Return To 1977 Chapter 13: Yongdingmen Railway Station

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Sit south and look north at Yongdingmen Railway Station, facing Taoranting Park across the moat.

The front of the train station is the ticket gate and exit. There is a seven- to eight-meter-wide passage on the east side of the square paved with cement bricks. It is an empty space when you enter it. If you want to find the entrance and waiting room, you must turn here to see it. The waiting room is at the innermost part of the airport. The door opens to the east and faces several tall poplar trees. Just now, Hong Yanwu was blasted out from here by the duty officer.

This railway station is actually quite famous, because it later became the most important high-speed rail hub in the country - Beijing South Railway Station. However, it would not be officially renamed until 1988. Much like what Hong Yanwu remembered, the current Yongdingmen Railway Station is still a backward and chaotic old station with quite backward public facilities.

If you look around, the most intuitive feeling now is that the train station building is low and the glass is dirty. Not to mention that the ticket window is just a row of small wooden windows, and even the waiting room looks like a simple iron shed. As long as you stand outside it, you can see the high overpass inside the station.

In addition, not only were the floor tiles in the square broken, but the paint on the iron guardrails was also almost peeled off. On the surrounding brick walls, there are many places where there are collapses and missing bricks and tiles. There is another special phenomenon here, that is, there are still many relics from the "movement" period on the broken brick walls. Those big-character posters posted on the walls may have been damaged by too much wind and rain, or were secretly torn off by people as waste paper. Most of them were broken and moved violently by the wind. And in addition to these, tourists are allowed to squat, lie down, and litter as they please in the square without anyone interfering.

No one wants to believe that such a chaotic place is less than ten kilometers away from Tiananmen. But in fact, this objective situation has always existed. To put it bluntly, this is all because Yongdingmen Station was designated as a temporary station during construction, and it has hardly been renovated in the following thirty years.

However, it is precisely because Yongdingmen Station specializes in local and temporary trains and is the most popular station in Beijing, so only trains departing from here will stop at Chadian Station.

Chadian Station is actually the least popular third-class station on the Jingshan Railway. It is so simple that it doesn’t even have a platform. Express trains never stop there, and local trains only stop for two minutes. Most of the people getting on and off there are labor camps and family members who come to visit. The reason for the existence of this small station is entirely because of the nearby "Qinghe Farm".

The reform-through-labor team known as "Qinghe Farm" is the first large-scale reform-through-labor farm in the new society. It was originally established to train Kuomintang agents. The word "Qinghe" in its name actually does not refer to the river, but to "the clear river water cleanses the soul." "Qinghe Farm" is actually the most formal name, but because people have to get on and off at Chadian Station, everyone still calls it Chadian Labor Camp.

A year ago, Hong Yanwu took a bus from here and was escorted to Qinghe Farm. Likewise, he had to take this slow train from Chadian Station back to Beijing. In fact, as of yesterday, he had spent 388 days at Qinghe Farm.

"Woo——!"

A long and piercing sound came from the station. It is an old-fashioned steam train, full of power and passion.

Hong Yanwu was awakened by the deafening sound of the whistle, stopped facing the glass window and continued to be in a daze. He put away the certificate of release from education, the certificate for leave, and the train ticket stubs, and then began to count all his belongings.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he took out a brown-red banknote with a pattern of steel workers on it, he was distracted again.

He will never forget that these five dollars were forced upon him by Captain Xue before he was sent to the train.

Captain Lao Xue is the warden of Chadian. His family is in dire straits and the whole family relies on the old man’s salary alone. He knew that in order to squeeze out five yuan, the old man would have to eat steamed buns and pickles for who knows how many days, so he would never accept it. But Captain Xue didn't allow him to refuse, saying that he didn't want him to have other ideas because he had no money. He actually held his hand tightly and forced the money to him.

In addition, because Captain Xue was afraid that he would encounter some unsolvable troubles on the road, he deliberately left the farm's phone number for him in advance in the upper left corner of the "Steelworker" in a space with a lot of blank space. "26110——9".

He really didn't know what to say about all this, so he could only call Uncle Xue and bow deeply to Captain Xue.

Perhaps it was pity that he was sent to a labor camp with adults at such a young age. This kind-hearted old man really took good care of him during the more than a year he spent in the labor camp. To be honest, he never thought that Uncle Xue was a policeman. He was simply a kind-hearted old man, a rare kind-hearted man with smiling eyebrows and smiling eyes. Uncle Xue treated him no worse than a real father. This time he returned to Beijing after being released from prison. It was all because of the help of Captain Xue that the field director granted him an extra eight days of leave and gave him up to 15 days of family leave. And on the morning of his return to Beijing, this old man dropped him off at the station like a son.

