Serial 丨 Feng Zikai self-description 05 Dream Traces

Author: Feng Zikai Author/Paint ▏ Zhong Guisong eds

Publisher: Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore

I have a scar on my left forehead that is the length of an eyebrow. It was formed when I broke my head on the threshold in my childhood game. Mr. Face to Face said it was a broken phase, it was a flaw. But I call it "Dream Marks" myself. Because this is the only trace of my dream childhood. From this trace, I can explore the beautiful dreams of my childhood.

When I was four or five years old, one day, in order to "send" (my hometown custom, the children of relatives came to the door for the first time, when they resigned, the host family would make a few plates of buns to send him, known as "sending"),a small guest of a certain family, mothers, aunts, aunts and sisters were making rice noodle buns. In the middle of the hall is a large plaque, and in the center of the plaque is a large plate containing a large pile of clay-like rice noodles and a large bowl of sweet bean paste for filling. The mothers all sat around the plaque. Each rolled up his sleeves and took a piece of rice noodles from the plate and kneaded it into the shape of a bowl; he took a chopstick of bean paste to hide in the bowl; and then he closed the bowl and made it into a circle. Then use the technique to knead the circle into a triangle, twist out three strands of twisted silk pattern of the spine, and finally put a red "Shou" character print on the center point of the spine, and the bun is made. Circle after circle is displayed in the large plaque, which looks very good. Everyone laughed happily as they did it. Sometimes it is said that who did too little and who did too much; sometimes it was said that the aunt's work was too exquisite, and sometimes it was laughed that the mother's work was like a cake. The sound of laughter fills the room. This is a rare day of the year when the whole family laughs. And in me, as a child, there is more joy on this kind of day; when I am ready to make buns, I have to eat a bowl of sweet bean paste. When I do it, I just have to make a noise, and the mothers will make another small bun for me to eat on the spot. Fresh rice noodles and fresh bean paste, made hot and eaten, taste good. I often don't eat enough of one, and then I have to eat a second one. If eating the second one is not enough, I can clamor for them to make a shou character print. This seal is not easy to type: there is too much water to dip, and it is a mess to see the word Shou; the water dipped is too little, and it is not clear to type; moreover, the position should be placed correctly, and if it is crooked, it will be ugly; if it is broken, it cannot be smeared and altered. So I clamored for a print, which is the most feared thing for mothers. They would consult with me and give me a small grain of rice noodles that I had picked when I was making the dumplings and tell me to "make it myself and eat it myself." That's the Lord's purpose I'm looking forward to! After this example is prescribed, the rice noodles that everyone picks up when they make rounds and closes them must belong to me as usual. When it is not enough, you have to ask to twist a handful of rice noodles into the big plate, freely kneading all kinds of clay by hand: pinch a person, put together, pinch a dog; and then knead, and then pinch a hookah pipe... When the dirty rice noodles that I pinched into my hands were mixed in, and the snow-white rice noodles turned gray, I asked them for a bean paste, wrapped them in various things, and ate them in my stomach. On this day, because I was arguing very badly, my aunt made two small and exquisite buns for me to eat, and my mother picked a ball of rice noodles for me to play with. In order to seek freedom, I did not eat at that scene, but took it to the store and played with my five brothers. The fifth brother, I later learned to be an apprentice in our shop, but at the time I only knew that he was my dearest companion as a child. He was older than me, more intelligent than me, bolder than me, and he often did all kinds of things that I didn't expect to surprise me. On this day, I took out the bun and rice noodles to play with him, and he found a few small red clay prints of the ink mud bodhisattva and taught me to print rice flour bodhisattvas.

Later we quarreled, and he took his rice noodle bodhisattva and fled, and I took my rice noodle bodhisattva and chased after him. Chasing to the side of the row door, I fell, my forehead bone slammed on the threshold of the row, and I hit a hole the size of an eye, and I fainted. By the time I was conscious, I was already in my mother's hands, and Mr. Choi Tak-ben, the surgeon, was wrapping strips of cloth over my head.

Since I fell and injured, my fifth brother came upstairs every day to ask me when he was free in the store. When I come, I must secretly find something from my sleeve that I like to play with—such as a few kowtows in a fire box, a foreign paper man's head, a small foot made of old diamond shells, a knife made of Shunzhi copper tungsten, etc.—and give it to me to play with until I have this scar on my forehead.

