Longtou River || The first hometown, my father's hometown, must also be my hometown, so the beginning of the pen, a little strange, may be a kind of deliberate, may be I and this place has a kind of indescribable

Longtou River || First

Hometown, my father's hometown, must also be my hometown, so the pen, a little strange, may be a deliberate, may be I and this place has a kind of indescribable hidden sense of alienation, I do not know how to express.

In the more than a year since my father's death, every time I think of him, I will have the memory of the rental house when I was a child, tulou ancestral house - Xiapu Lou, so there is always a thought, go and see.

On the fifth day of the first year, the child returned to Beijing, the sixth day of the spring festival was the last day of this Spring Festival holiday, and the sense of festival centered on the son suddenly appeared in the gap, the wife said that she wanted to sleep enough, but at more than 10 o'clock in the morning, after getting up, I asked, do you want to go anywhere? I said, or go to our peaceful hometown; all right. There is no deliberate plan, just go, this is the fate.

Before leaving, I sent a WeChat message to my cousin and asked, Are you out? He replied several times, saying that there was no no, sent the location of the navigation, and said that he would pick us up at the high-speed port..., and there was enthusiasm in his tone.

My hometown is in Longtou, and everything I hear from the mouths of the elders is called Longtou, and my grandfather, parents, and uncles are all called this, but its administrative place is called Meifeng Village in Anhou Town, which is inexplicably inconsistent and alienated.

Even this time, in fact, I have returned to the faucet 4 times.

The first time was more than 50 years ago, when I was 4 or 5 years old, and it was this time that the memory of my hometown was imprinted:

Tulou circle the big cheng, grandfather's door is facing the door of the tulou, from the second floor of the circle window through the tulou gate to see the undulating mountains, such as the brush pen holder, the second floor also has a circle window, there is a trench outside, used to be between the window and the bank across the small suspension bridge, you can go out directly, think it is too interesting.

Outside the gate of the Tulou there is a stream that snakes, looking upstream and downstream, there is no end, the stream is clear and rippled, babbling on a long belt made of pebbles that can't see the head, clear little fish swimming in groups, there are several meters wide clean beach belt on both sides of the creek, everyone will impulsively want to use their feet to go to this stream, anyway, I like this trip.

At that time, it was the season of harvesting turnips, and every household was making preserved vegetables. The uncle also took me to pluck the turnips, first digging a few pits on the beach by the stream, and then harvesting, washing, cooling and drying the white radish from the vegetable field not far away, pouring them into the pit in baskets, and then stepping on the turnips barefoot until they were trampled, and then laying a layer of salt....

That stream has been in my dreams for decades. It was only this time that I knew from the navigation map that this stream is called "Longtou River", why not call it "Longtou Creek" or "Longtou River", doesn't it mean that "the south water is called the river, and the north water is called the river"? In the future, I will slowly clarify it, but this time I finally understand why my hometown is called "Dragon Head", perhaps because of the creek in front of the door!

In 1985, shortly after working, I returned to my hometown for the second time, this time because of the death of my grandfather, who died unexpectedly, because he fell at night.

In the depths of my soul, I was close to my grandfather, who had a round head and a low forehead, squinted, was somewhat lame, always wore a single black and gray coat, wore a straw hat, and would occasionally blow a rare sniffle inside, (so far), I could faintly echo his voice calling me "Min", and the voice he called my father "Zhang". His grandfather was a traffic officer of the Wushan guerrillas and a member of the Communist Party of China, and after liberation until the 1960s and 1970s, he had close contacts with chen Tiancai, a former superior and commissioner of the Longxi Prefectural Committee, and his lameness was caused by long-distance walking during the revolutionary period.

This time the funeral returned to my hometown, full of days to do folk rituals, countless kneeling, until the end of the funeral, numbing people - spirit and body, but I insisted on not looking at my grandfather's remains, because I want to keep my grandfather's eternal squinting smile...

In 2015, my uncle died, and I went back to my hometown again, to attend my uncle's funeral, hurried back and forth.

This time at the beginning of the sixth year, it is the fourth time, although the time is short, it is the most humanistic one, and it is I who take the initiative to seek "Where did I come from?" " answer. In my imagination, I did not want to disturb my cousin and cousin, I just wanted to take my wife, quietly go to see the ancestral land that originated from blood, and ask my cousin for the location because of the strangeness of the road....

Starting from the city, on the highway to the exit of the high-speed toll station in Anhou Town, as long as it takes more than an hour, the cousin has been waiting there, following his car, all the way sighing, cognition, Anhou is the old district, in the past is a poor mountainous area, and now the car is in the middle, but you can feel its prosperity, the shops are lively, the crowds are crowded, the traffic, the parking, are pretty good cars, a village does not lose a town at all, the remote countryside has become the appearance of the city.

(To be continued)