The "Great Cold" has arrived. North wind, rain, frost, sand and snow, ridge ice, wet fog also followed, under the interplay, the cold tide quickly swept through the entire Chuanxi Dam, and the proverbial cloud froze to death of pigs and dogs".
The "great cold" is coming, the natural world is still cold, but people do not need to worry about its arrival, and the problem of hunger and cold for the vast majority of people is no longer a problem.
The last lunar year, the "Great Cold", will come at 10:39 a.m. today. It will be destined to be the "pet" of today's whole day, living from morning to night in television, newspapers, online media (especially self-media), and in landscape films, landscape paintings and people's talk (including poetry, of course), chatter, jubilant, smiling like flowers, proud of frost and snow, and warmly seems to have booked a handshake with spring in advance.
In the early hours of this morning, I woke up on my pillow, tossing and turning, the fragments of my childhood that resisted the cold, carrying the old and pure fragrance, wafting in front of me from the depths of the years.
1. Hot water bottle
When I went out as a child, my mother handed me a hot water bag.
Carrying it in the pocket of the clothes, the intimate back is hot; pinching in the hand, the palm of the hand and the back of the hand are warm.
No matter how far you go, as long as the hot water bottle is in your hand, the warmth is around, and the mother's love is around.
When I grew up, I knew that it was not necessary to refuse to be cold, to heat up a clear spring in my hometown, to keep its body temperature, and to appreciate its gift.
Second, steel charcoal
In the middle of winter when he was a child, his father took a few pieces of steel coal and placed them in the brazier, placed the brazier in the middle of the four walls of the ventilated hut, ignited the fire, and the family sat around the brazier, while roasting the charcoal fire, while swinging the dragon gate array, patiently waiting for the cold winter to pass.
I stared at the burning steel charcoal in a daze. The flame was sometimes red, sometimes blue, sometimes silently shaking, sometimes making a beeping sound. I seemed to hear Steel Charcoal talking, and at me, what was she saying?
The fire of steel charcoal shone in my eyes, and I didn't realize that the cold days had passed.
After going to school, I slowly learned the deep affection that steel charcoal gave me.
Tens of millions of years ago, she was a beautiful and youthful tree, standing on a certain end of the earth, quietly growing, quietly waiting.
Suddenly, one day, the earth's crust moved, and all life on earth was facing extinction. When the great tribulation came, this beautiful tree, her life was seriously damaged, her soul was about to break away from the broken branches, and at this moment, she fiercely and decisively pinned her soul and the only remaining branches and leaves on the rock that was about to shatter into molten pulp.
After the movement stops, the cooled molten slurry still turns back into rock. In the hard bones of the rock, there are the veins of the leaves, the tentacles of the roots, the shape of the branches, and the fluttering of insects. A tree was resurrected, resurrected in the rock, and she interpreted the heaviness of life in such a resolute way.
Then the tree sank into the ground along with the rocks, cut off from the world and from the air.
Life is truly a terrible existence. Ten million years later, a piece of steel charcoal burned in the eyes of my childhood, and from that warm flame, I found the original beauty of a tree.
Third, squeeze the heat and bake
I'm in elementary school.
Entering the heavy wooden double gate of Yunling Palace, I saw a passage several meters long, and at the end of the passage, a courtyard appeared: a dusty open space, surrounded by several simple tile houses, and in front of each row of houses were two or three eucalyptus trees taller than the houses.
The school building of Yunlinggong Primary School was built by foreign missionaries at the end of the Qing Dynasty, where my ancestors heard sermons and where my father and mother spent their first years. When I went to school, the school building was dilapidated, the walls of the classroom were ventilated, and the tiles of the roof were often blown down by the strong wind, and several times I almost hit my classmates on the head.
When the cold winter came, the students in the class still wore single clothes and pants, none of them wore cotton clothes, and many of them were still barefoot. In class, you can clearly hear each other's teeth crunching between the tables, and you can even hear the trembling of their respective muscles.
Everyone is looking forward to getting out of class quickly. After class, the girls flew to the mud to "hopscotch", and the boys rushed to the podium to squeeze the heat.
