Many things were invented to benefit the world. An abacus walks in time, and time flies in the abacus. What is left to the times is not only its own value, but more importantly, the secondary value that enlightens the philosophy of life. "Addition increases connotation, subtraction increases gains and losses, and multiplication calculates." Opportunity, division and happiness." This is a life prophecy polished from the abacus.
The abacus is a simple calculation tool invented by our ancestors based on their long-term use of abacus. It is rectangular in shape, surrounded by a wooden frame, embedded with thin rods, and abacus beads running through the rods. The abacus with the perfect combination of pearls is recorded in "Shu Shu Ji Yi": "The abacus controls the four o'clock, and the longitude and latitude are three." The general idea is: carve the wooden board into three parts, the upper and lower parts are used to stop the beads, and the middle part is For positioning purposes. Each person has seven beads, with each bead on the top serving as five and each bead on the bottom serving as one. Arithmetic operations are completed by moving the beads by hand. It is simple and convenient, replacing the ancients' most primitive method of calculating acres and grain using wooden sticks as chips. It is conceivable that when an abacus, which embodies the wisdom of the ancients, was born among the people, it must be as magical as today's electronic calculators.
When we came to the world, we grew up on our mother's milk, and it was our mother who taught us how to speak and count. "How many fingers are there in one hand? How many fingers are there in the sum of two hands?" My mother enlightened me step by step. After learning, she used her fingers as chips to calculate how many pigs, chickens and ducks the family had... When I grew up and went to school, I remember that when I was learning abacus, my mother bought me a small nine-position abacus. Then, I tied it with a string and carried it on my back like a schoolbag. I looked at it again and again, and touched it again and again. Touching the round beads, they are like strings of candied haws hanging on the body. The more you look at them, the more you feel the subtle fragrance. My mother said meaningfully: "Go to school and study seriously with the teacher, and learn abacus well. Once you learn abacus well, you will be successful in the future!" I asked my mother naughtily: "Can you have good food if you learn abacus well? Have new clothes?" Wear it?" My mother said affirmatively: "Yes! But if you don't have enough food and clothing, you won't be poor forever." I listened to my mother's words and ran on the country road with my abacus on my back.
Facing abacus is a strange thing for me and my classmates. In the first class, the teacher did not teach us how to use the abacus. Instead, he taught us some about the origin and basic knowledge of the abacus, and then started to teach us how to move the beads with our fingers and "return the upper beads and the lower beads." After that, learn some simple addition and subtraction. In order to facilitate calculation without causing confusion, write "One, Ten, Hundred, Thousand, Ten Thousand" on a white piece of paper and stick it on the middle beam of the abacus. Later, it was discontinued, so multiplication and division were not learned. However, fortunately, I have been exposed to it, learned it, and have an abacus on my shoulders.
"There is a square city, and there are many soldiers living in it. When the war breaks out, the soldiers never leave the city." A riddle and prophecy turned the abacus into a toy. After school, a few children play the game of "killing beads". The one who uses two beads is a short square, and the one who uses five beads is a rectangular. Whether it is a rectangular or a short square, the beads are in tandem. Arranged crosswise, the formation was like a battlefield between the enemy and ourselves on the abacus. When playing, retreat is the way to advance. While the long side moves the beads in the front, push the beads in the back forward, just like drawing a bow and shooting an arrow, knocking off the beads in front of the short side. Then it is the short side's turn to attack, so that both the enemy and us A fierce killing began. A war without gunpowder, regardless of the number of troops, depends entirely on strategy. As long as the strategy and tactics are used properly, both short and long sides can win. In the best of three games, the loser gets his nose scratched by the winner.
The long and rectangular abacus is shaped like a field in the countryside, and the beads that move up and down seem like plump crops swaying in the wind. "The west wind blows hundreds of miles away, and the fragrance of grain and millet comes, and the sound of spring falls in the Dou Valley." The simple farmers work hard in the fields, waiting for the abacus to come in autumn. As for the harvest after autumn? The abacus can understand. As long as the black beads move, the number will naturally come to mind.
