From "barefoot doctor" to "practicing village doctor", a 57-year father and son relay guardianship
The instant noodle packaging bag was folded into four crumpled folds, the uncle shook his hands to take out the medicine fee, and buried his eyes in the layers of wrinkles.
Zhu Laicheng put his hand on the abacus, his little finger hooked back calmly, and a few beads slipped silently towards the bottom frame.
This is a habit inherited from his father, Zhu Xiulin - no medical fees are charged, and when conditions are difficult, he will deliberately reduce the cost of medicines, and even pay for it himself.
From the "barefoot doctor" to the mountain village clinic, in the past 57 years, the "dead debt" in the hands of the father and son has accumulated 7 large books.
In Miyunhexi Village, Beijing, the mountains touched their noses, and the Chaohe River was squeezed to the west, making a bend and then flowing to the south.
It was late at night, the egret rested beside the big pine tree by the river, and the bright white light of the village clinic turned over the window lattice, leaving creases on the big willow tree at the door, like a staircase paved with frost and snow.
Shacks, wing rooms, warehouses... At first, the small clinic kept changing locations, and it was not until 1993 that it took root in its current location.
At that time, Zhu Xiulin was in his prime, and he specially selected two willows with straight trunks to plant at the door.
Over the years, the growing shade of the trees has witnessed the clinic gradually become what it is today. In the space of 60 square meters, the consultation room, treatment room, and pharmacy are in good order, and the villagers can complete a medical treatment in the turning room.
▲In Hexi Village, Miyun, Beijing, the village clinic of the Zhu family.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
Just like a cycle, the two generations of village doctors, father and son, both began to practice medicine at the age of 25, carrying medicine boxes and running around the fields, relaying to guard the health of the villagers within a 6-kilometer radius.
Time is like a knife, the father leaves, the son's son is also immersed in his ears and eyes, and he embarks on the road of studying medicine.
Three years ago, after a small hardware upgrade, the clinic added four more skylights.
Between the consultations, Zhu Laicheng raised his head and could see the willow branches swaying lightly outside the window.
Playing the abacus that his father had spent most of his life on, he felt at peace, "Every doctor must develop the patience of his lover."
"Barefoot Doctor" in the mountains
Zhu Xiulin becoming a doctor is more like a coincidence.
In 1963, after graduating from high school, he returned to the village.
Spring ploughing and autumn fruit, pulling harrows and plows, the young man guards an acre of land, relying on a handful of strength to support his family.
At that time, lack of medical care and medicine was common in rural areas.
A large-scale commune may have a health center, but a small-scale commune does not even have a clinic. It is luck to have an old Chinese doctor.
In Zhu Xiulin's life, the word "doctor" hardly ever rolls on the tip of his tongue. He never thought that just two years later, it would become his new identity and would accompany him for life.
In September 1965, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China approved the "Report on Placing Health Focus on Rural Areas" by the former Ministry of Health Party Group.
As one of the few high school students in Gubeikou Town, 25-year-old Zhu Xiulin became the only candidate for the village doctor of the Hexi Village Brigade.
In order to cultivate these rural grassroots medical forces, the town invited experts from Peking University.
Zhu Xiulin carried his luggage and walked 40 miles along the Hetao to reach the teaching site.
In the first year, he lived there, devoted himself to his studies, and did not see other people's diseases; in the next three years, he spent more time returning to the village, and used whatever medicine he had learned, even going back and forth a day.
With a straw hat on his head and a medicine box on his back, he walked through the fields—for the next 20 years, he was more affectionately called "Barefoot Doctor" by the villagers, like countless colleagues he had never met before.
At that time, there were 10 production teams in Hexi Village, two of which were in the ravines and needed to visit regularly.
Every week, Zhu Xiulin would follow the trails that the fellow villagers had chopped and stepped on, and climbed into the mountains to give people medical treatment.