Hong Yanwu still remembers the scene when Captain Xue saw him off on the train back to Beijing.

On March 21, that is, this morning, the moment the train just stopped, he jumped on it.

But before the train started, Captain Xue, who had been freezing with him for more than half an hour, was shivering while still giving him instructions repeatedly. "Don't make your parents angry. Don't cause trouble when you go back. Learn well and remember."

When he thought of this, the corners of Hong Yanwu's eyes became a little wet, and he quickly rubbed them with the back of his hand.

In his last life, he was a white-eyed wolf and let the old man hurt him in vain. This time he doesn't mind, he must listen to Uncle Xue.

In his previous life, after this vacation, according to regulations, he should have returned to the farm to work. His household registration will also be officially settled in Chadian, and he will completely lose his qualifications as a Beijing resident.

But after he returned to Beijing last time, he did not go home at all, nor did he return to the farm to find a job. Instead, he wandered around the society for two years. It was because of this choice that he and his father suffered lifelong regrets.

And this time, he will never let the past happen again.

Hong Yanwu tilted his nose and counted down.

This "Steelmaking Five Yuan" is actually the largest denomination of banknotes in his hand. Besides, all he had left were some dimes and cents.

Don’t mention it, I haven’t seen these tickets in a long time. Among these coins, the one that looked freshest to him was the green five-cent note. Not to mention the warship pattern on the note, he had almost forgotten that banknotes of this denomination had ever existed in the world.

In fact, there are three types of paper coins like this, one cent, two cents and five cents. They all belong to the second set of RMB issued in 1955. Since most of the second set of RMB has been recycled and stopped for use, only this small-denomination paper currency is still in normal circulation on the market. In fact, this kind of small-denomination cents could still be seen until the third set of RMB was withdrawn from the circulation market, but at that time only the most common yellow one-cent notes remained.

Soon, the remaining loose coins were counted. There are three dollars and a half in banknotes, and there are also 13 cents in steel pennies. Together with the five-dollar bill, the total was eight dollars and sixty-eight cents. This was all the cash he had on him. Don't tell me, this number is quite auspicious.

After ordering the money, there are also food stamps.

People living in the 21st century can buy food freely, but in this era, if you want to buy any food, you almost have to show food stamps. In later generations, some people described food stamps as "eating passports", and some people It's called "second currency". In fact, food stamps are far more important than real currency. They should be called "survival passports" and "the first currency". If there are no food stamps, no matter how much money there is, people will starve to death. This is definitely a special case in the ticket era.

The food stamps in Hong Yanwu's hand were all issued by Chadian Farm. Although the farm has long since left the capital, it is still under the management of the Capital Labor Reform Bureau, so the tickets issued are all capital food stamps, so there is no problem that they cannot be used in other places. During his family vacation, he had to rely on these tickets to fill his stomach.

Speaking of which, food stamps, small pieces of paper less than half the size of a matchbox, are more diverse than RMB. This is all because people's diet at that time was more staple food than non-staple food, and non-staple food was mainly green vegetables. Therefore, people have no food in their stomachs, resulting in a high demand for food. There are more coarse grains than fine grains in the food supply. So food stamps became all kinds. Taking Beijing as an example, the supply ratio at this time was 20% rice, 40% white flour, and 40% cornmeal, which was jokingly called "two white and one yellow" by the common people.

The food stamps that Hong Yanwu ordered totaled twelve kilograms and three taels. Among them, rice stamps are one and a half catties, face stamps are five catties and one tael, and the rest are coarse grain stamps. In addition, there is another 20-tael gas ticket. This is not the kind used in later generations to refill the car with gas, but used to buy cooking oil at the grain store.

As for the old key...

Hong Yanwu really can’t remember it.

These two cigarette butts?

Go, what the hell.

Hong Yanwu shook his hand, flicked away two cigarette butts without hesitation, and put only half a box of matches back into his pocket. But just after throwing it away, he also remembered it.

Not to mention, he really had this kind of hobby when he was in the labor camp.

It turns out that at that time, Hong Yanwu liked cleaning the offices of correctional cadres the most, and he was praised for his positive attitude. But his purpose was not that simple. The real reason was that he was eyeing the cigarette butts and clean letter paper in the dustpan. The purpose is to break out the shredded tobacco from the cigarette butts and make them into "rolls" that can be "twisted" by hand, commonly known as "cannons".

