South to North: A Prison Guard at the Beginning

Time: 1975.

Location: Northeast China, Heilongjiang Province, Harbin City No. 1 Prison.

This is the largest prison in Harbin, where all the criminals serving sentences of more than ten years are detained.

Most of the prisoners here have committed serious crimes, including theft, robbery, human trafficking, rape, drug trafficking, kidnapping, intentional injury, etc. The crimes they have committed are varied.

Of course, there are those who are guilty of heinous crimes and there are those who are wrongly accused. Living in this turbulent era, there are some things you cannot resist. In other words, it's fate.

The criminal law of this era is not sound. Some things cannot be explained clearly, and being wrongly accused is inevitable. If this happens to you, there seems to be no other way out except to accept your fate.

Harbin No. 1 Prison is divided into eight prison blocks, from one to seven, and the last one is the women's prison block.

The entire prison covers an area of ​​tens of thousands of square meters, with hundreds of cells of various sizes, holding thousands of prisoners.

There are nearly 500 prison guards and other personnel in this prison. Each prison area has a warden, four team leaders, and each team has ten prison guards.

The job of a prison guard every day is to wake up the prisoners, watch them eat, and watch them work. Today's prisons are completely different from later prisons, and the daily labor here is very heavy.

Moreover, the food was not good at that time. Every day we had hard steamed corn bread with vegetable soup that was as clear as water. If the weather was good, there would also be some pickles.

Six thirty in the morning.

Forty prison guards, led by four team leaders and the ward director, came to the fourth ward. The team leader waved his hand, and the forty prison guards quickly separated and put the whistles around their necks into their mouths.

"Beep beep beep!!!" A shrill whistle sounded.

"Get up! Get up! Get up quickly!" After the whistle, the prison guards' urging voices came, and the rubber sticks in their hands hit the iron door of the cell, making a banging sound.

The prisoners in the cell would get up immediately when they heard the whistle, without any hesitation, because this is a prison, and if you disobey the guards will really punish you, and a beating is the lightest punishment.

What these prisoners fear most is being locked up in solitary confinement. What is a solitary confinement like? It is a small dark room, where the prisoners are tied to a small bed and cannot move. They have to pee and poop directly, and they only have one meal a day. It is extremely difficult to endure.

After getting up and folding their quilts, the prisoners lined up in the cells. There were about twelve people in each cell. There were a total of seventy cells in the entire Fourth Prison Area. However, the Fourth Prison Area was not full. Only more than fifty cells were full. There were a total of more than six hundred prisoners.

The prison guards began to open the doors of the cells one by one, and some of the prison guards put their hands on the handles of their guns to stand guard. At this time, the prison guards had guns in their hands. What's more, all the prisoners in this prison were serious criminals, and serious incidents had already happened there, so the prison guards were extremely cautious.

Soon, more than 600 prisoners were brought to the open space in front of the prison area. Forty prison guards surrounded them, and four team leaders were on both sides. The warden came forward to speak, which was also routine.

Soon, with the permission of the warden, more than 600 prisoners were taken to the cafeteria for breakfast. Soon, prison guards from other prison areas also brought prisoners to the cafeteria one after another.

During meal time, some prison guards stood on guard around the perimeter, while others walked among the prisoners to patrol and prevent any trouble.

Among the patrolling prison guards, there was a prison guard in his twenties, holding a rubber stick in one hand and with the other hand in his pocket, walking towards a square-faced male prisoner who was nearly 40 years old.

"Old Ma!" The young prison guard walked up to the prisoner and patted him on the shoulder with a smile.

"Hey, Supervisor Yuan, it's you." The prisoner called Lao Ma stood up immediately.

"Hey, Old Ma, I've told you so many times, just sit here, why are you being so polite!" said the young prison guard with a smile.

"Okay, then what do you want to talk to me about?" Old Ma asked casually as he sat down with a smile.

"It's nothing. Here, I'll give you some pickles!" The young prison guard produced a small bag of pickles from his hand and handed it to Lao Ma as if by magic.

"Oh, Supervisor Yuan, I'm so sorry."

"Don't hesitate. Just take it." The young prison guard frowned, then threw down the pickles and left.

People in this era were poor. A prison guard only earned thirty or forty yuan a month, and even if you had money, you had to have a ticket to buy things.

"Hey, Lao Ma, Supervisor Yuan is really good to you." At this time, the prisoner who was sitting at the same table with Lao Ma spoke, but his eyes were fixed on the pickles in Lao Ma's hand and he was swallowing his saliva.

There is little money in prison, and having pickles is a luxury. They haven't eaten pickles for a long time, and even if they did, they were very hard.

"Okay, let's eat together." Seeing everyone like this, Lao Ma generously put the pickles in the middle.

"Oh, you are so particular, Old Ma!" Seeing this, everyone stopped being polite and started eating.

At this time, the young prison guard looked at the ceiling at a 45-degree angle and let out a sigh.

His name is Yuan Mu. He is not from this world. In his previous life, he was also an inspector, but he was a criminal policeman and the captain of the criminal police team. Once, he risked his life to rescue hostages, but he was killed by a bomb detonated by the gangsters.

When he woke up again, he was in a dormitory. After sorting out his memories, he found that in this life he was also called Yuan Mu, twenty-one years old, a prison guard in the third team of the fourth ward of Harbin First Prison, and he had just been there for a year.

It took the original owner a lot of effort to get here. His parents were employees of the Ningyang Railway Bureau. They died in the line of duty, leaving him alone. He was supposed to take over, but he wanted to be a police officer since he was a child, so he asked a leader of the Railway Bureau for help.

Yuan Mu's parents had some favors for this leader, so in order to repay the favor, they arranged for Yuan Mu to be a prison guard in Harbin No. 1 Prison.

The situation outside has gradually stabilized in recent years. It is not as tense as in the first few years of the movement. It is also relatively stable here, without so many things to do. Every day I just check on the prisoners and go home on time.

Originally, Yuan Mu didn't know where he had traveled to until he met Lao Ma a year ago. He thought the other party was Bai Baoshan. Later, after asking, he found out that the man was called Ma Kui.

That’s right, it was the police officer Ma Kui in “Coming From South to North”. After chatting with him, Yuan Mu became more certain that he had traveled to “Coming From South to North”.

But it was not right. Shouldn't I be a flight attendant? How did I become a prison guard? Later, I gradually adapted and accepted the fact that I was a prison guard.

Take it slow. It’s only 1975 now. The real storyline started 1978, so there are still three years to go.