Childhood Origin (Excerpt)
Wen 丨 Chen Faithful
Boys born in the courtyard of the farm house helped their parents with farm work from an early age. But I can't remember exactly how old I began to work, according to the general law of rural people, saying that a male doll can eat a steamed bun at a time, which is a good helper. I judged from this that it was probably when I was six or seven years old. I also can't remember which kind of agricultural work I learned first, but I generally remember that the agricultural tasks I could do were pulling grass, cutting grass, holding firewood, pulling ears of wheat, breaking grain and peeling grain. Some of these agricultural tasks I engaged in as a child were things that I liked to do and left happy memories; some were unbearable and did not want to do but had to be done, and they became a kind of pain.
My favorite farm job is mowing the grass. My family and the family next door have a cattle together. Cows like to eat grass. Whenever the grass grew in the spring, I put on the small cage woven of wicker on my back and carried the short sickle for cutting the grass, and went down to the Bahe River or up to the slope of Bailuyuan to cut the grass. At that time, I did not know the name of the White Deer Plain, but only said that the grass was mowed uphill. Mowing the grass is always going in pairs, and almost no one acts alone, in addition to the fun and fun of the gang, there is also a crucial one, that is, safety. At that time, there were still wolf tribes active on the original slopes of the ditch beams, and often someone bumped into a wolf in a certain slope or a certain valley, and even a terrible disaster in which children from a certain village were taken away by wolves. My father always reminded me when I went out to mow the grass, don't go uphill alone, find a companion to go with.
There are only three or four partners in the village who are the same age as me or not worse than me, and today I am looking for him, tomorrow he will come to me, and three or four people have gathered, and they will discuss which ditch or which beam to cut the grass, and they will walk out of the village with a giggle. The wheat harvest entered the scorching heat of the day, the sun was like a fire, and the partners sat down in the shade of the ditch under the slope beam that blocked the sun, played a game of stone grabbing, or played poker, until the sun tilted to the west, and then grabbed a short sickle to cut the grass. The most tempting pleasure is catching grasshoppers. Grasshoppers have wheat grasshoppers and autumn grasshoppers, the former is grown on the ears of wheat and makes a squeaking sound, I have caught grasshoppers in the wheat field with my friends, and in a hurry, I forgot about the ripe wheat, stepped on the wheat, and attracted the scolding of the owner of the wheat field. However, this wheat grasshopper call was very monotonous, and soon turned his interest to the autumn grasshopper, a spirit worm. The so-called autumn grasshopper is relative to the wheat grasshopper, when the wheat grasshopper can be called after completing a shelling, the autumn grasshopper only drills out of the eggs buried under the ground, and the body is tender and green like mung beans that have just been shelled. Autumn grasshoppers grow on barren slopes and cemeteries in ridges covered with thorny jujubes, and are difficult to catch. My buddies and I couldn't wait for it to complete three dehulling feathers to become a grasshopper that could chirp, so we searched among the thorny bushes, often stabbed by the spikes of the thorns to the surface of the feet and calves covered with blood. Catch a small autumn grasshopper, put it into a grasshopper cage woven in bamboo, and feed it the inner core of the wild valley seedling every day. Watching it grow in a small cage day by day, complete three times to become a plump grasshopper, and sing as loud and rhythmically as a bell, I often fell into a kind of intoxication. This kind of autumn grasshopper has a strong vitality, if it is fed well, it can often be sung until late autumn or even frost season, adding a happy sound to the calm and lonely farm yard... Catching autumn grasshoppers is too focused and too engaged, often forgetting to cut the grass, whether it is the excitement of catching autumn grasshoppers or the chagrin of not being able to catch them, they will fade soon after picking up the short scythe and starting to mow the grass, only afraid of the grass cutting too little Father's reproachful eyes.
The farm job I remember the most reluctant to do but had to do was to pull the wheat. My family has sixteen or seventeen acres of land, the vast majority of which are scattered on the original slopes, and only three or five acres of paddy fields that can be watered are divided into four or five pieces scattered in the Bahe River Road. The soil fertilizer accumulated by raising cattle is not enough to apply two wheat and grain fields that can be harvested in a year, and the single wheat on the original slope cannot be fertilized at all, and the wheat grows yellow and does not look like it is yellow, and it is almost impossible to hold the sickle when harvesting, and there are many ears scattered in the wheat stubble field. Villagers in the village call this color of wheat monkey hair, small ears of wheat call fly sprinkles (fly heads), and cut this wheat called raisin hair. My father scooped up piece after piece of wheat, which was full of monkey hair, and I followed him with a large rake made of thick wire to pick up the lost monkey hair. What impressed me the most so far was the land called the top of the Tang family slope farthest from the village, which was the largest piece of land on the original slope of my family, about two acres or more, and there was not a single tree around. I dragged a large rake with a thick wire of one meter wide as a rake, and a rake was hugged from east to west, and then from west to east, and it was like combing the hair and body of this monkey who had just been coated with monkey hair. This wire rake is not too heavy, dragging it up is not too tired, the key is that the heat wave rolling on the slope is too unbearable, the brazier-like sun is spewing fire overhead, the wheat stubble that has been sunburned for most of the day is steaming, and the process of dragging the rake past and then dragging the rake over is being turned over and baked. Despite wearing a straw hat on the top of his head, the scalp and face still felt unbearable baking burns, not to mention the body and bare calves. The sand fruit leaf tea brought from home has long been drunk, the sweat seems to have dried up, the mouth is dry enough to not even spit out, looking at the wheat stubble field that has not yet been embraced, there is a helplessness that wants to cry but can't cry. Seeing a friend of the same age on a slope in the distance also holding him, there seemed to be a kind of comfort in his heart, the peasant dolls had to do this kind of work, and could not talk about the monotony and boredom of labor, at that time did not understand these elegant words, although they actually endured... And when he sat in the courtyard with his father one night for dinner, grabbed the white-faced steamed fragrant. Love to eat or not to eat? Love to eat. Next year, I will hold the wheat and pout my face again. The time when you can't stand the pain of holding the wheat, the thought of eating white-faced steamed buns makes you feel energetic... This is the first teaching I received about labor.
(Source:Everybody)
Chen Zhongzhong (1942-2016) was the vice chairman of the China Writers Association and the honorary chairman of the Shaanxi Writers Association. He is the author of "Go Behind the Old Poplar Tree", "Early Summer", "Four Sisters", "Farewell to the White Dove" and other works. He has won important national awards such as the National Outstanding Short Story Award and the National Excellent Reportage Award, and "White Deer Plain" won the fourth "Mao Dun Literature Award".