Returning to my hometown on the fifth day of the Chinese New Year, I still saw several elderly people in the village. Many young people have finished their New Year's prayers, most of them have bought houses in the town or county, come to the village on the first day of the New Year to worship their ancestors, and then go door to door to pray for the New Year, which is the most lively half day in the village.
But half a day later, everyone went back to their homes, and peace returned to the village. When I went to visit the New Year, there were only old people left in every household. Many houses are left with only a large rusty lock, and the houses that the family spent several years building in the past few years have grown weeds in front of the door, and the tiles on the houses are incomplete.
Birds that fly back to nature
I haven't been home for 3 consecutive years, and my parents are out with me. When I came back last summer, the weeds in front of the door grew taller than I did. The roof still has the skin of a snake molting. On a hot night, I lay in bed in the old house, without air conditioning, but it was extremely cool.
As soon as my parents returned home, they were warmly welcomed by the villagers. Some dragged us to our homes for dinner, some sent new year goods at the bottom of their own pressure boxes, and some poured us "beard wine" and said: "My beard wine is home-brewed, only for my own family to drink, others come, I am pouring white wine." ”
Unable to cook my own meals as I had just arrived home. We ate at the nearby aunt's house three times a day, so more people went to the aunt's house to talk, drink tea, and play cards together. In addition to the fact that the parents are usually more popular, it is also because the peaceful village needs popularity too much.
My mother had a minor illness a few years ago, and the weather was extremely cold during this time, my mother could not adapt to the long journey, and I usually had the possibility of motion sickness in a car of several kilometers, so we postponed the time to go home. Fortunately, the road home was smooth, and the weather was rarely warmer, and along the way I opened the window a little gap, and my mother did not get motion sickness.
The aunt is also like a migratory bird, usually helping her cousin with children in Hangzhou. When I returned home early a few years ago, I called my mother when I arrived home and urged my mother to come home for the New Year, she said: "When I returned home, it was like a bird on the mountain out of its cage, free, and the air at home was so fresh. ”
Her mother's heart itched after hearing this, but she did not tell her aunt about the small sickness of her body, she was afraid that her aunt would be worried. The day after I got home, my mother asked me, "Do you think I look better?" I looked up and told her truthfully, "You forgot? I'm weak and can't tell the color. The mother smiled and said that she felt much better.
I can understand how she feels and how her parents want to go home and live. Several elders in the village who work outside or have children say: "No matter how good it is outside, I will definitely go back to my hometown when I am old." How good is the hometown, free, do whatever you want, usually grow some vegetables, raise some fish, feed some chickens, go to the field when there is nothing to do, breathe fresh air, and find a few people to play cards and bask in the sun. Watch TV at night, go to bed early and get up early. It's not like in the city, where there are restrictions everywhere, and people don't know a few..."
Before reading books on traditional Chinese medicine, I remember a professor who told a case that an old man had a cancer, and the hospital issued a notice of critical illness, he tore up the notice, returned to his hometown, and built a simple shed at the foot of the mountain, planning to spend the rest of his life here. Every day at sunrise, day in and out, sinking a well and drinking, ploughing and eating, why should cancer be in me? After a few years, he not only survived, but his health was getting better and better. "Because he merged with heaven and earth, he realized the unity of heaven and man."
I have always been skeptical of the veracity of this case, but I am convinced that heaven and earth do not treat all things differently because of human stupidity or cleverness. The earth is like a loving mother, no matter how her child, human beings, destroy and ravage on the earth, Mother Earth is silently bearing everything and giving everything she has, forbearance and love.
So, in reality, I want my parents to live with us and take care of each other; but from the bottom of my heart, I prefer them to live in the countryside, which is good for them physically and mentally.
The milk of the earth
Whether I work in Beijing or return to changsha to live, I take time to return to the countryside every year.
Spring in the Qingming Festival back, to see a hundred flowers blooming, spring rain, butterflies flying, listen to the birds gusting, flowing water, with children to walk green to sweep the grave, by hanging ancestors;
Summer on May Day Labor Day back, at this time the mountain flowers are full of flowers, greenery, spring shoots lined up, and then pick a few wild onions, on the spring water, pick up a few dry firewood and a few handfuls of dry grass, set up a mud stove, fry a plate of farmhouse side dishes, the aroma is fragrant;
Autumn in the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day back, the plane tree in front of the door is no longer there, but it does not affect me to move a chair to sit in the ping, in the cool as water moonlight at night, lightly Luo small fan fluttering fireflies, lying down to watch the morning glory Vega. In the city, you can't see the moon, and you don't have the heart to see the moon, but in the countryside, the snow white moon shines on the earth, and a few old people say good years in the smell of rice and flowers, and listen to the sound of frogs.
Winter goes back during the New Year, when the climate in Jiangnan is special, and the winter rain is cold in spring. This kind of season is the most suitable for lying on the bed at night, reaching out and not seeing five fingers, the world can only hear the raindrops on the eaves, smashing into the ravine behind the house, and also smashing into my heart, like the lullaby of Mother Earth, the most healing.
Every time I go home, it's like making a spa for my own soul. Although I hadn't been home for the New Year in three years, I simply cleaned up my room and Slept soundly.
When I woke up in the morning, it was raining lightly outside the house, and I stood on the steps of my hometown, greedily breathing in the cold and fresh air, and did not feel cold. Compared with in the city, warm air conditioning and stoves are inseparable in winter, cold air conditioning is inseparable in summer, and the houses in my hometown are obviously warm in winter and cool in summer.
I took my 9-year-old daughter and walked around the not very high mountain, telling her along the way, where I had fished, where there were tea bags, where honey could be eaten in camellias, where wild vegetables were abundant, where we both picked bamboo shoots together, where under which tree I had once laid there for a summer...
