平凡的世界英文版World of Plainness 1-1 20200520

Because the douban.com is not reliable anymore, I want to transfer my translations into this site.

World of Plainness 1-1, Lu Yao, pluiepoco, 20200514, 20200519/20

One day as usual, between February and March in 1975, it was sleety; the woolly raindrops blended with sparse snowflakes were drifting the way down to the earth. Insects would wake up from winter sleep soon, how could the snow stay any longer? Mostly, the flakes disappeared totally before they touched the earth. On the Loess Plateau, the coldest and longest winter was leaving, but the warmest spring was far from coming.

On such a sleety day, no person was willing to go out, if it didn't matter. The county town was much less noisy than usual in every street and lane. In the shades, the leftover snowdrifts and ice blocks were fading away by the knocks of raindrops, so the flagstone streets were overflown by dirty liquid. The wind was still cold. The streets were empty, but at random, there would be a yokel, wearing a poky felt cap merely enough to cover the forehead, with a basket of potatoes or radishes in one arm, and yelling for possible buyers in a feeble voice. Oh, a town would lose all vigor in such a day, and nothing was loveable any more.

Fortunately, in the county high school yard half way up the hill, scenes were different. Right after the bell ring of lunch, groups of boys and girls were rushing out of rows of stone caves. They were knocking their bowls and chopsticks aloud as thunders, stepping on the muddy ground, noising across the yard, to throng southward until the foot of wall at the General Office which was also a row of caves. Such a big yard was trampled into a mud pit in a twinkling of an eye. At the same time, those day students living in the town were also gushing out of the east gate of school in two or threes. They were holding umbrellas, chatting and laughing on the way, across a long downhill path pre-embedded with sidelong stone pallets, and after a short while, they had disappeared in the streets and lanes.

At the root of south wall of school yard, a dozen lines of students were ranked by class numbers. The students on duty were distributing foods to everybody. Since everybody registered and paid for the foods yesterday, the process was simple now, and the students on duty merely had to allot the booked share of foods as scheduled. The vegetables were ranked in three classes: first, second and third class. The first class vegetables were mainly potatoes, cabbages or sweet potato vermicelli, studded with appetizing meat slices, 30 cents per serving; the second class vegetables were almost the same with the first class, except for absence of meat, 15 cents per serving; and the third class vegetables were the poorest, freshwater boiled white turnips — with several dots of chili oil floating on the surface symbolically, attempting to cover up such excessive freedom from fattiness. Nevertheless, the third class vegetables were the cheapest, 5 cents per serving.

For every line of students, a bit of the first class vegetables were contained in a small washbasin, indicating few students could afford the vegetables with meat. A bit of the third class vegetables were also contained in a small washbasin, showing few students were willing to favor the lowest class vegetables. Only the second class vegetables were contained in a big enamel foot basin, too full to overflow, obviously, most students enjoyed the second class vegetables, neither luxury nor poor. The staple foods were also ranked in three classes: wheaten bun, maize bun and sorghum bun; white, yellow and black, the three colors shew a difference; so the students joked them to be Europe, Asia and Africa respectively.

Most students of the queuing flock were from the countryside, with cheeks and bodies branded more or less with signs of labor. Except a few of them were dressed as boorish as their parents who were peasants, these students who were regarded as “masters” by their fathers and uncles were dressed decently. Although in this moment the peasants living in poverty-stricken mountainous areas were mostly in lack of clothes and foods, their children studying in a bigger world should deserve some pieces of decent clothes, so they were setting their teeth in order to save for such clothes. Anyway, there were a couple of students from richer rural families who were dressed up almost the same as those from politically influential urban families, and what was more, on their wrist there was always a watch shining. Such “foreigners” were standing in the crowd, like a Triton among the minnows, not hiding their superiority complex at all. They were queuing behind the uncommon basin containing the first class vegetables, so eye-catching, though they were a few.

On this barren and sterile Loess Plateau, a county high school might be the highest education institution of the county; notwithstanding such height, it could possibly afford to build a mess hall for its students in no case. Whatever the weather was like, all students would have meals in the open air. Fortunately, these young people from the countryside and mountainous areas were used to this kind of picnic in the middle of labor in the wilderness. Who cared? Usually, in sunny days, they would squat in a circle with best friends, talking and laughing, and gave an end to each meal.

