Gaze deeply in the rubble of the old garden - reading Huang Xiaoji's "Taste of Eight Centimeters"

Huang Xiaoji's "Taste of Eight Centimeters"

In the winter night, a group of us walked along the green belt along the river and then turned back. Walking to the side of a building with a large boiler, they went back to their houses. I vaguely recognized the person next to me, including Huang Xiaoji. The next morning, we walked on this river again with the white vapor in our mouths, and in the morning sun, he fell behind us against the light, took pictures of the weeping willows of the tree, and regarded one or two weeping begonias as treasures, constantly adjusting the angle to give this small flower in the cold wind a picture, so we walked a little way back to him, he hurried up, approached, was an apologetic smiley face, explained: "It is really incredible, how this flower bloomed in advance, it is still winter!" And joy naturally flowed from between his brows. That's the impression we get when we walk together.

This impression led me to believe that he was a man of natural sensitivity. This sensitivity makes him always have an authentic and simple love for life. One day in December 2020, we spent a brief time together in a creative bootcamp before returning to our respective cities to work and live. At that time, I was learning about the recent publications of the Guangdong People's Publishing House, including the upcoming new book "The Taste of Eight Centimeters" of the "Eight Centimeter Series", and I approached Huang Xiaoji again. Prior to this, he wrote "Qing Ploughing and Rain Reading Jiangnan Old Things", "Old Village", "Old Artifacts Under the Eaves", "Eight Centimeters of Time", "A Village's Food List", "Farming in the Old Garden", "Hometown in Festivals" and other works. Huang Xiaoji shuttled between Yongxing, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places, and he wrote for 10 years. He spent nearly 10 years documenting and reflecting on the changes in rural society in southern China set against the backdrop of eight centimeter villages. It is a world that is gradually silent and empty and will eventually disappear. And Huang Xiaoji has made the necessary psychological preparations. The old hall house and the new tile house in his childhood life have been rubbled everywhere, and after work, he bought a house in the county town, repaired high-speed rail, and obtained a demolition payment when he built a new countryside, and he did not hesitate to keep his own house in the new eight centimeter village, in order not to let himself lose the roots of the hometown. He stubbornly returned to his hometown again and again, twice a year, before the Qingming Festival, and rushed back to the eight centimeter villages, although his parents had passed away, his sisters had long been married, and there was no one waiting for him there, he still built a bungalow, built a small courtyard, planted pomegranates and loquat trees, vines, and let them grow, blossom and bear fruit in the quiet courtyard, as if to replace the home where he had lived for more than ten years. In the process, he chose to strike a balance with reality, rejecting the dissolution from modern society and the engulfment that would give him a so-called city man's identity. He delicately and affectionately described his childhood and his homeland, his youth years, although he was poor at that time, the days were sparse, the bitterness and hardship in those old times, also made him issue the indignant words of "useless is a bookworm", he sincerely and not without reflection wrote about his struggles at the bottom of society as a peasant boy who went out of the countryside, and with the help of writing, he rebuilt a dwelling closer to the soul and entered another "eight centimeters" life. The disappearance of the village's ancient cypress maple, camellia oleifera trees, ferns and small bamboo shoots, and the downfall of mills and pig pen houses mean that the local way of life of an agrarian society is far away, but in his writings they are all alive. He percussed more than 600 years of history, reshaped his homeland in the rubble of his hometown, and carved the countryside into the history of the soul in his narrative and review of daily life, and will never be forgotten. It was a different kind of crystal world, where it carried his abundance, his awe, and his gratitude.

After quietly reading "The Taste of Eight Centimeters", I felt this affectionate gaze of his homeland, and the image of the old garden came alive from the bottom of my heart through time and space. Mother's recipe is the most common ingredient series in the countryside: taro, radish, pepper, bitter melon, loofah, winter melon, pumpkin, water melon, beans, often the same dish several ways to eat, frying, steaming, stir-frying, pickling, nothing more than the common practice of the townspeople, not to talk about how complex cooking techniques, but the mother can always burn a different taste. Sweet potatoes in addition to being a staple food, can also be simmered in the hearth, roasted by the fire, made into tea, made into sweet potato powder, brewed into sweet potato soil wine, water melon old can make melon spoons, loofah is not to mention, after drying, peeling and removing seeds, is an indispensable washing residue throughout the year. The material of the countryside is poor and abundant, and the wild vegetables such as small bamboo shoots, ferns, gardenia flowers and fungi are all over the mountains, which are the seasonal objects that people flock to nowadays, and the mountain fruits such as tea ears, bubble knots (scientific name raspberry), and chicken beating a (scientific name golden cherry) are endless for every child who grows up in the countryside. Together with his sisters, he shared some of the family's farm work in the midst of the farm. Watering vegetable fields, carrying water, collecting firewood, sweeping floors, and building melon racks. In the two houses of the old hall house, the mother sewed and mended the kerosene lamp, the father smoked a dry cigarette, he and his sisters read and wrote textbooks, and the warm memories of childhood and the strong family affection spread out in the bean-like lights. I clearly felt that those distant things and utensils clearly appeared in front of my eyes, and the irreproducible but worrying rural flavors once again awakened my taste buds, it was so real and rich, I was immersed in it and the aftertaste was endless; it was so strange and distant, making me long to live in the city but untouchable. In the process of reading "The Old Hall House", I experienced a long-forgotten truth in my own life.

