It always rings with the moon at night.
The face of my hometown is a vague disappointment.
Like waves in the fog
After parting
Homesickness is a tree without rings.
Never grow old.
-Xi Murong's homesickness
After the Dragon Boat Festival, the weather in Shenzhen is hot. Summer comes so suddenly that people are caught off guard.
Typhoon Miaobai came, bringing rain at night and blowing away summer.
Scattered summer drifted far away and landed on the bamboo goose stream in my hometown, where there were countless memories of my childhood. ...
Liuzhou, my hometown, is the place where Baiyue is tattooed by Liu Zongyuan. The poem "Hibiscus flowers blast across the ditch, vines beat the wall in oblique rain" always hits my face on rainy nights. It's so cool, I can even smell the raindrops on Liuzhou's face thousands of years ago.
My childhood was bright and beautiful. Why am I a little gloomy when I am old after I have been away for a long time?
As the rain goes back, I recall the scenery of my hometown and look for the footprints of my childhood, although it has long been forgotten in young history.
mantis
It is difficult to find mantis in cities nowadays, whether it is Shenzhen or Liuzhou. Now, if any child gets one and brings it to school, it will definitely cause onlookers. It goes without saying that the fate of mantis is often tragic.
In my childhood, mantis was a companion, not a plaything. I've been catching mantis with older children since kindergarten. I still have that skill, but it is no longer suitable. ...
There are many kinds of mantis. Living in a tree, we call it tree mantis, handsome and magnificent. Living in the grass, we call it grass mantis, which is slender and good at flying; There is also a kind of mantis, which likes to flirt with flowers, haunts all kinds of flowers and is covered with patterns. We call it fox mantis. We usually catch tree mantis, because he is a gentleman among mantis, and he always keeps aloof relationship with children.
The method of catching mantis is not difficult, the equipment is simple, but there are still doorways in details. First of all, you should understand that mantis is aggressive, and children take advantage of this psychology. Secondly, you should prepare a long bamboo pole, which is usually replaced by a clothes drying rod at home. Finally, you have to understand the life rules of mantis. At noon, when the sun is hot, mantis doesn't come out for food. It is best to catch mantis in the early morning or evening.
On the morning when the grass was covered with dew, friends gathered under the buttonwood tree. One kind of buttonwood is a tree that mantis likes to inhabit, and the other is neem. Compared with the two, it is relatively simple to catch mantis on buttonwood, because the branches of buttonwood are thick and the leaves are thin, and mantis is easy to be exposed. The tallest Jinyang has slowly lifted the bamboo pole and lifted it up, close to the trunk of a mantis. Mantis is obviously alert to this sudden strange thing, and two "knives" are held high. I heard the teacher's idiom when I was a child, but I didn't agree with its explanation. In my opinion, mantis is not overreaching, but full of vigilance and desire to attack the car in front. Mantis didn't stop, but went to "chop down" or even "dismantle" the car. In his eyes, those two knives are the most powerful weapons.
Jinyang touched the mantis with a bamboo pole, which should be quite exquisite. When the strength is great, the mantis will be afraid and turn around and leave, which is "beyond the reach of the whip." If the strength is small, mantis will not advance with a knife, so it will not run on the bamboo pole. Only a rhythmic and vigorous touch can arouse the inner flame of mantis, and finally it will be killed by a knife along the bamboo pole. I can't wait to chop the child at the end of the bamboo pole with a sword.
In the laughter, mantis rushed to the bamboo pole and glared at the children. The triangular head held high, the knife covered with small thorns waved up and down, and the green and blood-red inner and outer wings spread out angrily. This is the funniest and most angry expression I have ever seen. Of course, the children are still a little scared, because at this time, as long as you stretch out your finger, mantis is likely to immediately clamp you with its machete and bite your mouth, and that taste is enough.
All we did was surround the mantis and stop it from running into the grass again. After a long time, he didn't know whether he was shy or tired. He put down his knife and folded his wings, but he still refused to lower his arrogant head. We just put it on a short branch and swam away. Mantis can't run, because it is not good at Yu Feixiang and is too lazy to run away.
Little friends can catch more than a dozen mantis in one morning, each with a twig in his hand. The mantis stands upright on the twig, unaware that there will be a planned duel waiting for them. On a hot summer day, the children hid in the corridor with branches, caught two mantises and put them at both ends of a wooden stick. Then our king of the children Wei Jinyang tightly held the center of the stick, and the two mantissas looked at each other, and the atmosphere suddenly became dignified.
Mantis is naturally aggressive and does not need to be provoked. Both mantis strutted forward. When they met in the middle of the stick, they backed away in shock, then raised their broadswords and glared.
In fact, two mantissas can only win, and now we can see some clues. Often, the harder a mantis holds a knife, the more likely it is to win. How is mantis's "losing face" reflected? It depends on which mantis's body is tighter, which mantis's wings are more open and which mantis's posture is more condescending.
