I refuse to go back to the 1980s!
In the late 1970s to early 1980s, I lived in a courtyard in a alley in Shijiazhuang city. Every month at the end of each month, my grandmother gave me two yuan to hand over to the landlord. These two rooms were rented by my grandmother.
It's not a quadrangle in a TV drama, but a large courtyard in the movie "Dragon Beard Gully".
There is a thatched cottage in the southeast corner of the yard, which is a very small thatched shed. There is a large tank in the corner for men to urinate, and two small tanks are buried in the middle of the ground. There are two bricks on the side as mats for people to squat and defecate.
There is no door to the thatched cottage. Before entering, cough at the door. If you hear a cough response inside, wait at the door. Only when there is no response can you enter.
One of the earliest animals I knew was the maggots wriggling on the pile of squatting feces.
In a few days, a carriage will come to collect feces. A man carries a bucket of feces and scoops it into the bucket, then takes it out of the door and pours it into the dung can on the carriage. The whole yard is filled with a foul odor.
Sometimes when we arrive at the meal, we have to eat what we should eat, and everyone is used to it.
Every yard has a powerful old lady who discovers a missing onion and a head of garlic, so she scolds the street in the yard. We all have to listen and don't stop for half an hour.
A person in the second courtyard bought a cart of sand from the countryside, and after the carriage arrived, it was unloaded at the entrance of the third courtyard.
There was a family in the third courtyard, so they shoveled sand into their own small shed. After discovering it, the second courtyard went to find it. The person who stole sand from the third courtyard was straightforward and said that whoever allowed it to be unloaded at my doorstep would be mine.
At that time, I was already in elementary school and thought this was not right, but as children, we didn't dare to speak. I remember this for over forty years.
My grandfather bought half a car of winter stored cabbage in an attempt to save money. Upon inspection, my grandmother found that all the vegetables had been hollowed out. She was so angry that she sat in the yard crying and cursing. My grandfather wilted his head and dared not speak up.
Who said that the people of the 1980s were simple, they were all nonsense.
In elementary school, the classroom conditions were very poor. There was a coal stove in the corner, and we elementary school students took turns lighting a fire before class.
Go order some newspapers, light firewood, and put coal blocks after 7 o'clock. Not real coal blocks, but coal foam and dried coal mud blocks made of loess and mud.
A chimney is a very luxurious thing. There is no such thing in the classroom, and the windows are not open despite being afraid of the cold. The entire classroom is filled with one meter thick thick smoke.
Even so, it was not warm at all. My hands were so cold that I couldn't hold my pen, and everyone had frostbite. Chilblain is quite interesting. It was born on the ankle this year and will appear in the same position again next year.
My back of my hand has been frozen with blood marks, which adults call cracks. My mother scalded me with hot water to relieve the pain, but then I still have cold marks. Until now, there is a black mark on the back of my hand, which is a commemoration of when I was frozen.
Two years ago, my mother chatted with me and said that there was a down jacket selling in the store at 70 yuan per piece. After weighing it for a while, she was not willing to buy it for me. I'm sorry.
I replied to her, "What are you talking about? We were all poor back then, and you and my father were dual employees. Our family is pretty good, but at least I have acrylic cotton.". Acrylic cotton is a chemical product that is not as warm as cotton jackets.
Now in the northern winter, there is a car when going out, and a house when getting off. The house has heating and there is no feeling of freezing.
My impression of the winter in the 1980s was a bone chilling cold. In the morning, I shivered and went to school, but I could only grit my teeth and endure it. My ankles and ears developed chilblains every year.
Remember that at that time, there was a fixed amount of one kilogram of oil at home every month, and sesame oil was even considered a luxury item.
When pouring sesame oil, your hands should be very stable. After pouring, use your fingertips to wipe back the sesame oil from the bottle mouth, and then lick the remaining sesame oil with your tongue. It should not be wasted at all. Licking the sesame oil bottle is a standard action.
My grandmother has been suffering from angina all year round. At that time, she lacked medical treatment and could only carry it this way. Finally, she passed away in her early 60s.
Two years ago, my mother underwent stent surgery for a heart attack and recovered very well. We chatted and said that my grandmother also had a heart disease back then. If we had the current medical conditions, she wouldn't have died at that time.
At that time, transportation was underdeveloped and fresh fish and shrimp were not available, so it was called "stinky fish and rotten shrimp".
Once my mother went to the market to buy a fish, which made me overjoyed. She found out that the fish was smelly. My mother suggested changing it, but she came back empty handed, saying that the rest was also smelly. I am particularly disappointed that this fish has been remembered until now.
