After crossing Wushaoling and Gulang Gorge, my eyes suddenly became clear: the endless land of Liangzhou, sky blue and water blue, fertile fields thousands of miles away. Qilian Mountain, as wide as my father's backbone, winds westward, and the white snow on the top of the mountain reflects the sky more blue under the sunlight. In winter, the spring is beautiful, in summer, the ice and snow melt, the four seasons circulate and the water flows endlessly. Qilian Mountain, known locally as Nanshan. The spring water and snow water in Nanshan flow for thousands of miles, nourishing everything in Hexi Corridor. Liangzhou people regard water as their life, build canals and dams, drink water for irrigation, and grind rice with water mills. Therefore, the concept of "dam" appeared in place names, such as the first dam, the second dam ... up to the seventh dam, as well as the high dam, the upper dam, the middle dam and the sheep dam. My hometown is Xiaoqiba at the foot of Qilian Mountain.
Go back to your hometown and see your hometown again. What used to be small is now over the age of no doubt. But I don't see their firm belief in the future life, just like the mature fruit covered with branches, and they only have expectations and uncertainties about the future life.
Go back to your hometown and see your hometown again. Now, near my village, meet people. However, my hometown and neighbors' enthusiasm for me far exceeded my expectations. A fat aunt dragged her grandson for more than ten years without contact. She took my hand and eagerly asked about my parents' recent situation, which suddenly reminded me of the time when my parents were seriously ill and were alone at home. She helped my parents cook and starch in a hurry. I don't know with what kind of mood to tell her the death of two old people in the past two years, let alone express my gratitude to her. Brother lame cobbler, who grew up with me, has been ill for two years. When his dumb daughter-in-law came from a distance and waved to us stupidly, I only felt particularly warm in my heart. I am amazed at my memory. I recognized the family daughter-in-law who used to bully honest in-laws at a distance of tens of meters. Aunt Liu, who lives alone, is over seventy, and her thin body is still so strong. I took her hand and joked that she could live to be 99 years old. She said with a smile that she has been working independently for several years as far as she can, and she doesn't want to drag her children down. I sighed with shame. This is the parents who support us, working hard and being strong all our lives. I thought about my children before I left. Aunt Niu, who once lived in a yard, gave birth to four daughters and a son. She dotes on her son to become a young master, but always puts her daughter-in-law in front of others. I have heard with my own eyes how bad her mouth is, and my mother criticized her with me. As a child, we lived in a yard, which is her usual style. Looking at the old figure and listening to her telling me about the miserable night scene at home alone, I was speechless.
Go back to your hometown and see your hometown again. In my memory, before the collective planning, the yard in my hometown was very special. The courtyard is very big, divided into East House and Westinghouse. The East Courtyard is divided into two houses, the South Courtyard is called the Outer Courtyard, and the North Courtyard is called the Inner Courtyard. It is said that the master lives in the inner court and the man lives in the outer court, probably according to status and door. Enter the outer court and turn right. According to the direction, there are four families living in the south house, the east house and the north house. The most striking impression is that a handsome old man and his wife live in the north house. We call them Mayai Mayi. It is said that Master Ma is an ancient private school teacher and is very gentle. When I was a child, I liked to stand on tiptoe to watch him write Spring Festival couplets for the owner. The font is beautiful, but unfortunately he died very early, leaving his wife to live alone for nearly 20 years. There is a row of houses in the west of the outer court. There are stone mills and millstones pulled by donkeys in the house. The mill has a door leading to the west yard, because the west yard is a place for raising donkeys, horses, cows and sheep. The outer court is very big. I remember a big leather carriage, that is, a big carriage with hard miscellaneous wood wheels wrapped in black patent leather and pulled by several pieces of leather. Up to now, I can still remember the old man holding a whip several meters long and throwing it round and round into the air. The tip of the red tassel drew a circle in the air and then flew out like a meteor, bang, bang, bang.
Go straight ahead from the spacious wooden door of the outer courtyard, and you will see the towering mound gatehouse of the inner courtyard protruding from the left side of the north courtyard. The double doors in the yard are very thick, about half a foot thick, and rhythmically covered with special round rivets. This is what people used to say in ancient times. It is worthy of the name. I think this is probably to prevent the knife from cutting the axe! The deep square bolt holes extending to the left and right sides behind the door proved my guess, but where the thick bolts went, they disappeared. Square thick fruit and wood doorframes and doorsills are neatly arranged in six or seven alleys, about two meters between each alley. The doorway is deep. As soon as you enter the door, you can see the pillars of the corridor sitting in a row of houses from east to west, entering the inner courtyard through the entrance of the building and looking around in the gatehouse. There is a small door leading to the top of the gatehouse on the earth wall on the west side of the door. The two sides of the gatehouse can lead to the square courtyard walls all around. It is a vertical high wall three stories high, compacted with high-quality soil and more than five feet wide. Looking up after entering the door, you can see a six-or seven-story earth building standing in the north of the yard, which is called Dadong by Li Zhuang people. The north house is next to the building, arranged from east to west, and then transferred out of three rooms to the south. It is a custom in Hexi area to take the houses in the north and south as the first house. There are principal rooms, private schools and grain depots in the hospital. On the back of the East Room, near the wall, is a leather shed where daily necessities such as coal, firewood and grass can be stacked. There are poultry houses, pig houses and earthen toilets behind the west wing. There are three families living in the yard. The yard is big and warm, at least in my childhood imprint.
