The ginkgo tree in the courtyard

The place where my ancestors lived for generations is an ancient village with 1,700 years of written records in the mountains of southern Anhui Province, called Shanmen Street. The Dictionary of Chinese Scenic Spots says: "Mountain Gate, ancient called Shimen, also known as Lingyan", here "the stone wall is steep, the row is open, like a city". It means like a city gate, so it is commonly known as the Mountain Gate Cave. A street outside the mountain facing the entrance of the cave is Shanmen Street.

The nickname "Lingyan" comes from a poem by the Tang Dynasty poet Luo Yin: "Lingyan is chiseled in what year, and there is this door when chaos first opens." Where the medicinal immortals go, the mountains do not change the old. The "medicine picking immortal" mentioned in the poem refers to the Eastern Jin Dynasty hermit Qu Zhen. The Book of Jin says that at the end of Taihe (367-370), Qu Qi "lived in the Wenling Mountains of Xuancheng County, and Sima Huanwen tasted the creation of the past, and saw That Mr. Huang was clothed in deer and sat in a stone chamber, and the gods were not discolored." ...... He died in the mountains. He Fasheng's "Book of Jin Zhongxing" Yun: Qu Zhen lived in Xuancheng Wenling Mountain, "people worship, pray for a spirit"; under the mountain "there is a pond known as Qu Tan, also known as the Seven Confucian Pond, a hundred feet deep, its Qing can be discerned, it is said that Mr. Qu Gang and the hermit seven people swim fishing place." In the southern half, there may be a stone platform with traces of chess and tea bowls, which are now out of the water, and fishermen still see it. Huan Wen visited Qu Zhen to ask him to come out of the mountains to help him usurp the throne, but the hermit would rather die than follow. When Qu Yuanming died, Tao Yuanming was just five years old, and Luo Yin had come here to inscribe poems (882) more than five hundred years later. After that, Mei Yaochen, Wang Anshi, Shen Kuo of the Song Dynasty, and Luo Rufang and Tu Xiying of the Ming Dynasty, the psychologists of the Ming Dynasty, have left ink marks here. And almost all the latecomers will almost mention the mysterious hermit of the Jin Dynasty, Mr. Qu Zhen.

In addition to the Shanmen Cave, there are chaoyang, purple clouds, ripples, Mingxin, loquat, Longtan and other caves, ancient books have "ZhongluoKuo Cave Seventy-two" saying, Qifeng, strange rocks are diverse, unique. The stone carvings here have been listed as key cultural relics at the provincial level.

Ancient ginkgo trees with intertwined branches cover the mysterious paths, and the faintly visible cliff carvings inherit the thousand-year-old context.

In my first memory, Shanmen Street was a secluded alley paved with bluestone slabs, with a long wheelbarrow in the center of the slab, flanked by quaint wooden houses. This is a house in southern Anhui that is different from the Hui school architecture. In the early morning, cooking smoke wafted from the roofs of each house, and people on the street gradually removed the door panels, opened the storefronts, sold tofu, sewed, squeezed oil, and did small business, repeating their daily livelihood.

I was born in this ancient and mysterious mountain village. When I was born, my father was already an employee of the commune (township) supply and marketing cooperative, and he was the only one in our village who ate "imperial grain". Because his father was kind and helpful, people in the surrounding ten miles of countryside called him "Manager Wang". My mother was a wise man in the village, and because my family had a long generation, some young daughters-in-law and boys in the neighborhood, even those who were only a few years older than their mothers, affectionately called my mother "little aunts" .

I hadn't met my grandmother, who had died before I was born, and left a picture of herself in a black satin tang dress, sitting in a vermilion chair, looking "rich." When I was 5 years old, the old man (not my grandmother, our family has always called my grandfather "old man", I don't know what the origin is) died. I don't remember much at the time, but I vaguely remember that one winter morning, the old man walked away in the cry of the whole family and never came back.

In addition to the caves, the most proud of Shanmen Street is the ginkgo tree. The 100-year-old ginkgo trees are all over the streets and alleys, outside the caves, and especially the ginkgo trees in my courtyard are the most magnificent.

Listening to her mother, she had just come to the Wang family and asked the old man: Did you plant this tree? The old man said: When I was young, this tree was already so thick.

This ancient ginkgo tree spanned three hundred years from my grandfather, to my father, to me, and came to my name in 1992, when the family was separated, and it has been a full thirty years now. In 1993, I returned to this ginkgo tree and got married, and in 1995 my daughter was born in the courtyard under this tree. I suddenly sighed and wrote an article titled "The Ginkgo Tree in the Courtyard". It reads:

The ginkgo tree in my courtyard grew in the middle of the small courtyard, and its wide branches and leaves stretched out to cover the entire courtyard. In spring, the shy ginkgo blossoms explore the novel world from among the young branches and leaves, and the courtyard is full of fine tidbits and its faint fragrance; in the middle of summer, it opens a thick green umbrella to shield us from the hot heat and open up a cool shade place; in late autumn, the sunset is sloping, and the wind is blowing, and the yard is flying with countless golden and beautiful "butterflies"; in the middle of winter, the bare branches proudly stretch out to the empty sky, reflecting a deep and tragic world.

