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Turbulent Years: From the Return-to-Village Movement to Supporting the Three Lines
Chapter 1: The Farewell
"Fellow neighbors, farewell forever!"
These were the heartfelt words shouted by Dabang’s father in the spring of 1962 as he bid goodbye to his old neighbors.
In the early 1960s, to make up for the catastrophic losses caused by the "Great Leap Forward," the Central Government decided to drastically reduce the urban population. By the spring of 1962, this "Return-to-Village" movement reached its peak. The family of Dabang, a childhood companion of my fourth older brother, answered the call to return to their rural ancestral home.
On the day of their departure, a sedan—a rare sight in those days—was parked on Xingshan Road. Dabang’s father stood on the car, one hand gripping the open door and the other raised high in the air. He shouted that tragic, stirring "farewell forever" to the neighbors who had gathered to see them off. The adults burst into tears, and even as a five- or six-year-old child, a cold shiver ran through my heart.
The following year, Dabang’s father returned to Shanghai to seek aid. He had grown so old and emaciated, bearing stark witness to the brutal hardships of rural life.
Chapter 2: The Red Tide
During the early days of the Cultural Revolution, "Supreme Instructions" from Chairman Mao were issued constantly. Day or night, people had to march in the streets to celebrate. I vividly remember one night march where a young girl in the procession got her first menstrual period. Fresh blood streamed down her thigh, completely unbeknownst to her.
As onlookers began pointing and whispering, she fell into a state of immense panic. Eventually, a female teacher led her away. The crowd simply kept surging forward, cheering and chanting, as if absolutely nothing had happened.
In the midsummer of 1968, the Workers' Propaganda Team marched into our school. It was another spectacle of fluttering red flags and deafening gongs and drums. People cheered to welcome the dawn of an era where "the working class exercises leadership in everything."
Chapter 3: Preparing for War and Scarcity
In the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split deepened and the Vietnam War escalated. The air was thick with the tense, suffocating anticipation of a Third World War. Schools began teaching students air-defense knowledge: how to evade air raids and how to survive nuclear radiation.
Almost overnight, every glass window you could see—at home, at school, and along the streets—was taped with white paper strips in the shape of an "X" to prevent shattering during blasts. Students were ordered to hit the streets to scavenge scrap metal for the state.
In 1969, Chairman Mao issued the directive: "Dig deep tunnels, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony." The vineyard at Caoyang No. 2 High School was dug up and transformed into a sprawling network of trenches. In our own neighborhood of Caoyang New Second Village, every household volunteered day and night. On the open lawn of our village's small garden, everyone fought to dig air-raid shelters. Men worked on the construction site soaked in sweat, while older aunts busied themselves serving tea and water—a scene of frantic, collective labor. We stood on the empty ground in front of our doorstep, mixing mud to mold bricks.
To "prepare for war and famine," my mother roasted a massive bag of hard broad beans, and my fourth brother helped stir-fry dozens of pounds of flour for emergency rations.
The newspapers and radio broadcasts loudly proclaimed that the United States and the Soviet Union had formed a "horseshoe-shaped encirclement" around China. World War III seemed on the verge of erupting at any second. It was during this very climax of panic that my companion, Xiaolan, headed to the remote regions with her parents to support the "Great Three Lines."
Chapter 4: The Drill
During those days of preparing for war, schools conducted emergency drills for rapid assembly and air-raid evacuation. The midnight air-raid sirens sounded shrill and piercing. One night, along Meichuan Road as we rushed to school, a classmate named Xiao Zhu was struck in the left eye by a stone shot from a slingshot. Another boy, Xiao Zhao, was impaled in the abdomen by a steel rebar when jumping into a trench, resulting in the permanent surgical removal of his spleen.
Following the Zhenbao Island incident in 1969, Chairman Mao decreed that "we must prepare for war." The entire nation, involving hundreds of millions of soldiers and civilians, embarked on massive, grueling cross-country military camping marches.
In 1971, over two thousand teachers and students from Caoyang No. 2 High School marched into the rural outskirts for a military trek lasting about twenty days.
During a forced march on a rainy night, a young girl in the flower of her youth accidentally fell into the water, vanished, and never came back. The master worker from the Workers' Propaganda Team leading our detachment was a man in his fifties. Driven into terrifying panic by this sudden tragedy and the crushing weight of political responsibility, his hair turned completely white overnight during the few hours of the frantic emergency search.
Our classmate Xiao Wen, a medical worker carrying her first-aid kit, treated us like her own siblings. She performed auricular therapy on us, using adhesive tape to precisely secure small grains like mung beans onto specific acupoints of our ears. By pressing these points with her fingers, she stimulated our meridians to relieve pain and reduce inflammation.
She also used gold needles and strands of human hair to puncture the painful blisters on the soles of our feet. We marched on, shouting the slogan, "Forge iron-clad feet, strike down imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries!" Little did we know, the "small ball" of Sino-US ping-pong diplomacy was already quietly spinning. The giant wheel of the era was about to make a sharp turn.
Chapter 5: The Guardianship
In 1970, my father was finally granted permission to head to Jiangxi to support the construction of the "Small Three Lines." People back then possessed a pure and fervent mindset, always eagerly responding to the nation’s call. During the "Return-to-Village Movement," my father had applied, but because our ancestral home was within the old city walls of Beijing, he did not meet the criteria. When the call came to "Support the Great Three Lines," he applied again. However, he was likely impacted by my mother’s "special political status" at the time and failed to get approval. Even though she had been politically rehabilitated by then, the shadow of his official file lingered. This time, he finally got his wish and became part of the very first wave of builders heading to the Small Three Lines.
Before his departure, the factory sent workers to weld heavy iron cages over the north and east windows of our home. This abrupt, protruding iron cage was a special perk provided by the factory for employees traveling to far-flung regions. They literally "welded shut" the safety of the dependents left behind, allowing the workers heading into the brutal environments of the Three Lines to have peace of mind.
It was an incredibly austere era; we had never even heard of commercial iron security doors or window grates. The neighborhood committee strictly forbade illegal structures, and this iron cage was admittedly an eyesore.
Looking back, the iron cage on our house was the suit of armor my father left behind during those turbulent years—a tangible manifestation of his deep care and responsibility. Today, the anti-theft window bars crowding modern cities feel more like lonely, isolated fortresses. The most tragic part of modern progress is that people often don't even know who lives next door. As society advances, that simple, old-fashioned neighborhood care and trust—much like the era of wartime preparation, military treks, and a nation entirely in arms—has been left behind forever in the distant past.
Chapter 6: The Family Amulet
Reflecting on it all after the fact, I realized a profound irony: during those chaotic and turbulent years, my mother’s former title as a "Counter-Revolutionary" unexpectedly became our family's ultimate "amulet."
If our entire family had been approved to packed up and move into the deep, isolated mountains of the Great Three Lines back then, I am afraid I would have spent my entire life unable to ever walk out of those mountains. I certainly would never have had the opportunity to sit here today, writing this piece of oral history.
Haha! History has no "ifs"—it only has results.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
第三百四十篇
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