In the journey of life, whether he is a successful person or an ordinary person, whether he travels around the world or stays together for life, his birthplace, especially the place where he lived in his childhood and adolescence, will become the clearest mark in his life.
My hometown is Zhuanjing Village, Xiashenjing Township, Yanggao County, Shanxi Province. This small village in the north of Shanxi is very ordinary. I have carefully read the Map of Zhaibao on Yanggao South Road published in the seventh year of Yongzheng (A.D. 1729). On the map, Qiaotou, Jin Jiazhuang, Zhangguantun and GuanZhuangzi, which are close to my village, are all on it, except the village where I was born. It means that this village did not exist 300 years ago. However, the ancient brick well site recorded in Yanggao County Records (1991-2015) published by China Literature and History Publishing House in 20/0/9 belongs to the Han Dynasty. Until now, this village is still unknown, but I am still very happy about the record of the ancient ruins of the Han Dynasty 30 meters east of the village. It shows that this village has a history and a story, but our descendants lack textual research. Cut short the nonsense and return to one's muttons. The village is a typical hilly landform. To the south of the village is a high loess slope. We call it Nanliang, and there are two deep ditches in the east of the village. Hundreds of families in the village choose to live in the ditch bay facing the sun. My family lives in a ravine called Xiaoxigou. There are five families. In my house, the self-closing door is made of adobe on the cliff, and there are three holes in the hole. This three-hole cave, where my life was born, bears all the joys of my childhood, as well as all the confusions and ideals before I joined the work. Now, I have been away from this three-hole for nearly forty years. I have changed 20 jobs and worked and lived in five cities and counties, including the provincial capital, but it is still the most common dream and the only dream that haunts me. This is an eternal memory in my life. This gully bay is called Xiaoxigou, which is relative to a gully bay called Daxigou in the village. There are more than 30 families living in caves scattered on the cliffs of Daxigou. Compared with the residents of Daxigou, my family is very marginalized and cold. My three-hole earth cave is my grandfather's legacy. One hall and two rooms, that is, the middle room is for access and the east and west rooms are for residence. There is a proverb in our village called "Grandson doesn't live in Grandpa's house", which means that if Grandson still lives in his ancestral property, it means that the family business has not developed. Indeed, this three-hole cliff-facing earth cave left by my grandfather has been known since I was sensible that only one hole in the west can live in, while the one in the east has cracked from the middle of the hole because of rain soaking, so I can only put some farm tools and things in it. My mother often tells me that according to the principle of rural house inheritance, the ownership of the East House should belong to my uncle who was still living in Inner Mongolia at that time.
First of all, talk about cliff kiln. Living in caves is very common in hilly areas with loess landforms. However, there are two kinds of earth caves near the cliff. One kind is called direct earth kiln, which is to flatten the soil layer near the cliff and directly excavate and shape it on the earth cliff. Generally, the three holes are also connected. When we enter two houses, we also call it a kiln. For the sake of safety, the excavation is relatively narrow and the living is dim. The other is adobe, also called cliff kiln. It should be said that this name is accurate. Adobe stuck to the back plane of the cliff and built a cave, which was wider and brighter to live in. As far as I can remember, there is a ditch in our village called Suan ditch, and more than 20 families live in direct-fired earth kilns. Cave dwellings are integrated with loess hills, some of which are like Yan 'an earth caves, but not as spacious and bright as others. The cliff kiln where my family lives is more than ten meters in front of the residents on both sides, which is convenient to enter and exit and very bright. Some people say that the cave near the cliff is warm in winter and cool in Shenxian Cave in summer, but that can only be helpless ridicule. In fact, there is a lot of bitterness. For example, there are a lot of rats and sometimes snakes here, which makes women and children frightened. But people who live in caves will never kill snakes. Instead, they will shovel snakes in baskets and let them go out in ditches far from home, because there is a superstition in the village that snakes are gods. I remember my father had two experiences of watering snakes. I especially remember that when I was seven or eight years old, there was a big thunderstorm one summer, and suddenly a lot of mud poured out from the top of the back wall of the cave. My father said that the mouse had dug the hole and poured the water in the ditch on the ground. Father put on a wool bag, braved the heavy rain and climbed up the ditch with a shovel, and had a hard time finding the hole to block it. But there is already deep mud on my floor, and it is quite difficult for my mother and my sister to pour it with a washbasin.