Editor's Note
In 1947, Pei Wenzhong, who held the rank of major general, led the Northwest Geological Survey Team to conduct a three-month investigation and trial excavation in the Weishui River Basin, the Western Han River Basin, the Tao River Basin and near Lanzhou in Gansu, and found many prehistoric sites, including Tianshui and Wushan.
In addition to the busy investigation, he appealed to what he saw and heard in the process of traveling around Gansu, revealing for us the hardships of transportation at that time and the hardships of Gansu people's lives, which is a vivid picture of the people's livelihood at the bottom.
First, the carriages of the ancient road and the characteristic shops
The most interesting part of my trip to the northwest was the section from Tianshui to Longxi. In this paragraph, we can appreciate that the real Gansu part has seen the ancient culture in this realm and touched the simple people in the northwest of the mainland. Most of the other parts have been baptized by the outside world and have lost their original appearance.
Tianshui to Longxi, is a section of the ancient road from Tianshui to Lanzhou (that is, Lanzhou through Shaanxi and Sichuan), before the highway is repaired and the car is not opened, this avenue is like a cloud, and the merchants are weaving. But now it is depressed, and only merchants carrying luggage, porters driving donkeys and horses, and old-fashioned carts are left to walk. There are about two kinds of old-fashioned large cars, and people often say that gansu car wheels refer to this kind of car.
Mule convoys of goods, 1941
The iron-wheeled carts are all from Longxi or Lanzhou; the carts are large, at least three horses or mules to pull, and can be loaded with two thousand pounds, and many can be pulled by five or seven horses. They always walked in gangs and helped each other, because when climbing the hill, there were two carts of horses, often as many as eight or nine, to pull one cart up first, and then one to pull up. The second is the wooden wheel car in Min County, the car is small and large, with a horse, not necessarily a gang to walk, only a few hundred pounds, and then take a guest, when going uphill, the guest walks, and can help the coachman. The reason why these two big wheels are big, if you walk on the road, you will immediately understand.
The so-called avenue, that is, the road to be taken by the big car, the road is a large stone, a large pit, a ditch slope is very large (often more than 30 degrees), must be this big wheel, and the wheel is not on a plane, the shaft is concave inward, the wheel side is outward, if you walk through the big stone or deep ditch, a roll will pass, can not turn over. The wooden wheel truck in Min County, the wheels are not strong, but the production is easy to save money, the wheels can be changed, that is, the car can also be abandoned without pity.
Then on this section of the road is characterized by "shop", along the road, Wulipu, Shilipu, Twenty Lipu, etc., is completely a shop, and in the ravine, the so-called village, is really only a few storefronts, the store is mainly the boss lady, the boss lady is like the shop small two, only for the drive, "into the door a bowl of noodles", into the store, that is, there is a bowl of noodles to eat, noodles are "pulp water surface", with sauerkraut soup poured noodles, its taste is sour and bitter, but Gansu people like to eat it. Staying in the hotel will eat this bowl of noodles, about now usually live overnight to eat a bowl of noodles, a total of two thousand yuan, the next day early to get up nothing, the guests will leave.
The noodles should be made by the boss lady, the rolling pin is very long, up to three or four feet, roll out the noodles, cut with a knife, all depending on the boss lady's craftsmanship. Pretty young hostess, tourists gathered, all crowded on a big kang. Until the hostess is old, if no one replenishes, the store will be closed. Man is a sentient animal, so the affair between the hostess and the passengers often appears in an endless stream. Some people say that only one or two generations of shopkeepers have opened shops, because the epidemic of wind and current disease is inevitable in the store!
Got the car and the shop, and then I'll talk about our trip.
Second, the blind horse in distress and the female shopkeeper of the wind
We are a group of five people, and we are expected to hire a big car, take the luggage, sit on the people, and travel a hundred miles in two days, from Tianshui to Gangu, with enough time to work on the road. On July 20, we hired a rubber iron wheeler and stated that we would not pay for alcohol for 150,000 yuan. The next morning, I left at dawn and ate breakfast at the West Thirty Mile Shop.
Mountain Carriage, 1932
On the 21st, we prepared very early, but this car, after thousands of calls, began to come out. Load the car and walk up, it's past 9 o'clock. At the beginning of the trip, I had a problem with the right eye of the horse on the right side of the car, and later I talked with a fellow traveler on the left side of the car, and he said that there was a problem with the horse's left eye. The two argued and asked the coachman, who smiled and said, "It's a blind horse!" ”
This coachman's surname is Sun, a Shandong person, and the person is so good! In the early years, he was unable to join the army and was exiled to Gansu, selling paper cigarettes first; after the victory, the price fell, he lost a fine light, had no choice but to drive people to the car, did not travel between the north port and Tianshui, quite enough food and clothing. He doesn't know, on this road, whether a car like his can go, we don't know.