My ballpoint pen refill is used up. I asked my father for a penny to buy a refill, but he scolded me for wasting it and concluded that I must have nothing to draw and play with. I am an honest child. After being scolded, I feel very aggrieved and dare not explain. I secretly cry when I return to my room.
Later on, as I developed, I had a strong desire for the opposite sex. At that time, as young men, we liked two magazines the most, one called "Popular Film" and the other was "Shanghai Fashion". Visiting a classmate's house and seeing these two magazines on the bed, I knew it well.
Later, two handwritten copies of "Heart of a Girl" and "Memoirs of Manna" were circulated. By current standards, they were very clich é d and boring pornographic novels, and the shock they gave us at that time was like an atomic bomb.
The classmates finally borrowed it home, stayed up all night, and made a copy by hand, thus achieving nationwide dissemination.
In 1987, I passed the college entrance examination and was admitted to a military academy. I could eat enough, but I definitely couldn't eat well.
For a long time, the country was facing a shortage of food, and the military had to share the country's worries by eating aged grains.
Mantou is not the big white and noisy Mantou you imagined, but it is dark and dark without any elasticity. When you squeeze it with your hand, it collapses like plasticine.
Southern students can't eat rice, so they are more repelled by the so-called Mantou. Someone threw Mantou on the wall, but it stuck and burst into laughter.
Another southern student threw the Mantou into the swill bucket, which was found by the team leader. The team leader copied it by hand and punished the student to eat it.
The student was very resistant and refused to eat. The team leader broke the Mantou out of the swill bucket in half and ate half of it himself. The student couldn't stand it and ate the rest.
After graduating from military academy in 1991, I was assigned to a grassroots unit of the 38th Army, stationed indoors in Baoding, with relatively good conditions.
After receiving a salary of over 100 yuan for the first month, I went to a serious restaurant in Baoding and ordered a smooth pork loin, a fish flavored shredded pork, a bottle of beer, and a portion of rice. I ate it hard for over 30 yuan.
Looking back, before I graduated from military academy at the age of 22, I always had a bad mouth. Later on, I ate a lot of delicacies and delicacies, but I didn't remember them. I remember this first whole meat dish after graduation until now.
The barracks are brick houses, and in winter, they rely on a stove for heating. There is a flue inside the wall, which rotates around the house and heats up by the radiation of the flue.
Each room is arranged in rows, and I am the platoon leader, enjoying the single berth closest to the stove, while the rest are arranged in a circle around the high and low beds according to the age of the soldiers.
The window glass is broken, and I reported to the barracks stock that there is no glass to help me find a solution.
I'll take my soldiers to find plastic sheets and wooden boards. There's no such thing as ready-made ones for us to pick up. Let's even steal them.
If there is not enough coal, it is inevitable to go to other companies to borrow it, and if it is discovered, it will inevitably lead to a fight.
I performed well at the grassroots level and was transferred to the headquarters as a staff officer. The first time I went to the headquarters cafeteria for a meal, I was shocked. There were no stools, and we all had to stand and eat.
I have a classmate from a military academy who is also assigned to the 38th Army. He is not in the same team as me and we inevitably meet frequently.
He married a wife who is a doctor at a hospital in Baoding, with one officer and one doctor. The couple should be doing well, but in fact, they don't have a house.
One day he came to me for a drink and said that the kitchen knife was already sharpened, ready to chop off the head of the hospital management department.
At that time, there was no concept of buying a house, and they all had to rely on their units to divide the houses. After they got married, the hospital should allocate a dormitory for their wife, but the management department head had to make things difficult for them.
At that time, it was necessary to find connections when doing things in society. Gao Yingping and Fan Zhenyu once said in a crosstalk that a man named Wanneng Glue was especially good at building relationships. If you buy deep-fried dough sticks for breakfast, you can buy good ones based on your relationships. This was the current social situation at that time.
After the reform and opening up, every day is getting better and better. For someone like me who has passed by, it's like passing away.
I see that some young people nowadays feel a lot of life pressure, so they miss the 1980s, saying that there was no mortgage, no car loan, no medical and educational pressure, and there was not much work pressure. The wealth gap was very small, the neighborhood relationship was harmonious, and people were simple and happy.
Alas, such naive thoughts make me unable to laugh or cry.
I am 55 years old this year and have already experienced aging and physical decline. If there is an opportunity to travel back to the 1980s and regain my youthful and healthy physique, I will firmly refuse.
If I had to travel, I would have taken out all my possessions and begged them to let me go.
Young people, cherish the present~
