□ Ding Xiaocun
When I was a child, there was a lonely old man living in the village, just next door to my house, this old man lived a long time, had a lot of experience, and had a wide range of knowledge, and the words he said were profound and mysterious in the eyes of the villagers, but people would believe them. In his old age, he was blind in both eyes, and my parents took a lot of care of him, and he regarded my parents as relatives.
My parents had a strange name for him: they called him "sir."
At that time, I was too young to understand the name, only a very vague memory, and there were only three kinds of people called "Mr." in the countryside: teacher, doctor, and Mr. Yin and Yang. This old Mr. Zhou seems to have occupied everything except that he is not a teacher. He would prescribe herbs. The people in the village have a headache and brain fever, a stomach trouble, he will give several herbs, the family immediately went up the mountain to find, quasi-can find, dig back to cook a pot of soup to drink, most of them worked. He will also tell fortune telling to push the eight characters, to many people have calculated, when I was a child, the atmosphere around me was strange, fortune telling to see yin and yang, that can not be done openly, mostly at night, sneaky like engaged in underground activities, but this kind of activity in the mountains has never been interrupted.
The old man lived in a house in the village for the orphans, and in his later years he was almost blind due to severe cataracts, but he tried to take care of himself as much as possible, cooking and washing his face and clothes, and carrying water and chopping wood to take care of the room, and my parents helped. I was very young, and I only remember him sitting on a small bench, chatting with visitors, chatting happily, not at all like a lonely blind old man.
After the old gentleman's death, the house was taken into public ownership, his relics were taken away by the villagers, and the useless ones were burned down by fire—I always remember the scene: the fire illuminated the opposite hillside, like a play to the end, and the flashing lights slowly extinguished.
When I was a child, I read books collected by my mother, and many of them were secretly given to her by the old gentleman -- this is not a property, but it is also taboo to collect these books. My father once told me that the old man gave him a fortune-telling book, known as the Book of Heaven, which ordinary people can't read, and the people in the mountains have this taboo: probably the heavenly opportunity cannot be leaked. My father revered this taboo and left the book but never read it as a memorial to the old gentleman—and later he was still afraid and burned the book.
The fire that burned the relics of the old gentleman, how many things were taken away, I later regarded as a mysterious question.
I read four famous books before the fifth grade of elementary school, and I also read many folk songs, folk tales, and some old books with rough but vivid illustrations, which became the introductory textbook for my childhood. I often think that there is also a legacy of the old gentleman here! He did not know that the old yellowed books he had secretly kept had nurtured a teenager in a remote mountain village. In the era of cultural desolation, he left a secret path, allowing me to enter the cultural halls of the past and the present, with long knowledge and knowledge, and some understanding of imagination and thinking.
In our mountains, people who are sick rarely go to the hospital, because the nearest hospital is also separated by dozens of miles of mountain roads, and patients are unable to complete this section of the road. Small illness and small pain, it is impossible for people to carry them to the hospital, but if they carry them to the hospital, they probably can no longer walk back.
Many of the methods taught by the old man have almost become a kind of life law in our mountain village.
Get some ginger bamboo leaves summer dry grass winter mulberry leaves, cook a few bowls of soup to drink, basically effective. Stomach discomfort and stool is not smooth, pick a handful of wild pepper plantain and the like, cook a few bowls of soup to drink, most of them work. Anxious dizzy, I couldn't sleep well, I got some mint half-summer old tea, boiled a few bowls of soup to drink, and slowly recovered.
My father had been bitten by a snake several times, and he was in no hurry to find and kill the snake (in my childhood understanding, this should be called revenge and broken roots), then picked a few wild grass leaves, put them in his mouth and chewed them, squeezed out the blood from the place where the snake had bitten, and then pasted them with chewed herbs. After a few days, the herbs were pulled down, the snake's tooth marks were gone, and the skin that had poisoned the dark blue was restored. It's amazing! When I was in middle school, I especially wanted to enter medical school because of this mysterious attraction.
The winter night is cold, the bamboo forest outside the house is blown by the wind like a galloping horse at night, the snow seals the door, and the window paper reflects white light. The fire pit burned with large tree knots, which slowly turned into red charcoal in the flames. At this time, my mother was making needlework by the fire, and my father was brewing a pot of soy tea and gossiping with us while smoking a dry cigarette. Sometimes they would talk about the old gentleman who had been dead for several years, when my father suddenly remembered something, and ran to the back room to pull out an old book, and he read it to me in the light of the fire. This is a soup song - if you study Chinese medicine, you have to carry dozens of soup songs, which is like a secret to saving lives and relieving pain. Of course I can't remember these soup songs, but I know that this book was also left by the old man to my parents.
The respect my parents had for the old gentleman was something I felt from the fire on a winter night. Only when people know reverence will they not commit the tao of heaven. Only when people understand the truth can they not be afraid of blindness - the so-called bright heart. When I grew up, I understood: after more than 80 years of unpredictable world, the old man's heart is as clear as water, clear and clear, and it doesn't matter whether the eyes can see or not.