My ancestral home is Wangjiazha, Dongguan Street Horticultural Factory in Guliangzhou, which is now the walnut garden in Dongguan Botanical Garden in Liangzhou District. After liberation, in response to the call of the state to establish rural credit cooperatives, my grandfather came to Xiaoqiba in the south of the city with donkey and the means of production for farming. Since then, our family has hung up the resounding name of membership system at that time. My grandfather is still a worker in a circular art factory. In the old society, he had his first wife and no children. On the one hand, my grandfather responded to the monogamy policy of the new society, and on the other hand, in order to make the names of rural members actually exist, he placed his first wife in Xinzhuangzi, Tianjia, a new family with seven dams. This poor woman suffers a lonely life because she can't have children. Finally, my grandfather took my young father and buried her in the beach of Qiba River in a hurry, but she didn't go into the ancestral grave. My parents were loved by her when they were young, so my father called her aunt. My parents told us since childhood that with such a big grandmother, don't forget to burn some paper and kowtow to her when she goes to the grave on Qingming Day. On the surface, the son inherited his father's career. My parents came to the countryside in the chilly early spring of 1966, holding my brother who was born in the city and living in the west wing of the quadrangle mentioned above, where the poor woman and my great-grandmother died. However, it took my parents more than ten years of youth to return the west wing of the landlord's house. Because my grandfather's collective shares exhausted my grandmother's reputation as a five-guarantee household, he also climbed a large amount of government bonds in the collective current account. In the eyes of the older generation, it is natural for fathers to pay their debts, and even aunts with only one name are deeply rooted. I don't want to say anything more, and I don't want to express anything more. It's just that those special times have made some special people, especially my parents, suffer more. Because they are outsiders, the locals call them "sneaking out" and because everyone is poor.
Anyway, I was born in this compound and grew up happily and carefree. Every inch of land in this yard left a deep mark on my happy childhood. My parents have to go to work on time every day to earn work points, and put my sister and me on the stone pier at the entrance of the cattle farm in the west yard to bask in the sun. Master Tian, who always laughs, often teases me. I still remember the expression on his face when he touched my bald head kindly. Now, he has died a few years after I left my hometown and went underground with his lame old woman. I clearly remember playing with my playmates in the sand ditch next to the east wall of the compound. I still remember the enlightenment time with my brothers, sisters and friends in the same village in the private school room in the north room of the inner courtyard. At that time, every Zhuangzi in the countryside had a classroom, which taught children during the day and adults at night. It was called night school. The sound of reading is still ringing in my ears, which makes me glad that there is such an enlightenment school, and it is in the yard where I was born.
However, due to collective planning, all seven families living in the front and back yards moved into single-family houses. Then the production is distributed to households, and the means of production such as land and livestock in the West Yard are distributed to individuals. The house is gone, even the thick wall of the tall gatehouse has been dug up by the villagers who lack soil, leaving only a rough outline idle so far, at most just a pile of forage, leaving only my childhood memories and endless melancholy.
Go back to your hometown and see your hometown again. Coincidentally, there is also a place that is basically similar to the' East Courtyard' in my childhood imprint, and it is also well preserved, but on a smaller scale. We are in the same Zhuangzi. There lived an old man in Zhuangzi, who was 93 years old and lived a long life. He is still hale and hearty, articulate, gentle and humble, smart and wise! I clearly remember the happy time of herding sheep and weeding with him when I was a child, and I also remember his strong body that he could drive cattle and plow fields in his seventies. I held his hand, and the excitement was beyond words! So I motioned my wife to leave a photo for us. Unexpectedly, in the face of this octogenarian, we will have several opportunities to get together and can only shake hands and say goodbye. Goodbye to the old man I love all my life, goodbye to my dear hometown friendship.
Go back to your hometown and see your hometown again. After living with my elderly and sick parents for more than ten years, I really left my hometown and the small village where I was born and raised. Although I went to Liangzhou city every year on average during this period. Originally, I thought that if I left my parents around, I would have no worries about my hometown. However, the older you get, the stronger your homesickness will be. Once I wandered aimlessly in the bustling streets of Liangzhou City for several days. I don't know what I'm looking for or what I see. I haven't seen a fellow villager, a classmate and a friend for nearly a week except my relatives. I stood by the beautiful Tianma Lake and sighed that this bustling city no longer belongs to me. I should go! This kind of mood is incompatible with the lofty aspirations of leaving home twenty years ago, and the inner doping is more vacant and melancholy! My cousin who accompanied me also questioned my playboy: "This is your hometown, at least there are many relatives of you!" " "Yes, in this land under my feet, or in the countryside, or in the city, there are relatives who are in the same strain with me and whose blood is thicker than water! Many classmates and friends have lost contact. Where are you? Did you have fun? This is my inner call in countless late nights, and I suddenly understand that this is not a complex that has been entangled in my heart for a long time!
I began to shuttle between the city and the countryside in my hometown, trying to find something to fill my homesickness. The old house demolished by land requisition has only a corner left! In the farmland full of crops, the past intensive cultivation and land struggle disappeared. Crops and weeds coexist, good and bad. Those young and middle-aged laborers have disappeared from the ground. Suddenly miss the spring, summer, autumn and winter of my childhood hometown: the busyness of spring; In summer, the sweat is like rain, and the fruits are fragrant; Autumn is crisp, blue sky and white clouds; Winter snow dance, gardening, gossip around the stove. I began to habitually turn my eyes to school, the place where I gave birth to hope and let go of my dreams! I saw a more harmonious, rich and beautiful new countryside-Xiaoqiba.