▲The Crouching Tiger Mountain behind Hexi Village is one of the mountains that Zhu Xiulin often climbs during his visit.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
"Doctor Zhu!" Seeing him coming, the villagers who were still busy in the crops hurriedly greeted him.
Not so particular about it, they gathered on the edge of the field, opening their undershirts that were soaked in sweat and mud, waiting for Zhu Xiulin to crouch down and put the stethoscope on his chest.
The dirt road was bumpy, Zhu Xiulin walked fast, and the coyote smoke all the way.
Sometimes in order to save time, Zhu Xiulin climbed directly to the 660-meter-high Crouching Tiger Mountain from the village at an altitude of more than 200 meters.
The mountains are steep and dangerous, and he has walked a lot, and he has practiced a bit of the ability to walk on the ground. Often, he goes out for inspections in the morning, and in the evening, he can rush home with 180 catties of firewood to cook.
One person has to take care of the life and death of more than 3,000 people in Hexi Village.
Almost everyone in the village knocked on his door late at night.
Those who knock on the door at night are all acutely ill.
As soon as the door was knocked, the whole family was awakened, and if they were in a hurry, they would go into the yard and knock on the window glass.
In the winter, Zhu Xiulin put on his padded jacket and velvet cap, carried the clinic box, and rushed to the patient's home.
Adhering to the principle of "spending less money and treating serious diseases" in that era, Zhu Xiulin worked as a doctor and an accountant, and set up a "local pharmacy".
When he was free, he took a dozen or so apprentices, carrying sacks on their backs to the mountains to collect herbs.
Zhimu, Yuanzhi, Fangfeng, Poria... When there are no patients, he cuts the medicinal materials with a guillotine in the clinic, and when it is dry, he will grind the medicine with a "snoring snoring".
Year after year, Yao Nianzi sounded, and the way his father bowed and stretched out his legs was also engraved into his son Zhu Laicheng's childhood memories - his father originally liked to play chess and write calligraphy, but later, he was treated by a doctor. Fangzi was crowded, leaving only farming as a hobby.
The father became a "chained" person.
▲ The prescription written by Zhu Xiulin in 2004 was already yellowed.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
In the eyes of Zhu Laicheng at that time, his father could see any illness.
The midwife couldn't pick up the baby, so he called him over quickly; the elderly and children with facial paralysis, after a few injections, their face became normal; someone drank pesticides by mistake, he was also very brave, and he picked up the water pipe and washed his stomach.
Zhu Laicheng still clearly remembers that once, his father met an acquaintance at the gate of the village.
The man slipped a few doses of decoction and said that he had a cold and had to go home to support him. He asked casually, "What's the matter with me? It's hard to open my mouth now."
"Where did you touch it?" The father became serious, followed the other side and looked at the wound wrapped in cloth, "Come on, you have tetanus!"
As his father expected, the man was diagnosed with tetanus at the hospital.
This disease can't see light, and he lay in a small dark room for more than 20 days before he saved his life.
"Medicine is an art"
On the path of practicing medicine, Zhu Laicheng said that he has both reverence for his father and a love for medicine.
When he was a child, he followed his father out, listening to the villagers greeting his father with "Second Uncle, Second Uncle" along the way, and his words showed affection.
He often flips through his father's books, and with the knowledge "stolen" from the color atlas, he pulls his friends up the mountain to plan medicine, digs "gun bullets" on the Gubeikou Great Wall halfway, and packs a small bag back to the village to find the acquisition team. Can sell for thirty or fifty cents.
After graduating from junior high school, Zhu Laicheng went to work as a bricklayer on the construction site.
There were twenty or thirty people living in the simple plank house, while the co-workers were arguing about the plot of the martial arts novel, but he was reading medical books with a flashlight in his bed.
The co-workers laughed at him as a "nerd", and he didn't care either, so he passed by with a haha.
When I flipped through the pages, I saw that the two books were the most advanced guide books of the "Barefoot Doctors", which were published in 1982.