Tianshui to Gangu, first along the West River (i.e. the Zhihe River), past guanzidian, over the mountains, that is, Gangu, before reaching the bank of the Wei River. From Tianshui to Thirty Mile Shop, Forty Mile Shop, the road is flat, we talk and laugh with the coachman, he is very proud, we are also very happy. But after that, the river valley is narrow, turning to the northwest, and the road is gone, only the riverbed is visible. The riverbed was covered with large stones and small rocks, the ditch was undulating, and our coachman was in a hurry, pulling his blind horse away, and we were always worried about the disaster of the car overturning.
Good (not) easy, to 9 o'clock more, the sky has been dark, only to sixty mile shop, found a clean small shop to live, the hostess is young, but not beautiful, probably so only we are a few guests, compared with the next door high-end full of friends, is nothing less than heaven and earth. When I first tasted the pulp water surface, I really couldn't eat it, so I boiled the noodles in white water and sprinkled with salt noodles, which is called "sweet water noodles", enough to eat two bowls, and this other bowl will add an additional 1,600 yuan.
The five of us slept on a large kang, and there were not many bed bugs, probably because of the scarcity of guests. When we enter the shop, we have to fry (hot water) to wash our faces, and the next morning. The store is very strange, but look at us is a group of strange guests, the store can not give, just in the mouth of the recitation, the guests did not wash their faces, just our group of geeks, into the door to wash their faces, get up early to wash their faces.
Carriage wheels stuck in dirt roads, southern Gansu, 1932
After sixty miles of paving, the road was even more impossible to walk, but struggled in the cement and rubble piles. About an hour or more, our car to go from the left bank of the river to the right bank, everyone looked at the road for half a day, unable to move forward, and then plucked up the courage to cross the river, unfortunately the car fell into the mud, the horse was overwhelmed, the coachman was not as good as the five of us to help push and pull, there was no result, and then decided to unload the car, first pull the horse out, and then try to pull the car empty, more fortunately after the horse was out, it fell into deeper mud, the mud was deep to the belly, at first the horse still struggled, and then it did not move, just kicked the foot next to it, and shouted: "It's over!" It's over", the coachman Lao Sun, who did not like to talk, also spoke, he said: "This time I will peel your skin." According to him, if the horse is dead, the porter should peel off the horse's skin and go back to the treasurer to show it.
We first put a rope on the horse, intending to put a noose around the horse and pull the horse out; but we could not go into the horse and tie the horse, because we ourselves would be in the mud and unable to pull out our legs. After several attempts, but they could not succeed, looking around, there was only a child herding sheep, a few pedestrians on the far road, and several families in the far forest. We finally decided that one person would go to the village to find someone, find a rope, borrow a bar, and one person would be a "road intercept" on the road and find someone to help save the horses. As a result, the two people who went were all forced by force, and only four or five people came, brought two bars, did not call on the road, and escaped three people.
Parking Break, Southern Gansu, 1934
The man was so powerful that he turned the horse over the mud several times with a rope bar, and took the horse to a good place, and the horse actually stood up. The coachman's old grandson couldn't stop saying: "Thanks to this is an old horse, with experience, he struggled twice, and when he couldn't get out, he didn't move." If you are a young horse, I am afraid that you will have to struggle desperately, and when you struggle until you run out of strength, you will be exhausted! "I thought, too, and so do people! To be powerful, to know the impossible and not to do it, otherwise it will inevitably be exhausting. Now that he is a high official, he holds a number of important positions, and if he really does things, he will not die of exhaustion. After all, people are smart, positions can be more, money can be more, but do not do things, absolutely tired and not die!
After rescuing the horse, he rescued the car again, rested for more than an hour, and the coachman Lao Sun pulled the horse on the car again, and when he arrived at the Guanzi shop, it was already past noon. Guanzi shop is the end of the river, and Gangu County, across a large mountain beam, the mountain road on both sides are steep, up and down the mountain beam are very difficult; so whether it is a porter, coachman and shoulder man, whether up the mountain or down the mountain, are resting or staying in the Guanzi shop, so there are many shopkeepers, as if the female shopkeeper here is also particularly famous.
Women of the Northwest, Republic of China
The hostess of the shop where we had lunch, young and old, the youngest was about 30 years old, really dressed up, in the middle of the wilderness village, out of the crowd. Later, when I passed through Guanzidian on my way back, I heard that this jun was quite famous, it was the husband who had four, and recently because of the competition among several dignitaries in the town, the frustrated people falsely accused this jun of being a "communist party" and was accused of being in the Tianshui county government. I once had four poems in praise of the clouds:
A flower in a wild mountain grass, a graceful female shopkeeper.
Married husbands in two pairs, "eight eyes" is really boastful.
Gai Jun was nicknamed "Eight Eyes" and was quite praised and envied by other female shopkeepers.
With the help of the town office, we hired a donkey to help this blind horse-drawn carriage to get up the mountain beam, and when we arrived in Gangu City, the sky was already dark, and we found several guest houses, all of which were occupied by the army, and had no choice but to find the county government, and the county government entertained us to live in the "Yamen" and solved the problem of living. Because it was too late, there were no sellers, and they did not want to alarm the people in the county government, so they bought a watermelon and two pounds of thick pot cakes, which also solved the problem of our group of five people eating.
Knowledge and Life, 1948
This article is exclusively compiled by "Hanhai Taosha"
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