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Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

Winter tree

The story of Tsutomuda Street

Text | Liu Qiujie

Liu Qiujie, pen name Qiu Ge, was born in 1954 in Tangwan, Yuantian Township, Lianyuan County. He has worked as a farmer, a private teacher, a film projectionist, a safety supervisor, a secretary, an office director, etc., and has authored "Symphonic Poems of Friendship" and "Collected Letters". Click at the top #Dou Kasayama Autumn Song Storytelling # to see more historical articles.

This article is more than 3500 words

At the junction of kengtian and xianghua villages in Doujiashan Town, Lianyuan City, Hunan Province, there is a street with a history of nearly 300 years that has been abandoned for many years, called "Yuantian Street" in ancient times. In the Fang Zhi of Anhua and Xiangxiang, and in the genealogy of the Liu clan, no written record of this street can be found. With the decline of the ancient street of Tsukida, the legends and stories that once circulated on the Xiang (Township) - An (Hua) Ancient Road have gradually disappeared...

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie
Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

The current situation of The ancient street of Yuantian, the stone slab road of Xiang'an Ancient Road is still faintly visible

Conforming coppersmiths

A regular visitor on Tsuneda Street is an old coppersmith. He was in his seventies at the time, and his name was unknown, and everyone called him a deaf coppersmith. That craftsmanship is now unmatched. A piece of copper, under his small hammer, the copper bat and copper beast on the long-life lock created are vivid, and the small bell clangs. The four words of longevity and wealth are vigorous and powerful.

The deaf coppersmith never hits the dragon or phoenix pattern on the long life lock. Some customers asked him to beat the dragon and phoenix on the long life lock at a high price, and he never took this business, only said bluntly: The blessing of the emperor, you can't stand it. The copper locks and hundreds of keys of the deaf coppersmith could not be used universally. The small copper ball created has five layers inside, rotating each other, and the innermost is a copper bead, I don't know how to insert it.

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

Each one had knife wounds

In the early years of the Republic of China, a blind fortune teller came from the street of Yuantian. One day, staying in a stall on Tsutomu Street, because the food was light, he bought meat at a meat stall on the street and asked the butcher to cut it into 32 pieces. Bring it back to the shop, ask the shop to cook it, and say: Don't cut it, just cook it like this.

After the shop was cooked and served to the table, the fortune teller used chopsticks to pull it in the bowl, picked up a piece and said to the boss: "Boss, this General Guo (pot) and General Cai (Cai) fought a war, the fight was too frightening, you see: go in thirty-two, come out sixteen pairs, people and horses are still there, each one has knife wounds." ”

The shopkeeper also understands people, knows that people walk the rivers and lakes, and even the blind are not easy to fool. I had to say, "Sir, I see that you have so much meat, I am afraid that you will not be able to eat a meal, and I have left you some for the evening to eat." ”

So, sir, the shopkeeper, he smiled.

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

The current situation of the old street shop (inn).

Willow grafting

Among the you Fanglang walking on the ancient streets, there is no shortage of superb divine doctors. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, there was a herbal medicine langzhong who always came to the street of Yuantian every year to sell medicine for half a month. He treated his illness with a bowl of well water. Such as bone water, bone water, snow frost water, hemostasis water, open knife analgesic water, iron bull water, reverse return water, rampant water, quenching water and so on. Whether it is a bruise or a snake bite, whether it is a typhoid fever or dysentery, it is a bowl of well water with a mantra and a little powder. To cure leprosy, use the sediment under the urine bucket to add a little powder, apply to the head, and grow hair in half a month. The medical expenses are all three liters and three bowls of rice.

One day, a child in Luantang Bay fell from a tall hom while watching a cow, broke his right arm, and his family came to see him on his back. Only to see Mr. Langzhong instruct his family to go to three wells to bring a bowl of water. Mr. Kanaka took the water, drew his right hand on the surface of the water, recited the words in his mouth, and then took the water in his mouth and sprayed it on the child's injured arm. After spraying, I touched the broken hand with my hand and squeezed it a few times. Then I took some medicine powder to the stall and put it on a paste, and said: Okay.

Then he broke a few willow branches on the willow tree on the side of the street, tied them to the broken hand, and put it in a bamboo tube, saying: After seven days, the bamboo tube can be dismantled. Seven days later, the bamboo tube was dismantled, and the broken arm was intact.

