At the beginning of 1969, the conflict between China and the Soviet Union broke out on Zhenbao Island, and the Soviet Union threatened China with nuclear weapons.
At the beginning of 1971, I was digging tunnels in a small village called Nianzigou in Ningxia, enlisted in the army, left the fiery scene of digging holes in preparation for war, and joined the army university to defend the country. In 1975, when I was returning home from the army to visit my family, I made a special trip to the Nianzigou Cave, which was the masterpiece of our basic armed militia--- the Battlefield Cave.
In the seventies, the hole of Nianzigou was on the loess half slope of Yinwa Tailiang, and the width and height of the hole were about 1.5 meters, and the cat needed to walk on the waist. Every 5 to 10 meters or so, there is a slightly larger side hole for storing food and sheltering for the masses. The cave stretches for about 200 meters. At that time, all the villages around Nianzigou had holes in the ground. Not only Ningxia, but also Lanzhou and other places have air-raid shelters against nuclear bombs. There are holes in the mountains around Lanzhou, and these holes were all dug in the air-raid shelters when preparing for the war. These caves include the main cave and the side branch holes, and some of the caves are equipped with facilities such as war rooms, data rooms, kitchens, and storage warehouses, and the most of the holes can be used for people. Now, these holes have been developed to grow mushrooms, because they are warm in winter and cool in summer, and they are well lit.
At that time, China's equipment was still relatively backward, people were in the spirit of Yugong moving mountains with shovels, hoes to dig such an underground Great Wall, at that time important industrial equipment were transferred to the underground, and workers not only dig in the unit, but also dig at home and in the street after work, all the schools and factories first completed the excavation of the hole. It is very easy to dig such a hole in the Loess Plateau.
Before digging deep holes, the population evacuation began in China, focusing on the evacuation of key personnel in the first and second lines to the third line, followed by the evacuation of the population in general areas to the mountainous areas, in order to reduce the population density per unit and protect the residents from the enemy's mass destruction** and other offensive weapons.
In February 1969, under the population evacuation policy in Linxia County, Gansu Province, where I lived, I also became an evacuee, and I had to be evacuated with my family to the Guanba Mountains near the Sancha Ping Farm in Gansu Provincial Prison. Faced with the choice of life path, I left my family and did not go to Guanba, but came to Nianzigou in Haiyuan, Ningxia alone, so I dug a hole in the ground and enlisted in the army in 1976.
Later, due to the easing of Sino-Soviet relations, the role of the cave in preparing for war declined. When I came to the cave again in the 80s, the entrance of the cave was washed and buried by the rain, and the cave gradually faded out, and people born after 70 years basically did not know the history of this dusty deep hole.
Since the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Sheng proposed "building a high wall, accumulating grain, and slowly becoming the king." By the 70s, the "digging deep holes, accumulating grain, and not seeking hegemony" put forward by *** had become a thing of the past, and I was fortunate that I had personally participated in the specific practice of "digging deep holes".