My father died in vain
My father was born into a poor family and never received an education; he couldn't even write his own name.
He had four children: I have one older brother and two younger sisters.
Among us, only I had passable academic results; my two sisters and brother performed very poorly.
My father held special hopes for me; he wished that I could pass the exams and escape the peasant life to secure a government job.
Even though I studied very hard, unfortunately, my academic performance was not great. After finishing junior high, I failed the high school entrance exam twice and didn't even pass the preliminary selection, so I had to go back home to work on the farm.
My father was extremely disappointed in me, and the last time I failed the preliminary exam, he was so angry that he beat me with a stick.
My father was an upright man and very enthusiastic about helping others, often doing work for the villagers without charge. Although he was well-liked, he wasn't good at making money.
A strong impression of poverty marked our childhood — we lacked sufficient clothing and food. We were always longing for good food, wore tattered clothes, lived in a dilapidated house, and everything at home was worn out.
My father was physically strong and optimistic, always cheerful, unlike me, who often looked worried and distressed.
However, for some reason, he suddenly developed gastric cancer. He passed away more than a decade ago, and I often miss him. He was an exceedingly honest and kind person, and he suffered terribly from cancer before he died.
My father was originally in excellent health, but his illness stemmed from a misguided national policy.
In the past, the sale of pork was exclusively managed by food stations, and private selling of pork was not permitted. This policy was not bad, as it allowed farmers to access fresh and reliable pork.
Later, as the economy opened up and the market economy began to rise quietly, this policy clashed sharply with the monopoly of food stations. Many private sellers started to sell pork secretly, and this gradually became an open and brazen activity. Because these private sellers offered lower prices, better service, credit, and home delivery, food stations quickly went out of business.
In the 1990s, in an attempt to save these failing food stations, the state enacted a policy to restore their monopolistic status. Private sellers could only sell meat through food stations and were not allowed to slaughter the animals themselves. This policy was known as "designated slaughtering".
However, by that time, the market economy had already gained considerable scale. Because it was a monopoly, the food stations set the wholesale price of pork very high. The private meat sellers had no say in the matter and had no choice but to accept the situation, losing their profit margin. These people were extremely dissatisfied with the "designated slaughtering" policy, resenting it deeply.
The local government also exerted significant effort to stabilize this policy.
I remember there was a woman in our area who ran a small variety store; she secretly sold meat behind the store and was discovered by the food station employees. They confiscated her pork, and a fight ensued between them.
The food station staff called the local police, who arrested her and took her to the police station. She continued to curse loudly there, and somehow, the next day, she was dead. The police said she died of an illness. Later, the police station and the food station compensated her family, and the matter was left at that.
As time went on, private operators would officially wholesale some pork from the food stations and then secretly slaughter their pigs at home. These privately slaughtered pigs, not subjected to the food station's extortionate prices, were sold cheaper, and the operators earned their living from this meat.
For a while, the food stations required each operator to fulfill a monthly quota of 600 to 900 jin of pork. The wholesale price set by the food stations for this quota was often very high, sometimes even higher than the retail market price. Thus, private operators had to rely on their own slaughtered pork to survive, which made their situation difficult.
Initially, food stations did not allow private slaughtering, but later on, as long as private operators met their quotas, the food stations turned a blind eye.
Sanhe Town in Feixi County, near us, is the largest market town in the area. Many private pork sellers in the town slaughtered a large number of pigs and sold the meat at low prices, leading to a significant price gap between rural areas and the market town for pork.
In the rural areas, pork is the most important food for the villagers. Typically, their daily meals consist of pork with cabbage.
My father used to say: "The pork at the food station by our door is too expensive, and going to Sanhe Town to buy it takes too much time." So, he would often go to the town to buy a lot of pork to salt and preserve it, which we would eat over a long time.
At that time, I didn't live with him, but every time I visited and saw him eating the salted pork, I would remind him to eat some fresh pork instead of always having the preserved kind, but he didn't take my advice seriously.
Sometimes, when I came home, I found that the preserved pork had turned yellow and spoiled, yet my mother couldn't bear to throw it away. Throwing out the spoiled meat often brought scolding from both my parents.
When my father was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer, we all thought about the yellowed preserved meat, but by then, it was too late.
Many people in the nearby rural areas, like my father, developed stomach cancer and the majority succumbed to it.
They spent their lives accompanied by yellowed preserved pork.
In recent years, the market economy has swept through urban and rural China. Because food stations were collectively owned enterprises with little oversight, corruption, and laziness prevailed until they gradually closed down and were eliminated.
Farmers can now eat fresh pork again, and with the spread of refrigerators, the incidence of stomach cancer among them has greatly reduced.
Some might read my article and wonder how the occurrence of cancer could be related to national policy. In the history of England, there was a time when households with windows were taxed, leading many people to avoid opening windows, which resulted in a significant number of people suffering from rickets due to a lack of sunlight.
My father was diagnosed with stomach cancer and went to the Bengbu Cancer Hospital for treatment. He was deceived into the radiology department and received radiation therapy. At that time, there was no internet, so we couldn't research whether radiation could treat stomach cancer.
Back then, an unwritten rule was that the family of the patient had to give the doctor in charge a few thousand yuan as a "red envelope". The chief doctor, Dr. Liu, wanted this bribe, so he misled my brother and father by claiming that radiation therapy was better than surgery for stomach cancer. We only found out later that the possibility of curing stomach cancer with radiation was zero, while surgery had about a one-third chance of success.
My father fell ill due to incorrect policies, and died because of corruption in the medical field.
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