Special "Urea Pants" for Rural Cadres

How much joy and how much sorrow

“The Urea Pants” once swept across rural areas in both northern and southern China. Hou Shuangxi, a villager from Wu Zu, Lu Jing Town, Heyang County, Shaanxi Province, reminisced many years later, saying,”There was a net weight of 50 kilograms written on the buttocks, and the crotch indicated a nitrogen content of 80%. Can you imagine how it felt?”

However, even with the urea bags, only the cadres in the village could afford to wear them. Ordinary members couldn't afford them. A children's chant that echoed in the alleys and fields went,"For big cadres and small cadres, each has their own nylon pants, black or blue, but not for the members." Hou Shuangxi still recites this chant fluently to this day.

In Zhang Xianliang's novel "The Adolescence," there is a passage describing the "urea pants": "Once, she used her day off to dismantle the imported urea bags from Japan and sewed them into short-sleeved sweatshirts and skirt-like shorts to wear to work. She emitted a pungent smell similar to urine all over her body..."

“At that time, she was wearing shorts made from Japanese fertilizer bags, which I found incredibly amusing. The characters ‘日本’ (Japan) were sewn right on her buttocks, with ‘日’ on one side and ‘本’ on the other. However, she didn’t even recognize the word ‘日本’ and thought I was laughing at her buttocks. She stopped, bent over, and pushed her buttocks towards me, saying, ‘Look, look! Let you have a good look at a woman’s buttocks!’ So ‘日本’ expanded even more in front of my eyes.”

Forty years later, who still remembers the "urea pants" that once swept across the entire country?

In a bitter song self-composed by farmers, there is a poem titled "Japanese Urea Bag" that goes like this: "Making pants brings joy and delight, reluctant to part with friends and relatives. It has long been collected in the village history, and just mentioning it makes us bend over in laughter."

From the poetic perspective, this somewhat cultured author had once owned a pair of "urea pants" in the 1970s. However, most farmers didn't have such an opportunity. Therefore, their self-composed songs carried a hint of mockery and resentment:"Cadres see cadres, competing with urea pants,'Made in Japan' in the front, and 'urea' in the back."