"Contemporary Celebrities" l Lv Fengjun: Old Mill Old Mill

<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="2" > old mill</h1>

Lv Fengjun/Wen

My wife told me that I wanted to grind some ballast to eat, and I also wanted to drink some brown rice noodle porridge, and there were a few bags of freshly beaten corn in the storeroom, so I carried them to the car.

The mill in the village is not in the village. Cars drive slowly along winding country roads, with small bridges flowing from time to time. When I was about to reach the bottom of the mountain, I saw a broken mill lying in the doorway of a family, and beyond this doorway there was another family, and between the two houses was the mill. Two grass huts, so dilapidated that they could only hide their faces deep under an earthen cliff.

The car entered the courtyard without a fence, and a dusty man in front of the door immediately shouted inside, and it was not long before a face appeared in the door. The owner of the mill was a short, thin old man, with a gray face like a layer of powder, and his light hair like a mess of frost. A fat tunic was draped over his body, like a child's cloak, and he had a wide belt tied around his waist, conspicuously hanging from the "three pieces" commonly used by electricians (pliers, gong and wire knives, and electric knives). I knew the old man well, and I knew that it had brought him a lot of glory.

The old man was threshing the rice. The machine was right next to the door, and inside were two shredders and a face grinder. Don't look at the shed full of cobwebs, but the ground is quite clean. The cement-smeared floor has been rubbed with light. As soon as he saw that someone was coming again, he handed the handful in his hand to the owner of the rice, and then helped me carry the bag into the house. He asked me, "What are you grinding?" I said, "Get some small ballasts, and the rest are all ground brown rice noodles." He grabbed the bud rice and said, "How many halves do you want to break?" "Maybe it was because his tongue couldn't stick straight, but I didn't understand him. The owner of the rice was busy explaining: "He asked you how much a grain of bud rice you want to break, is it four halves or six halves?" "I understood that he was referring to the particle size of the small ballast. Busy said: "Six and a half, breaking six and a half is so big." ”

Grinding the bud rice into a small ballast is very troublesome, first ventilation to remove debris, then peeling to remove the bran, followed by crushing and breaking into rice. When the bud rice is broken, it must be sifted with a sieve while it is broken until it is one-sixth the size of a bud rice. In contrast, it is much easier to grind brown rice noodles. Remove the debris and peeling, and the rest is just ground. The old man helped me for a while and then let me take care of myself, and he was busy taking care of the people grinding rice. He was busy with a large gong and a knife in his hand, and from time to time he talked to us.

He wanted to introduce the old running errands of the rice mill to the object, and asked the people: "What kind of person do you want to find?" The old running errand said, "Just be a woman." He joked, "Find you a mom, what are you going to do?" The old running errand said, "You can really pull." He said, "I won't rip it off, you'll have to give me wine." As he spoke, he carefully turned over a few pages of worn-out pieces of paper. After a while, he came over to talk to me again. He said, "I heard you love to drink, and I'm good at taking this sip." One day we both drank a few cups. I said, "Okay, when I go to my house one day, I have good wine." He said, "Well, look at me busy." Come to my house, I'll kill a chicken for you. "I asked for my phone number and wrote it down on those pages."

The rice noodles were finally polished. I asked, "How much money do you have to pay him for your craft?" He said, "Forget the money, leave the chaff to me." "I know that the bran is worth more than the cost of the hand, but I happily agreed. He helped me carry the bag to the car again, and I didn't forget to talk about drinking before leaving.

The car was about to start, and I looked at his old mill and said, "This is all beautiful countryside, should you rebuild this broken house?" He grinned and said, "Things are still good old, and the new house smells of lime." ”

The moment I stepped on the accelerator to leave, he suddenly shouted, and my wife motioned for me to stop. I glanced in the reversing mirror and saw him ripping a large orange-red melon from the wall and striding over.

Driving on the fields of golden autumn, the intoxicating aroma of rice has been lingering in the window.

[Lü Fengjun: A member of the Chinese Writers Association, he has authored novels, prose collections, reportage and other works. 】