles at you, you forget your own names? Forget how many bowls of dry rice you can eat! When they smile at you, it’s probably just to sweet-talk you into doing work for them!”
“No way?”
“Nothing? What do you mean nothing! Don’t you know how hard and tiring farm work is? If city kids can’t stand it, it’s entirely possible they’d decide to find someone to marry and make life easier for themselves. But if they return to the city someday, it won’t just be men who pull a Chen Shimei—women can do it too.”
“Oh.”
“Go home and remind your sisters too—among the men, Li Changwei already has a partner. Don’t get too close to him. And besides, his whole family has been sent down to the countryside.”
The brigade leader said that last sentence in a lowered voice.
Things were a bit chaotic these days—being sent down didn’t necessarily mean someone was a bad person, but having ties with sent-down personnel was absolutely no benefit. Purely from the standpoint of seeking advantage and avoiding harm, he didn’t want to see the village’s young people wade into such muddy waters.
Forget about offering help in a snowstorm hoping for repayment later—he was afraid they’d get themselves into trouble before any repayment ever came.
Besides, not all of them were bad people, but not all of them were good people either. How could they tell which ones were good and which were bad?
The best they could do was not kick people when they were down—and that was already good enough.
“Leader, there’s no need for us to remind anyone. With so many notices posted, everyone will see them first thing tomorrow morning.”
The brigade leader laughed. “True, I must be getting senile. Just leave them posted here. Tomorrow morning I’ll tell everyone—since they’ve put it out there, we’d best take the advice. Listen to advice and you’ll eat your fill.”
He paused, then added, “And don’t go thinking city folks all live the good life. It says right here that some city people—seven or eight of them—are crammed into two rooms with barely room to set a foot down. One person earning a wage to support a whole family of freeloaders—some of them have it even harder than we do. All right, nothing else. Everyone go about your business.”
The next day, the gong signaling the production team to work rang out fifteen minutes earlier than usual, accompanied by the shouts of the brigade accountant: “All commune members, assemble at the grain-drying yard!”
The grain-drying yard was an important place in the village. Next to it stood an old opera stage, and all the village activities were held there, as well as open-air movie screenings.
Zhao Fengxia had just finished eating and hadn’t had time to wash the dishes yet. Hearing the sound, she asked in confusion, “Why is it earlier than usual? What’s happened now?”
Muttering to herself, she was already briskly getting up and heading out the door, not forgetting to instruct Jiang Xuegong, “Wash the dishes before you leave, or they’ll be hard to wash when I come back at noon.”
“Don’t worry.”
Ning An finished the last sip of her porridge, wiped her mouth with a handkerchief, and caught up with Zhao Fengxia. “Mom, wait for me. I want to go take a look too.”
She hadn’t had a chance to look around the village since she arrived.
Jiang Xuegong called out from behind, “Come back soon! We still have to go to work!”
“I know, we won’t be late.”
By the time the mother and daughter arrived at the grain-drying yard, a large crowd had already gathered.
The brigade leader stood on the opera stage with a big megaphone. Seeing that most people had arrived, he called out, “Quiet, everyone. Listen to me.”
He had to shout several times before the chattering below finally died down.
“Five educated youths have come to our brigade, and starting today they’ll be working alongside everyone. Let’s welcome these knowledge youths from the city, and we hope they can use their knowledge to help us rural folk progress together.”
“Also, I want to mention something. In the middle of the night yesterday, some big-character posters suddenly appeared in our brigade, introducing the backgrounds of these educated youths. The main purpose is to tell us that the educated youths came here to build, not to find romantic partners. They want us commune members, especially the young ones, to keep a proper distance from the educated youths. No courting.”
“I hope everyone takes this seriously. You can read the details yourselves in a moment. I know some of you can’t read, so I’ve arranged for a few literate people to stand by each poster. If you don’t understand something, just ask. Alright, dismissed—go take a look. When the gong sounds next time, it’s off to work.”
When the brigade leader finished speaking, everyone dispersed on the spot, and the chatter started up again.
“Who posted those?”
“Probably the educated youths themselves. They look down on us mud-legged peasants—first thing they do is warn us to keep away from them! They’re disgusted by us.”
“What are they acting so high and mighty for? They’ve been sent down to the countryside, and they still think they’re above everyone? Even experts from the province come work the fields with us. They’re just a bunch of fresh-out-of-school brats—how could they be better than the experts?”
“Can’t say whether they’re better or not, but one thing’s for sure—they look down on us!”
Someone who had already read the full posters disagreed with these takes: “I don’t think the educated youths posted them. It says on there that Educated Youth Li’s whole family was sent down. If the educated youths had posted it, would they write that?”
“Maybe it was some other educated youth, then!”
“That’s possible too, I suppose.”