Oh, my Leizhou Peninsula

Don’t look down on the photos I took, saying that they are messy, unprofessional and lacking in artistry.

In fact, this is a reflection of an author's deep penetration into life. The writing materials he obtained from real life are also a portrayal of some friends who worked hard to start a business and used their own wisdom and hands to achieve career success. , a kind of microcosm.

At the southern end of the mainland of our motherland, there is a peninsula called Leizhou Peninsula. The three major peninsulas in my country are Shandong Peninsula, Liaoning Peninsula and Leizhou Peninsula. It can be seen that the Leizhou Peninsula ranks among the top three because of its unique geographical location.

According to the entry in "Cihai":

"Leizhou Peninsula, in the southwest of Guangdong Province, extends between Beibu Gulf and Leizhou Bay. It faces Hainan Island across the Qiongzhou Strait. Along the coast It is rich in fish. The climate is hot and tropical and subtropical cash crops are abundant.”

This is of course only a general picture. According to the relevant information I found from local historical records and from reading miscellaneous books, I know that the Leizhou Peninsula is about 140 kilometers long from north to south and 60 to 70 kilometers wide from east to west. It covers an area of ??8,888 square kilometers, accounting for 10% of the land area of ??Zhanjiang City. About 71%.

What is even more surprising is that some people compare the Leizhou Peninsula to a long boot extending into the South China Sea. It is said that this peninsula is surrounded by the sea on three sides, with a long and winding coastline of more than 1,555 kilometers, forming more than 100 large and small harbors, among which Beibu Bay and Leizhou Bay are the most famous.

The author does not dare to rob people of their beauty. The above data comes from "Zhanjiang City Chronicles", and the author once asked Guo Niang for advice.

The author came up with such a topic, naturally not to popularize geographical knowledge. It is just like the ancients telling stories or acting, with gongs and drums noisy, trumpets blowing, music played, and the minions come out first. , Uh-huh..., shout a few times, it's called passing.

When the author was young, he moved with his family to the Torch Farm in Leizhou Peninsula due to reservoir emigration. He studied in the primary school of the farm’s workers’ children and lived there for about three years.

Although I was young and ignorant at that time, I still experienced the hardship of the living environment at that time.

At that time, the farm mainly planted sugar cane, sisal, rubber, lemongrass and other cash crops, as well as sweet potatoes, cassava, peanuts, sesame, and rarely rice.

Under the influence of natural disasters and other factors at that time, the farm's food supply was quite tight for a period of time. The food supplied was mainly sweet potatoes and cassava, with a smaller amount of rice.

Once, all I ate was cassava, and I got so drunk (actually I got cassava poisoning) that I felt dizzy. Fortunately, my classmate carried me into a sugar cane field near the school and cut off the cane for me to eat. The sugar cane juice alleviated the toxicity of the cassava and saved my life. Otherwise, I really can’t chat here today.

Fortunately, the red land of Leizhou Peninsula is both vast and fertile. Whatever you plant, you will grow. For some companies that were established earlier, bananas and papayas are everywhere in front of and behind the houses and on the roadside. They can be picked when ripe on the trees to satisfy hunger. Moreover, in those hilly areas, there are many edible wild fruits, especially mangosteen, mangosteen, bayberry, bayberry, ganache, pallet fruit, etc., which can be found everywhere, and you can pick some anywhere to quench your hunger and thirst.

Because the land is vast and fertile, both on farms and in villages, grains and oil crops are grown on a large scale. Even if the rice supply is small, people will not be hungry.

There is a lot of land and little labor. It is busy during the harvest season. People must be a little careless in their work. There are quite a lot of sweet potatoes, cassava, peanuts, etc. left out. This is good for those of us who have holidays. young scavenger. As long as you follow the farm workers who dig and pick potatoes, and turn over the potato fields again, you will definitely come back with a full harvest.

I clearly remember that during the summer vacation of 1960, I lived with Uncle Yao’s family in Zhanjiang. My Aunt Lan, who was teaching in Lianjiang, came to Zhan for treatment and brought a pound of peanut oil to honor my fifth wife. None of the other uncles had a share, which shows how scarce and precious cooking oil was at that time.

Even that pound of oil was saved bit by bit by her family. This trivial matter in life left a deep impression on me, and I have never forgotten it even today, when I buy oil for my own consumption or as a gift, often weighing ten kilograms.

During the summer vacation of 1961, my friends and I went to the fields of Egan Village near the farm almost every day. In the higher ground where peanuts had been harvested, I used a small hoe to turn over the fields. I went there and after more than ten days I picked up more than 20 kilograms of peanuts, dried them and sent them back to my uncle Yao's house in Zhanjiang.

At that time, in a living environment where even senior cadres and senior intellectuals had a rationed supply of food and oil, it must have been both precious and enviable.

I once saw my very bloody, generous and generous Uncle Yao, before going to school, silently packing peanuts in a brown paper envelope and putting each package into his briefcase. Here, he took it to school and distributed it to his colleagues.

During the summer vacation of that year, the farm began to plant upland rice on a large scale, that is, sowing rice seeds on the slopes, so it is also called slope rice. At the same time, edible oil crops peanuts and sesame are planted in large areas.

At that time, even we primary school students were mobilized to participate in sowing peanuts. It can be seen that the labor scene was huge, people's enthusiasm for production was fully mobilized, and the enthusiasm for labor was unprecedentedly high. Leizhou Peninsula's On the red earth, red flags are fluttering, gongs and drums are noisy, and songs are loud, looking forward to a good harvest.

People are born and nurtured by the earth. Having said that, only when human beings give full play to their talents, use their wisdom and hands, work hard, struggle hard, and do everything possible to develop production, can they have enough food and clothing, and can they live a happy life. Only by using colors as bright as the sun can people change an unsatisfactory living environment and make it brighter and better.

In the golden autumn of October, as long as you look around, you will see the red land of Leizhou Peninsula among the green waves of the sea of ??sugarcane, and you will definitely see patches of golden yellow. In the middle, the ears of rice sway gently, exuding the fragrance of rice, overflowing with people's joy of harvest, showing people's smiles and joyful laughter.

That autumn, a young military cadre named Cao, dressed in a neat military uniform and carrying two wooden boxes of books, came to the Torch Farm Workers’ Children School from Guangzhou to serve as our six The head teacher of the grade taught us Chinese.

He is youthful, full of vitality, mature and steady, has a clear voice, speaks slowly and softly, is gentle and decent, and is good at teaching and enlightening us.

He led us in morning exercises and recess exercises, led us in self-study, read extracurricular books, told us stories, and went with us to participate in voluntary labor, harvest upland rice, pull peanuts, and cut sesame seeds.

Teacher Cao is not only my Chinese teacher, but also my first enlightenment teacher in writing. At the same time as Mr. Cao, there were many transferred military cadres, veterans and college students who arrived at the farm to work at the same time. They came together from all over the world for the construction of Leizhou Peninsula.

In my boyhood, although I only lived in Leizhou Peninsula for three years, I transferred to school back to my hometown. When he was 19 years old, he responded to the call of the times and went to the countryside of Leizhou Peninsula to participate in construction for nearly ten years.

(Friends visiting, to be continued)