Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (一直游到海水变蓝)

"One, Two, One"

"Be united, alert..."

"... earnest and lively"

"Unite to win yet greater victories!"

Back in 1949...

Everyone called Jia Family Village

a pit

The place made people ill

Alkaline soil and foul sewage

There were just three treasured assets

Sow thistles, willow shoots...

... and phragmites reeds

Why were these assets?

People could eat sow thistles

They're an edible foodstuff

That was one of them

The reeds were also edible...

They fed the livestock

So these assets...

... were essentials for life in the village

Nothing else would grow there

It was desolate land

We couldn't cultivate it

The soil was too salty!

I won't go into the history of it

Let's jump ahead to when Ma Feng convened a meeting

A general discussion

That was the start of the big change

One evening we talked with Ma Feng

He asked us to gather twenty or so people

Maybe thirty, people with skills

Smart people with good memory

To have a group discussion

So we sent out a call

And more than forty people showed up

Ma Feng raised the issue of filtering water before irrigation

We needed to treat the water first

The water was causing the alkalinity of the soil

It's like the clothes we wear

When our clothes get soaked in sweat...

... it's harder to clean and dry them

You end up with stains you can't get out

Ma Feng was implementing...

... what Chairman Mao said about strength in unity

If one family...

... tried to solve the problem of alkaline soil...

... it couldn't be done

How to make it happen?

We needed to mobilize everyone in the village

We took Ma Feng's advice

With three families, then five, then ten...

... we formed...

... what we called 'mutual aid groups'

We mapped out a plan for the village

When we'd figured it all out...

... there were thirty to forty people in each group

And each group took about ten days...

... to finish the preparations

We started by filtering the fresh water

Then drained away the salty water

And then let the sun do its work

It was just like drying clothes outdoors, under the sun

Bit by bit, the seeds took root

They germinated

Nothing died, the seedlings flourished

They grew

The mutual aid groups...

... speeded things up

We went on to form a production team

It was based on individual production units

We were highly motivated

As a result of all this hard work...

... Jia Family Village became quite famous

Lots of people came to see our progress

Other villages were still short of grain

They couldn't feed themselves

Relied on food coupons

But we had plenty to eat

We even had surpluses!

In fact we had enough surplus...

... to sell grain to the government

We ended up contributing one million kilos to the state

"Working the land, standing tall..."

"Raising his work-tool even higher..."

"He holds the hoe up in the air..."

"As if he were holding..."

"... a flag of toil"

He holds the hoe up in the air

as if he were holding a flag of toil

Yu Jian

I like what you are

And I like how you behave

- Straightforward, optimistic... - It's true

He could hear you with his hearing aid

How old are you?

I'm Ninety-one

Bring it over

I can hear now

In the past, the village had three "too many"s

Too many unmarried men

Too many young children sold away

And too many beggars

Life was so hard here...

... that no-one would marry our men

There was a saying...

"Don't marry your daughter into Jia Family Village"

Those who came here to marry would suffer

So no-one did

That's why there were so many unmarried men

Ma Feng...

The first time we met was in 1953

In the spring of that year

I was First Secretary of the Communist Youth League

We were having a meeting that evening

Talking about...

The county League had given us three promotional tasks

One was to promote the Marriage Law

It came into force in 1953

Second, to promote the collective procurement and distribution of grain

And finally, to promote collectivization

To encourage people to join co-operatives

Mutual aid

We were in the middle of the meeting...

Assigning tasks...

... when Old Jia arrived with Ma Feng

Old Jia came in and said...

"This is our League's First Secretary"

We knew that he was a writer

But we didn't know he was such a big name

We just knew that he was a writer

He loved joking, making fun of this and that

Our members loved listening to him

He smoked a fat little cigar

About this thick, but quite short

He invited us all to try it

He even invited the girls who were there!

We were all teenagers

But he offered his cigar regardless

Laughing, we said we couldn't smoke

You could have it all yourself!

That made us laugh

Lots of us were there that night

He said that to promote the Marriage Law...

... we should take the lead ourselves

Find ourselves partners!

"What about you with him? Or you with her?"

He was fooling around with us

"You look like a good match for him"

"You two look good together"

He became the League matchmaker

She and I...

In fact he matched three couples in our League

We got together and married

So to speak...

He planted a seed in people's minds

A seed of love

That was when people starting seeing each other, forming couples

When love became a freedom of choice

Arranged marriages were outlawed

We were free to choose marriage partners

"In the mountains and rivers"

"I would like to hold your hand"

"To cross the bridge"

"On the bridge are red flowers, green leaves"

"Families and rivers are nearby"

"On this side of the bridge, hair is black"

"On that side, hairs have turned white"

On this side of the bridge, hair is black

On that side, hairs have turned white

Shen Congwen

My father Ma Feng was born in 1922

23 May in the lunar calendar

It was in Juyi Village, in Xiaoyi County

When my father was born...

... my grandfather was over fifty

And my grandmother was still in her twenties

When grandfather died...

... the family went downhill

Nothing went well

My grandmother wanted to raise this son herself

So she refused to remarry, despite being so young

She sold the house and land

Took the money

And returned to Dawang Village, in Fenyang

So my father, from the age of six or seven...

... grew up in Dawang Village

When he finished school...

Not long after that...

... the Anti-Japanese War began

When he was in the army

His squad leader was...

Sun Qian

The writer Sun Qian

His involvement in the arts began by accident

Father liked painting when he was young

Back then, the platoons...

... held a blackboard newspaper competition

He remembered a magazine he'd once seen

The illustrations in it...

... were woodcut prints