□ Tang Fubin Wansheng Daily
Lunar New Year, the most unforgettable thing for me is to pick up silver water.
In the early morning of the first year, the snow in Montenegro's hometown was flying, paved with bright and dangling snow on the crooked path, and the scene of the adults picking up silver water in the past New Year was like a movie film on the screen in the brain.
Silver water is actually a well spring picked early in the first year. This custom has never been recorded in the classics, but it is a unique folk custom that is widely spread in Bayu and its adjacent areas.
The beginning of the unity, the beginning of the auspicious. The door of the hall "squeaked" open, and the most favorite thing for the villagers to hear was the happy auspicious words. I learned that the eldest brother picked a full tank of silver water early in the morning, so I couldn't wait to run to the water tank to see what was going on, but I could look left and right, look up and down, and I couldn't see the silver. I pricked my ears in confusion and shouted, "This is well water, where is there any silver water?" The adult narrowed his eyes: "Lazy people see water, and diligent people see silver water."
The old family pays attention to the silver water to come out on top. That is, in the same well, whoever scoops the first scoop of water and retrieves the first load of water will win good luck in the new year. Translated into the current words, if you want to take the initiative in everything you want to do first, you may have a good chance.
I remember that picking silver water in the family was first my father's business. It is said that every lunar new year's day, his old man was always the first person to scoop silver water in the old well in the courtyard of his hometown Shijiatian. Later, the eldest brother took over his father's flat burden, and the title of champion was maintained until more than a decade ago, when every household had access to piped water. But I suspect that with the consistent atmosphere of the family and the persistent character of the eldest brother, even now, he must be the first person to unscrew the faucet and use the basin to take the silver water that reflects his smiling face.
However, in the Liao family courtyard inhabited by more than a dozen people, including Tang, Zhang, Ren, and Luo, almost everyone wanted to scoop the first scoop of silver water from the old well on the first day of the new year. Therefore, it is not easy to fight for the first. It depends on who has the tenacity and who is more attentive.
The old man said Chinese New Year's Eve the fire at night, to be prosperous! For this reason, at that time, the family always put the best and most thorough green bars, large tree trunks, miscellaneous wood knots and other hot firewood in the fire pit of the hall house in the fire of the church house, and burned it fiercely. After eating the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, there was only the time when there was no TV Spring Festival Gala, smoking leaf cigarettes, "hushing" drinking laoyin tea, women and children "snorting" sunflower seeds, spending Chinese New Year's Eve in the warm and melting dragon gate array. And the children who have been excited for a while, and some adults, less than the first half of the night, leaned on each other and began to snore sweetly.
Chinese New Year's Eve night, my eldest brother is a model of staying up late, because he always has the heart to go to the old well to scoop up the first scoop of silver water. Especially near midnight, he cleaned up the bucket, flat shoulder, and water scoop for a while, and prepared the bamboo torches to illuminate the road; he went outside the house to watch the weather and watch people move; or his tired eyes were half open and half closed, and he did not forget to look at the alarm clock on the table, and the figure of the pointer "ticking" walking. Once the hour hand was about to point to zero, he picked up the bucket with his hands and feet, greeted the first breeze of the New Year, the first snow, took the first step of the New Year, and went out early. Only to see, in the wild, in the snowy night, next to the old well, the eldest brother first inserted a lit three-pillar incense before scooping the water, burned a few symbolic paper money, folded his hands together to make three "ritual orders", intended to give nature, put a small string of firecrackers, and began to scoop his first scoop of silver water into the bucket. When the neighbor heard the sound and went to the old well, the eldest brother had already entered the house full of joy.
To say that picking silver water is a wish, a vision, and an allegory. When adults carry a pair of empty buckets, cross the threshold and walk out of the house, into the snowy night that is full of yang, pick out is a family that is not satisfactory in the past, and pick out such troubles as the family's quarrels, crop failures, and even sores and diseases; when the flat shoulders are leisurely carrying silver water into the door, the moment when the "rushing la" dripping water does not leak into the water tank, what is picked back is the harmony, happiness, laughter, and new atmosphere of diligence and well-being in the New Year.
Perhaps, the spirit of the silver water picked out on the first day of the New Year, my father, eldest brother, second brother, and third brother in the rural large collective period, honest, work in front, everyone is the villagers thumbs up and praise, by the production team of each work diary is very full of labor. In this way, the simple family style full of the fragrance of earth, silently and slowly infiltrates our hearts and ignites our human affairs. I left my hometown in Montenegro to study in the city, become a soldier, go down to the grassroots level, and work in the government for decades, and I still benefit from the memories of the past that picked up silver water.
Today's villages, and even many families in the city, still inherit the custom of picking up silver water early in the morning of the New Year's Day, but instead of going to the old well to scoop it up in the face of the wind and snow, they gently unscrew the faucet in their own kitchens, and calmly and ritually pick up the first pot of silver water of the new year.
