I returned to my hometown during the National Day festival.
The next afternoon, I suddenly had a mind, went out of the village alone, went up the river embankment, and drove the car to the gap where the Yangtze River broke in 1954. Stopped and sat quietly for a while, as if reminiscing about the past, there were thousands of horses roaring in the ears, and there was a fierce cry for help.
There is a warm sun outside, but also a soft wind. Looking south through the car window, a pond can be seen in the gap of the poplar forest, formerly called reed swing. Without looking closely, it no longer has the openness of the past, and the once vast reeds have gradually shrunk until they retreat to the edge of the pond, a look of pity for each other. The autumn water is thinning, reflecting the figure of the dead yellow reeds on the shore; an old willow tree stands alone on the shore, no longer able to dance the melody of youth; a few herons lightly display their slender posture, or hang their heads or raise their heads or spread their wings; over the pond and then extend south, is the Yangtze River. The distance was a little far, and the river turned into a gray-white old cloth filled the gaps in the reeds and poplar trees. The tall buildings in Jiangnan and the endless distant mountains have become vaguely hazy paintings.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Book of Poetry has the following sentence about reeds: "Crabapples are flying, and white dew is frost; the so-called Yi people are on the side of the water." "In autumn and winter, the reeds are silver-white silk yarns with reeds on the edges, and they are unforgettable at a glance. Now I can't see a large area of reeds, which makes me a little lost.
In my childhood, I always came to this reed a few times a year. In the light of spring, the wind carries a chill. On the banks of the river are bare willows, branches and branches in the air doodling helplessly; in the reclaimed wasteland, wheat seedlings are still indulging in the atmosphere of winter and have not been knotted, but rapeseed has green buds, three or two small yellow flowers that can't wait to bloom, conveying the breath of spring. The reeds were empty all around, the asparagus were still sleeping in the dirt, and the scythe-sharpened stakes on the surface of the ground were like a dagger piercing into the air, and it would also pierce the cotton shoes on the feet. We came here to pick the maran head, pinch the artemisia, and pick the shallots. Some are for pigs, some are for pigs. This is not a taste of wild game, but a search for life, although it is often stabbed with blood by life.
A few spring rains, a few spring thunders, asparagus drilled out of the dirt, the tip of the shoot was reddish, like a fetus stained with the mother's blood. One gust after another of wind blew, countless reeds became a green ocean, and the momentum seemed to be that thousands of troops and horses were galloping and shouting and reveling, which made me young in awe. But in the end, we could not resist the temptation of the fragrance of the rice dumpling leaves, and in May, we burrowed into the reeds. By this time the reeds had formed, dense and vast, and we were burrowing in the bushes like small fish swimming in the ocean.
Later, I learned that the pond actually had a name, called Longtan. In the summer, a group of young fish catchers swim up the river, and large and small ponds have our footprints of frolicking. The last gathering place of a diagonal line is Longtan. The pond is a big lake in our hearts, very open, the water is also very deep, and there is a "small island" in the water. We swam through the deep water, a pair of small hands searching the slope of the island, if we touched a stone or a nest, there would be a reward. Listening to my father, it was the base of the old house, which had a large courtyard built on it, and there were dozens of people living there. Five or four years of water, the breach is behind the house, and the torrent has swirled out of this big dragon pool.
Ten years after that ruin, one night in mid-autumn, I came to a small village called "Cheng Jia Dun" with a lot of resentment. As if with nostalgia for the old house, I descended on the straw-paved wooden bed, crying alone, the delicate voice like the howl of an owl familiar to everyone, which seemed ordinary in the quiet village, unnoticed.
After I can remember, every year in the winter, the reeds were shaved clean, along with the artemisia grass and vines by the pond. The fallen reeds are packed into bundles, loaded into the car, and raised on the shoulders. Against the wind, over the river embankment, through the countryside, into the corners of the village. They either stand against the trees, lie down in piles, or lean against the wall, waiting in silence to break through the cocoon and become butterflies.
"Chang'an is a month, and ten thousand households hammer and reed." It is not an exaggeration to paraphrase this poem to describe the reeds in his hometown at that time. In their hometown, there may not be many people born in the 1950s and 1960s who can't weave reed mats. It was a tough time. Today's children may not have seen the appearance of the ash mat, and they are even more disdainful of its ugliness, its lowliness, and even incomprehensible, a hard-made reed mat is worth more than six cents, but it helps people survive the barren spring. So, in the cold moonlight, people were like an indefatigable old cow, dragging heavy stone bricks, going back and forth in the clicking sound, repeatedly stepping on the reeds. These long reeds have been forged, polished, and slitten, and flattened in hammering, like a strong man who has gradually lost his edges and corners and become supple after the tempering of life.
The land to the household gave people hope, and the reeds were also eroded little by little. Year after year, tall reeds turn into low soybeans and peanuts. In the year of great water, the seeds planted with hard work reaped not hope but sighs. The ash mat was gone, and the filtered down was still dusk.
Many people who once came out of the reeds, took hurried steps, walked in other places, and weaved life. But the reeds are no longer desolate, and the pace of the times has left a deep imprint here: on the land in front of us, a modern port, Tongling Jiangbei Port, is about to be born. The wei connecting the port is the Jiangbei Railway special line, and the outside of the wei is connected to the Yangtze River, which is a vast world.
I stood on the embankment and saw the distance.