After Zhu Xiulin finished reading, seeing that his son was interested, he gave him a "foundation".
Starting from human anatomy, internal medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, and surgery are all involved, and the main points in it are "almost ready to use."
▲ The book "Chinese Barefoot Doctors Textbook" published in 1982 by Zhu Xiulin and Zhu Laicheng.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
After traveling abroad for several years, Zhu Laicheng became a foreman from a bricklayer, but the money he earned from his part-time job bought various medical books.
Work and hobbies are like two parallel lines, and they can't be knitted together.
Looking back now, in fact, in the long road of life, the most important thing is often those few steps.
In 1990, Zhu Laicheng, who had a foundation and interest in medicine, chose to return to his hometown and embarked on the road of medicine.
He was 25 years old that year, which happened to be the age when his father turned to be a village doctor.
The trajectories of the two generations of father and son are subtly "unified" across time and space, but the general environment at this time has already changed. After nearly 40 years of development, the rural cooperative medical system has become a more standardized and systematic "new rural cooperative medical system". entered the exploration phase.
Zhu Laicheng, who was a monk halfway through his career, was admitted to the health school and obtained the village doctor's certificate and doctor's qualification certificate.
A certificate is just a thin piece of paper, and years of experience are the most valuable asset of a doctor.
Zhu Xiulin will use the most vivid metaphor to let his son remember the key: wet rales are like small straws blowing water, which is typical pneumonia; the sound of big straws blowing water is more likely to be emphysema and bronchitis; The "rustling" sound of twisting hair is a pleural friction sound, which may be pleural effusion...
In the eyes of the fledgling Zhu Laicheng, his father was like a doctor in ancient books, gentle and soft-spoken.
Learning with his father, he will feel calm down.
Once, Zhu Xiulin asked Zhu Laicheng to visit a villager's mother.
The old lady has been bedridden because of a cerebral infarction, and she has bedsores on her body.
Zhu Laicheng took a scalpel and "picked the bedsore out of the bones".
After the operation, Zhu Laicheng set up a bed next to the old lady, turned her over every half an hour, and injected injections on time according to the treatment plan, and stayed like this for a week.
The new tissue replaced the necrotic cells, the wound healed into a scar, and the old lady's condition improved significantly.
This is matched.
There are also many people who do not cooperate.
Some elderly people are afraid of being hospitalized, afraid of spending money, and afraid of delaying their children. Even if 120 are called, they are not willing to get on the bus.
Once, a hemiplegic old man shouted syllables loudly because of aphasia.
Zhu Laicheng and the old man "played five back-and-forth Tai Chi sessions", comforted him softly, and promised, "I'll come back if it's all right, I'll go to your house to give you an infusion, you don't need to run away", and finally coaxed the old man into the car.
"Medicine is an art." Zhu Laicheng said that it was his father who taught him this principle slowly - everyone's personality is different, as a doctor, you have to figure out how to use language to relieve their mental tension, and then heal the body pain on.
After the whole process is completed, and things are explained clearly, people will not be anxious.
"Seeing a doctor is an art, and life is also an art. This is the doctor who heals people."
"Home Handover"
The father and son have cooperated with each other for many years, and the tacit understanding infiltrates every visit.
Gradually, one gets old, and one takes over, and unconsciously, the "home handover" of this rural clinic is completed.
▲In August 2022, Zhu Laicheng took the pulse and blood pressure of the elderly in the village at the clinic.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
An old-fashioned 28-bar bicycle is one of the "witnesses".
In the early 1970s, the village provided Zhu Xiulin with this bicycle and went out to get medicine, which became much easier.
At that time, he often went out in the early morning when the sky was bright, and if it went well, he could come back in time for lunch.
Feeling distressed by his father's troubles, Zhu Laicheng took over the job of fetching medicine after he became a village doctor.
