When I was sixteen or seventeen, one of my father's fellow villagers was taken back to my hometown by my parents on a hot summer day. Soon after, my uncle and my second brother took me back to my hometown from Zhangzhuang Railway Station by donkey. A sudden thunderstorm mercilessly poured out endless villages and my childhood fantasies! The rain flowing nowhere made yellow waves on the yellow land, and instantly drowned me in a small yellow river on the road in front of my house. I was lying on the wooden lattice window of my second brother's adobe house, and I was surprised to see this strange scenery outside the window for a long time. My second brother and the villagers also wondered that it was really strange that I had just returned to my hometown. I think this is a special reward from God for my wandering daughter who returned to her hometown for the first time, and gave me such an incredible and memorable gift.
When I got up the next day, the rain stopped, the water receded and the sun rose. In the dazzling sunshine, my father's hometown finally showed in front of me in an unobstructed view. Where is this our childhood fantasy? It's far from what we thought! Looking around, the same adobe house is really dilapidated, neither majestic nor spectacular. Because it is saline-alkali, relatively single crops have been washed away by the flood, which is really terrible. It's just that the lush elms, locust trees, jujube trees and willow trees, colorful flowers and falling butterflies in the village make me ignore the humble countryside and pick up a little romance I once imagined. But anyway, this is my father's hometown after all! I held my breath, breathing the fresh air fragrant with the soil in my hometown. I feel the breath that my father grew up here, and my heart is in a trance in the feeling of deja vu. Seeing that the cornstalk (corn) sorghum and many crops planted in the field were destroyed by yesterday's flurry, my second brother squatted in the field and stroked lovingly, and his eyes were full of tears. Growing up in the city, I didn't know what this mess meant to farmers who lived by growing crops, but when I saw my second brother's misery, I knew the seriousness of the situation and my mood suddenly became as heavy as this rain-soaked yellow land.
In talking with them, I learned that there are still some relatives in my hometown who are inextricably linked with my father. The three sons of my second brother (that is, my second uncle) are closest to us. Their three brothers all live in the city, perhaps it is difficult to leave their hometown, so they left their jobs in the city and returned to their hometown with their families, worked at sunrise and resumed their peasant career at sunset. My second sister-in-law is also an honest village woman. She wanted to marry my second brother and go to the city as a family to enjoy happiness, but the idea of marrying a chicken with a chicken made her listen to my second brother go back to China without saying anything. Who knows it doesn't matter this time, when the class composition is divided, because my grandfather used to be the director of our county education bureau, with a fixed income, and should be a relatively wealthy family in the village. In fact, he is very rich. My grandfather is an enlightened man. His meager income supports a large family and often helps poor children in the village to go to school. The property at home is still the adobe house and a dilapidated yard I saw when I came home. ) But my grandfather, including my second uncle, is dead, so this "rich peasant" hat is only for my second brother who just ran back to my hometown. It was an era that we modern people could not imagine. Tragedies and comedies in life are endless, just like my second brother, as if for this hat. ) The second brother who wears the "rich peasant" hat is tantamount to giving his hand to bad luck, and life at home has never been peaceful.
There was a cow in the village to feed my second brother. At that time, there were no tractors at all, and the role of plowing cattle in busy farming was obvious. My second brother keeps this cow wholeheartedly, because he knows that he is engaged in labor reform and is not careless at all. But one day, the second brother was ill, and he asked his son Shu Min to feed him cows. It may be that the scholar who was only a teenager at that time mistakenly cut the poisonous plants as cattle grass, and the cattle died inexplicably the next morning after eating them. This is a catastrophe. The village has been asking the second brother to explain why he poisoned the cow. Why is my second brother so arrogant? Poisoning cattle is destroying the revolution and promoting production. My second brother must honestly accept the criticism of the revolutionary masses! I really don't know how my second brother got through it. I only know that my old and gentle second brother is more cautious and even a little scared by this. Although I have been back to my hometown for many years, I am still filled with indignation and resentment! But my second brother said, "you grew up in the city and don't know the importance of farming cattle." We cultivators can rely on it to farm! " I feel sad even if others don't criticize me when we feed the cows to death. Even if a little more criticism can save the cow, we are sorry for the villagers! "I don't understand what the second brother said, but I still feel wronged for the second brother. So some village cadres came to me later, and I looked very indifferent and thought, "Hum; Who told you to bully my second brother? "
The second brother has four children, the eldest is a daughter and the second is a son. Although I get along with them all, it is best to be "skinny" with their elder sister.
