It is difficult to find the old times in the hometown, but the bright moon is still the same

#记录乡村之美 #

"I was born in April in the countryside, and I tell the secret of the rising sun to spring."

After studying abroad for many years, the most memorable thing for me is the land where I lived since I was a child, about her past, about the unique fertile soil that the water of the Yellow River came up from the sky, about the magnificent scene when the great river she witnessed when it entered the sea, and the memories of all this filled every place in my memory, accompanied by my days and nights in a foreign land.

However, my hometown is long ago, and what is more than the land that I will never forget? How could life in the countryside when I was young not the most precious existence in memory? My hometown is not only the small city where the Yellow River flows into the sea, but also the countryside where I grew up.

There are endless wheat fields, harvested cotton, and lotus leaves. It is not noisy, there are few outsiders visiting, just a small village with a population of no more than two thousand, and sometimes there are shepherds resting in the fields, the shadows of the trees, and the smoke of cooking.

I remember when the high school Chinese class was commenting on the examination papers, the teacher asked a question with great anticipation: "Have you ever seen a chimney in the countryside?" This expectation surprised me: the objects that were commonplace in childhood are now hard to find. After all, natural gas, range hoods have entered the homes of ordinary people, and who will glue the pillar drum to keep the chimney symbolizing the past? As a result, with the progress of the times, the chimneys that symbolize the fireworks of the human world gradually disappeared.

Later, I realized that our generation is a lost generation. The smoke from the cooking stove in my memory is still there, but many people can no longer find it in their eyes. In fact, what has passed away with the torrent of time, why not just the gusts of cooking smoke?

When I was a child, I grew up in the countryside, and my life seemed to pass very slowly. After the renovation of the house, only a red brick wall was left on the west side, which was crawled with climbing tigers, and the large water tank with a diameter of nearly one meter was leaning against the corner, and whenever the weather was sunny, the water in the water tank would always become warm, and I would put my hand into the water, and the slippery tentacles were the moss on the wall of the tank. There was a loom in the warehouse where the seeds were stored opposite the main house, which was no longer found. I still remember the threads spun from the spinning machine being soaked in a basin of water, as white as a clear soup noodle. The neighbor's grandmother had to work for a long time before she knitted a small piece of cloth. I fooled around, holding the shuttle in my hand and making it float in the air like a small boat.

There is a vegetable field of grandpa in the west of the village, I run around behind him all day, picking a handful of dog tail grass, taking a small shovel to turn the soil and then burying the apple core that has just been eaten into the soil, regenerating weeds in the next year, I don't know if it sprouted or not, anyway, it is all green and vibrant. The family's pond was planted with lotus roots by his father, and in the summer a pond of lotus flowers bloomed, and the lotus was eaten when the lotus was picked, even with the lotus heart, there was no bitter taste. There was a bachelor in the westernmost part of the village who raised dozens of sheep, and every afternoon he would go to the south village primary school to graze, and a few children would take the willow branches to learn from him and take the sheep to the slope where the grass was most lush. I used to be one of them.

When the locust flowers are full of branches, the air on the way to school is sweet and silky. The old locust tree had grown freely for decades, and its canopy shaded half the street. Almost every family in the village has eaten locust rice made from the flowers on her branches. The skillful old man of the family took the locust flower mixed with white sugar and stored it, and mixed it with egg stall cakes, and once I ate it, my mouth could be fragrant for several days. There is also the New Year's Festival, every household has taken out homemade pickles, and there are jelly made of newly killed pig skin, freshly fried lotus boxes, with fish, the aroma can spread throughout the village, and I have eaten countless private restaurants for many years outside, but I have never encountered a similar taste.

When the farmers were busy, people even had to go home with stars and moons, and the adults threw the snakeskin sacks filled with freshly picked cotton in the yard, and then lit the lamp in front of the house to eat. A few of my neighbors' children and I lay on the bag, sniffing the characteristic fragrance of freshly picked cotton, looking at the moon, looking at the brightest stars. The seeds of cotton were a little on my back, and I lay on my back, but my heart was full of peace and joy. At that time, the sky was far-reaching, and the stars were full of stars, as if they could not be seen. The nature and vastness I have seen should start from childhood, the earth has a spirit, all things have feelings, once the starry sky was brilliant, the moon hung willows, and the distance between nature and man was not far.

And then what happened? After a few years of studying, when I returned to my hometown again, the old mud houses that had their own mood at that time became red tiles and white walls, painted with neat and clean blue paint, and the dirt paths that had once been there could no longer be found, and the roads were wide and lined with trees. This is a trace of development. Sure enough, the progress of the times always has something to lose, but it has also gained countless things.

Just like now I can't find the joy of running and playing in the field, and I can no longer go to the edge of the field to pick wild fruits. We stride forward in the torrent of urbanization, but let the memories be recorded in history and relayed by previous generations. We are lucky enough and lost enough. It is difficult to find the old times in the hometown, but the bright moon is still the same. My hometown is developing, transforming into a way I don't know, I am happy for her, but I am also lost because of the lack of memory.

So far, I have read only two books more than ten times: "The Legend of Hulan River" and "One Man's Village". There are so many things we are losing in these two books, and it is in my most memorable hometown that I can capture the shadow. Where is the so-called vernacular literature placed now? Now we are going too fast, but we can't grasp too many things. Since you are running forward, there must always be something to give up. But I still hope that the fertile land of the past, after many years of absence, will still have a simple existence.