There were two boxes of medicine strapped to the back seat of the car, and ice was hidden under the snow for three or nine days.
Another time when he went out to see a doctor, he encountered a retrograde man while turning a corner, and a large piece of skin was torn off from his hand.
After returning to the clinic to get a good dose of iodine, he set off again with the medicine box.
In fact, even this clinic has taken shape little by little, and it has become what it is now.
When he was young, Zhu Xiulin used kerosene lamps to see a doctor in a shack near the hillside of the village. Later, he moved to a wing room as low as a rabbit's den.
In the following years, the hospitals where the railway soldiers retreated, the warehouses where the production teams loaded grain, and the clinics all temporarily settled down.
Until Zhang Yushan, the old party secretary, took office in 1993, the clinic did not have a fixed location.
The father and son guarded the mountain village, and also received small but simple thanks from the villagers.
Occasionally, in the yard in the middle of the night, there is a "squeak" sound, that is, a villager slips the caught fish along the wall.
Whether it's the freshly grown shepherd's purse in the field, or the seasonal apricots and raspberries, the fellow picks a big bag and puts it in front of Zhu's house, without saying who sent it.
There used to be a handy blacksmith in the village. He learned that the clinic had been burglarized, and he took the initiative to help them with a fine lock.
On a rainy day, the mud dots from the eaves next door hit the window of the low-rise bungalow in the clinic. The 80-year-old blacksmith watched it without making a sound. The next day, he came over with the guy and instructed the younger generation to climb up to the roof to build it. The eaves blocked the water.
Three years ago, Zhu Laicheng renovated the old clinic: the room was expanded to 60 square meters, and four skylights were designed.
Sitting in the consulting room, looking up, he can see the willow tree that his father planted when he was young.
The willow tree was straight and straight, and the light and shadow shone through the skylight in the white and clean consultation room.
My father has been away for 16 years, and the year before his death, he was still prescribing prescriptions and taking medicines for others.
At that time, Zhu Laicheng often persuaded his father that his sons and daughters had already married and started a family, and he took care of the clinic himself, so that he should rest more and go out with his granddaughter to play more.
But Zhu Xiulin refused.
When he was finally hospitalized, the doctor gave Zhu Laicheng a number: three days at most.
Zhu Laicheng was so sad that he cried. Among the four siblings, he lived with his father the longest.
▲ Zhu Laicheng’s photo of his father, Zhu Xiulin, was remade in his mobile phone.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
"Don't worry." As a doctor all his life, how could Zhu Xiulin not know his condition? He comforted his son, who also knew very well.
Because of his serious illness, his blood vessels were thin and brittle. The nurse tried several times with the needle but failed. Zhu Laicheng and the head nurse applied to puncture his father by himself.
In 2006, Zhu Xiulin died.
Before leaving, Zhu Laicheng held him and sat for a night.
All his life, 66 years, my father has been a village doctor for 40 years.
When the old party secretary Zhang Yushan returned to the village, the old master who had brought them up the mountain to find herbs was no longer there.
"Jing has been treated by others, why didn't he take care of his own disease." He said anger in his mouth, but the circles of his eyes were red.
In Zhu Laicheng's heart, there is a regret that can no longer be filled in - their family never had time to take a family photo.
But my father didn't seem to get far.
The abacus that he had used for most of his life, Zhu Laicheng is still using to this day; the medicine cabinet, which is as old as Zhu Laicheng, still has a place in the clinic.
Although some patients who owed "dead debts" have long since passed away, Zhu Laicheng still kept the yellowed prescription papers because of his father's handwriting on them.
"Every doctor must develop the patience of his lover"
Time is submerged in the wheel of life, and another cycle begins without a pause.
In the eyes of fellow villagers, Zhu Laicheng is more and more like his father, with the same facial features, demeanor, and even voice.
The time in the mountains is quiet.
The street lights in the village were turned off early, and a faint pale shadow was drawn from the cement road. Only his clinic and the small shop next door carried the lights.