Da, da, da, two mantis usually touch three times with two knives, and they will get entangled, and then the mouth on the triangular head will tear and bite off. Mantis's teeth are special. They are pliers-shaped, and they bite sharp and powerful. Generally, mantis duels have to be fought to the death, which often ends in a tragic situation of biting off the other side's head. Some more ferocious mantis even devoured the same kind of corpses in public, which made us children understand the word law of the jungle for the first time.
At that time, there was a famous cartoon called Sheriff's Black Cat. In one episode, the black cat sheriff found out that his wife ate her husband on their wedding night. Originally, he wanted to punish his wife, but later she explained that he had to do it in order to reproduce. After watching this animation, my friends and I were all enlightened and full of doubts. Because we finally found a reasonable and less cruel explanation for mantis eating the same kind, but according to our observation, mantis seems to eat the same kind regardless of gender, so we argued for a long time. ...
Mantis is always with children. The mantis on the buttonwood seems to never be caught. Every day, the winning mantis players, we also put them on a specific neem tree. That neem tree is in the yard of the child's house, which is equivalent to keeping mantis on it. To show the difference, we also mark our own mantis. Some put red handprints on mantis wings, some tie thin lines around mantis necks, and some simply write their names on mantis slender necks with pens. These marked mantises are all concentrated on this neem tree, and some can recover smoothly the next day, but most of them are gone. Once it was autumn for a long time, and all the leaves of the plane tree fell out. Several of our partners came home in long-sleeved school uniforms and saw an almost air-dried mantis body in the middle of the road. The red handprint on their back was still faintly visible. ...
Sour Mimi
Sour Mimi is a plant that grew wildly in my hometown when I was a child. As an adult, I suddenly found that everyone used to call it clover.
In Liuzhou, this plant has been called sour Mimi since childhood. So that once, by chance, it was near the West Lake in Hangzhou. I saw a mother playing with her daughter. Mother said, "let's pick sour Mimi!" " "
I blurted out, "You are from Liuzhou."
She smiled, and I smiled. In fact, the aftertaste of this sentence really has a strong Liuzhou flavor.
Now that I think about it, it makes sense that sour Mimi is called sour Mimi. When children pick this grass, they often suck the roots in their mouths. The taste is sour, which runs through the whole childhood.
As for adding "Mimi" after the word "acid", I think it makes sense. Because in Liuzhou dialect, Mimi has a small meaning, and the leaves of sour Mimi are relatively small, can the combination of acid and Mimi mean a kind of sour grass?
In fact, when I was a child, the leaves of acid Mimi were not small. For a long time, my friends and I went to find acid Mimi along the Bamboo Goose Creek every day after school, and then held it to "fight".
To play the game of playing sour Mimi, the thin sour Mimi on the roadside is not good, because it doesn't have that "tendon" at all. The thick sour Mimi we found beside the vegetable field beside the river ditch has a thick rhizome. After the skin of the rhizome is peeled off, there is a "tendon" attached to the leaves. With this "tendon", two sour boobs can be tied together to fight.
The way to fight is also very simple. Only the sour Mimi with "tendons" attached to the leaves was peeled off and danced in our hands. The two little friends shook the sour Mimi in their hands, intertwined them, and then pulled them hard. Whoever breaks it is a loser. On the surface, this is a contest about the toughness of sour Mimi, but it is also a mystery.
First of all, some friends are haunted. They don't peel the roots outside the tendons, and often leave a small piece at the bottom. During the battle, some leaves were covered again, and the other side could not notice them. After the two sour chests are intertwined, pull hard, and the sour chests protected by one more layer of tree roots will definitely have a good chance of winning. Often, after the little sour Mimi wins the big sour Mimi, we always turn over the leaves to see if there is a "ghost". People who often "cheat" despise playing with him.
I remember that along the Bamboo Goose Creek, there were sour boobs everywhere. The sour boobs in my memory are all with three heart-shaped leaves. At that time, I didn't find a four-leaf clover at all. Four-leaf clover means looking for luck. So how many sour boobs we pulled up were torn to pieces, which brought us only happiness. This happiness may be luck.
The sour Mimi in childhood memory has leaves as big as a child's palm, and the "tendons" peeled off are like thin hemp threads. When two big sour chests are hit together, you can feel the toughness of plant fibers when you pull your fingers. The torn sour Mimi is like a small parachute, spinning down, down, down. ...
I can't count how many sour chests I broke in my childhood. Every summer in my hometown, a piece of sour milk will spread and wait for us to pick it. Our little friends are a bit like a group of small miners, looking for their own treasures in the fields. Occasionally, we will meet a small piece of fat and sour Mimi next to the vegetable field, and we will be happy all afternoon. We carefully selected and won a handful of sour boobs from other friends with the biggest sour boobs "General". Then, with the consciousness of "protecting resources", I found a piece of dried banana leaf and covered it on this small piece of sour Mimi like a cover, waiting to collect it tomorrow.
