Zhou Zuoren: Nostalgia for water towns

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Having lived in Beijing for a long time, I have become accustomed to the northern terroir, and I no longer miss my hometown in the south, sometimes I just mention it and compare it with Beijing, but the result is always dwarfed, without a hint of boasting. For example, in the winter, in the early years of the Republic of China, I lived in my hometown for a few years, every year I had frostbite in my feet, and I had to peel off a layer of skin in the spring, but I didn't give birth to it after arriving in Beijing, but the spots on my heels still existed for forty years, and I was besieged by mosquitoes in the summer, which was the most painful thing in the south, and I wanted to write something during the day only in the encirclement of mosquito smoke, but I might have to be bitten a few times, and Beijing was also not hanging an account at night. But there are times when you have to remember its benefits, and the first is water. Because my hometown is in eastern Zhejiang, it is a famous water town, and the poem of Du Xunhe of the Tang Dynasty who sent people to Wu said:

Jun went to Gusu to see, and the people did their best to pillow the river.

There is less idle land in the ancient palace, and there are more small bridges in the water port.

Although he is talking about Gu Su here, he says in another poem: "Go to Yue from Wu, Wu Jiang and Yue Lian." This is a good word, so the words above can be transferred, and the so-called "people do their best to pillow the river" is really well described. Beijing has a spring drought as usual, and it will never rain after the snow, and it has not rained in June this year, or it will wait until the autumn rain. When it is so dry, although it is a common and almost annual thing, it is inevitable to think of some things that come to the place where there are many small bridges in the "water port".

In the city of the water town, almost every street has a river parallel, so there are bridges everywhere, low or only two or three levels, under the bridge to pass the boat, the high one is six or seven levels. There are not many bridges in the countryside, but there are many differences between the ports and the harbors, and it is equal to the use of cars in the north, which is equal to the use of cars in the north, and the rich can be hired exclusively, and the people who work have their own "desaka" boats, and ordinary people have to take advantage of the public navigation boats. There are two kinds of this, one of which is the port ship, which takes the short road of the county, and the other is the sailing ship, which takes the long road outside the county, and it is open at night and arrives the next morning.

Port ships in the city has a certain port, in the morning into the city, in the afternoon to drive back, about sixty or seventy miles of land and water, a day can be called port ships, the total number of port ships do not know how many, there is always a medium village, although it is a private business, in fact, it can be regarded as a public transportation organ, Lu Xun short story collection "Imitation Fear" there is a novel about divorce, saying that Zhuang Musan led his daughter to Pangzhuang to find a comforting old man, that is, to take the port boat, but he used Chinese there to call the ship, the novel also focuses on depicting characters There is no description of the port ship.

It is a medium-sized grange boat with a white canopy, lined with straight paneling and sitting side by side, with objects in the middle. The boat money is only one or twenty yuan, and it is not necessary to look at the distance of the road. The residents of the countryside are fixed, each other are old neighbors, or the family, on the ship to see that the passengers are almost acquaintances, sit down and chat about the day, the air here is very different from the long road is mostly passengers of the ship.

The ship takes most of the road from the front, the end is the station, its occupation is to send to the usher, the port ship is to run the village's public utilities, somewhat to the local service meaning, not only business, it not only takes the passenger up and down, transmits letters, but also handles goods for the village, whether it is a pound of sesame oil, a foot of shoe upper cloth, or a pound of Huai crab, as long as there is something in the shop, you can buy it for you, they do not write accounts, when they come back, they only rely on memory, this is the dry smoke of the three or six uncles fifty-six texts, this is the seven pounds of cloth sixty-four texts, Nothing is missed or wrong. It carries people to the city, and also runs the streets on behalf of people, which is very convenient, but there may be people, especially the wives, who are not very satisfied with the purchase, so they have to wait a little, and when the "boat shop" arrives, they buy it themselves.

In the city, there were cargo lang burdens, carrying burdens, shaking a special small drum with the elegant name "Frightening Girl" or "Summoning Lady", which was called "Bag Luo Dan" in dialects, according to Sun Dezu's "Sending Niches Yi Zhi" Volume IV: "The Bag Luo Dan of the Cargo Lang Dan Yue Yue is the genus of the goods and miscellaneous cloth and silk thread, and its initial cover is sold with the bag of the rope, so the cloud. "Later, it was a kind of box made of rattan and bamboo, stacked up very high, but in the water town, because of the inconvenience of walking, there was no, but there was a kind of boat shop that was convenient for water travel to make up for this deficiency." This appearance is no different from the ordinary port boat, usually a person shakes the bridge, to a village near the line, someone in the boat knocks on a small gong, everyone knows that the boat shop is coming, a coax to the riverbank, each to buy what they need, probably in addition to chai rice, other daily necessities can be bought, there are foreign oil and foreign lampshades, there are also mangma upper cloth and foreign head rope, and silk thread. This is the old way, but it is actually very useful.

I have seen this kind of boat shop, taken this kind of port ship, or before the Republic of China, the time has passed sixty years, maybe these are no longer there and are not known, then what I am pursuing is only the dream of the past. However, as I said above, although these methods are old, the intentions are all good, and recently I have often seen in the newspapers that some salesmen are trying to go to the mountains and villages to deliver goods, which is really the meaning of opening a ship shop, but it is even more hard work.