"I've been singing to the public for 50 years!" Li Shouwang, a 71-year-old blind man, was one of the last storytellers in northern Shaanxi.
When he was 4 years old, Li Shouwang had a small illness, but he did not expect that it was this small illness that made him lose his light forever. The reason is that he is poor, because he has no money for treatment, and since then he has lost the opportunity to be an ordinary farmer.
People often say that "if you close a door, you will open a window", 19-year-old Li Shouwang learned to speak with a master by chance, and he used this to make a living, which was 50 years.
In his forties he took a mentally disturbed wife, gave birth to a son and a daughter, who inherited her mother's illness and married a son-in-law with tuberculosis.
The son also went to Sanyuan County in Xi'an to become a door-to-door son-in-law because of his family's poverty, and the son lost money in business.
The unfortunate encounter of his children has become a heart disease for old Li, who is more than 70 years old, and the money that old Li earns every year almost subsidizes his children's lives.
Although the eye can't see, the day has to be lived. Li Shouwang himself lives alone in the mountains, and there are few families around, cutting firewood, making fires, cooking, all in one go, a meal is often a bowl of noodles, and the days are so good.
Early this morning, Li Shouwang and his blind teammates packed up and prepared to leave. The annual storyteller team has begun the long journey again.
A group of people you hold me, I pull you, slowly on the dusty road, until dark, they walked to Liujia Village, at this time the sky is completely dark, Li Shouwang and his party beat the dust on their bodies, into the cave, and then sat on the hot kang.
It was late, but it didn't affect the enthusiasm of the villagers. However, these villagers are elderly people who rarely see young people.
With the development of urbanization, 90% of the rural population in northern Shaanxi has gone out to work, and the storytelling team that was once popular has now almost lost its audience base.
"Play the three strings I start a class, men and women and children go to please save again," after debugging the instrument, Li Shouwang led a group of old guys to carry out a hard singing, singing roughly, as soon as the opening is the taste of northwest heroic.
After singing the play, everyone Zhang Luo wanted to collect money, but did not expect the village accountant to suppress the price, said a total of 270 yuan, gave 200 yuan, the reason is that Li Shouwang and his gang performed the program belonged to cultural propaganda, the village did not need them to come, now the village has a TV, if you want to watch it, you can directly watch TV, tv has everything, Li Shouwang and his gang belong to the "difficult people", want to busy them, but the village really can't come up with so much money.
Li Shouwang, as the captain, did not agree, if he agreed, the money he lost would need him to take it to the big guys.
A group of people argued, to no avail, and went to sleep separately.
"Eating ours, drinking ours, sleeping with us, and wasting our electricity, it's good to give money!" Early the next morning, the accountant's wife came, and as soon as she came, she shouted, and when she left, she turned off the lights and drove the people away.
The people of the storytelling team are honest and honest, and such a thing does not only happen in Liujia Village, but also in other places. The contradiction between Li Shouwang's storytelling team and the village team is intensifying, and many times because of the difference in the amount of money, they and the village captain quarrel with each other, which makes Li Shouwang and a group of people very embarrassed.
They really couldn't do anything about it, so they had to take the money and leave.
At this moment, his son Li Shouwang called and said that he had lost tens of thousands of dollars in business, and his daughter-in-law had broken her leg and was in urgent need of money.
Li Shouwang has earned money over the years to his son, even his own coffin is not left, where is there any money, he had no choice but to go out and find his brother-in-law to borrow money.
The brother-in-law's family is not rich, but also knows the situation of Li Shouwang's family, seeing that he came to borrow money, he lent Li Shouwang all the two thousand in hand, but this is far from enough, Li Shouwang thought of his brother-in-law's neighbor in the loan money, although the neighbor wanted a five-point interest, but Shouwang did not hesitate for his son, and found a neighbor to borrow three thousand yuan.
The next morning, Li Shouwang went to the bank and remitted all five thousand yuan to his son, although he whispered when borrowing money, he still smiled happily at his son on the phone, and asked his son to quickly withdraw the money.
When Li Shouwang is running around in the field, he will always put a picture of his children in his bag, although he can't see it, but when he misses his children, he will always take it out and touch it a few times, maybe this can give him some comfort.
In this way, all the way to singing, Li Shouwang and his gang walked nearly three hundred villages, hiked up to 1,500 kilometers, and the two-month storytelling life was finally over.
Everyone took every penny of the money they earned, and Shou Wang, as the captain, took five hundred yuan, but he was still very happy, because it was close to the end of the year, and his son was finally coming back.
Li Shouwang took the money to buy many New Year goods, cleaned the house thoroughly, cleaned the caves, pasted new windows, changed the curtains, in order to let them go home for a few more days, he specially spent a huge amount of 480 yuan to buy a small TV and satellite receiver to watch the Spring Festival Gala.
When he learned that his son would take his daughter-in-law and granddaughter home for the New Year, he was overjoyed, cleaning the caves, pasting new windows, changing curtains, and buying back televisions and satellite receivers so that they could go home for a few more days. But what awaited him was a sigh.
Waiting for the left and waiting for the right, the son has not returned, and the last sentence cannot come back to the New Year, which makes Li Shouwang completely disappointed.
Li Shouwang is still worried about whether his son will not come back because of insufficient money, and he also plans to borrow money to paste to his son, hoping that his son will finish the New Year over there, and he will come back in the first month.
The emergence and demise of an art is directly related to its audience, usually born of love, grown up because of joy, and died of boredom, which is the case with blind people in northern Shaanxi, because of the flow of audiences and the transfer of forced decline.
The decline of traditional craftsmanship is a kind of fragmentation of traditional culture, and it is inevitable that pain will arise if it is a separation.
I remember when I was a child, when there was a movie in the countryside, everyone rushed to tell each other, and the children were even more happy and overwhelmed, scrambling around the people who played the movie.
The movie has not yet started, the place where the movie is played has long been crowded, at night the whole village of men, women and children are sitting in the courtyard, children are riding the wall, climbing trees, more children are still sitting in the first row.
People feel happiness in such beautiful years, looking for ways to live and the true meaning of life. Since then, this lively and noisy scene has been sunk in people's hearts and has forever become a memory.
The yearning for a better life and the desire for warmth in the world are the happiness we have been pursuing.