Cao Shugui's works: To the village we will eventually die

Recently, the villagers in their hometown are struggling with one thing.

A real estate developer in the next town to invest in the construction of some residential buildings, the number of houses is large, the town residents can not consume, so it threw an olive branch to the people of our town, if you go to buy a house, not only the price is cheap, the government also has subsidies, a discount, can save tens of thousands.

The townspeople were a little moved.

But the question is, after living upstairs, what to do when you plant the land and harvest the wheat and do farm work? Riding a motorcycle back and forth?

Buy or not buy? That's a problem!

Regardless of whether the villagers will move to the upper floor of the next town after some struggle, after hearing this news, I thought of another question.

My hometown is remote, the pace of new rural construction is slower, and in the place where I work, many villages have realized that farmers have gone upstairs. Clean, tidy, convenient needless to say, but every time I see a few buildings standing abruptly on the vast fields, I just feel cold and stiff, they can't carry the warmth, tranquility and peace unique to native China.

In a city with little land, buildings are undoubtedly the most space-saving way to live, but is this kind of people stepping on people, stacking people, and this kind of cold, closed building really the best way for human beings to live? Do hundreds of millions of peasants in China have to live in such buildings? In which direction should life go after going upstairs? Where should the homeland affection, where should the blood thicker than the water be placed? Is it true that the vernacular China of "the eaves of the elm willow shade and the front of the Tao Li Luo Hall", the vernacular China of the "small bridge and the flowing water of the people", will finally be buried under such a building?

Whether I can figure it out or not, there is an indisputable fact that my rural economy is getting better and better, but there is less and less bustle.

What a thin childhood it was not to eagerly look forward to the New Year.

But now the truth is that even in the countryside, people don't have much enthusiasm for the New Year anymore.

Once we were eagerly looking forward to the New Year, when the New Year was approaching, the whole village was full of strong New Year flavor, and every household was preparing for the New Year.

As soon as the porridge was eaten, the taste of the new year began to spread in the village.

From the fifteenth day of the waxing moon, dismantling and washing bedding, cleaning houses, buying new clothes, steaming steamed buns, frying oil fruits, killing chickens, slaughtering pigs, so many jobs, I can finish it with ten or twenty words, but to finish it, it takes half a month, and it is still nervous.

Once upon a time, with our ardent anticipation for the New Year, we thought everything was so interesting. If I had to write from the perspective of a child, I would prefer to kill pigs.

The time of slaughtering pigs in our family is generally after the new year.

On the day of the pig slaughter, the family was busy early, my mother was boiling water under the stove, my father was busy washing the tank, and my brother went to ask the neighbors to help. When it was time to eat breakfast, the villagers arrived one after another, and everyone came to the backyard, and the big fat pig waiting to be slaughtered saw more than a dozen people coming to it, and already smelled the danger, and when it was caught, the howling could be heard by the whole village. After the pig was slaughtered, the oversized water tank prepared by my father came in handy, digging a shallow pit in the ground, putting the tank into the pit, adding boiling boiling water, and then tying the pig's two front legs to a thick wooden stick, and four strong boys carried the pig into the water tank, let the boiling water flood the pig's whole body, scalded it for a minute or two, lifted it out, stayed and put it in, and then lifted it out, and so on, so that the purpose was to soften the hairs on the pig. After that, it is a huge project of hair plucking work, you know, a big pig of more than two hundred pounds, the pig hair on the body is all pulled out.

When the men had disposed of the pigs, the women in the stove room began to get busy, preparing two large pots, one to fry the pigs into the water and the other to cook the meat. Be sure to make a big pot, because the people who eat are not only those involved in the slaughter of pigs, but also the elders and children of the neighbors, full of a room full of people.

Stir-frying pork liver, pork heart, and pig blood with Chinese cabbage and potato chips is actually a pot of smorgasbord, but when it is boiled, it is fragrant. Home-raised pigs, and freshly slaughtered, cooked pork dipped in vinegar and garlic blended dipping sauce, this is not a human delicacy what counts?

There are many dishes and meat, and it is even more lively to eat. The elders sit on the kang, the young people sit around the round table under the kang, and the children and women are in the kitchen, and everyone is smiling and happy.