...... Grandpa was born and raised under the ginkgo tree in the courtyard, married his grandmother, gave birth to his father, and my father was born and raised under that ginkgo tree, married his mother, and gave birth to me. Unfortunately, they never got out of the courtyard shaded by the ginkgo tree in their entire lives.

I am fortunate to have been born under the ginkgo tree where my ancestors lived for generations. When I was twenty years old, I said goodbye to the courtyard under the ginkgo tree and went to the far south. But I still loved the ginkgo tree in my garden in my bones, and finally returned to the ginkgo tree in my soul's dream, married my wife, and gave birth to a daughter...

The article, along with a photograph of his wife washing clothes under a ginkgo tree, was published in New Generation magazine, No. 7, 1996.

Last night, tossing and turning, as if waking up from a dream, I suddenly realized that there may be some kind of inevitability in many accidents in life.

In the early years, I heard the big brother next door say that our family used to have a family tree, and in this family tree, our "inherited" generation was the thirty-third generation. Come to think of it, thirty-three generations span almost seven hundred years, and if you look at this ginkgo tree, it should be almost seven hundred years. Could it be that seven hundred years ago, the ancestors came here, planted a ginkgo tree by hand, and then passed it down from generation to generation?

When I was a child, I often lay on the cool bed outside the house on summer nights and looked up at the starry night sky, listening to my uncle tell the past of a long, long time ago. Coincidentally, the first time I went out alone was when I was in junior high school in 1982 to attend the meeting of representatives of the three good students and outstanding student cadres in the xuancheng area organized by xuancheng district, and the first point I visited was the New Fourth Army Headquarters in Yunling. When I revisited my hometown ten years later, I was already wearing a lieutenant's uniform. I remember also wrote an article titled "The Assertion at the Foot of Yunling Mountain". Suddenly, I felt that the "Ye Ting Annals" that I was compiling at hand seemed to be a fate in the dark, and it was even more an unshirkable responsibility.

My uncle died in 1985, my father died in 1986, and I took the college entrance examination in 1987, but for economic reasons, I had to give up my favorite major in literature and history, and when I was in my third year of high school, I changed to science and enrolled in military school. After graduating from military school, I went to the fujian coastal troops. When I entered the new century, I was transferred from Xiamen to Nanjing. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of my father's death, I returned to my hometown to rely on my ancestral old house and built a small library under the ginkgo tree, named "Ginkgo Biloba Book Garden". The tens of thousands of personal collections accumulated in the past 30 years have been placed here one after another, free of charge and opened to the public, making the book garden a public welfare reading place. It is hoped that in this way, I will return to my hometown and society, so that more people will fall in love with reading, have a place to read, and be able to read good books.

It was the Qingming Festival of the first six years, and after visiting my father's grave, at the instigation of my aunt's family, we held a simple ceremony for the Ginkgo Biloba Library. People in the village, even some people in neighboring villages, heard the news and bought cannon battles to come to congratulate, and for a while the village was lively.

When the library was completed and opened, my mother was over eighty years old and her body was still healthy. She opens the library early every morning, organizes books, cleans up, and enjoys it. When someone reads a book, she holds a cup of tea and sits in the "special seat" around the corner, looking at people, thinking at the same time, and sometimes can't help but talk a few words. Since then, every time I called her, I would listen to her talk endlessly about the book events that had happened in the library.

"Some time ago, there was a very bright young man who came to read at nine o'clock every day, left at five o'clock in the afternoon, and ate a bowl of instant noodles at noon. I asked him what he did, and guess what he did? Put the bees! It is said that it was released from Shandong all the way to the bees. The young man said, you are very good here, there is such a good library in the village, you can sit, you can read books, and you don't charge money. ”

"The retired teacher Chen of the primary school, these days every afternoon to read books, a look is two or three hours. I asked him how old he was, and guess how old he was? Ninety years old! I can also read books, which is really good eyesight. ”

On the weekend, I returned to my hometown to visit my mother, and I happened to meet Teacher Chen and read a book. I quickly brewed a cup of hot tea and served it, and Teacher Chen stood up humbly and thanked him one after another.

I instructed my mother that when Teacher Chen came back later, she would pour him a cup of hot tea. I sat down next to my mother, stroked her age-stained hands, and murmured, "He's so old...

But I didn't want to, this was the last side of my mother and me. A week later, my mother suddenly drove the crane west.

It's another year of Qingming Festival, and my mother has been gone for three years. The ginkgo tree in the courtyard should spit out new shoots, and the garden should be sprinkled with tender green ginkgo tidbits.

Suddenly, I realized that Qingming is not only a remembrance of the ancestors, but also a kind of inheritance of Chinese culture. (Wang Chengqing, Nong Yin Nian Qingming)

Source: Guangming Network