Back in July 1953.
Yuan Longping achieved positive results in Southwest Agricultural University. In the graduation season, I am faced with the choice of where to go to work. On the desk is a copy of the "Graduation Assignment Volunteer Form" that the school has just issued. Faced with the volunteer form, he pondered. After a while, he picked up the pen and wrote the words "Yangtze River Basin" in the column of "Work Assignment Volunteers".
Yuan Longping's choice was not a whim, but a whim.
Yuan Longping was born in Beiping in September 1930. His parents named him Longping, and his meaning is also simple, Longzi generation, "Ping" means born in Beiping. There are five brothers, and he is the second. Parents are named after their place of birth. The eldest Longjin, born in Tianjin, the second, Longping, born in Beiping, the third Longjiang, born in Jiangxi, the fourth Longde, born in Jiangxi, the old five Longxiang, born in Changde, Hunan. From the names of the brothers, it can be seen that the family migrated in those turbulent years.
Mother held 1-year-old Yuan Longping in her arms, and next to her was her brother Longjin.
After the "918" incident in 1931, the situation in North China was tense day by day, and Yuan Longping's mother took Longjin and Longping from Beiping to his hometown in De'an, Jiangxi Province to take refuge.
3. Old. Fourth, the fifth child was born one after another. The Anti-Japanese War broke out, and the whole family was displaced between Wuhan, Changde, and Chongqing. The Japanese surrendered, and the family moved from Chongqing to Wuhan, then to Nanjing, and then to Chongqing on the eve of liberation.
Yuan Longping was born into a family of intellectuals. His father, Yuan Xinglie, graduated from Southeast University in Nanjing. Her mother, Hua Jing, was a housewife, but she graduated from high school in Jiangsu Township Church High School and used to be a teacher. Parents attach great importance to the education of their children, no matter how uncertain life is, they have never relaxed their children's education, and every time they go to a place, they have to do everything possible to send their children to school (Yuan Longping also has a half-sister). Yuan Longping successively went to primary school in Hankou, Lixian County, Hunan, and Chongqing. He studied junior high and high school in Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing, and went to university in Chongqing.
In that era of gunpowder, Yuan Longping's family wandered and displaced, but they never left the banks of the Yangtze River or the Yangtze River Basin.
At this moment, in the face of the "Graduation Assignment Volunteer Form", the family's experience of wandering for nearly 20 years was replayed in Yuan Longping's mind. He felt that he could not live without this land, and that it was time to do something on this land.
The graduation assignment notice has come down. Yuan Longping was assigned to Hunan. To be precise, he was assigned to the Hunan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry. To be more precise, the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry assigned him to the subordinate Anjiang Agricultural School as a teacher. The Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry has jurisdiction over four agricultural schools, one in the east, one in the south, one in the west and one in the north, and Anjiang Agricultural School is a school in the west.
An Jiang?An Jiang is in **?The mother found the map, and together with Yuan Longping, she put her face close to the map, carefully looking for this unfamiliar place name on the map. Follow your finger along the thin lines on the map and slowly slide it across the map. Slid from Chongqing to Hunan, from the northern part of Hunan to the western part of Hunan, and then moved south, saw the Yuan River, and finally stopped at the small dot in the upper reaches of the Yuan River near the edge of the Yuan River.
Ermao!The mother raised her head, shouted Yuan Longping's nickname, and sighed: "When you get there, you have to endure hardships!."”
Mother Hua Jing has already read and traveled to Xiangxi from Shen Congwen's pen. There the mountains and rivers are green, the scenery is beautiful, the folk customs are simple, and at the same time, the mountains and rivers are connected, remote and closed, and the traffic is inconvenient.
A lone lamp shines for life!Some friends were worried about Yuan Longping: "That place is too remote, you have to be mentally prepared!."”
I'm young, I'm not afraid of hardship!Yuan Longping said to his mother: "My two female classmates, one went to work in Xinjiang and the other went to work in Guizhou!Good sons and daughters are ambitious!”
Yuan Longping knew that his mother could understand him and support him. His mother taught him to be a moral person, an honest person, and a loving person. Mother's teachings are taken to heart and never forgotten. "My mother's education has influenced me all my life. Later, he said.
I have a way, I can play the violin. Yuan Longping, who is optimistic and cheerful by nature, said to his friend: "When I am lonely, I play the violin for fun. ”
When he was a teenager, Yuan Longping had a wide range of interests and hobbies, and he wanted to learn everything and try everything. He loves sports and has been a keen swimmer since he was a child. When he was in elementary school in Chongqing, Japanese planes bombed him in turn, hiding in an air-raid shelter, and he was so depressed that he slipped out and went swimming in Jiajiang without waiting for the air raid siren to be lifted. Once, he skipped school to take his younger brother to swim, and his father found him through a telescope, and his angry father caught them and beat him to a full meal. By the time he was in high school, he had become a strong swimmer, winning the first place in Wuhan and the second place in Hubei. In the pool of the university, he is the first to be surpassed by no one. He also almost became a national professional athlete. In his junior year, he confidently went to Chengdu to participate in the Southwest Regional Games with the first place in swimming in eastern Sichuan. The night before the game, in the street was brightly lit, steaming, shoulder to shoulder in the night market**, in the face of a dazzling array of Chengdu snacks, did not control their mouths, what dragon copying hands, Lai Tangyuan, "one jump and three jumps", etc., ate a time, but ate too much, bad stomach, the next day the competition was powerless, only won the fourth place. The top three were all in the national team, and he missed out by one place.
Yuan Longping (1952) in college
Yuan Longping also has a hobby and has participated in the university's choir, especially for bass. When I was in college, a classmate played a classical violin piece, which was subtle and elegant, melodious and soft, and often brought Yuan Longping to a very beautiful, gorgeous and beautiful realm. He asked this classmate for advice and learned to play the violin.