Now I sometimes spend the Spring Festival in my hometown, but the happiness of my childhood has been lost, every household does not raise pigs, eat meat is bought in the butcher's shop, and the lively scene of killing pigs in the memory can only continue to be reminiscent in the memory.

"On the second of February, the dragon looked up, and maggots and ants probed."

This is the proverb of my hometown, and it is probably also the proverb of many places.

Maggots and ants are all ready to move, and people can't continue to snooze around the stove. Gotta have fun. Happiness has little to do with matter, and as long as you want to be happy, happiness can also follow.

On the second day of February, how can the villagers have fun? Without spending money, take local materials, find two stout poplar trees next to each other, tie a thick hemp rope between the trees, and hold a swing competition. The contestants are the brave boys in the village, the children are the cheerleaders, and the others are responsible for watching the game.

In memory, watching the annual swing competition, the excitement and excitement, no less than watching the women's volleyball final.

The so-called artists are bold. The young man of the game you disobey me, I will not let you, the hemp rope is whistling, I squeeze a handful of sweat for them every time, for fear of stepping too hard, directly a 360 degree rotation fell from the rope. One of my neighbor's brothers, because of his timidity, never dared to compete, and he was not less ridiculed by us little furry children.

Now, let alone a hemp rope between two trees, or prepare a richly decorated swing for young people, and they will not glance at it. Busy working all day long, busy earning money, busy repairing houses, busy buying cars, the only thing I forget is the happiness of swinging on a hemp rope.

Seriously think back to how many poems I memorized when I was in elementary school, I don't know; how many words I read, I don't remember; how many math problems I did, I didn't have an impression.

So what do you do all day long?

Good question! Then I will seriously tell you that at that time, I, and we, all day long, remember to play.

When I was a child, I had a lot of fun! At that time, every family was an average of four or five children, and when they went out, they felt that the streets were full of children, there was no shortage of playmates, they went up to the trees to dig birds, they went down to the ground to herd cattle, and they didn't know what sorrow was all day long, and they were a happy mess.

The most fun time is summer, take a shovel, carry a basket, a serious tell parents to cut pig grass, in fact, to the field, a group of children where to remember the pig grass this thing, shovel thrown, basket thrown, catch butterflies, catch cockroaches, look for bird eggs, look for beehives, take a slingshot to beat quail, play faint early. Tired of playing, everyone acted separately, a group of people collecting firewood, a group of people pulling barley, what to do? Eat roasted barley. After piling up the firewood and lighting it with matches, after a flurry of hands and fireworks, the barley was ripe. Pull out a barley head from the fire, put it in the palm of your hand and rub it, the cooked barley will be grained into the palm of your hand, and the wood-burned barley is full of chewy head, and the more you eat it, the more fragrant it is. When I finished eating, I was all racing, and my hands and faces were all black. When the sun was about to set, I remembered the matter of cutting pig grass, and in a panic, whether the pigs ate or not, cut a basket of grass and went home to make a difference.

In the winter, the game of tireless play is hide-and-seek, hiding in the haystacks, hiding in the woods, drilling into the air raid shelter, anyway, it is difficult to find where to hide. Once, I even hid in the vegetable cellar of the neighbor's house, and I still remember the helpless expression on the neighbor's face when he held a flashlight and looked at a group of small people crowded in the vegetable cellar and the potato and radish cabbage that had been trampled beyond recognition.

Now the streets of the hometown are cold and clear, I can't see a few children, the townships have set up central primary schools, and all the children in the fourth grade or above have gone to the central primary school to go to school, usually boarding, only going home on weekends, and after school is also unfinished homework, there is no time to play.

I really sympathize with the children now.

My rural economy is developing, and the lives of the villagers are improving, but why in my eyes, our happiness is getting less and less? When one day my hometown also stands tall buildings, when my hometown can no longer find the original appearance, will the local feelings of generations eventually disappear?

Perhaps, the problem in the countryside is not only to build roads and develop the economy, but the most important problem in the countryside is unsustainable. The life span of villages, trees, and buildings is getting shorter and shorter, people are becoming less and less rural, and where to go in local China may not be a question I should think about, and the peasants do not seem to have thought about it, this is the footsteps of the times, and no one can stop it.