During the small talk, someone said: Mr. Zhao Zhong, you make money like this, you must have sent it. Mr. Langzhong said: "Herbs langzhong does not make a fortune." Some merchants on Tsuneta Street wanted their sons to study medicine with him, and Mr. Langzhong said: "Pull herbs, shave the brain shell, castrate the horizontal pig (boar is horizontal, sow is grass), san mohe (learning)".

Eighteen and a half steps

According to legend, the Ningxiang Huaminglou Liu clan (a line of Chairman Liu Shaoqi) revised the genealogy, and the Liu clan of Ningxiang Huaminglou believed that the Liu clan of Ningxiang Huaminglou had moved from YuetangWan (the place where the ancient Liu clan passed on the family school) near Yuantian Street. Send people to Ningxiang to confess their clan with Huaminglou Liu.

Pangu, an old man of the Liu clan in HuamingLou, said, "Family Gate, do you know the eighteen-step half-stone stone?" Do you know where this monument is? The people sent to Ningxiang by the Liu clan of Sijia Tian could not answer for a moment.

The old man of the Liu clan of Huaming Lou said, "You don't even know the eighteen-step half-stone stone, what kind of clan relatives do you still recognize?" The emissaries of Tsutomu returned from Ningxiang, thinking left and right, unable to understand. One day, when I went to the three wells of the Xiang'an Ancient Road to carry water, I suddenly realized: "It turns out that the eighteen-step half-stone stone monument is here." ”

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

Remnants of the "Eighteen-Step Half-Stone Stone Hammer"

Savvy furnace maker

The pot maker on The Street is very famous, his name is Liu Shuihe, known as "water slippery back". Slip back in Anhua has a shrewd, cunning meaning. Every day before the furnace was opened, the water slippery back would go door to door shouting: Oh...! Then the collected iron pots are gathered together, the bottom of the pot is treated, the furnace is opened, the molten iron is melted with a crucible, the molten iron is taken with a clay spoon, and the mud sandbag is placed in the hand, the left hand presses the molten iron from the bottom of the iron pot into the broken place of the pot, and the right hand holds a cloth barrel to flatten the molten iron. Every drop of molten iron is called a fire. Each fire consists of 5 cents and finally to 3 cents.

Once, a user made up a large iron pot and had no money to give the water slippery back. Shui Slippery Back said: You take the liter and beat three bowls of rice for me. That user bargained and said: Half a liter of rice is good? The slippery back said: Then tip half a liter. The user measured the tip half a liter of rice to him. In fact, the tip of half a liter is almost the same as three bowls of rice.

The people on the field often say that "one horse (mule chicken, rooster castration) two strokes (make up the pot) three dozen iron, not yet profitable, the god of wealth to go up to rob" is also a money-making business. But the slippery back said: "If you make money, the furnace can be held, and the mouth cannot be held." (Shengzi, an instrument for measuring rice, is square, with a small bottom and a large size, with three grids, and a liter of rice is about two pounds and four two.) One block is half a liter long, and one pound is two or two. Two blocks short are called bowls, six two per bowl. )

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

Pot maker (called 镥匠 in the Yutian dialect)

Tic-tac-toe secret

The dye shop on Tsutomu Street dyes the white soil cloth hand-woven by the rural family with indigo and indigo extracted from plants to dye the white cloth into cyan and blue. One day, a customer brought a piece of cloth and asked to dye it blue. (A horse is a unit of length, more than 4 zhang long, converted to today's length, a cloth length should be about 13 meters, width according to the system limit, about 1.4 meters.) )

The shopkeeper saw that the cloth cotton yarn was delicate and the weaver was exquisite, so he replaced the customer's cloth with a coarse cloth in the store. When the client came to pick up the cloth, he opened the dyed cloth and said, "This cloth is not mine."

The shopkeeper said: How is it not yours? Three feet nine feet long, four feet two inches wide, not a lot of yours.

The customer said: the size is still there, the bottom is gone.

The shopkeeper said: You mean I changed the scale with the stone.

The client said: Yes, my cloth has the word "well" in my name. I woven a tic-tac-toe at three feet and three inches out of uncooked sesame thread. You don't have a tic-tac-toe on this piece of cloth.

The shopkeeper had to take the customer's cloth and say: Where is your name? The customer opened the cloth and pointed to the shopkeeper a tic-tac-toe woven from unstained, unstained cobble thread at three feet and three inches.

The shopkeeper said sarcastically, "Oh, that's because I was so (stupid) that the guest (wife) got it wrong." (The shopkeeper's wife is not stupid, this is the shopkeeper's humble words, like the "humble thorn" of the text).