Farmers who farmed in the past should probably have an abacus. My father once owned an ancient abacus with a wooden base closed by wooden boards. My father, who smells of earth all over his body, went to a private school for several years when he was a child and knew how to do a little calculation. However, the average person can only calculate daily necessities, rice, oil and salt as a small commoner. If he is not a master, he will not be able to calculate big accounts. In the era of public ownership of rural land, my grandfather and parents worked in the production team, plowing fields, transplanting rice seedlings, digging soil, etc. They often came out in the morning and returned home in the evening, just to get more work points. The growth of crops in the fields is inseparable from the supply of fertilizers. The pig manure accumulated by every household at that time was the best base fertilizer for soft soil. My father used a shovel to dig out the fat mud from the pig pen pond and pile it into a rectangular shape. The next day, the captain came to my house with a graduated bamboo pole, and the accountant came to my house with an abacus and account book under his arm to measure the dimensions. After registration, the income was calculated at the end of the year.
We endure the scorching sun and severe cold all year round, come and go with wind and rain, and look forward to the year-end arrangements. At home, my father took out the work-point notebook he usually kept and looked at the abacus under the kerosene lamp as if he were staring at crops in the field, counting the profits and losses with his calloused hands. At this time, the accountants of the production team were as busy as cutting wheat and planting rice seedlings, with beating beads dancing on their foreheads. A string of beads carries two loads, and the beads fall and rise, bringing joy and sorrow at the same time. The accounts are out, and there are households with a surplus of food and households with a shortage of food. People in the households with a shortage of food are frowning and thinking about how to live their lives. Fortunately, my family is a household with surplus grain. My father happily carried a basket to the team to pick rice and came back. The full granary was enough for the family to feed for a year.
I learned to gaze at the countryside from an abacus. Reform and opening up was driven by the grand plan of making the people rich and the country strong, and farmers now have land for independent management. The endless grains grown in the fields were sold to the public; mulberry trees were planted and silkworms were raised, and the fruits of white silkworms were sold to factories for weaving silk and satin... The family was busy working around the clock, and the father's abacus that had been used for many years was not idle. , the beads fell from my hands, and what I gained was the joy like the fullness of the sun and the moon. The money in the money bag increased from the original single digits to thousands, and went straight to tens of thousands. Township enterprises also have this rare opportunity. The rumbling sound of machines in factories is the engine of rural economic development. The business is booming and the employees are busy and happy. "When the abacus rings, there is ten thousand taels of gold." The beads on the abacus are jumping, and the real profits are rolling.
The world rotates and time flows. The abacus always gets old, whether it retreats or not, its meaning remains with the sun and the moon.
Our compatriots on the other side have the same traditional culture, have also used abacus, and have a attachment to abacus. It is reported that a large abacus used to record people's merits and demerits hangs on the Shanchuan Gate of the Chenghuang Temple in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. There is a couplet on it, "Why worry about worldly things; gods have their own Mahayana." The Chenghuang Temple in Tainan City also has a couplet "Good and evil are all." It’s up to people; it’s difficult to calculate right and wrong. “An abacus connects the feelings of flesh and blood. I wonder if the wise ancients used the abacus as a metaphor for the world, in a special period, to warn those special people who have evil intentions, not to make small calculations for personal gain, but to make big calculations for the prosperity of the nation? It must be! Just imagine, if brothers multiply each other, they will get huge energy; if good and evil are unclear, right and wrong cannot be tolerated, I wonder if compatriots in the same family will have the same association when reading this calculation couplet?
"A bridge separates two families and their hearts are forever connected; a pearl moves between two families and connects their hearts." The perfect combination of abacus means a happy marriage. When her daughter got married, her wife specially bought a "Wishful Plan" for her daughter and placed it in the decorative cabinet.
In this way, it not only presents inner blessings, but also serves as a silent revelation: in the future, you must be careful in your life as a head of the family, and use hard-working hands and sweat to gather the wealth of life; there are gains and losses in life, don't care about it; in the long journey, If you seize opportunities on the road of life, you will get twice the result with half the effort; learn to use the time of love to eliminate each other's shortcomings in life. Everything in life is like an abacus. Only by adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, superimposing and vibrating can you achieve eternal happiness!
An abacus is rolling in the long tunnel of time. It has been passed down from ancient times to the present. The abacus that is sleeping now hides the glory inside; hides the wisdom inside; hides the sun and moon inside, in dreams. The sound continues along the track of time...