The "thin pole" is a little bigger than me. A girl of seventeen or eighteen, in the words of her hometown, is like a daffodil. The "thin pole" is about 1.6 meters long, with ear-length short hair and regular facial features. Laughing will reveal a mouthful of white rice teeth. The big eyes with double eyelids are round, just like the question mark that keeps popping up in her stomach. Although "skinny" is a little older than me, she went back to her hometown with my second brother when she was very young. She was basically isolated from the outside world and didn't know anything beyond the plain horizon. So when I went back, she was very excited and accompanied me all day and kept asking questions. In fact, I can't answer some questions at all. But I tried my best to satisfy her desire and told her some interesting things about our city and our family. The "thin pole" person is very smart, but because of the limited conditions at home, she has never read any books, but she can save sewing at home and in the fields. With the help of her mother, she made me a green military uniform that was particularly popular at that time, which made me look very proud. (I later wore it to Beijing and back to Chongqing to show off, but my companions couldn't see that I sewed it myself, and they especially envied me. In particular, her bicycle riding is particularly "slow", and she often takes me from village to village to tell me something about her family, the village and her own affairs. When I mentioned that their family was bullied by some people in the village because of birth problems, I was filled with indignation. My second brother and second sister-in-law were both fired, but she began to rebel over it. She often goes to someone to say that her family bullied her, and sometimes she has to fight. In this way, the image of a "thin pole" shrew has also been established, and the overbearing behavior of some people in the village has begun to converge. Of course, as a beautiful young girl, "thin pole" sometimes makes a girl miss love, but due to family factors, she consciously dares not climb up to the person she likes, but she doesn't like the poor conditions, so she is upset. When no one is around, she even tells me these very private whispers, which makes my life in my hometown a little happy. In short, the "skinny" mood has gradually affected me, and I can't live without it more and more.
Shu Min, the "skinny" eldest brother, was in junior high school and was born in the hometown of Confucius and Mencius. Moreover, he loves literature and is eager to try. However, at that time, the "reading uselessness" was rampant, every university was almost paralyzed, and many professors were being criticized and reformed. If they want to study hard, there is no way out. Only by joining the army can you change your personal destiny. However, the problem of family background has become the shackles of his ideal, making his originally tall body unable to stand tall and straight. It's just that when he is dancing and writing, he often can't help but sigh. Immature faces often reveal precocious worries, and a staff that is asymmetrical with age is deeply embedded in the forehead, which is very mature. My third sister Yinghai and my younger brother Xia Shu were very young at that time, but I was deeply impressed by Yinghai's beautiful shyness and Xia Shu's naughty stuttering.
In those days in my hometown, the happiest thing was listening to the old people in the village telling anecdotes about my father. There, I first heard my father's baby name: Changzhong. As the name implies, it may be that I hope my father's life is like a clock that has been placed for a long time, ticking away and never ending. The moral is that I hope my father will live a long and healthy life. An 80-year-old grandmother in the village told me: "Your father was a naughty boy when he was a child! When I never take a good walk, I often stretch my arms, swing my legs and jump when I leave home, and learn to sing big plays in the "drama box". One day, I choked and screamed, but your father is very smart and eager to learn something, and his academic performance has been very good. If it weren't for the war of resistance, your father wouldn't have left here. Your father is good, too. He became an engineer. Just like when your father was a child, you like to learn to sing in the theater box, and you will do a lot in the future. " I also heard from another grandfather that your father was not superstitious since he was a child. At that time, jiaozi was cooked during the Spring Festival. When the adults at home cooked it, they sent a reed-made "Ji Zi" to the temple to worship the Bodhisattva. That year, I happened to meet your father and your cousin to pay tribute in the temple. As soon as I arrived at the temple, your father asked your cousin to eat jiaozi with him. Your cousin was afraid of making Bodhisattva angry, so your father ate jiaozi alone, and then left Kiko in the sky, crying and threatening to sue him. He left and went to play. Although I was scolded by your grandfather when I came home later, your grandmother spoiled him and cooked him a big bowl of jiaozi. After eating, he found a deserted place and beat up your cousin. You see, your father was really interesting when he was a child? "
Listening to the old people's stories, the image of the mature, stern and unsmiling father I am very familiar with gradually blurred in my heart, while the image of the godless, childish and naughty father they described gradually became clear, which almost subverted my father's previous image in my heart, but I couldn't connect them and knead them together, just felt that the father who was so familiar became a little strange in an instant. Of course, I certainly hope that my father is still the father they described, because there is absolutely no generation gap with us, and there is no need to put on airs and lecture us like adults, let alone hit my hand when I do something wrong.