When there were few patients, he studied in the clinic.
Every year, the government records a course for the village doctor. He holds the phone to his ear and writes down knowledge points in a small notebook with the other hand.
▲ On the evening of August 9, 2022, Zhu Laicheng was taking notes in a class in the pharmacy.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
Like my father back then, I never go out for a consultation without distinguishing between the early morning and the middle of the night.
On a sunny day, the moon is bright, and he can find the door of the patient's house by feeling the darkness.
Which village in the village has high blood pressure and diabetes, Zhu Laicheng is very clear.
Half of the fellow villagers who come and go on a daily basis are from other villages, and many of them came to Beijing from Hebei to find him for transfusions.
Zhao Liguo's home is 30 miles away from Hexi Village.
From his mother to his children, whenever he felt uncomfortable, he would come to the Zhu family to see a doctor, from Zhu Xiulin to Zhu Laicheng.
Take a look at the child's tongue coating, listen to the lung sounds, and then let the child turn his back and tap the intercostal space. Zhu Laicheng basically knew that it was another small cold. "Take some medicine, it doesn't matter." There has always been a doctor in his village. , Zhao Liguo is also well aware, the medicines are obviously the same, "I came here to try to be at ease."
For so many years, the farthest place Zhu Laicheng went was Hefei, and that was the only time he had traveled by plane so far.
In the morning, I sent my daughter who was going to college to Hefei, and took the overnight bus back to Beijing at night.
The daughter wanted to keep her father for an extra day, but his cell phone kept ringing.
The father walked briskly with "visible anxiety."
The person absent in the photo changed from Zhu Xiulin to Zhu Laicheng.
Daughter Zhu Yuanyuan got married and went to Bali for vacation, and asked her mother to do ideological work for her father one month in advance.
When the time came, Zhu Laicheng stayed in the village alone.
Later, Zhu Yuanyuan forced him to go out to play. She had booked a hotel and bought a ticket in advance.
In the clinic, Zhu Laicheng arranged everything properly, but he did not arrange rest days for himself.
Once during the Chinese New Year, when I caught up with Cun Jin'er, there were a lot of patients.
From the 30th to the first day of the new year, the Dong family’s child urinated and pulled his arm, dislocating it; the western family’s old father had a hernia, curled his legs, inhaled and pushed for more than half an hour; His heart beat only 38 times a minute, so he hurried to get an injection.
When I got home from work, I checked my watch and it was almost six in the morning.
He also continued his father's habit of not charging medical fees, and even added a little to it.
A fellow villager came to Zhu Laicheng with an instant noodle package, wrinkled and folded in four, with the medicine fee at the very end, and he took it out with trembling hands.
▲August 13, 2022, a villager pays for the previously unpaid medicine from an instant noodle package.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
Putting his hand on the abacus, Zhu Laicheng would deliberately give them less money for medicine.
In the event of a sudden illness, he would go home to get thousands of dollars and eight hundred dollars to take to see a doctor in his fellow villagers.
Over the years, the father and son have accumulated 7 "dead accounts", which are 10 centimeters thick.
Zhu Laicheng didn't count it. "It is estimated that there is more than 10,000 yuan in it." As for how much it can be converted into the current purchasing power, he has not even thought about it.
This is also the most important lesson he learned from his father, "Every doctor has to develop the patience of a lover."
A village doctor and a farmer
The obsession with medicine inherited from his father is now "planted" in Zhu Laicheng's son Zhu Yan.
▲ Zhu Laicheng (middle) with his lover and son.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
Zhu Laicheng still remembers that when Zhu Yan was in elementary school, he ran to the clinic with a schoolbag and sat down after school.
At that time, people working outside were cut with nails and had to be debridement and disinfected before being sent to the hospital.
He squatted there to give medicine to others, and Zhu Yan, who was a little younger, stood beside him with his neck stretched out.