I also have a vague feeling that the author hides primitive awe and sincere mourning in an almost warm narrative. The taboos that circulated from the mother's mouth left a reverence for life and all things. On a dark spring night, the thunder was rolling, and his mother repeatedly warned him not to make a sound, not to open his mouth to the fire (lightning), because only the elves licked and ate the fire, and they would be struck by lightning. Under the old cypress tree next to the old well, incense and fruit were prayerfully offered, and the diamond-shaped red paper with the names and wishes of the children was pasted on the tree, and prayers were made to pray that the children would be easy to raise and become easy to become. During the New Year's Festival, burn paper and incense under the old cypress tree next to the old well to bless peace. When a loved one dies, punch a pot of old well water to give the last scrub of the loved one. They worshipped the god Vesta and the god Buddha, and his mother washed her hands year after year and lit up the shrine in the hall. When the old man in the old hall left, the black coffin was placed in the middle of the hall, and the family held their breath and quietly went to bed. In the days that followed, there were more and more dead old people, and in his eyes, it was as if he was still stuck in the same place, and everyone was like swallows flying apart, but the home was no longer there. The old hall house is like the video history of Huang Xiaoji's childhood memories, perhaps for him, it means the source of a person's spirit, in these words, he more comprehensively recreates the picture of the past life in the countryside, recording the development of rural society in southern China.

In his pen, the life of hardship and hardship is a nightmare that accompanies half a life. One by one, he rushed to the predicament of survival in the world, using his strength and full of ideals to fight against hopelessness and struggle. When he was a child, he did not become the father of a coal miner, he did not have such toys as "rolling iron rings", "ball cars" and "iron barrel guns", after joining the work, he was poor and came from a poor background in the factory without girls favoring him, when he went to Dongguan to work alone, he spent the coils he borrowed, was threatened by robbers at the railway station to grab money, and then was humiliated by people in line. "He lost the last fifty cents, had to sell old watches on the street in exchange for the cost of returning to his hometown, when he risked being humiliated on the bus to escape the ticket, ate and slept like a beggar on the construction site, on the train he was eager to tucked under the seat like goods to return to his hometown, was lost the last 10 yuan when he was checked, he returned hopelessly to Yongxing County, and there was no foreseeable bright future under his feet." Before and after the publication of the "Southern Journey Collection", he borrowed money to go to Wuhan to visit Teacher Rao Qingnian, visited the Yellow Crane Tower alone, wrote poems in the wind, and finally got on the train early, and once again risked being checked to return to the county town to continue to raise money.

In the midst of suffering and hardship, he is like a poor young man in his father's story, holding out all cold realities in an almost paranoid "fairy atmosphere". In the autumn of 1989 he was assigned to the Building Materials Factory, a factory converted from a clay pot factory, which was not profitable and often could not be paid. At first, when he was arranged to sit in the office, the work was easy and clean, but he could not bear the internal and external torment of being like a miscellaneous servant and being isolated and isolated by the low-level workers, and finally in the case of disgusting the factory director's arrangement to go to the funeral home, he took the initiative to ask to work in the workshop and changed from a cadre to a worker's post; in 2012, when his daughter applied for the Nankai University independent admissions examination, he insisted on not sending people and not running away from the relationship, and finally his daughter got what she wanted and scored a lot higher than the admission score line. He has never given up on himself, he adheres to his moral bottom line and ideological innocence, while rejecting the shameless clichés of chasing fame and profit in society, he insists on his identity as a reader and constantly improves his spiritual system through writing, completing the transcendence of himself again and again.

About author:Chen Dan, a native of Liuyang, Hunan, graduated from Jinan University, master of arts, has published works in journals such as "Spark" and "Jiangnan Poetry", and now lives in Guangzhou, engaged in editorial work.