Did you ever live in such a building when you were a child?
The staff dormitory, the red brick wall, the scent of the next door neighbor's house always wafted in, and the climbing tiger of the grandfather's house downstairs hung in front of the window.
Houses are often old, dust has accumulated on the screens, window flowers have been pasted for a whole year waiting for new ones, and the relationship between neighbors is always close. You can often even hear how the children in the house next door are being trained.
And the next thing we want to tell you is that everything we just saw is not a real building, but a miniature model. From the dust of the windows, to the window flowers of that era, to the vegetables planted in the pots that we Chinese people like, they are all reduced versions that have been restored. Even the trash cans can be opened and closed manually.
Doing all this is a Shandong guy, miniature modeler, friends love to call him Shengge (@Shengge model).
Usually, he likes to film the process of making his own model, and send it to the watermelon video to communicate with his peers. Unexpectedly, a model video about my hometown suddenly caught fire, with 210,000 views and comments pouring in.
Brother Sheng suddenly realized that he was not the only one who was homesick in the wandering wanderer.
A model bears a memory, which is a beautiful story that shares nostalgia.
I went to my grandmother's house as soon as school was over
I don't know how many kids are like me
The matter of making an old home model has been pressed in Brother Sheng's heart for a long time.
It was a small yard from the '70s, and he always liked to remember it after moving.
"When I was a kid, the first thing I did after school was to go to my grandmother's house. Grandpa was always warming a pot of wine, and Grandma was always burning the scallion oil cake that she was good at, and it smelled fragrant. Grunt on the stove to cook a pot of sticky porridge that I love to drink. On the windowsill was always the ledger that Grandpa sewed with a cigarette case, and although he had not been to school for a few days, he could write and count well. ”
"And in winter, we always light a small stove in the hut and bake a few sweet potatoes next to the fire, and I will never forget the aroma of caramel."
The small ledger made of cigarette boxes, the glass of Grandpa's warm wine, the big iron pot that Grandma fiddled with, the small stove in the house, the old furniture... In ShengGe's memory, this item always jumps out one by one, like beads strung together, always evoking the warm moments in those lives again and again.
He decided to use a miniature model to restore his hometown in his memory.
Because I learned model design, plus I liked old things. He always took a paintbrush to record everything in the old house, and even took out a ruler at any time to measure the size of the items, and had already saved up a small book of materials.
Window frames, walls, ornaments, small things are designed one by one. The appearance of that childhood home also began to gradually take shape, reappearing in front of everyone in a physical form.
Push open the door, printed with flowers blooming rich enamel tea set, old wooden chairs, wall calendars hanging on the wall, children's awards, old photos of the family.
Take a look outside the courtyard again, shifeng brand agricultural machinery stopped outside the door, there are two bags of fertilizer on the electric three wheels, and Grandma's bench is still in the yard, waiting to dry this year's cabbage.
Sheng Ge gave the video an ambient tone. As soon as the sound of the machine sounded, it almost pulled everyone back to the old days.
Everyone in the comments section is reminiscing. "Why do I want to cry", "Miss Grandma", "So kind"... Nostalgia seems to be contagious, from the northern courtyard of Dezhou, Shandong Province, flowing to the Jiangnan water town, the Loess Plateau, the staff dormitory, and the grandparents, parents and parents who are always waiting for us there...
Recreate his hometown with his father
After the video of Brother Sheng's hometown went viral, some people successively found him to help reproduce his hometown. Sheng Ge has done statistics, starting from the first model in 2012, he has built hundreds of houses in the past ten years.
This also made Brother Sheng suddenly think of his father. My father was in his sixties, and over the years he had become more and more fond of talking about the past, and the story always happened in the old house where my father was a child. Poor memories of childhood hunger, pleasant times playing around with siblings, repairing roofs on rainy days, drying quilts on sunny days... The old house is full of memories, but unfortunately not a single photo was left before the demolition.
"I asked my dad if he wanted to make the old house you'd been talking about, and he said 'yes, and we started."
This is a typical Chinese father-son collaboration. Most of the time there is silence, but each knows what the other wants.
The father is mainly a designer, and the son takes on the role of technical guidance. The two people talked casually, handed each other some tools, and the replica of the old house began.
Sheng Ge's father used to be a carpenter, and the manual work was originally meticulous, drawing, and making were all old. But because there are no photographs of the old house, all the reproductions can only be based on a rough memory. They thought and did, and when they reached a vague place, their father would call his brothers, and everyone would think back together, and when they talked, they would talk about the childhood in those memories.
At this time, Brother Sheng often sat on the side and listened to his father talk about those past things, which was particularly interesting. "In fact, they were talking about the hardships of life at that time, but they were still very happy to say it." Making models seems to become a switch, suddenly opening the conversation box for the silent father, and the past of life that the son has no way of understanding unfolds.
The most interesting thing is that when the wall of the old house was restored, Brother Sheng's father hung a small ladder to connect to the wall of the neighbor. "He said it was his escape route when he was a child, and every time he disobeyed and was chased and beaten by his family, he would run to this corner and climb the ladder to escape."
The reproduction of the old house took a full month. By the day the model was completely built, the family had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel that the reproduction is real, and the memory of the past is suddenly awakened. On the one hand, I feel that life is not easy, many memories of the past are bitter, and now life is finally better.
And ShengGe also felt that it was very meaningful to use the video to shoot the model making with his father. The replica of the model is like he and his father rebuilt an old house once. In the process, he seemed to have re-acquainted himself with his father and learned about his life.
"He actually always liked art, but in order to make a living, he couldn't go to art school." From the age of 16, he gave up continuing his studies and naturally could not enter professional art schools. Learn carpentry with your master, find jobs all over the country, and make furniture for people. When I am old, I finally have leisure, and when I see a beautiful piece of wood outside, I like to bring it back to do some small creations. ”
"Maybe this time I completed this model with him, and I also helped him realize his dream."
As Sheng Ge's nostalgic reproduction of the watermelon video becomes more and more popular, more people come to him to reproduce the old house. Everyone's needs are strange, there are replicas of old dormitories, there are replicas of old ancestral homes, there are replicas of small courtyards... And the most critical thing is often not the house itself, but what kind of small objects everyone hopes to put on the inside of this micro-shrunken house.
What impressed Sheng Ge most was that a customer must want to reproduce a small leather whip, specifying the style of the triangle belt, and resting it on the shed. "He said that when he was a child, he threatened to beat him with a whip when he disobeyed his father, and he felt scared at that time, and now that he thinks about it, it is a memory."
Times have changed, demolition and construction have been built and demolished everywhere, and many people's memories are closely related to those disappeared objects. Brother Sheng also did not expect that taking a model video could cause so much resonance among everyone.
"I can rely on my craft to give myself, but also leave a thought for everyone, and when I miss home, I will see it, which is very good!"