As we enter April, the east wind is strong, the old is expelled and the new is adopted, and the yin and yang are reversed. The breath of spring quickly breaks out the camp and destroys everything. Then comes abundant rain, and along with the rain are the footsteps of people traveling in a hurry. Among the sounds of rain and footsteps intertwining are the sweat of people running and the tears staining their clothes.
Before the Qingming Festival comes, everyone will ask everyone they meet, "Are you going back to your hometown during the Qingming Festival?" This sentence is like an infectious disease, fermenting in the circle of friends of city people, country people, and Chinese people, and it cannot be ignored. To block, as if not going back would be disloyal, filial, benevolent and unjust. So sweeping tombs on behalf of others, sweeping tombs online, and repairing tombs... have become the focus of a new wave of hype.
I have not returned to my hometown to visit graves during the Qingming Festival for eighteen years, nor have I returned home during the Spring Festival. The eldest brother who stayed in his hometown in Hubei said on WeChat that his parents’ graves were covered with weeds and dead branches, and they were cut down every year during the Qingming Festival. Before the Qingming Festival, he wanted to ask relatives and friends from the clan to help repair them with cement and stone bricks, which would cost nearly ten thousand yuan. Yuan, ask me what I think. I don’t know if my parents who have lived a frugal life would agree in heaven, but as children, it seems that this is the only thing we can do for them in this world to fulfill the filial piety of our descendants.
It is not easy to return to my hometown from a coastal city. The transportation in my hometown is not very convenient and there is no direct transportation. Therefore, you must first start from the city, take the train back to Wuhan, then transfer to a train or bus from Wuhan back to the county town, and then from the county town to the town, have a rest in the town, and then return to the countryside... Stay in your hometown In less than two days, we have to return and have another round of rush. It takes at least four days to get there and back, and the worst part is, about two days on the road. This is generally the same route for tourists who go out to work across the country to return home. There is only one day off during Qingming Festival, and the children in the sixth grade graduating class have not achieved satisfactory results and have been included in the priority list. As a result, both adults and children have to take leave, and their wages will be deducted, credits will be deducted, bonuses will be deducted...
What's worse is that the relatives and friends in my hometown don't seem to be very enthusiastic. A few days after the announcement of our return home was posted in our hometown's WeChat group, no one followed us, let alone the specific itinerary of our family of three.
So we said, "We went back and forth all the time, trying our best to get back, for what?"
Yes, the sweat, rain, or tears along the way, for what?
It has been more than 20 years since my parents passed away, and my brothers and sisters have all become grandparents. They all have too much time to take care of themselves. Who has more energy to pay attention to our itinerary and ask, "What day do we plan to go on that day?" Are you ready for the trip? Are you hungry? How is your child?" After a while, he asked again, "Why can't you get through on the phone? I'm so anxious." , I'll pick you up"...
These words of passionate affection from my parents that are lingering in the ears of many people have also been echoing in my ears, but now they are... Has become a distant memory. So my wife and I had a quarrel about education, responsibility, family affection, filial piety, and the meaning of life.
I repeatedly explained to my wife, who lives in the town and whose parents are still alive - brothers and sisters, they are very busy, they have their own children to care for, and we have to find a way ourselves. And no matter how good they are, they are not parents! I am a child without parents!
When I said this, I was startled by the almost childish response I blurted out, and then tears fell unconsciously as I was in my late teens. We unanimously focused our quarrel on one issue - where there are parents is home, so is it no longer "home" where there are no parents?
I suddenly remembered what my cousin said to me on the way back from ancestor worship during the Spring Festival the year before last: "Brother, my parents and elders have gone away one by one, and some of them are lying here. It’s been decades. I’m already seventy at the end of the year, and I’m about to go to bed. You’ve only come back once in a few years. Will you still come back when your relatives are no longer here?”
Following the changes in China’s rural towns. The pace of urbanization is accelerating. With the transformation of rural collective farms, farmers are losing their land, old houses, and livestock... Countryside, countryside, there is no township, no village, and no land. Is hometown still hometown? In ten years, twenty years, or thirty years, the hometown will without exception become "dad's hometown", "mom's hometown", "grandparents' hometown" in the eyes of children, and eventually it will become someone else's hometown. And every spring, in a homeland full of rice waves, wheat waves, soybeans and sorghum, and endless fish ponds, on the country roads on the ridges and roads, I am afraid that I will never find anyone I know, and the familiar ones risk my life. There are no smokey houses, pine forests where cattle can graze, and small rivers that are often cut off from water all year round. There is no reason to miss or linger.
However, as long as there is still the place where the ancestors lay down, the pile of tombs where parents and relatives are buried, and the less than two square meters of yellow land left, even if the grass grows again, the road will be No matter how far away it becomes, it will still be the end of the nostalgia that haunts us day and night, no matter where we are?
Jia Baoyu once married in Tanchun, and during the Cold Food Festival when relatives were scattered and their flesh and blood were separated, he also sadly wrote "How many times have the Qingming Festival come to this world" and "Sending tears to the riverside during Qingming Festival, thousands of miles of east wind, just a dream away." "Poetry. Every time I read that chapter, tears overflow from my eyes.
"Green smoke rises, clear tears fall, green mountains and green graves, no descendants return. A glass of sake, two lines of clear tears, all turned into rain during the Qingming Festival, one after another, breaking people's souls.
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The tears of Qingming are not to hurt the spring, not to suit the occasion, but to stick to the yellow land of my hometown forever, but the world is far apart, and to call my parents who should not call me back; just to show my filial piety when it is too late. Fulfilling filial piety and the feeling of regret and longing that "the child wants to support but the relative is not here"; just to find a place to place our souls and homesickness that have been dusted for too long.