Original Article: Sufferings in Past and Good Times at Present

Original Article: Sufferings in the Past and Good Times at Present

1970s. China.

During the Campaign of Criticizing Lin Biao and Confucius, there was an indispensible educational program. Elder people were invited to tell stories to young students about their sufferings in the old society of China before the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, and to convince the youth of the good living standard the Communist Party brought about.

This is because that Lin Biao used as his motto Confucius’s saying: Restrain yourself to achieve your goals, or literally meaning: Restrain oneself to restore to Rituals of Chou Dynasty. Restore to the past? An easy interpretation for the ordinary people was that Lin wanted to bring the Chinese society from the then socialistic back to the capitalistic.

During one of the events, we had three speakers. Each of them told us their sufferings in the past, such as hunger, toiling labors for little income, illness and poverty. However, things did go astray sometimes.

One of the speakers mentioned that he suffered the most from hunger in 1961, when each person had a ration of 140g of crop food each day. Another one asked the audience: “In the past, when I was working for the landlord, I could enjoy salty boiled soybeans all the time; but I have not been able to have some bean curds for years. Where has the Party taken the beans to?” Each time when something like this happened, the organizer would tell the speaker, “Please have some boiled water, over there, please …”. Apparently the speakers did not realize the embarrassment they created. “I am okay, I can continue without water”. “I am not thirsty, and I am not tired”.

所有跟帖： 

• 想起一句話：“雖然不常想起，但也不曾忘記。”謝謝你的係列。 -紫君- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 14:43:20

• Thank you! -美壇奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 17:50:27

• very well written, indeed. i could not help laughing when -戲雨飛鷹- ♀ (123 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 15:31:01

• Thanks! -美壇奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 17:50:47

• 請教"孔老二"怎麽翻譯成英語比較貼切? -ntotl- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:19:06

• 回複： -美壇奇葩- ♂ (88 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:27:04

• 但在中文中"孔老二"有點貶義. 你這種翻譯是中性翻譯. -ntotl- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:32:38

• 回複： -美壇奇葩- ♂ (98 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:05:42

• Thanks for your explanation. -ntotl- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:27:30

• 我家以前給地主扛活 -hahaman- ♀ (20 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:42:05

• 回複： -美壇奇葩- ♂ (61 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:51:10

• 聽說foxconn給員工每月900人民幣 -hahaman- ♀ (24 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 20:05:11

• Fox Canny! -美壇奇葩- ♂ (16 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 08:26:05

• goog writing! at that era, students would take some educational -help15- ♀ (519 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 20:14:01

• 我下鄉好幾次。春天去過。我也撥包米。有一次， 看到一個公馬 -bearsback- ♂ (261 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 20:52:36

• :-) -美壇奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 05:30:30

• 回複：:-) -bearsback- ♂ (28 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 12:17:53

• I was a little country fellow, so ... -美壇奇葩- ♂ (138 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 06:11:34

• 我不知道cucumber -bearsback- ♂ (24 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 12:26:46

• Cucumber. How to identifying male and female flowers. -美壇奇葩- ♂ (98 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 13:15:10

• 你說的是黃瓜花不是黃瓜，bear說的沒錯，黃瓜看起來 -戲雨飛鷹- ♀ (8 bytes) () 07/01/2010 postreply 09:04:25

• ah ... -美壇奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 07/01/2010 postreply 11:37:04