The daughter picked a large handful of reeds, made a broom, and picked a wild flower to put on it, which was beautiful.
When I helped her pick flowers, I saw the branches sucking in the spring rain, and her face was swollen, like a baby who had just eaten enough milk and was sleeping soundly. People who have lived in this village, men, women and children, no matter where they go, look forward to returning to the countryside and sucking the milk of the rural land, even if they just smell and sniff, they are very intoxicated.
The breeze on the river and the bright moon in the mountains
I climbed to the top of the hill and looked out over the whole countryside, which was already covered with camellia oleifera trees. A few years ago, in order to develop the rural economy, the village bulldozed all the green trees on the mountain and planted oil tea trees. This year, it is the year of the harvest, the contractor mobilized the villagers to pick tea seeds, 100 yuan a day.
Some villagers also discovered business opportunities in advance, planted tea trees in the mountain fields, and harvested this year. One of the villagers squeezed 200 kilograms of tea oil this year, calculated according to 50 yuan a kilogram (the oil squeezed by this kind of fine tea seed is cheaper, and the tea oil squeezed out by wild tea trees in the past was 70-100 yuan a catty), and the income of tea oil alone is 10,000 yuan, which is much more cost-effective than selling rice in farming, which greatly improves the income of some farmers.
My grandfather opposite my family is 76 years old, has not farmed, but changed to sesame and rapeseed, he said that the sesame seeds he planted are the best, covering most of the sesame seeds on the market, could have sold a good price, did not want to gather a person who processed sesame oil on the spot, the price is half cheaper than what he sold, resulting in his sesame oil can not sell at a good price.
At that time, he reminded those who bought sesame seeds to beware of the person adulteration, everyone thought that he had selfish intentions and did not believe it, but after buying it home, he found that the taste was different. Fortunately, after this grandfather finished processing sesame oil, the rest directly sold sesame seeds, and the price was OK.
I drove to town and found that there were already traces of rural revitalization. Some people in the town planted strawberries in greenhouses and built many new houses. Many people in the family dug ponds and raised fish and ducks. A young handsome man after 90 in the village raises cattle and pigs at home.
There are all kinds of voices on the Internet about the changes in the countryside, people who have been in the city for a long time can only watch a lively one, people who go out in the countryside see disappearing villages, and crying land, in my opinion, we should listen to the ideas of people living in rural areas.
I asked the elderly in the village, and they still remember the benefits brought to them by the abolition of the agricultural tax many years ago, and they also lamented the qualitative improvement of material life. Of course, they also have a lot of complaints, such as expensive hospital fees, low reimbursement, low harvests in rural areas, small population, and sometimes one person in the whole village, and people can scare ghosts to death...
Over the years, I have become more and more deeply aware that under the general trend of the times, human strength is very weak. All heroes and tragic characters are products of the times. You see That China's richest people are like the current traffic stars, their rise and fall is also sudden.
In the trend of the times, every character is a wave on the tip of the wave, if you must firmly believe that people will win the day, firmly believe that you are the tide of the times, then you will fall very badly. Therefore, for the current trend of rural areas, I firmly believe in the major policies and policies of the country's rural revitalization. After getting to know some experts, I also firmly believe that most of The experts in China are real experts, not "brick makers", who have been working in a certain field for many years, and their cognition is far more advanced than that of the keyboard heroes of laymen, and it is much more useful than my struggle to spit a few words.
This era is the carnival of the city and the sorrow of the countryside. But in the loneliness of the countryside, I can also see the bustle of the countryside. I took the child, walked on the road in the countryside, pointed to the pond at dusk in the summer and told her that this was: a remnant of the sun paving the water, half a river and half a river red;
Walk to the reservoir of the neighboring village, see a group of egrets, and tell her: two yellow orioles singing green willows, a row of egrets on the blue sky;
Walking in the fields in early spring, I saw that the grass had just sprouted her teeth and told her: The rain on the street is as wet as crisp, and the grass color is close but not there.
During the rainy season, I told her: during the yellow plum season, it rains at home, and frogs are everywhere in the grass pond. There is about no night and a half, idle knocking chess pieces to drop the lights and flowers.
My hometown is not very beautiful, there are no famous mountains and rivers, no scenic spots, and there are no big people of "immortals", "dragons" and "Dexin", but as long as you look at it with your heart to taste, every flower and every soil in the village can be found in the poetry of the ancients.
Su Dongpo wrote in "Chibi Fu": Between the heavens and the earth, everything has its own master, and it is not my own, although it is nothing to be gained. But the breeze on the river, and the bright moon in the mountains, the sound of the ear, the color of the eye, the inexhaustible, the endless treasure of the Creator, and the place where I am with the Son...
Every time I read this, my heart is as cheerful as the breeze on the river, as clear as the bright moon in the mountains. No matter how the countryside changes, as long as there is a breeze on the river and a bright moon in the mountains, each of us who comes out of the countryside can "run a reed like a reed, and ling is at a loss." Hao Hao is like Feng Fei Yu Feng, and does not know what it is; fluttering is like a relic of independence, feathering and ascending to the immortal. ”
Note: I am Guzi, born in the countryside, once sought a job in the imperial capital, worked in the media, now lives in a city in the south, often write some rural text, if you are interested in rural stories, welcome to pay attention.
Rural New Year series of articles:
Going home for the Spring Festival, the 35-year-old cried twice in front of my relatives, and the collapse of middle-aged people was simple
The Chinese New Year's Eve of the new year in the rural hometown: my father said that after eating this "rich", this year will be over
The taste of the countryside