When squeezing the heat and drying, taking the left or right corner of the gable of the pulpit as the horn, the whole class of boys is divided into two columns, one column is back against the wall of the pulpit, one column is against the wall perpendicular to it, and everyone squeezes hard against the wall from two directions to the corner, while squeezing and shouting rhythmically, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing... Sometimes, our class teacher, Mr. Cai Qihua, would come to the front of the crowded hot and drying team, half-crouching, waving his hands vigorously, blushing, and cheering us up.
As soon as Teacher Cai came, the students squeezed the heat and baked harder. The students who were squeezed out of the queue quickly ran to the back of the line and continued to squeeze forward. The wind whistled outside the house, but we often squeezed out a hot sweat.
When I was in elementary school, the memory of the cold was very deep, and my memory of driving away the cold was even deeper.
Fourth, cockfighting
At the age of twelve, I was admitted to Kichijoji Junior High School. The predecessor of the school is still a temple built in the early Qing Dynasty.
Outside the main hall, there is a nanmu forest, all of which have a history of hundreds of years. In the main hall, the Buddhist hall is still there, and the box room is still there. The Buddhist hall is used as our library, which displays books such as "Golden Light Avenue", "Sunny Days", "Ouyang Hai" and so on, and I spent many unforgettable moments there. The box room is the office of the school teacher, and my class teacher, Zhang Kailan's office, is in the innermost one. Because Ms. Zhang reads my compositions in public in the class from time to time, her office has become my favorite place to go, there. She taught me many things I couldn't learn in class. After Teacher Zhang retired to the county more than 20 years ago, every year on the afternoon of the 30th day of the 30th month, before Chinese New Year's Eve, I would go to Teacher Zhang in advance to pay respects to the New Year, and accompany her to set up a small half-day dragon gate array, until now.
After graduation, I learned that the Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger of Jixiang Temple, the leader of the rebel army at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Yingjie Zhang Dashan of Chengdu Baolu were plotting here; the first underground party branch of the Communist Party of China in PiXian was established here; during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nanjing National Drama College crossed the south to run the school here, and the famous dramatist Xiong Foxi taught here and served as the principal. The people of the ten miles radius, the ancestors of each family, may have watched the performances of the teachers and students of the national drama college, and listened to the propaganda of the underground party of the Communist Party of China... I once heard my father say that when he was a few years old, when he got up in the morning, he heard the female students of the national drama college practicing their throats by the small river outside the temple.
Unfortunately, such a temple with a thick historical accumulation was demolished after the 2008 earthquake, and those glorious times may have been turned into the cement foundation of the new standardized teaching building.
When I was in junior high school, China's reform and opening up had already begun. In winter, we already have cotton clothes and new shoes to wear. Although the classroom is an old house, the doors and windows are still neat.
After class, the girls in the class circled around here and there, spreading some news that made the boys itch but could not catch a star and a half. Boys are still as active as ever, there are chases and fights on the playground, there are games to break wrists, and the most common game is cockfighting.
I was the shortest in my class, sitting in the first row, but cockfighting was unbeatable. The battle began, I took a foot pole in my hand, jumped alone, forward, killed the enemy group, rushed left and right, saw the opportunity, and fiercely pounced on the opposing leader, directly picking him down under the chicken leg. Standing on one leg on the other side's position, holding chicken feet in his hands, looking around on all sides, waiting in a strict position, allowing the sweat on his forehead to be blown away by the cold wind, that state of self-satisfaction, to this day, I want to laugh at any time.
In the whole three years of junior high school, I never had a particularly cold memory.
5. Military coats
At the age of fifteen, he was admitted to the Middle School.
Somehow, in the winter when I first started school, the whole school became popular with the army coat. I also asked my parents to buy one, in fact, I already knew that it required my parents to save money and spend half a year, but at that time, the vanity of adolescence overshadowed the filial piety of the peasant son.
The military coat was not actually worn on the body, but was loosely draped over the shoulders. Walking in the cold wind, letting the wind blow the sleeves or the hem of the coat behind you, although the front chest is too cold to be cold, but you think it is too cool, let the warmth of the pride flow throughout the body.
Unfortunately, the whole winter passed, my cool play was not noticed, and the first spring love also let it die on its own.
At that time, I already knew that even if it was cold, I had to pretend that I didn't care.