The "Grass Hall on mid-levels" is a brick house nestled among the flowers and trees of Mid-Levels. On its gate, the calligrapher was asked to write two big characters: Caotang.
In contemporary times, caotang has become a cultural symbol and cultural concept.
There was a veritable thatched cottage halfway up the hill, which was really thatched. From a distance, you can see that it is a rather ancient grass hall.
However, the real thatched grass hall did not go out of the inherent fate of the grass hall.
When I was young, I settled in a cottage at the junction of Xiuwen, Xifeng and Kaiyang in Guizhou. That was 50 years ago, half a century ago. At that time, there were still one-third of the peasant households in the village, which we respected as the poor and lower middle peasants, living in thatched huts. It should be a real thatched thatched house with a layer of roof. We have walked into almost every home of the poor and lower-middle peasants, not only visiting the poor and asking questions, remembering the bittersweet, but also witnessing the darkness, dampness and simplicity of the thatched huts. I remember that when a companion walked out of the thatched hut, he told a big truth: Some people said that the thatched hut was warm in winter and cool in summer, and they were simply talking blindly. Every year after autumn, there are always one or two families of farmers who will invite the villagers to build a thatched house once. It is said that if the cover is not overturned, in the rainy season, the thatched house will present a landscape of "heavy rain outside and light rain inside", and it is impossible to stay. We should know the youth first to increase insight, the second is to deeply understand the hardships of the life of poor and lower-middle peasants, whenever the peasant family flips over the thatched house, we will also go to join in the fun, help a little help, and at the same time rub a meal to eat. It was in this help that we learned the common sense of two country life. First, don't look at covering the roof with layers of thatch, that is also a technical job, at least three layers. Moreover, the three layers of grass cannot be covered exactly the same, and the silk thatch, thatch and dry grass must be intertwined with the cover. The first layer of the cover is tight, and the second layer can be covered. The simplest one also has to be covered with three layers. Second, no matter how well built and exquisite the thatched house, its life expectancy is only 10 years at most. Nearly 10 years later, the thatch on the roof will gradually rot, blacken, and break, so that people cannot live in it. It is also from helping the peasants to build thatched houses together, we have a deeper understanding of the meaning of "rolling the triple grass on my house" written in Du Fu's "Song of the Thatched House Broken by the Autumn Wind", so as to more closely appreciate the suffering of the people. I also understood why the peasants had a strong desire to build a brick house on their homestead after a slight improvement in food and clothing.
The decent thatched house built in the middle of the mountain still did not escape its fate of less than 10 years of life, the wind and rain, the scorching sun and frost and snow, only 7 years later, the thatch on the roof was scraped away, leaving only a layer of blackened linoleum and a crooked wooden shelf.
The grass hall on the mid-mountain that I am going to write about here is purely a brick house nestled between the flowers and trees of the mid-level. According to the mountainous terrain, in addition to the appearance of the grass house, in addition to the appearance of the grass house, the calligrapher was also asked to write two big characters: Caotang.
Obviously, it is a brick and tile structure, villa-type building, why is it still called a grass house?
Some people say that there is not a Du Fu Caotang in the suburbs of Chengdu, and most of them are also imitating it.
Du Fu Caotang I have seen, is also a very beautiful building. To be sure, this is not the grass hall where Du Fu lived, which was blown away by the strong wind and would be lifted off the thatched roof.
So the question is, thatched houses have accompanied our nation for thousands of years, in the land of China, I don't know how many such houses have been built, why is the grass hall where du Fu lived in poverty still be imitated and commemorated today?
The answer is obvious, Du Fu is a great poet, he lived in the grass hall, in the years of upheaval and displacement, he wrote the poems, the literati feelings he saw through in his poems, not only the self-hatred and self-lamentation when the hut he lived in was overturned by the autumn wind, in this tragic situation, he thought of himself as the cold soldiers and ordinary people with the same fate in the world, and also deeply concerned about the fate of the people. The masses of the people were touched by his literati sentiments, and only after thousands of years of building a drafting hall to commemorate him and remember him.
In this sense, the grass hall on the mid-mountain will highlight its significance. (Ye Xin)