At that time, our favorite place to beat sour chests was an iron bridge on Zhue 'e River. Under the bridge is a concrete pier covered with a thick layer of iron plate, and on both sides of the bridge are guardrails made of pig iron. We leaned against the guardrail and overlooked the gurgling water of Zhue 'e Creek. Holding a pair of sour boobs, fighting one by one. Broken sour Mimi whirled in the air for a long time before falling into the stream and drifting away. There is such a profound scene in my memory: in the beautiful sunset, my friendliest friend and I fought with sour Mimi in the afterglow. The original black iron plate bridge deck is like burning red, showing the last heat of summer. We only have a sour Mimi "General" in our hands, which we threw away, wound around and pulled. Just then, two "generals" actually fell at the same time, and two dark green parachutes flew away with golden light ... in my childhood, in my hometown, along the river of memory until this summer.
Babatri
Before I wrote the words "Baba Crisp", I specially searched the Internet, and an advertisement for a donkey meat burning shop came out, which made people feel ridiculous. It seems that the object represented by this word has more regional characteristics. Perhaps, with the growth of our post-80s generation, this plaything has disappeared.
After writing this, I took pains to search online and found that many people still played with this toy. Some people in Guangdong and Guangxi call it "cracked tube", others call it "cracked tube" and "crackling crisp", which may be another way of saying it in Liuzhou.
The main material for making poppy crisp is bamboo, which covers the lush bamboo beside the Bamboo Goose Creek. Summer is the time when these bamboos have the most water. As soon as school was over in the afternoon, we took out the already prepared saw blades from our schoolbags and went down to Bamboo Goose Creek to cut bamboo.
To make crispy bamboo, it doesn't need to be very thick, just thumb thickness. Choose a bamboo joint as close as possible to the root, because such a bamboo joint will be tough and stand the test. A bamboo was sawed off from the root, and the twigs and details on it were cut off, leaving some of the strongest bamboo joints. Then cut them one by one and put them in the shade to dry. The reason why there is a link of air drying is because the bamboo joints that have just been sawn have a lot of water, which makes them crisp and easy to crack immediately.
After drying in the shade for a day or two, we will cut these bamboo joints according to the size of three to one. The long part is the spool, and the short part is the firework. It takes patience to insert chopsticks, because the chopsticks you insert must fit perfectly with the spool, so that the "bullet" will be powerful. We usually look for thicker chopsticks and then grind them into the right size with sandpaper. One end of chopsticks is tightly inserted into the short bamboo joint as the "grip" for firing, and the other end is appropriately inserted into the spool. In this way, a crispy one is ready.
The finished flute is clear and crisp, which is somewhat similar to the flute in Huang's hand. If you hold it in your hand, it's green, it's hidden, and it can be split in two. It is the best "carry-on weapon" for children.
In fact, this crackling sound is really "fatal". The children found the fruit of Melia azedarach and stuffed it into both ends of the bamboo tube. Hold the handle and poke it hard, and the fruit at the front will shoot like a bullet with a beep. If you hit your forehead, you will definitely swell up a small bag, which is worse than the plastic air gun that children often play with.
After the fire, the fruit at the back end was pushed to the front end. There will be a beep when pulling out the grab handle, so the name "Bibrittle" may be because of this beep.
In fact, the "ammunition" that children use the most is not fruit, but paper towels. Because the size of the fruit is hard to find, and the paper towel is easy to insert after soaking in water, and the seal is better, and the beep is louder when firing. Besides, the wet tissue ball hit the body, although it hurts a little, but it is much worse than fruit, and it also avoids many unnecessary fights.
But children are children after all, and naughty characters are hard to change. Some children take paper towels instead of tap water, but red ink and blue ink. In this way, the body is red and blue, and it is crisp all afternoon. When I got home, my blood was red and blue, and my parents were about to jump out.
I don't know how many bamboos I sawed off in my childhood, nor how many crispy bamboos I made. I only know that my bamboo chopsticks are often not enough in summer. With the growth of age, the craft of making shortbread is becoming more and more skilled. I remember the summer vacation when I graduated from primary school. I made some of the best popular potato chips in my life. When I shot, it was loud, powerful and long range, which dwarfed the pop chips in the hands of the children around me. Later, I also took a knife and solemnly engraved my name, time and a domineering self-design symbol on these sit-ups When I went to Qiu Lai in summer, I couldn't bear to throw them away. Instead, it is treasured and taken out from time to time to feel the moisture in the bamboo joints.
After moving for several years, I found these crunchy things on the bookcase. The slub has turned yellow, and the "grip" has been tightly combined with the barrel, but the contents engraved on it can be clearly seen. The time shows:1994,8, 15.
Postscript:
childhood
This is a long bamboo pole.
The green mantis is over there.
The older child is at this end.
childhood
This is a spinning sour Mimi.
A lingering muscle.
Tie one end at home.
A dream that will never grow old is tied to one end.
childhood
It's a light green crunchy one.
Time flies.
Strike is transparent homesickness.
Fantasy and reality ...