From worshipping the God of Wealth to thinking**
Text: Wang Meng. At that time, there were two theaters closest to home, one was the current Victory Theater, which was once known as Jianguo Xitang after 1945. What was called earlier, I don't remember. The other has always been called the Red House Cinema, and later mainly screened documentaries. Every time we watched the movie, we crossed the road from Xisi to the north into Shuaifu Hutong or Baozi Hutong, and then went west to our house. For me as a child, these two alleys were too long, and I felt tired to walk. I often complain about how long it is and when I can cut this alley.
Once, while walking tirelessly on this long alley, I suddenly found a wallet with a small amount of money in it. This chance encounter excites the family, who hope to pick up their wallets every time they walk there. Even when gossiping, I can't stop saying that when I fall, it would be good to pick up a golden hammer. At that time, prices were skyrocketing day by day, and people who had money used things like gold bars to maintain or negotiate prices. The rental house is priced in a number of bags of "foreign noodles". We have never seen gold bars, but we often hear such sayings in life. Later, when I read the idiom of waiting for the rabbit in junior high school, I thought it was not an exaggeration. In a life of insecurity and scarcity, it is really possible to pick up ready-made rabbits day and night.
Every 30th month of the old calendar, there are hawkers who shout "send the God of Wealth" to each family, a piece of low-quality straw paper, painted with Marshal Zhao Gong. Once, when my family had just bought this statue of hope, there was a knock on the door, and I was about to shout "No", when I was immediately warned by an adult, I could not say no, I could not say that I had just bought it, but I could only say, "Please!" ”
When I met an adult playing mahjong with a neighbor, my sister and I went to kowtow to the God of Wealth. No matter how I kowtowed, I had the impression that my mother and aunt were mostly playing with negative numbers.
After Japan's surrender, there was a resale of silver dollars, and the west entrance of our Hutong was a small market along the north ditch (later known as Zhao Dengyu Road), which gave me the impression of the "tattered city" mentioned in the model play "Red Lantern". Many people in torn robes shouted "buy two, sell two" to sell and buy silver dollars. Our family, who is crazy and poor, has tried a few times, and I have learned to recognize "Yuan Datou" or something. Strange to say, my impression is that as long as our family buys a silver dollar, the silver dollar will definitely fall in price, and as long as the silver dollar is sold, the silver dollar will definitely rise.
All these humilities, all these shames, all the insignificance and lowliness, were swept away after coming into contact with the revolution. No more trying to find your wallet while walking, no more praying for your mother to win money playing cards, no more dreaming of making a fortune by flipping silver dollars. All the aspirations to live in humility without any more hardship, and the desire to someday turn over, are given sustenance by the existence of the revolution and the proposition of the revolution.
He Ping is different from Comrade Li Xin, he is enthusiastic, idealistic, frank, and full of vitality. He spared no effort to educate me and one of my good classmates, Qin Xueru, the son of a farmer in Changping, and I once said that He Ping's home was a family party school for the two of us. Ai Siqi's "Popular Philosophy" made me suddenly penetrate, and there was no disadvantage. Huagang's "Outline of the History of Social Development" made me learn from the heavens and the heavens, the five modes of production, the inevitable laws of history, who can violate them? Who can change? As soon as I read this book, I immediately felt that justice was in the chest and the truth was in the hand. Du Min and others have a small series of social science books in the Xinzhi Bookstore, which has enabled me to read all the major events in the world. **'s "On New Democracy" made me realize the brightness and conciseness of the revolutionary truth, and I was confident. Huang Yanpei's "The Return of Yan'an" filled my heart with hope and support for the revolution. The Soviet Union's "Lonely Village Love" (written by Kadaev, formerly known as "I am the son of the working people"), Rainbow (written by Vasilevlevskovskaya), and "Wife" (written by Kadaev) all made me yearn for it. In particular, Shui Fu's translation of "How Steel Can Be Made" is the bible of the youth revolution: "The most precious thing for man is life, and life is only once for man......"Immediately I was convinced, recited and made my blood boil. Zhu Helai and Paul Kochagin are my idols, and I love Tonya very much.
He Ping also took me to Chaohua Bookstore on North Xinhua Street, saying that it was a progressive bookstore. There, I saw the "Times No. 3 Journal" published by the "Times Publishing House" run in the name of Su Shang, which was in the form of a folio newspaper with a column on the Yan'an broadcast, which was refreshing to us living in the Kuomintang area. Later, I went there many times, and it is estimated that the bookstore has been closed by the old Beiping authorities, with its doors and windows closed, and it looks like it will be closed forever, which makes me feel extremely sad and sad.
In the "** book" that He Ping gave me, there is a picture album "The Protection of Soviet Children", which should be a propaganda material issued by the Soviet Association for Foreign Culture, and it was the socialist revolution that emphasized the emancipation of women and created the construction of nurseries and kindergartens on a large scale. When I was a teenager, I thought of nursery schools and the like as inventions and advocates of the Soviet Union.
The other is called "Chronicles of the Soviet Union", which was written by British "Fabian socialists". They highly praised the achievements of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution, but also questioned what they said about the restrictions on freedom of expression in the Soviet Union, which puzzled me considerably. When I visited the UK in 1987 in an official capacity, I spoke with Fischer, Secretary of State for Culture in the shadow cabinet of the British Labour Party, about my reading of the words of the British Fabian socialists as a teenager. Everything is like this, there is no meaningless reading and acting, "It's not that you don't report, the time has not come." ”
More than a year later, He Ping graduated from middle school and was employed, and his underground work changed from facing middle schools to "professional youth", and he no longer contacted us, but changed to a professional revolutionary, Comrade Li Guang, a member of the Middle School Working Committee of the School Committee of the Urban Work Department of the North China Bureau of the Communist Party of China, contacted us. In the underground terminology, the two "progressive relations" between me and Qin Xueru (because we did not have an organizational identity at the time) were given by Li Guang, who was told to us at that time as "Liu Feng" and "Belt". "Belt" refers to the guidance of the superiors to the subordinates in the one-line contact of the underground party.
Liu Feng is a talent, resolute and handsome, and his voice has a good resonance, many years later, I found that his appearance is very similar to the famous actor Shi Weijian, who was the director of the ** Experimental Theater. Liu Feng's image is completely in line with my expectations of the party's underground workers, and his analysis of problems has always been to the point without elaborate words. He didn't talk as much as He Ping, nor did he have as lively and humorous as He Ping, and the prospects for the revolutionary cause he brought me were much more severe, he was a serious and reserved person, and when you were with him, you felt that he would always be confident, firm and correct.