Well, that day was different. All who had received foods and vegetables were protecting their bowls with their straw hats or elbows, toddling through the muddy yard to their own dormitories in a panic. In a short time, the mess ground was vacated, with few left. Most students on duty, the distributors, had also left one after another.

Now, only one distributor in class 1 of grade 1 stayed on the unmanned mess ground, waiting. This was a pudgy lame girl student, likely a polio survival. In front of her body, the three basins were already vacant of vegetables, and the bun basket was almost empty, with four coke-like sorghum buns left. Whose buns were they, the girl’s? Of course not, since she held a wheaten bun and a maize bun, and her bowl seemingly contained the second class vegetables. This betrayed the lame girl was from a middle class family. Look, she was apparently unhappy, waiting for the latest comer, with her own foods and vegetables in her hands under the dripping eaves. Let’s imagine, the latest comer must be the poorest guy who ate the poorest staple foods, alas, without even the cheapest third class vegetables, 5 cents per serving!

Snowflakes were thickening in the rain, all of a sudden, blurring people's far or near field of vision. The day was as silent as the night in this voiceless town. A cock crow was heard from afar, adding a dreamlike gloom in this grey world.

At the instant, from the north end of this empty yard, a tall thin lad was coming. He was hunching over and staggering in the mud, with an empty bowl in his armpit. The lad was thin, sallow-faced, with low cheekbones and an upright Grecian nose. His fading boyish greenness had not been replaced by the special glory of youth at his age, obviously due to malnutrition.

He was stretching his long thin legs, stepping in muddy water. Perhaps, he was the owner of those black buns, wasn’t he? Whoever wore this poor would eat this poor. Look, his clothes were somewhat like what a student should wear, but they were dirty, unevenly dyed, and made of cotton cloth woven manually. He wore a pair of old yellowish training shoes with two pieces of cotton ropes in place of the original shoelaces, and the upper of one shoe was even clouted with a strip of blue cloth. His aged trousers were merely long enough to cover one half of his legs; thanks to his socks, he was not barelegged. (No body but he knew the heels of his cotton socks were holes, which seemed intact with covering of the shoes).

He was walking directly to the mess ground. Now it was certain that he was coming to fetch these black buns. The lame girl couldn't wait for too long and had already limped away with her own foods and bowl before he arrived at the basket of buns.

He came before the basket, stared for a second, and then bent down to pick up his serving of two sorghum buns. The other two were left in the basket; for no reason he did not take all.

He stood up and had a quick glance at the three empty basins on the ground. He was lucky enough to find some remains better than nothing on the bottom of basin vacant of the second class vegetables. The drips from the eaves were spilling the vegetable juice out. He looked around and found no one else in the yard covered by the misty rain and snow. He squatted soon, in haste like a thief, and spooned all remaining juice mixed with rainwater from the basin bottom to this own bowl. The thrilling noise created by the scrapping spoon on the basin bottom was exploding like bombs. Blood flushed onto his sallow cheeks. A big drip from the eaves dropped on the bottom of the basin, scattering the vegetable juice onto his cheeks. He closed his eyes and two teardrops were seen falling down from his chin. Oh, can we suppose he was weeping the chili juice out?

He stood up, palmed his cheeks, and carried his half bowl of leftover vegetable juice to the boiled water room at the southwest corner. He mixed the vegetable juice with some hot tap water from the wall, tore the sorghum buns into shreds, soaked them in the mingled juice, and then squatted under the eaves to devour the foods.

Suddenly, he stopped chewing, and saw a girl student who came to the basket and picked up the other two black buns. Yes, she also came. He stared at her back, poorly clothed, for a good while.

This was nearly a custom: since the beginning of this semester, whenever it was time for meal, she or he was always the latest comer, picked up two black sorghum buns and silently moved off. This was not agreed. In fact, they were not familiar with each other, nor had they talked to each other. Both of them were promoted to county high school right after graduation from their respective local commune middle school. Since this semester began freshly, most students in one class knew no more than the ones from the same village or same school.

He squatted under the eaves, gobbling and pondering: “Why does she come as late as I to take foods? Oh, she must be as poor as I. Oh, yes, we are too poor to have good foods, but we have our own tender and sensitive self-esteems, so we escape public eyes and silently take away our own indecent black things, to avoid too many wordless insults!”

However, he knew almost nothing about her, except that her name was known as Plum Rouge in the first roll call of the class.

Perhaps he was known as Fred Sun merely to her?