We spent our first two weeks of school in that stinking temporary classroom until a room became available at the proper school. This consisted of single-storey brick and stone classrooms joined to each other just like commune housing. I knew the local school well because sometimes I had secretly climbed over the walls and played there with some of my friends on Sundays.
But today was different. At eight that morning, the head of the school welcomed us and we were led by Teacher Song to our official classroom. It was a square room with two rice-papered windows on the outside wall, and a window and a door on the inside. There was slightly more natural light here than in the temporary classroom, and the ceiling was high and the air fresh. Pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin were glued on the back wall. On the front wall were large pictures of Chairman Mao and Vice-Chairman Lin Biao, smiling warmly to us from above the blackboard. The blackboard was already filled with the words we were to learn that day. Under the blackboard was a foot-high concrete platform, and we had desks and small benches to sit on. This was luxurious compared to the temporary classroom!
My fourth and fifth brothers were also at the school and this gave me comfort. It was my fourth brother's sixth and final year before he moved to the middle school, and my fifth brother was in his third year.
After the first two weeks of school, I still had no idea what I'd learnt or why I should study. Listening to Teacher Song babbling on just made me sleepy, especially if we had afternoon classes, which went from two until six. The only thing that kept me awake was the thought of playing with my friends during those ten- minute breaks.
After our second class one day, we were told to go out onto the school-ground to have our first fifteen-minute physical education class, with all two hundred and fifty students. The sports teacher stood in front of everyone with a loudspeaker in hand and shouted out the eight exercise routines accompanied by recorded music. They were simple arm and leg stretching exercises which took no more than five minutes. The new students were placed in the last line and we simply followed the older students in front of us.
I found my fourth brother Cunsang as soon as we'd finished. "How is it going?" he asked.
"It's boring! I hate it!" I replied.
"Join the tribe. Why did you think I wanted you to make chaos when my teacher came to our house that time?" He was reminding me of the time we received the broomstick beating from our dia.
"How can you understand the writing? It all looks like grass to me," I said.
He burst into laughter. "That's what I thought the first few weeks. It will get better, I promise."
I didn't believe him. "What's the use of learning words anyway?" I asked.
"I don't know," he replied honestly.
I followed him to my fifth brother's classroom on the opposite side of the school-ground and found Cunfar in the middle of a pile of bodies, wrestling each other onto the ground.
"How was your first lesson, scholar?" he teased breathlessly, as he dusted off the dirt.
"All agony, no fun," I replied.
"The maths is even more fun!" Cunsang gave a wicked smile.
"Can't be worse than Chinese," I said.
"Just wait!" he replied, as the bell rang for the next class.
I had prepared myself for the worst in our maths class, but to my surprise the numbers were more bearable than the grass-like Chinese writing. But even so, numbers represented nothing to me and I still preferred to dream of running wild outside and playing games with my friends.
The journey to and from school was much more interesting than the study itself. Besides stopping at the sandy bank to wrestle and play horse fights, we occasionally detoured to a local butcher shop that only killed pigs. The heart-piercing screams of the pigs were horrible. We would watch as our own pigs, with their legs tied, were carried away to be killed for meat. The pigs always seemed to know what was about to happen to them: they would refuse to eat, even if given better food. I would hear their desperate screams and would press my hands hard against my ears and run away to hide rather than witness this unbearable scene. The thought of our own happy pigs being sliced up by the butcher always made my stomach churn.
I wasn't the best student in my year, but I did earn enough votes among my classmates to become one of the first Little Red Scarf Guards in our class. We wore a triangular red scarf around our necks, and for this honour we had to qualify in Mao's "Three Goods": good study, good work and good health.
I didn't learn much academic stuff at all during my time at school, except the many propaganda phrases and songs, and many of those I didn't even understand. I learnt how to write simplified versions of the Chinese characters and some basic maths equations but I really only lived for the two weekly sports classes. I was good at the sporting stuff. We had rope-hopping, and track-and- field which was mainly running, and by the second half of our second year Teacher Song had selected Yang Ping as the captain of our class and me as the vice-captain.
By this time I was ten years old and the campaign to "Learn Lei Feng" had started in all the local schools. Our textbooks were full of Lei Feng's inspiring stories. He was a humble soldier who did many kind deeds. He helped the disadvantaged and especially the elderly, not for personal glory but because, he wanted to be a faithful and humble soldier of Mao's. Lei Feng's diary showed how devoted he was to Mao's ideals. Extracts from his diary were published and included in our textbooks. Everyone of all ages in China was encouraged to learn from him. Everyone wanted to be a "Living Lei Feng". We learned a song that encouraged us to "pick up the screw by the roadside and give it to the police", to contribute to our great country in any way, from the smallest contribution, such as the little screw, to the great sacrifices of one's life, like Lei Feng himself.
One day a student from our school found a coin on the road and gave it to his teacher. He was instantly praised by the headmaster as a model student. His action was what Lei Feng would have done. From then on, much money was found by students by the roadside and the headmaster's money jar quickly filled up, until one day a parent complained that his child had taken all their savings and given them to her teacher.
For a brief period some students stopped attending school or were late for classes because they said they were helping the elderly and the needy just like Lei Feng. But they were just being lazy, and the teachers soon found out. A moral, a "tonic story", for these students was told in our classes:
One day, Lei Feng was late for his military activity because he was carrying home an elderly lady with bound feet. The head of his army unit criticised him without knowing the real reason behind his tardiness. Lei Feng apologised and wrote in his diary that he should be able to do kind things for the needy as well as carrying out the normal required activities.
After this, the school demanded that all kind deeds should be conducted outside school hours.
I, like many of my classmates, wanted to be a hero like Lei Feng. The things he did deeply moved me. His spirit of "forgetting himself to help others" was my living motto. Some classmates and I often went to veterans' homes to help them sweep their yards or carry water from the wells. We even picked up horse droppings from the street and took them to the fields as fertiliser. We needed to do at least one kind deed each day and write it down in our diaries. I thought maybe someone would read my diary after I'd died and realise I'd done even more kind things than Lei Feng. Then I would be a hero too! But I was only ten years old. I didn't think of it as another propaganda campaign to secure our loyalty to Mao and his communist state.