The farm does not allow students to smoke, so Hong Yanwu can only indulge his addiction by smoking this hand-rolled "cannon". No one knew about this. In order to keep it secret, he didn't even tell Chen Liquan.

He doesn't feel any embarrassment about smoking butts either. Doing whatever you want at any time is better than others smoking without cigarettes. And through this incident, he also learned that the correctional officers kept their cigarette butts very short, which made him pity them more than he pity himself. The two thrown cigarette butts were probably the "souvenirs" he had hidden on his body.

In short, his current property has been counted. The total amount of RMB is eight yuan and sixty-eight cents, food stamps totaling twelve kilograms and three taels, two taels of gas stamps, half a box of matches, and a key...

Oh, no. Hong Yanwu suddenly remembered that there was a bedroll thrown on the ground in the square behind him.

He turned around and searched all the way back, only to find that there were only cigarette butts and scraps of paper. The dirty, torn, oily bedding was actually gone.

Was it thrown away by the garbage collector? Or was it taken away by someone else? Does anyone still want this thing?

Okay, just throw it away. He simply gave up searching.

The climate in Beijing in 1977 was no better than that of later generations. There were fewer buildings and cars, and there was no greenhouse effect. It was still very cold at the end of March. A small gust of wind blew by, like a knife. Hong Yanwu couldn't help but shudder, and he was really shivering a little.

He was not wearing the black clothes and pants from the labor camp. The smock outside the cotton-padded jacket and trousers was a white-washed people's uniform. His buttocks, knees, and elbows were all patched, and his feet were wearing a pair of worn-out black cotton pads, with the cotton already exposed on the uppers. Thirty years from now, his appearance will definitely be a magic weapon that is not passed down to the beggars. He might be able to become a disciple of the Six-Packs, but in this era, it will not attract anyone's attention. He stood in the square, like a leaf in the green grass, inconspicuous.

This is not surprising. Patching clothes is too common in this era of lack of food and clothing. "Three years for the new, three years for the old, and another three for mending." This was the living standard of the society at that time. Everyone is soaked in sweat and wearing patches, and everyone is leading the trend of simplicity.

In addition, the "Ten Years' Movement" also led to the "unification" of the republic's clothing, so that people all over the country looked the same. When it comes to clothing colors, almost all are blue (including blue and black), military green (including military yellow) and gray. Clothing styles are nothing more than "the third oldest clothes" such as military casual clothes, cadre clothes, and work clothes (youth clothes). These clothes have taken the country by storm and are worn by both men and women. And because of this kind of politicized clothing fashion that obliterates individuality, the people of the Republic are ridiculed by Westerners as "blue ants" who are the same.

Perhaps many people born in the 1980s and 1990s will find this scene very vulgar and ridiculous. From their perspective, Beijing has simply become a city occupied by beggars, and all the people these days can be compared to "Brother Sharp". But in this special era, everyone is like this. Dressing simply is a kind of honor, but also a kind of helplessness. This is the cause of the era, not the problem of any one person.

Hong Yanwu held his cotton-padded jacket tighter and began to look left and right, identifying the direction and looking for a way out.

This is an old train station more than thirty years ago. People are coming and going on bicycles. Passengers are either carrying luggage on their backs or carrying bedding in their hands. They rush past him. Everyone’s The faces all looked so distant yet so close.

Although everything in front of him was ordinary, it was like a dream to him. How could he not feel panic when he thought about being in 2012 not long ago? How can you not be excited?

The moist feeling in his eyes came again, and he couldn't help but want to shout in his heart.

1977! I, Hong Yanwu, am back to fight again!

But just as he clenched his fists, a particularly provocative sentence popped up in his mind.

Why do I always have tears in my eyes? Because I love this land deeply...

He immediately had an impulse and even wanted to roll on the dirt-filled ground. So that the soil of my hometown and the land of my hometown can become closer to me.

In the cold wind, his eyes were red and his nose was twitching, like a naughty child who was aggrieved by his father's punishment.

At this time, a long-lost bungalow courtyard inevitably jumped out of his heart.

East courtyard of No. 2 Furuli.

When he thought of going home, a warm feeling of excitement immediately rippled through his body. There were his relatives there, including his parents and sister who were still alive, and his brothers who still regarded him as a younger brother. Even Chen Liquan was still alive and well.

Go home, I want to go home.

Yes, go home immediately.