The slogans written on the walls of old houses are unique scenery in my memory.
In the 1970s and 1980s, more than half of Hutou’s buildings were century-old courtyard houses. Nearly 70% of the hundreds of people from the four production teams in the big house are crowded into the old house, the new house, the foreign house, the salt shop, the upper bunk, the upper room...
Walls of the courtyard hall In addition to some narrative words such as "xx borrowed xx pounds of grain" and other narrative words, there are quotations from great people such as "read and study seriously to understand Marxism" in official style. There is a large courtyard in Huo Lane in the east courtyard, where more than a dozen families lived in the collective. Both sides of the hall are filled with large and small coffins, and the walls are covered with quotations and "Lao Sanzian". Three years ago, when my eldest sister's family moved into a new house and my brother-in-law went to the old courtyard to pick up the ancestral tablets, I once again reviewed the beautiful writing by the torch.
In eye-catching places in the housing estate, the mottled exterior walls are covered with water stains and moss and slogans in various fonts. Our old house is made of Sanhe rammed earth. Due to its age, the walls are severely aged. A faint black cursive slogan can be seen: We must liberate Taiwan. On the wall of Lao Mao's house next to the paddy field is a brick-red slogan: Be vigilant, defend the motherland, and prepare for war! On the wall of Fuying's house is: When one person serves as a soldier, the whole family will be honored. On the wall of the production team's bullpen room is: Never forget class struggle. There are three slogans on the wall of the ancestral hall: Resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea, protect the homeland and the country; all reactionaries are paper tigers; practice strict economy and oppose waste. At that time, the most beautiful line in the Hutou house was the one on the wall of Xiangming's house, "Strive to work hard, strive for the top, and build socialism as quickly as possible, and more cost-effectively." The "Agricultural Learning from Dazhai" in high, imitated Song Dynasty and red is the most popular.
I suspect that this most popular slogan is the work of my teacher: I remember in primary school art class, the teacher often taught us to write artistic calligraphy, and the content was "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture". The teacher's demonstration is exactly the same style as the one on the wall. I hate myself for being so clumsy that I can't write the word "Zhai" well.
I remember the slogan on the wall of the warehouse of the Beiwu Production Team in the East Yard: Learn from Dazhai and catch up with Xiyang. The slogan on the wall of Xianxian Cooperative is: Dig holes deeply, accumulate grain widely, and do not seek hegemony. From the Hutou house to the Jiangbian intersection house, there is a very three-dimensional slogan on the wall of Wenkai's house: Foolish Old Man moved mountains and transformed China. The slogan in cursive script on the wall of his neighbor's house is very interesting to read: If the whole county goes up, what will happen to the mountains? Work hard!
The slogan on the wall of the livestock farm on Shiqiao is also brick red: The yield per mu is 30,000 pounds. This slogan puzzled me for a long time. It wasn’t until I personally experienced the “double rush” autumn harvest when household quotas were guaranteed, that I truly understood what “satellite release” meant.
In 1977, the most luxurious Xianxian brigade auditorium in Luanshan Commune was completed. The newly painted slogan "The fundamental solution for agriculture lies in mechanization" is particularly eye-catching and can be seen in Zhoujiawu a hundred meters away. At that time, a new road was built in Hutou from Maple Tree to Cunbei Ridge via Daling to facilitate tractor travel. People called it the "Mechanical Road". Regrettably, our brigade has not become a pilot unit for "gardening construction" to flatten the land and straighten the field edges. The brigade headquarters only has a few walking tractors, and each production team only has one electric thresher. We can only secretly carry out the work behind everyone's back. I ran down to the village to watch the rice transplanter at work. At that time, the art troupe of the brigade also staged a flower drum opera for the occasion - "Two Old Men Watch the Machine".
When we were in the third grade of elementary school, we read a slogan newly painted with lime on the adobe wall of Teacher Shuiyuan’s house: Running towards 2000! Tan, a senior transfer student, said: "In 2000, we are all over a hundred years old, and I don't know if we are still alive." We all laughed at his inability to do math.
I went to Jiangxi Lotus for the first time in 1980. From Hanshanli to Nancun, you have to pass an abandoned factory. When I entered the factory through the back door, I found a slogan written on the wall: Learn from Dazhai and catch up with Hunan. As a Hunanese, I felt a sense of pride for the first time.
In 1980, Luanshan Cement Plant No. 1 was officially put into operation.
When we passed the cement factory in middle school, we looked up and saw eight big characters on the main building: self-reliance and hard work.
"An only child is like a flower, benefiting the country, the people and the family" is catchy and easy to understand. This is a slogan born in the era of family planning. Intubation, ligation, and induction of labor were high-frequency words in that special era. "Family planning is my country's basic national policy" was the theme slogan of the "National Policy Building" in various towns and villages that year. On National Day in 1996, Zou Ernai, Master Fa and I saw this slogan at a zoo in Beijing.
After the reform and opening up, the slogans on the walls of old houses have also kept pace with the times and have a commercial feel. There was once such a slogan painted on the wall of an old house on Wenhua Road in the county: Feed a flower, and a camel will make thousands of families rich!
Later, the advertising industry developed rapidly, and the exterior walls of the old house became cheap walls. Advertising space. Once when I walked into my hometown, I was dazzled by the advertisements for motorcycles, electrical appliances, banks, hospitals, real estate and building materials.
Today, those old houses that have stood in the wind and rain for decades or hundreds of years are gone, replaced by villas and small bungalows.
The old house is gone, but the scenery on the wall of the old house is still vaguely remembered.