More than thirty years ago, my administrative level should be between the positive department and the negative hall: at that time, I was in primary school in a town of a county in Hunan, always serving as the class leader with outstanding grades. Later, I also became the captain of the Young Pioneers, commanding all the teachers and students in the school to raise the national flag and do morning exercises every morning. According to the number of students managed, the class leader manages more than 50 people, which is equivalent to a section chief; the whole school has more than 1,000 people, so the captain is higher than the positive department but not reaching the hall level. If in the army, it would be at least the level of a regiment commander. My momentum was unmatched for a time.
But even with such brilliance, I still envied the snot-nosed guy in our class—this guy always had two noodle-like things hanging on his lip, flexible in extending and retracting. Normally, they swayed left and right, dangling in the air. Once startled, they would instantly retract, truly amazing. Of course, I wasn't envious of his flexibility, but rather of the fact that his family owned a house built on their own land in the town, with three rows of racks dividing three large wooden houses. Moreover, they had their own kitchen and toilet. Meanwhile, our family of four lived in a dormitory unit, only having a room of about ten square meters. After placing two beds and a table, there was hardly any space left. We cooked in the corridor, and the toilet was shared. To use the toilet, we had to walk from the second floor to the first floor, then go out of the building, climb seventy steps to halfway up the mountain to solve the problem.
As for that toilet, I still have some impressions. It was the only toilet in the hospital where my mother worked, used by doctors, nurses, families, and patients alike. With many people and few facilities, plus being cleaned only once every other day, one could imagine how foul-smelling that toilet was. According to the description of predecessors, the smell of this toilet exhibited different characteristics in different seasons: In spring, it was fresh and full of vitality, silently spreading everywhere; in summer, it was passionate and intense, brimming with excitement; in autumn, it carried a killing atmosphere, with a strong ammonia smell mixed in, especially irritating to the eyes; in winter, it was sticky and stagnant, and walking through it, one could feel the resistance brought by the stench. The elders said that a person actually only has one chance to smell the odor. Once immersed in it, like living in a stinky market, one no longer perceives the smell. If one stepped out of the range of the foul air and suddenly breathed in fresh air, it would bring great joy. At that time, we kids often wandered on the edge of these two kinds of air, running in and out to enjoy that pleasure. In that era, only children could find fun in life.
The hospital's wards were on the mountaintop, while the outpatient building and dormitories were in one building at the foot of the mountain. The first floor was the outpatient injection room and pharmacy, the second floor was the dormitory for all the doctors and nurses, and the third floor had only one big room and a very large balcony, where the director’s family lived. Setting the toilet halfway up the mountain was probably considered convenient for everyone, but I didn’t understand why the director lived on the third floor, which was the farthest from the toilet. Therefore, at that time, I thought the director's family must have stronger endurance than others.
The snot-nosed guy's mother and my mother worked in the same unit. If everyone lived in a ten-square-meter room, cooked in the corridor under smoke and fire, and went to the toilet halfway up the mountain, I would have been kinder to the snot-nosed guy. But thinking about such a person who had no ambition, couldn’t read books no matter what, yet lived in a big house where one could play hide-and-seek and monopolized a toilet, made me feel uncomfortable. This feeling directly affected my attitude towards the snot-nosed guy.
As everyone knows, one of the advantages of being a leader is that there will always be a large number of followers around who are good at guessing the leader's intentions. At that time, I was young, but I had quite a few followers. After school, even walking on the field ridges, I was surrounded by them. One day, seeing the snot-nosed guy walking alone on the ridge across the rice fields far away, someone who knew I didn’t like him came to me with a flattering look on his face and said, “I'll take some people to teach him a lesson.” I thought for a moment and said, “Go ahead, but don’t let me see it.” Then I glanced at the snot-nosed guy and walked home leisurely.
I thought that this guy would at most bring a few people to surround the snot-nosed guy and scare him a bit, but unexpectedly, they really pushed the snot-nosed guy into the mud in the rice field. As a result, the snot-nosed guy's mother took him to the school to complain that day. And the leading guy didn't wait for the homeroom teacher to scold him; he revealed me first. This guy, I always thought his appearance was treacherous. If it were wartime, I believe he would definitely be a traitor, but I didn’t expect that in peacetime, without torture, he betrayed us, and did so professionally, saying that I gave the order in the name of the class leader, and he dared not disobey. Damn, did I give an order?
This incident brought me some adverse effects. I was publicly criticized by the homeroom teacher in the class, losing some face, but it also gave me some beneficial enlightenment for my future life: Don't easily become a leader, and if you do become one, you need to be more careful and manage the people around you well, or you will be easily betrayed. In recent years, many leaders got into trouble, and many of them lost because of this.
This event should be considered one of the few stains in my life. Many years later, when I think back on this incident, I still feel deep remorse towards the snot-nosed guy. Moreover, from this event, I saw the weakness in my character: I had a grudge against the rich since childhood. If this psychology were changed to a revolutionary era, that would be the driving force of struggle, aiming for equal wealth, which is a good thing. However, in peacetime, it easily causes psychological imbalance, endocrine disorder, which is bad for both oneself and others.
But, there seems to be another possibility here: I have an infinite longing for a better life. I hope to live better, to have my own room, my own private space, so I don’t have to go to the toilet halfway up the mountain, can bathe at home without being watched—when I bathed as a child, I just placed a bathtub in the corridor, and those uncles and aunts who had daughters often stared at my little chicken with regretful expressions. Fortunately, at that time, I didn’t know much either, so whoever wanted to look could look their fill—it wouldn’t disappear anyway. Unlike now, I won’t easily let others see.
I think that the yearning for a better life is the same throughout history.
Now, I live in a community by the world-famous Lijiang River, with picturesque scenery. I have a three-bedroom, two-living room apartment, not only do I not have to go to the toilet halfway up the mountain, but I have two toilets equipped at once. If I get tired of squatting in one toilet, I can go to the other toilet for entertainment, feeling very happy. But I still often think about that ten-square-meter room from those days. Every time I think about it, I feel sorry for the older generation. For my two brothers, when my elder brother was born, it was understandable. But after having my elder brother, how did my parents manage to avoid him while bringing me into existence? It required a lot of skill. But in that era, everyone had to face this basic issue, had to endure silently, tiptoeing around, like stealing, which wasn’t fun at all.
Just from this perspective, I think we should cherish our current lives, no matter how many unsatisfactory places there are. Thinking about that era, and then thinking about the North Korean people today, we have no reason not to make ourselves happier.