Around the Spring Festival, farming is on holiday. Only farmers who work hard all year round can truly "idle" for a period of time. On the morning of the first day of the first year, eating the New Year's "pouring noodles", not long, neat and clean village entrances, streets began to gather people in pairs, under the warm spring sun, adults chatted, played cards, and swung swings. Girls kick sandbags, jump rope, and jump checkers. The boys had rolling iron rings, some played with marbles, some played "monkeys" (gyros), and some in groups of three or five "charged" with wooden "knives and guns". A young man did not know where to collect the detonator, extended the wire far away, and finally detonated directly, and a blast of thunder flattened the ground, shocking everyone.2
The most memorable, but also the boy's most enjoyable, or the New Year's homemade gunpowder chain gun, usually to find the help of older companions, with thick wire with iron tongs hand-folded, first processed into a pistol skeleton, polished the firing pin, and then the discarded (bicycle) chain dismantled one by one, double hole alignment, strung into a gun chamber, fixed with a wide leather band, the front end of the car spoke old rivet seal, and exposed the gun hole, the firing pin is then pulled by another rubber band. When firing, slightly break open the two sections at the front end of the gun hole, insert the matchstick upside down, seal the gun hole, inject gunpowder, straighten the gun chamber, pull up the end of the firing pin, gently buckle the top protrusion of the gun handle, stabilize the gun body with one hand, and finally pull the trigger - "ding" A crisp bright sound spread to the distance, a wisp of green smoke at the muzzle of the gun fluttered, as if the battlefield killed the enemy triumphantly, and the eyes of the partners were full of satisfaction and pride. The firecrackers that the children picked up, with the leads, and those that could be set off were set off with incense. If there is no lead, they will peel off one by one, use gunpowder to shoot, or pick up two pieces of dry tiles, one convex upwards, put some gunpowder on it, cover it with another convex surface, and then rub the heel hard, and the "ding" sound will go straight through the sky. Or sprinkle gunpowder on paper, ignite it with matches, and accidentally "poof" a sound, and suddenly become a big flower face by the thick black smoke that suddenly rises...
Children have their own pleasures and adults have their own entertainment. During the Spring Festival, in addition to walking back to the mother's home, the village will use thick and long rafters to cross and set up a high swing, and once the thick rope is swinging, the excess energy of the young and courageous boys and girls can be fully vented. On the first day of the new month, the streets are indispensable to the noise of gongs and drums, and the heroism of the songs. In some villages, there was even a Qin opera, and the noise of the gongs and cymbals was noisy, and the sonorous and powerful shouts sounded like rolling thunder and resounded across the sky. Some townships and towns organize "social fires", especially the "blood community fires" in the former fort of Tangfang, which makes people still have palpitations. But when I saw the oncoming team of horses, one by one the men had bloody and vicious faces, some "swords and axes cut the face", some "arrows through the back shoulders", some "steel knives through the chest", and some "stump legs and bloody arms"... The realism of the appearance and the horror of the image are unforgettable.
Time is like a colt, and the flow of years is like water. With the effective connection between poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, today's rural buildings are higher roads and wider villages are more beautiful, and people returning to the city have also brought back new concepts and new things, what has changed is the years and appearance, and what has not changed is people's blessings for a better life in the future. With the ban on fireworks and firecrackers, the Spring Festival outing, and the New Year in different places have also become fashionable. Nowadays, the taste of the new year seems to be getting weaker and weaker, and people no longer have the excitement and expectation of childhood, only a faint pleasure and nostalgia for those good memories that cannot be erased...