I love the sound of firecrackers, especially when it comes and goes. The muffled sound of either urgent or slow or high pitched or low voice is like a symphony, playing in the transition from year to year, on the vast land. If there are fireworks blooming in it, and the sky is colored with colors, the sense of happiness is even stronger. Just one year Chinese New Year's Eve, I had Chinese New Year's Eve meal at home in Taiyuan and set off for Zhejiang. On the Sichuan Airlines flight, watching fireworks bloom from north to south for half of China, it feels very warm.
In fact, all preferences are cultivated in childhood.
In my hometown, the New Year is the most ritualistic festival. In the era of material scarcity, the year is the day when you can wear new clothes and eat meat. Firecrackers are a must for the New Year, and it seems that the Year came to the world with the sound of "two kicks".
Before Chinese New Year's Eve, the inside and outside of the house must be cleaned. But no matter how much preparation work had been done before, on the thirtieth day, my mother still had to be busy from morning to night. After a year of wind and dust, the yellowing and brittleness of the New Year painting should be changed; the window paper should also be replaced Chinese New Year's Eve and pasted with beautiful window flowers; the wardrobe is not bright enough, and the paint will be wiped with castor to look like new. The new clothes of the three children should be prepared, and the dumpling filling on the first day of the Chinese New Year should be prepared. No matter how long the day was busy, My mother would still pour the last bit of garbage before twelve o'clock, because the green brick floor would still sweep away the ash from between the brick cracks anyway. After this series of operations, although it is still an old green brick house, it looks shining.
My family lives in the West Wing, and my grandparents live in the main room. The New Year paintings in the West Wing are still different from the main room. The paintings posted in the main room are called painting paintings, and the impressive ones are Liang Hongyu, Fan Lihua, Mu Guiying and other costume comic strips, all of which are stories one by one, sometimes two sets, sometimes four sets, and each folio has 8 patterns. After reading the New Year paintings, just like reading the books of the villains, I roughly understand their stories, the colors are mostly festive red, and the values of loving the country and being brave and fearless are often conveyed, and what they bring to people is advocating justice and indomitable. The New Year paintings posted in the West Wing are single figures or landscapes or tigers, and later the wall calendars of Hong Kong and Taiwan stars. One year, my mother bought three New Year paintings, two girls' one, one big and one small, and the younger one had a rounder face; a boy seemed to be wearing the sea soul shirt that his brother also had? The age is similar to that of his younger brother to be exact.
In my mother's words, it was bought for the three of us. So, that year, I would prefer the painting of the round-faced little girl wearing an infrared sleeve. Mom said that when I was a child, my face was round. However, in addition to the one photo of my first year, my second photo was already a PHOTO TAKEN from elementary school, and it was no longer a round face.
My father would make a lot of preparations years ago, more than a dozen pounds of pork and mutton should be prepared, if you do not buy it in advance, when the new year is approaching, the meat vendors will ask for a price. There is a saying "twenty-seven eight, catch and kill", which means that things are outrageously expensive a day or two ago. However, meat is just needed, no matter how expensive it is, you have to buy a little, no less. "Fat first month, thin February, and trepidation over March", reflects the importance people attach to the year in the era of material scarcity, even if life will be difficult throughout the year, the year in the first month should still make people feel rich.
In terms of eating, Dad also takes the soybeans at home to grind tofu or change tofu in the tofu factory, riding a two-eight bicycle, a wooden stick in the back seat, and a large silver-white bucket hanging at each end of the wooden stick, and the bucket is white and tender tofu. The reason why I have this impression is because once on the way home from school, I saw my father riding a bicycle with a bucket, and he asked him what he was doing. After the tofu is brought home and poured into the basin, it only takes one night to become frozen tofu, and the surface of the large basin will freeze with ice.
Enemas and cakes are also prepared, both of which are very laborious tasks. For example, enemas are the name of my hometown, and now the more popular name is bowl holders. The soba noodles and pig's blood should be stirred with water until the batter concentration is appropriate, and then spoon by spoon into a special cup (shallow bowl) and steamed over high heat. If you don't have one link, you are likely to fail. How much water is added to the surface and when to add it is a very critical link. Rice cake is originally steamed with glutinous rice flour and then wrapped in bean paste red dates, etc., and the dough also needs to be kneaded repeatedly with hand oil when it is just out of the pot, until the noodles become refined and non-sticky, which need to be carried out in the hot dough that has just come out of the pot, and when the temperature becomes lower, it will not meet the requirements. All of the above work must be done by Dad, and the basin is oversized, often the amount of more than a dozen pounds of noodles. In these complicated processes, the New Year's cuisine is baked. Everyone also cherishes these foods that are usually only eaten in the New Year. Sometimes relatives come and go, and they also give gifts to each other.
What we may be involved in, in addition to doing some cleaning aids, is to paste couplets. The Spring League is a big thing, and only the red and colorful Spring League posted on the door of the street shows that this family is ready for the New Year. Dad should prepare the red paper in advance, go to the home of the old man who can write the Spring Festival, wait in line, the money is not used, but to prepare some small gifts. Now in the south, the tradition of the New Year may not be as exquisite as in the north, and with the development of society, the taste of the year is getting weaker and weaker, and even during the New Year, the Spring League at the gate is often not posted or changed. In the hometown at that time, only the elderly in the family died, and for the sake of filial piety, they did not paste the Spring League, or paste other specific colors of the Spring League. That seems to be the case now.
