Photography: Zhang Wei

I went to several schools when I was a child, but only Mahuangshan Middle School is my real alma mater.

For a person who is not directly admitted to the university, it is not confident to write an article about his alma mater. Although his alma mater, Mahuangshan Middle School, is not as high as the university, it is undoubtedly the knowledge hall of my youth. My alma mater is located in a hilly town on the Loess Plateau. Because ephedra grows everywhere, it is named Mahuang Mountain. Mahuang Mountain is located at the southernmost tip of Yanchi, about 100 km away from the county seat, and at the junction of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia "Jiming Three Provinces". My alma mater snuggled in its arms, sucking the milk of the earth, and raising a batch of children of farmers in the annual ring of time, and generals and postdoctoral fellows all walked out of here.

1973 transferred from other schools to his alma mater, 1975 recommended junior high school, 1977 took the exam to go to senior high school. Without Mahuangshan Middle School, there would be no junior high school years for me. I was 15 years old that year, and I didn't know much about the newly resumed college entrance examination, not to mention what impact it would have on my future life. From primary school to high school, there are students from Minghai, Xiangdong, Chen Qing, Xue Hai, Chen Wen, Jinhai, Kaicheng, Inheritance and me, as well as my brother-in-law Yulin and Wu Yu, and of course, smart female students who love to learn. Up to now, there have been frequent contacts, and some students have not seen each other for decades, and there is no news. For example, if we have passed half a century this year, we can never go back, but we and the ridge of our village, as well as the smoke in the sunset, will always remain in my memory.

During school, the most impressive school buildings are canteens, dormitories and classrooms from west to east, all of which are gray brick bungalows. Listening to the students who live on campus, every morning after self-study, at noon and at night, the canteen is a battlefield for us rural children to compete for seats, queue up for meals and see beautiful girls at school. Xue Jun and Jianguo are small people, so it will never be their turn to jump the queue. Tall and burly students are warriors in everyone's mind. Satisfying the hunger for food in adolescence is the greatest demand of our time. Every meal is half a catty, and I only have a few dollars for living expenses every month. In case there are not enough pickles at home, you can buy some vegetables to eat in the canteen. The most unforgettable thing is the cabbage soup with 50 cents a ladle in the canteen. What we students who don't live on campus envy most is the students who live on campus. People play basketball and football after supper. They are really alive and kicking, and when we come back from school, we have to fetch water to sweep dung and pull up pig grass. ......

Now high school children are really happy. Parents give them living expenses in 800 yuan every month. There are many dishes to choose from in the canteen, and some parents have to accompany them. However, before 1979, every student would bring one or two side dishes to school. I remember I inherited a jar of sour cabbage on my chest and a jar of salted pork on my back. When I first arrived in the dormitory, I was "divided up" by my classmates, and I had to carry a bag of rice to the school cafeteria every month to get a meal ticket. Carrying rice and vegetables to school is dozens of miles away. In order to save a few miles of energy, this winding, narrow and narrow narrow narrow path is particularly long. Nowadays, pickles have left our three meals a day, but the taste of vegetables remains in our hearts, and the endless sour, salty, bitter and spicy taste hangs on the stomach wall.

The classroom is a herringbone bungalow with gray bricks. It leaks in rainy days in autumn, and it is cold in winter. Even if it is snowing outside the window, the classroom is still warm and quiet, and there are candles flashing in the classroom after midnight. Some clever students are studying hard, and the last one out is Zhan Qing. He used the time under the kerosene lamp to recite almost every question in the teaching reference materials on which page and line. Zhiyuan, Xue Jun and Jianguo also took part in the competition of language and mathematics, physics and chemistry in Yin Nan. Xue Jun won the third place and Jianguo also won the fourth place, which was unimaginable for a township middle school at that time. The three of them were admitted to the "prestigious schools" in Ningxia as they wished. Shengjiu, Hong Jiu, Chen Wen, Weidong, Tang Zhen, Lixin, Literature and Baoqin were admitted to technical secondary schools, Minghai was admitted to military schools and eastward to petroleum schools. Coincidentally, the admitted students happily went to the county for physical examination and took a truck with the person who went to Zhaojiawan to build roads. The depressed mood at that time was indescribable, and they wished there was a crack in the ground.

Now every time I meet and talk about my alma mater, I have a spicy taste of life in my heart. At that time, there were many interesting stories, such as the story of a civil servant riding a donkey backwards and bending down with Mao Laosan, the story of Kai Cheng and Yan Ming hanging into a water cellar, and the story of boys and girls looking for someone to hand over a note. I often peek at novels in class and am severely criticized and punished by the teacher. My deskmate Wei Zhu often tipped me off. When the teacher came into the classroom, he reminded me that once Mr. Chen, a chemistry teacher, didn't "wake me up" several times, so I was so angry that Mr. Chen slapped me. It's really a painful slap. Once in a Chinese exam, I peeked at my deskmate's questions and was found by Mr. Hu. At that time, I was corrected and stood for a class.

Chinese teacher Hu, who is also our head teacher, wears a pair of glasses with deep myopia, ends with his unique dialect and teaches us poor children to recite Chairman Mao's Qin Xue and Mu He again and again in Mandarin, which left a deep impression on me. I especially like his Chinese class, which still affects me today. Teacher Xie Anli, who teaches politics, always makes us recite political principles and teaches us that things are divided into two parts. We can see the essence through phenomena and integrate theory with practice, which has benefited us a lot throughout our lives. In my favorite math class, there are several famous teachers, including Xu Guanglei who teaches geometry, Zhang Hongfu who teaches algebra, Yaohua Chen who teaches chemistry and Li Rong who teaches physics. In the late 1970s, children in rural areas had limited imagination. The so-called great ambition is nothing more than changing from eating farm-style dishes to commercial dishes, or in the words of teacher Zhang Hongfu, changing from wearing sandals to wearing leather shoes. I don't know how big the outside world is, but I heard that the county is very prosperous, with tall buildings, cars, cinemas, lights, telephones and spacious roads.

After 40 years away from my alma mater, I returned to Mahuang Mountain twice this year. Things are different, and the castle peak remains the same. The alma mater has been gradually forgotten and turned into an abandoned yard. However, the poplars in front of the door are still so lush, as if trying to prove and tell the glory and hope here. I can't bear to see it, and I don't want to see it. My alma mater is like Waterloo in my life. Why can a soldier who lost the battle here meet his elders in Jiangdong? The entanglement of college entrance examination failure is difficult to change only for a lifetime. I know this is not the fault of my alma mater, and it is fair to all poor students. Alma mater is like a poor mother, who always submit to humiliation and loves her children. No matter the ragged boy in Shiliba Village, as long as he comes, he won't look at him coldly. The pond on Xishan 'ao washed away the dirt on us after work, accompanied by the sound of the morning glow and the flashing kerosene lamp in the silent classroom at night, which is still a scene in my mind. Pay tribute to the years of my alma mater and the trance-like figure of my old classmates under kerosene lamps. No matter how long and how far I leave, the love of my alma mater is irreplaceable. The love of my alma mater is as bright as the sun and the moon.

Time flies, the sun and the moon fly like a shuttle. I can only relive those young days that I can't go back. The earth revolves in orbit every day, but those young days can never go back. Everything will eventually become a memory in our minds and will be branded in our hearts forever. Nothing can express my attachment to my alma mater. I can only recall the time and make it beautiful forever.

About the author: Zhang Wei, pen name Xiaofeng, male, from Yanchi County, Ningxia, has worked in the army and government departments successively. He likes writing, loves life, cultivates sentiment and enjoys himself.

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