Wang Qiyu: The civilization that is gradually losing in the courtyard

I grew up in a rural compound and spent a peaceful childhood. After growing up, I walked out of the courtyard, but I often missed the life in the courtyard and nostalgic for the years in the courtyard, the civilization and harmony in the courtyard, the friendliness and harmony between the neighbors, have long been implanted in my heart, and whenever I remember it, it is always warm and familiar.

The courtyard where he lived as a child was divided into two parts (the inner courtyard and the outer patio), the outer courtyard lived in the three Tang families, and the inner courtyard lived in the Wang family brothers.

Listening to my mother recount more than once about the courtyard where I was born, in the summer and autumn of 1958, the same courtyard gave birth to our three baby boys, and the originally quiet courtyard suddenly became lively, and the childish cries rose and fell. Adults come and go, adding endless busyness and joy. On a sunny morning, patches of variegated diapers were dried on the wire in the yard like the flags of the Olympic Stadium. Because of our arrival, although my parents worked hard, everyone's face was full of smiles that could not be hidden.

At that time, the grain in the peasants' homes was returned to the public and gathered to eat in the commune canteen. Every household has no rice in the pot and no grain in the tank. The young parents rejoiced and became slightly sad, and they began to be helpless in the face of the men who were waiting to be fed. Milk is scarce, non-staple foods are scarce... In the end, it was a strong sense of neighborly affection, helping each other and helping each other through that difficult time. Whoever the neighbors get a bowl and a half of rice noodles from their relatives and friends, they will divide it into three parts and feed our brothers with different surnames who have no relatives and no reason.

This was followed by three years of difficult natural disasters. The commune canteen was then dissolved, and the villagers' food and clothing were no longer sustainable, eating leaves and bark, and all the wild vegetables, locust flowers, and elm money that could be eaten in the mountains were used as staple foods to fill their hunger. Most children are thin-faced due to lack of nutrients.

The same is true of me, the daily staple food is basically sweet potato noodle pancakes or sweet potato paste, only during the New Year's Festival or when close relatives come, you can eat a fine grain. However, the neighbors in our courtyard have never been stingy and selfish, and have always respected each other. No matter which one steamed a pot of steamed buns, two oil cakes, the first thing I thought of was to send one to each other, to the young us.

Together with the small neighbors in the courtyard, they learned to speak, and they walked together, and unconsciously the three young lives quietly grew up. Later, I remembered that the courtyard inside and outside became our happy "ocean" and the "battlefield" of hard work, and we often made us restless and turned the earth upside down. In the spring when the wind and the sun are beautiful, we play "Occupy the mountain as king"; on the hot summer night of the hot sun, we play "eagles catch chickens" together; in the late autumn of the cold wind, we play hide-and-seek together in the firewood and grass stacks; in the middle of winter when the snow falls, we build snowmen together and play snowballballs.

When I was old enough to go to school, Uncle Tang in the outer courtyard was a carpenter who made three benches identical, and my father wrote our names on the reverse side of the benches with a brush. We walked into the school together and sat down in the classroom. We went home holding hands after school in the afternoon and spelling b, p, m, f on the same homemade chalkboard. Take turns adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing...

In the mid-1970s, children who grew up in the countryside began to tire of backward homes and barren homelands, and longed to walk alone in a foreign land and pursue a new life. Young people flock to factories, mines, commerce, education (private teachers). I was also one of them, after graduating from high school, the mood of looking forward to going out to make a living gradually could not be contained, so I packed up and walked out of the courtyard where I was born and raised, out of the village where I was familiar with attachment, and the three small neighbors who were not brothers like brothers also ran their own things.

Nowadays, with the rapid development of urban construction, pieces of high-rise buildings grow wildly day and night, and a forest of buildings and towers swells. In my hometown, two or three-story small buildings have blossomed everywhere, and the only courtyard has been renovated and turned into a single courtyard, and the poetic courtyard civilization has been blown away by the horn of new rural construction. Those harmonious and warm neighborhood feelings have gradually disappeared with the changes of the times.

Since moving into the city, I have been confused about living in a building, and I have no real neighbors. The intimacy of chickens and dogs smelling each other and treating each other warmly has become old and dead and not interacting with each other; harmonious and friendly neighborly relations have become the indifference of not knowing each other on the same floor (a building) and not knowing each other for a long time; a numb expression dangling around, always making people feel the sadness of the world.

The courtyard civilization that I often miss nostalgic for has been sealed as the source of memory, and the warm and intimate neighborhood relationship has been buried in the dusty years.

About author:Wang Qiyu, a native of Yiyuan County, Shandong, Yiyuan County Branch of the Agricultural Development Bank (retired), a member of the China Financial Writers Association, whose works have appeared in media such as Essays, Financial Literature, Qi Feng, and Shandong Financial Literature, and many works have been included in literary collections such as "Silver Star Brilliant".

Yanagiizumi Financial Literature