Before pasting the Spring League, in a thick pile of red paper, it is necessary to distinguish where it is according to the shape, size and content of the Spring League. The content of Chunlian is the same because of its different locations. In each house, the main room is the position of the Master of Heaven and Earth, which needs to be arranged very solemnly, and the couplet also has two pairs of inside and outside, and the content is not clear. The wall of the entrance gate is the location of the land lord, and the couplet on both sides is "white jade born in the soil, and gold comes out of the ground". The kitchen is the stove king's, and the couplet content is "Heaven says good things, return to the palace to descend auspicious", which means that the stove king can say more good things. Animals and plants should also rejoice, so their "house" should also be represented by what they say. The pig pen in the backyard is pasted with "pigs and sheep full of circles", the chicken nest in the courtyard is pasted with "chicken fat and egg big", the barn in the room is pasted with the word "yes" or "grain noodles full of barn" whether it is looking backwards, the water pipe in the courtyard is pasted with "water like the South China Sea", the big tosho tree at the door is pasted with "Tree King Daji", of course, about why the Ailanthus tree became the tree king, my sister will also tell me a story. Go out to the opposite place to write "go out to see the joy", of course, you can also write a number of "look up to see the joy" posted in the place you may see. Street doors, doors, back doors, etc. couplets are necessary, of course, the content is mostly a good meaning, and in a large area of blank space, or in the middle of the door, you can also paste the bucket square, that is, the square paper that writes the word Fu, the book has "hard work to get rich", "people are diligent in spring", "new spring auspicious" and so on. When I was in junior high school, my father entrusted me with the heavy responsibility of writing couplets, in fact, I had never learned calligraphy at all, but I also boldly completed my father's heavy responsibility, and at that time I would like to create my own couplets and generously paste them on the door. The word is always a middle school word without a famous font, the content is also by their own ideas, and now they think that they are quite confident, and their parents will always praise us with the soil of self-confidence.
At the beginning of the spring league, of course, parents were the main force, and later we also participated, and later we became the main force. It's cold in the north, and Chinese New Year's Eve are even colder, sometimes accompanied by high winds. The paste made of white noodles is brushed to the wall with a brush, and it is frozen immediately, so one person brushes the paste, and the other one immediately pastes the couplet and smooths it out. Therefore, the whole process of pasting couplets is also tense, and the hands are often frozen and numb because they are exposed to the air. In some years, because of the strong wind, the couplet of the front foot sticker, the back foot is torn by the wind. And when the evening came, all the lights were on, the dumplings were churning in the pot, the stove was steaming, the tablets with ancestors were ready, the courtyard was full of new couplets with red links, and occasionally the sound of firecrackers sounded near and far, and the year of anticipation was coming.
In my hometown of Taiyuan, there is still the custom of lighting a fire. Now, with the demolition, the farm yard is gradually replaced by high-rise buildings, and there is nowhere to light the fire. When I was a child, a pile of firewood would be placed in the center of the courtyard, interspersed with carbon blocks, and some cypress branches collected from the mountains were deliberately placed, and it was said that cypress leaves could ward off evil spirits. People with good conditions, with honeycomb coal bases in the shape of a tower, tall and short, once saw that taller than me was really frightened. When the countdown to the Spring Festival Gala began on TV, adults and children ran to the courtyard, my father put "two kicks", my brother put small cannons and victory flowers and other small salutes, and the cannons of the left and right neighbors ran to the sky in unison. And then came the longings, the joys, the joys. At twelve o'clock, the fire was lit on time, and the cypress branches in the fire emitted a good smell, accompanied by a crackling sound, and the fire also rushed to the sky. One year, Dad felt comfortable, it seemed to usher in a year of turnaround at home, put a lot of firewood, the fire rushed very high, the fire reflected our smiling faces, and warmth.
Lighting the fire is also the beginning of receiving the gods, and in the fire, the gods seem to arrive with smoke. Dad began to light a handful of incense, and successively gave incense to the Heaven and Earth Lord, the Stove King, the Land Lord, and the ancestral tablets, hoping that the gods and ancestors would bless the peace of the family, the happiness of the family, and the success of the children. In those days, this was the strongest sense of ritual. On the first day of the Chinese New Year, my classmates and I walked around the street, only to see that the whole pig and sheep were actually provided in front of other people's heaven and earth, which shocked me. And my family just offered some dumplings. I went back to ask my mother, and she said that people with good conditions can afford it, but what to offer, sincerity is the same. I think it's right.
Since going out to study, more than twenty years have passed, and the rituals of the year have gradually become blurred or even ceased to exist. Maybe the food is too rich and too easy to get, maybe it's new clothes that can be bought whenever you are in the mood, maybe some customs in the process of modernization are considered inappropriate, and those fragments hidden in the memory will only occasionally pop up, such as the New Year's Day, reminding me of the past years, how we used to look forward to a good life. Of course, it's still looking forward to it.
Xiangshan County People's Court Pang Caihong/Wen
Reporter Jiang Manru Huang Meizhen / Photo
First instance: Chen Yulu
Second instance: Fang Zilong
Third trial: Wu Qichao