Section Six looked back upon the period of my senior middle school, which was a depression era in the whole country. A lot of people suffered from cold and hunger. All the students in my class were from the communes round the county town and were not allowed to live and eat in the school and had to attend by taking daily trips, which was impossible. We had no choice but to rent a peasant’s house and cooked ourselves. Now almost half a century had passed, it had no chance for us to meet each other, only some of us met once in a while. Now all of us had retired so I told a few classmates now living in the county town that they could organize a get-together to create an opportunity for us to meet each other. Later, Maolin Qiu and other few enthusiastic classmates began to prepare, whose main task was to seek for contact methods of all teachers and students. By their working hard for a period, whereabouts of every student and teacher were found out. All the teachers and classmates living in Nantong were willing to take part in, and some living in other places far away could not come but their contact phone numbers had been passed to the organizers.
On May 3, 2012, I took a coach in Xuzhou South Passenger Station and arrived at Jinsha, the county town, at 3 p.m. We were arranged to stay in Taohuayuan Hotel and met a lot of classmates and teachers, who I had not seen for 48 years. The boys and girls at that time now all became old men and women, just like a dream. When we first saw, we did not know each other but after talking for a while, language, look and expression drew us back to the past time, restoring the conditions of young ages, and feeling the same as 48 years ago. May 4’s lunch took place in the restaurant, all of us made speeches one after another, which excited me very deeply. I was a layman of writing poems, however I finished writing “three poems for three years of senior middle school”, expressing my excited feelings. If you want to know the background of my following three poems, I suggest your reading the sixth section of “As a Tree withthe Passage of Time”.
Three Poems Marking Three Years in Senior Middle School
I.
Being Enrolled in Senior Middle School Making Me Jump for Joy,
At Once My Mind Filled with Worries
All Students Living round County Town
Not Allowed to Live and Eat at School
Chance to Study Cannot Be Lost
Renting a House Close to School
Self Cooking for Three Meals a Day
Always Worried for Six Days of a Week
Saturday Seeing Me Going Home
18 li Long Way Having to Go on Foot
Sunday Afternoon Seeing Me Returning
Shouldering Grain and Fire-hay
Two Porridges and One Cooked Rice Not Being Sure
Often Three Porridges for Three Meals
Without Any Fish and Pork for Whole Year
Salted Vegetable with Meals Scarce of Edible Oil
II.
Year Two Allowing Us to Live in School
Grains Handed Over to Kitchen Avoiding Cooking Ourselves
Class Over Rushing to Canteen
Hungry Stomach Gurgling Like Wolf and Tiger
Beauty and Handsome using Same Mess Kits
Earthen Bowls with Poor Glaze Looking Ugly
Having Meals Standing without Table and Bench
Eating like Wolves and Tigers
After Night Class Stomach Empty
Cooking Porridge in Thermos Bottle
Tasteless and Insipid but Welcome Food
Many Roommates Anxious to Fill Stomach
Malnutrition Resulting in Only Skin and Bone
Often Being Hungry Leading to Being Slender
Growth Age Scarce of Nutrition
Parents and Teachers Unable to Provide Any Help
III.
Coping with Subjects during Year One
Fulfilling Assignments Being Carefree
No Aspiration during Year Two
Not Knowing Where Colleges Being
Rehearsing Drama during Year Three
Never Thinking of CEE
Alumni’s Letters from Colleges
Exciting Our Admirations
Arts and Sciences Being Divided
Class Staying without Change
Fifteen Entering Colleges by Luck
Forty Could Not Help but Stay in Hometown
Seventy Years of Age Reunion
Floating Clouds Over Resulting in Being Entirely Free
CEE Cannot Decide Who Being Heroes
Each Having His or Her Own Merits
Note: CEE: College Entrance Examination
I graduated from the senior middle school in July, 1964 and at the end of Aug. entered Nanjing University, five years of academic system. Because of the Cultural Revolution, we could not graduate in1969 and stayed there until July of 1970. Most of our classmates retired from 2000 to 2007. 2014 was about to come, and many of us held that we should go to our Alma Mater to have a party, marking the 50th anniversary for entering the university. Many of us had not met each other since we left our university, time flying and 40 years had passed. We all wondered what the old classmates were like. But some of us held that it was unnecessary for us to have such a party because the Cultural Revolution had torn our class, and hatred among us was hard to smooth away.
