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： 

• 想起一句话：“虽然不常想起，但也不曾忘记。”谢谢你的系列。 -紫君- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 14:43:20

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

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

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

• 请教"孔老二"怎么翻译成英语比较贴切? -ntotl- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:19:06

• 回复： -美坛奇葩- ♂ (88 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:27:04

• 但在中文中"孔老二"有点贬义. 你这种翻译是中性翻译. -ntotl- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 18:32:38

• 回复： -美坛奇葩- ♂ (98 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:05:42

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

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

• 回复： -美坛奇葩- ♂ (61 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 19:51:10

• 听说foxconn给员工每月900人民币 -hahaman- ♀ (24 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 20:05:11

• Fox Canny! -美坛奇葩- ♂ (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

• 我下乡好几次。春天去过。我也拨包米。有一次， 看到一个公马 -bearsback- ♂ (261 bytes) () 06/29/2010 postreply 20:52:36

• :-) -美坛奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 05:30:30

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

• I was a little country fellow, so ... -美坛奇葩- ♂ (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. -美坛奇葩- ♂ (98 bytes) () 06/30/2010 postreply 13:15:10

• 你说的是黄瓜花不是黄瓜，bear说的没错，黄瓜看起来 -戏雨飞鹰- ♀ (8 bytes) () 07/01/2010 postreply 09:04:25

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