ABSTRACT
Hsiao Ping-ch’üan is the deputy director of the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants Cooperative in Hsiang-yüan hsien, a member of the Party branch committee in Chi-chia-ling Production Brigade, and the deputy director of the production brigade in charge of animal husbandry. Now forty-one years old, he is a veteran shepherd. He usually likes to wear a pair of patched nailed shoes. He still treasures two pairs of “millstone” shoes. Three soles are nailed to the bottom and the sides are braced with five patches. They are five times heavier than ordinary shoes, and they are all the heavier when wet with rain and mud sticks to their soles. His two pairs of “millstone” shoes have a twenty-year history. Though they are ungainly, they are called the “shoes of glory” by members of the production brigade. Now, let us tell the story of the “shoes of glory.”