Talking about the origin of the scar on my forehead, the most vivid figure in my recollection is like the fifth brother. And the various surprising and gratifying behaviors of the fifth brother, and the joy of my childhood, also came to mind with this reflection.

The mischievousness of his behavior, I still feel surprised when I think about it now. But this kind of behavior had a great attraction to me at that time, so that I followed him all the time and volunteered to be his followers. He caught a large centipede with his hand, removed its poisonous hook and claw, and hid it in his sleeve, walking everywhere, ready to take it out at any time to frighten. I followed him and admired his tricks. Sometimes he secretly put the centipede on someone else's melon skin hat and let it climb down the man's forehead, frightening the man to jump straight up. Sometimes when carrying this centipede to the pit, while the climber waiting for the neighboring seat is pulling feces, he throws the centipede on his pants, causing the man to twist his pants and jump around, tired of the dung. Sometimes, when he was in front of everyone, he secretly put the centipede on his forehead, pretended to be bitten, and cried loudly, causing the people in the audience to panic and rescue him. When he was in danger of survival, he reached out to collect the centipede, and suddenly broke into laughter, and a wisp of smoke fled. Later, this trick gradually became worn, and some people warned him that if he took out the centipede again, he would punch his head and neck. So he switched out a different kind of flower head: he hid in the doorway, waiting for the warning that the person who punched the head and neck would go out of the door, suddenly shouted, fell on the ground by the threshold, rolled around, cried and shouted, saying that he had trampled on a large snake with thick arms, but the snake had already burrowed under the bed. The people who came out of the door were frightened by him, and their souls were scattered; but seeing that his suffering was deeper than his, there was nothing he could do, only to blame his bad luck. He saw a group of people crouching on the shore fishing, so he went inside and chatted with the squatting people. At the same time, he secretly knotted the braids of the two people who were close together, and he walked away and hid in the distance to watch from the wall. If one of the two people who were tied up got up and wanted to go, the burlesque showed him. The list goes on and on.

Looking back on his play now, it was almost a banter than a sadistic joke. But at that time, he was enthusiastic about creating, and I was not the only one who enthusiastically admired the children. The solemn educator of the world, please forgive his naughtiness a little! When we were children, we secretly played an origami handicraft in the private school, which was to be nailed to the forehead bone by Mr. Confucius with a copper pen sleeve, plus kneeling in front of the god seat of the Most Holy Ancestor Confucius!

Besides, our fifth brother also used his intellect and technology to invent all kinds of interesting things, and I now think of it. In the late spring, he led me out into the fields to steal new broad beans. I eat the tender raw ones and use the old ones to make "fava bean water dragons". The method is to smoke the old fava bean pods half-cooked with a coal head paper fire, cut off its lower end, pinch it with your hand, and the two beans in the pod will slide out from the lower end, and then cut the top of the pod slightly to make a small hole. Then put the pod in the water, fill it with water, pinch the lower end of it with the fingers of one hand and take it out, and then squeeze the pod with the fingers of the other hand, and a slender water belt shoots out of the hole in the top of the pod. The method is exquisite, and the shooting water can reach a distance of one or two inches. He also taught me the method of "bean stalk flute": picking the young stem of the pea is about inches long, and gently chewing it with one end in the mouth, and when it blows, it makes a chirping sound. Then pick the lower part of the broad bean stem, about four or five inches long, and use your fingers and claws to evenly open a few holes in the stem to make a flute shape. Then insert the pea stem into one end of the flute, and use the fingers of both hands to open and close the holes at will and blow it, and its sound is like a cavityless piccolo. He also taught me to use the oil of foreign candles for all kinds of pouring and shaping. Engraving all kinds of plates with taro or sweet potato, large types of woodblock prints today... And so on.

Now I have long been associated with these childhood pleasures. But when I talk about the origin of the scar on my forehead, I can still fondly recall the five brothers who were active and this kind of excited thing. Who says the scar on my left forehead is a defect? This is a testament to the joys of my childhood, a relic of my golden age. The past is destroyed like a dream, and no trace remains. Only this scar, which seems to be a golden mark on the face when "twenty rods, stabbed with military states", permanently and obviously records the facts of the past, and when I say it, I can remember the past for a long time. It was as if I had committed a crime in the home of the children's world and had been stabbed into the "far evil military state" of adult society. Although this indefinite exile has never seen me return to my hometown, with the golden seal on my face, I can also go back to the past and pursue the beautiful dream of my hometown!

June 7, 1934