Because our grandparents died before liberation, my father's sisters were only my father's elder sister, and my elder sister still lived in his son's Beijing (seeing jiaozi off as my father's cousin, surnamed Sun, we called him "Cousin Sun"), and others died one after another. It seems that his father is the oldest among his peers, and his grandparents gave him a nickname. Some of their children have married elsewhere. My father is the oldest, but he is an elder in front of them. Although I am very thin, she still has to call me "Second Aunt". Under the guidance of "Thin Pole", I visited the homes of my uncle and uncle's sisters Jin Rong and Jin Fang. At that time, Jin Rong's sister, who was embarrassed at home, and Jin Fang's sister, who was slightly better off (because her lover was teaching, she usually earned some cash at home) were very enthusiastic. They tried their best to cook some delicious food (such as baked oil cakes and jiaozi with meat), which made me very moved and happy. Because in my second brother's house, my second sister-in-law usually gives me a salted duck egg and white steamed stuffed bun, and jiaozi is often a vegetarian dish, sometimes one or two eggs. Occasionally, if you encounter sick chickens, you can only bite the bullet and kill them (because the chickens are mainly fed to lay eggs and sold to supplement your family). I have never eaten rich food (I have never put bones and chicken together to make a garden to eat. It's amazing to chew the feeling that there is meat in bone and bone in meat. In modern terms, it is not only nutritious, but also can supplement calcium. It seems that my second brother knew a lot about nutrition at that time) because my second brother's family usually ate "Wowotou" and "sticky porridge" and never gave up eating white steamed bread (because there was too little white flour distributed at that time), so from the time I returned to my hometown until I left, my second brother's white steamed bread was almost made for me. Of course, the fried cakes and minced meat in jiaozi were terrible.
One of the things I look forward to and like to do most in my hometown is "going to the market". Every fixed market day, my second brother either sets a donkey cart or lets a "thin pole" ride a bicycle to take me to the market in Liu Yang next to our village. When I first went there, I was blindsided, just like I saw in movies in southern cities: men, women and children, people who came to the market liked to hold hands, with baskets on their wrists, chatting in twos and threes, greeting each other, some squatting on the ground to bargain, and some leaning against the beige wall smoking cigarettes, waiting for buyers. Green willows are swaying in the breeze and floating around, as if they are busy sweeping away dust for people and soothing the upset hearts of sellers who have not waited for buyers. That touch of green, in a dark brown soil, in a blue-green dress, is particularly dazzling and charming. Its branches are as elegant and charming as a girl's bun.
At that time, material life was relatively scarce, but people's spiritual life was very easy to satisfy. In those years when I lived in my hometown, I was a little sad and disappointed when I missed my parents and sisters, and the rest of the time was full of simple and plain happiness. -a fresh water well in the village, a narrow bumpy road in the village, round watermelons and melons lying in the fields on both sides of the road, an ancient and primitive rice mill and oil mill, and red dates, apples and Sydney hanging on the trees all made me feel so novel. Chewing on the "thin pole", they just pulled up earthy peanuts from the ground, leaned against the willow trees dancing in the breeze, listened to the wild tongue of the grasshopper and the out-of-tune pastoral songs of the shepherd boy in the distance, watched the stream flow slowly around me, and watched the clouds on the horizon wander in the blue sky, which made me extremely intoxicated. Especially the endless reeds in the village (I didn't know why my father named me "reed", because reed is the most common and common plant in my hometown. Probably my father wants me to be like a reed, ordinary but full of vitality. No matter where I grow up, I will be full of energy. ) Swinging back and forth in the rhythm of the wind, the white velvet reed flowers raised with the wind filled the air, bringing my thoughts into infinite reverie ... My thoughts drifted away with the reed flowers, across the waters of Qian Shan, across the cities and mountains, and also floated to my hometown, connecting my hometown with my father's hometown, and there was no distance between our hearts. At that time, I really appreciated the remoteness of my father's hometown (because my companion's parents are basically locals). It is precisely because of the flexibility of the region that I feel the happiness that my peers can't feel. And this kind of happiness is vividly portrayed in my heart, which makes me have a strong desire to express them. That is, from then on, I fell in love with literature, that is to say, it was our profound hometown complex that gave birth to my literary complex.
Later, I went to the third brother's house in Jinan, the eldest brother's house in Northeast China and the eldest brother's house in Beijing. Everywhere I went, I was deeply and warmly impressed. Even now, my eldest brother, second brother and grandson have left us and left the world to which they were deeply attached, but their simple and honest images are deeply engraved in my heart. No matter how many years have passed, no matter how many fresh lives have been crushed by the wheels of years, the years we once owned and walked together are eternal! Those relatives who died before us will live in our hearts forever!