Since then, the craftsmen on the field have marked their own products. The blacksmith puts the word "Wen" on the ironware, the carpenter chisels the word "Ren" and "Shao" on the woodenware, the coppersmith puts the word "swastika" on the bronze, etc. It can not only be anti-counterfeiting, but also a commitment, but also for their own products to promote. (The toenaline fiber contains colloidal matter and cannot be stained.) If dyed, degumming is required. The customer took advantage of the principle that the hemp fiber contained glue and did not color, and made a secret note of the cloth)

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

In ancient times, the yuan gems of dyeing cloth and pressing cloth on the street of Tsutomu

Is (persimmon) trees do not sell

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a bricklayer in Fangtangping (hereinafter referred to as Party B) wanted to buy a piece of firewood grown on a piece of Mao Mountain in a family on Yuantian Street (hereinafter referred to as Party A), cut wood and burn the tile kiln. The two sides agreed on the terms of the price, the time to cut firewood, etc., and asked the Chinese to write the contract. It was agreed that this mountain would not be sold, some persimmon trees on the mountain would not be sold, and the rest of the firewood trees would be sold to Party B.

And Party A bought through the middle people, bullied Party B into being illiterate, used the harmonic sound of "persimmon" and "yes", and wrote on the contract the clause that "this mountain is not sold, the tree is not sold, and all the rest of the firewood is sold to Party B...". After the Chinese person read the contract, the two parties signed and pledged the contract, each holding a copy.

When Party B cut down some pine trees and oak trees when cutting firewood, Party A sent someone to stop them, saying that all trees could not be cut down, and took out a contract to say "trees are not sold", Party B said "persimmon trees do not sell", and both sides insisted on their own words. Finally, the elders of the clan were asked to mediate, because the paper was in black and white, and both parties had signed the pledge, and they could only cut it down in accordance with the contract. Because Party B was illiterate, he was deceived and suffered a big loss.

The sender is

In the thirtieth year of the Republic of China (1941), there was a farmer named Liu Hong on the Pass, and one day, the baochang asked him to send a letter, wrote a note to him, and gave him a piece of lace (silver dollars) and asked him to send the letter to Lantian. The security chief specifically told him that he could not read the letter to anyone and that he would go to jail if he leaked it.

He took and collected the letter and walked to the Mingjing Well through the lake spring to the Lantian Township Office. At the township office, the villager who received the letter read the letter and tied him up and locked him up in Zhuangding's house.

Liu Hong said: I am sending letters, why did you arrest me? The township ding said that today is the day when the townships send Zhuang Ding, and your letter to the chief of the bao is "The messenger is the messenger." "You're the strong man who delivered it yourself."

In the 1970s, Liu Hong said in a bitter and sweet report at school: "Bad culture, big losses. "To motivate students to study hard." Narrator: Liu Hong, male, (1916-1988). Illiterate recorder: Liu Qiujie, who was a private teacher at that time. Recorded: September 15, 1975. Location: Doujiashan School, Mingjing Commune, Lianyuan County, Hunan Province. P.S. This was told by Liu Hong, an old poor peasant at the School at that time, when he invited Liu Hong, an old poor peasant, to come to the school to make a bitter and sweet report.

Legends and stories left in the countryside (2) | Liu Qiujie

Hand-drawn schematic diagram of the ancient street of Tsukida

Insist on cash

One year, Meishan Shoshi, who had been selling bruise medicine and pills on Tsuita Street all year round, would eat and live in a group shop on Tsuita Street every year. These days, because the business is not good, I can't afford to live in a shop. He offered his boss to eat and live on credit, but the boss did not agree.

The boss said: Guess a riddle (riddle) again? The riddle goes like this: the stone beats more drums, and there is a beauty at the foot of the Western Mountain; the prince of wang sun sees it, and the old man Jingo acts as a matchmaker. Of course, the way to go the rivers and lakes knows the mystery, there is no cash, and they have to pretend to be stupid. Put the formula to say: I read the book, can't guess. I'll give you some plasters and pills at half the price, and I'll stay in your treasure shop for a few days.

The boss is also a philanthropist, taking the handle of the goods and leaving him in the rest shop to eat and sleep. (Meishan style, refers to the stalls who dance their fists and get sticks before selling medicines, and then vigorously brag about the magic medicine who can do a little kung fu)

Liu Qiujie collected and sorted 2021.12.23

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