Our 1964 grade class studying German had 64 students, the largest number of all classes before and after 1964. Our class was divided into four small classes and 16 girls, with each small class four. During the period we were in the University, some of us suffered from the calamity of imprisonment, and some were punished, not getting assigned jobs in time. A small number directly joined the air force and one was promoted to bureau level; few entered Ministry of Foreign Affairs and were promoted to an ambassador and consul general. Only a few were distributed in the cities of Jiangsu Province and one of them held the position of the leader of provincial authorities. Most of them like us went to the remote countryside and taught in middle schools. Several were transferred to factories undertaking the translation work after the Cultural Revolution, acquiring a temporary glory, which proved to be a pity because later when they retired they received the enterprise pension, much less than those who retired from government-affiliated institutions, including the public schools. They did not have professional ranks and titles. On the contrary, those who had been teaching in middle schools receive much higher pension. It’s true that men’s calculation is inferior to God’s calculation. One of them sighed with deep feeling: I jumped from the basket filled with rice to that filled with chaff. A few of us, who were distributed to the remote countryside, had made their own efforts and achieved great success, holding the positions of professors in colleges and high-rank teachers in middle schools. The pension of us is ranging from over &10000 to only about &2000 per month, as far apart as heaven and earth. Therefore, it was difficult to gather all of us to join the reunion party.
Both of us coupe held that we had not any information on so many classmates, some of whom even passed away, and it was necessary to create an opportunity to meet each other. We should forget what was unpleasant in the past and do not compare the current conditions of each other in case of causing new unbalances. The reunion should produce cheerful mood. Therefore, we took an active part in preparing the get-together party. I established a QQ group, using my advantage of the network technology and being familiar with some applications and was busy with looking for the classmates who did not leave any information. In the end, we basically found almost all classmates’ locations. The number of members of the QQ group was increasing and some of the next generations, namely their daughters or sons, also joined, which made me joyful and wrote a poem. (omitted)
The most unfortunate was that we discovered another two fellow students had passed away. The number of the dead increased to five when we got together in 2014. When I wrote this section, Nov. 2018, another three had passed away, the number became 8.
On the eve of our party, we were travelling in Jiangxi Province. In the city of porcelain capital, Jingdezhen, a kind of porcelain teacup attracted us very much and we decided to buy one for every classmate for marking our get-together. On the cup were burned the following words: marking 50 anniversaries for our enrollment in Nanjing University to study German” “presented by Defu Song and Meilan Zhang” and I wrote another poem in high spirits:
Thinking of Classmates Day and Night
At Night and in the Morning Recalling Their Appearances
Light Gift but Deep Feeling
Small Ware but Red Inch-heart
On May 16 we arrived at Nanyuan Hotel of NJU on time to take part in the get-together. When we met each other all of us got utterly excited. Procedures were executed according to our arrangements: informal discussion between teachers and students, visit to the old campus, taking photos, going to Xianlin New campus and etc.
However, I discovered that there were fighting genes fixed in some of our mates because of the cultural revolution, whether in QQ group or in later WeChat group, there were some written battles on account of great events in the world or small trifles, resulting in being unpleasant. Therefore, in the next years some of mates got together in Hangzhou, Nantong and Suzhou we did not go there. They wanted to come to Xuzhou together, to which we did not respond hurriedly. We only welcomed individuals or small group of mates to come to Xuzhou. Because the pensions our mates get are different from each other and we enjoy the treatment of professor and associate professor, which is very lucky and may cause those with extreme pettiness of character to produce admiration, envy and hatred unavoidably, therefore we only communicate with some good friends. In the WeChat group I do not speak anything, in case of getting angry. We become older and older, want to live calmly in peace, and adopt the best policy to keep healthy both physically and mentally.
Nov. 16 2018 in Xuzhou
Proofreading on Jan 7 2019 in Xuzhou
Uploaidng on Aug 11 2023 in Xuzhou
