A total of 1,102 graduates from the Nantong Middle School of east China’s Jiangsu province in 1966, 1967 and 1968 were awarded diplomas nearly half a century later as the school specially held a simple but solemn graduation ceremony for them on the morning of Oct 20.
With red diplomas in their hands, the elders felt that all sorts of feelings welled up in their mind. During the Cultural Revolution, the students of those three years had to go and work in the grass roots of border areas before completing all the required courses.
Liu Tienong, a graduate of 1966, had been recommended for admission to the Harbin Institute of Military Engineering, but after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, he became a worker at a cotton plant, and afterwards, he passed the self-taught examination and gained the senior economist certificate. He said, “No matter what posts I take up and no matter how difficult it is, I am determined to be a useful man. The diploma has little substantive significance to me, but its spiritual encouragement and the friendship between schoolmates will be forever engraved on my mind.”