The villagers who saw the doctor felt fresh when they saw this. Such a small baby is not afraid of wounds and blood, and often teased him, "I'm afraid you will take over from your father's class in the future."
The young Zhu Yan admired his father's ability and realm, just as his father once admired his grandfather.
This difficult and complex subject, like a bond, connects the three grandfathers and grandchildren together.
The first medical book Zhu Yan got was passed down from his grandfather. The rare and traditional characters on it made him confused, but he couldn't help but like to think about it.
Later, he really studied medicine, and for the first time, he did a mouse anatomy experiment. Zhu Yan asked his classmates to record a video of himself taking liver tissue and sent it to his father.
He also received a rare compliment from his father: his hands did not shake at all, and he had the talent to be a surgeon.
Father and son also quarrel when sharing their treatment experience with each other.
Obviously the drugs they said were effective, but they had to fight for a long time.
Zhu Laicheng seemed to have a sullen face, but in fact he was more relieved - his son's efforts were very much like himself who was stubborn with his father back then.
This year is Zhu Yan's fourth year of studying medicine.
During the practice, the first physical examination for pneumoconiosis patients, chest percussion, and listening to the sound of the intercostal space.
The uncle in his 60s was weak and weak in his speech. Zhu Yan was even more nervous when he saw it, and he was sweating all over.
Grandpa has been encouraging him.
After the diagnosis and treatment, Zhu Yan specially said thank you to the uncle.
The old man squinted his eyes and smiled, "Don't be nervous, you have just started, and you will definitely become a good doctor in the future."
This comfort and compliment made him better understand the persistence of his father and grandfather.
Perhaps it is the mutual and small companionship between these people that makes young doctors choose to continue on this endless path of learning.
Guarding the village clinic, Zhu Laicheng's life is still trivial and busy.
Hospitals kept sending him invitations, and some even talked to him several times about whether to join him.
But he always said that if you are used to living in the countryside, the land should not be abandoned. This is the duty of a peasant.
Taking care of the vegetable garden in the morning is the most relaxing time of Zhu Laicheng's day.
Chayote, mountain grapes, lentils, fine powder lotus, okra, cauliflower, cabbage... The vegetable garden at home is full of seeds, and there are three kinds of peppers alone.
Sprinkle a handful of seeds on which horns and nooks, and take good care of them according to the solar terms, and you will always be able to reap the fruits in the end.
▲On August 12, 2022, Zhu Laicheng was hoeing and pulling wild vegetables at his home.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Sun Linjing
But as soon as the granddaughter came steadily, the vegetable field "suffered".
The little girl used a hoe to draw a picture, and often plucked the radish and cabbage out of the roots.
Zhu Laicheng didn't care, and let her "bully" with a smile.
Steady is over four years old. Every time she goes to the village, she has to pester her grandfather to climb the mountain. She can't walk very far. She just listens to the monkey in her grandfather's arms and on her back: This is sour jujube, that is Ou Li; It was a squirrel, and it was a pheasant that jumped out; Bupleurum had a small yellow flower in the shape of an umbrella, and a ground-piercing dragon climbed around the tree... When I got home, I could tell my mother Zhu Yuanyuan what diseases one or two medicinal herbs could cure.
From her daughter, Zhu Yuanyuan felt her father's nostalgia for the land.
In recent years, she has become more and more accustomed to "following the wishes of her parents". When she sees rare rapeseeds, she buys them and mails them to them. "Any kind of seed can be planted in their hands."
The land treats Zhu Laicheng, who works hard, fairly, just like his father.
At 7 o'clock in the morning, Zhu Laicheng tidyed up the vegetable field. The cucumbers he had just picked had thorns on the top, and he took a bucket and went home.
Take a shower and start a new day.
Zhu Laicheng rode on a small battery car, followed the wind blowing through the clouds, and drove towards the clinic under the willow branches.
Beijing News reporter Guo Yimeng intern Cui Jian