It is also interesting to say that on the eve of graduating from college, a few good classmates joked, saying that they would make such an appraisal for Yuan Longping: hobby-freedom, specialty-casualness, together, it is free and casual. Every time he recalled this, he couldn't help laughing: "Haha, to be honest, until now I am still like this, I don't like formality, I don't like to be old-fashioned, and I don't want to be serious." In college, I used to sleep profusely, and when the drill bell rang for the first time in the morning, I didn't get up until I hit the emergency assembly bell for the second time, and I ran to the playground while tying my belt. There is no school health inspection, and the covers are not folded. ”
In this way, as the first generation of college students cultivated by New China, Yuan Longping and his classmates practiced their promise to go to the places where the motherland needed them most.
One day in mid-August, Yuan Longping said goodbye to his parents and brothers, his teachers and classmates, carried his luggage, boarded a steamer at Chaotianmen Wharf in Chongqing, went down the river, and transferred to Hankou to transfer to Changsha by train. Get off the train, find a good hotel, settle your luggage, and come to the Xiangjiang River. Yuelu Mountain is across the river, and the long-awaited orange island head is like a huge green snail lying in the river. He jumped into the magnificent river, swam freely, chopped the waves, and experienced the pride of hitting the water in the middle stream.
On August 24, the Hunan Provincial Department of Agriculture issued a letter of introduction for Yuan Longping
Anjiang Agricultural School: I would like to introduce Comrade Yuan Longping, a graduate of Southwest Agricultural University, to your school as a crop instructor.
After getting the letter of introduction, Yuan Longping went to a shop on the streets of Changsha, and he used the first month's salary he had just received to buy a violin. Everything was ready, and early in the morning, he boarded the shuttle bus from Changsha to Qianyang County (Anjiang Town) alone.
It's a charcoal-burning car. Behind the carriage was a small trailer with a stove on it. The cab sat the front and co-driver. The driver is responsible for driving, and the co-pilot is responsible for adding charcoal to the stove. Cars per line.
Thirty or forty kilometers away, the car was about to stop, and the co-pilot jumped out of the car, went around the back of the car, and added charcoal to the stove. When it was almost dark, the car arrived at Shaoyang Station in Baoqing, and traveled more than 230 kilometers in one day, almost half the distance from Anjiang. The shuttle bus stayed overnight in Baoqing, and the passengers got off the bus to find the fire shop, and the relatives and friends to join the relatives and friends. Yuan Longping stayed at the second guest house of the Shaoyang Prefectural Committee opposite the bus station.
Early the next morning, the driver re-lit the stove, started the car, and continued on the way. The car drove slowly through the People's Square, passed through Zhaoling Ancient Street in Baoqing, and arrived at Zijiang Wharf. Not far from the pier, Shuangqing Pavilion stands steeply on the shore, silently watching the boats and ferries floating in the water.
Shaoyang Zijiang Ferry (60s).
The coach got on the ferry, crossed the Zijiang River, and continued on his way. In the afternoon, the car drove to Jiangkou Town in Dongkou County, and in front of it was the Xuefeng Mountain Road.
The Xuefeng Mountain Highway is known as the Snow Peak Natural Danger, like a long thin belt, wrapped between the thousands of mountains and ravines of Xuefeng Mountain. A local folk song describes its steepness as follows: "Snow Peak Mountain, mountain after mountain, 331 bends, one bend is more difficult than the other, 221 are dangerous, and one is more dangerous than the other." ”
Xuefeng Highway was born in the smoke of the Anti-Japanese War. In May 1938, seeing that Wuhan was on the verge of loss, the people moved to Chongqing, the capital of the country. In this way, the Hunan-Guizhou and Xiangchuan highways have become the "wartime lifeline" connecting East China in the east, the Central Plains in the north, and Yunnan, Guizhou, and Chongqing in the west. The national ** urgently ordered Hunan Province to repair Hengbao (Hengyang to Shaoyang) and Dongyu Highway (Dongkou County to Huaihua Yushu Bend, Xiangtan to Dongkou Highway was completed and opened to traffic in 1935), and opened up the Xiangqian Line and Xiangchuan Line. During the original national period, Hunan Province urgently mobilized and organized engineering and technical personnel, road maintenance workers, people along the line, and military engineering teams to form a huge road construction army.
Snow Peak Mountain Road.
The car stopped at the foot of the mountain. The two drivers did not dare to slack off, got out of the car together, added charcoal to the stove, went around the car a few times, held a small hammer in their hands, squatted down, knocked on the chassis and tires of the vehicle, and looked carefully.
Taking advantage of the driver's efforts to stop and check the condition of the car, Yuan Longping stood up, poked his head out of the window, looked up, and saw that the mountain was lush and green, and the top of the mountain was not visible.
The car began to climb the mountain. The Snow Peak Mountain Road winds and falls among the peaks. The further you go, the narrower the road, the steeper the slope and sharper the bends, the ramps are longer, one sharp bend after another, the gravel road is potholed, with a mountain wall on one side and a cliff on the other, sometimes driving on a ridge with cliffs on both sides. In the "cow's ass" section of the mountainside, the slope is steep, the road is long and the bends are sharp, and there are several sharp bends, several bends reach 180 degrees, and the fog is thick and the visibility is low.
The car dragged the smoke and roared and crawled on the edge of the cliff, every step of the way. Yuan Longping, who has always been more courageous, also exclaimed in his heart: What a dangerous Xuefeng Mountain!
In his later years, Yuan Longping recalled this experience to his secretary: "I took the kind of car that relied on charcoal to climb over the snowy peaks and mountains, and the mountain roads were rugged, and I felt very dangerous. ”