【About the Author】Li Zhongqing, a native of Huining, Gansu, is a member of the China Writers Association, a director of the China Petroleum Writers Association, a member of the Sixth Gansu Writers Association, a member of the Lanzhou Literary Association, the deputy secretary general of the Fifth Council of the Lanzhou Writers Association, the honorary chairman of the Lanzhou Petrochemical Branch of the China Petroleum Writers Association, and a senior political engineer. Since 1982, he has published nearly a thousand literary works in newspapers and publications such as Yalu River, Earth Fire, Gansu Daily, Party Building, China Petroleum News, Sinopec News, Lanzhou Daily, etc., including "My Neighbor", "Second Time into the City", "New Song of Veterans", "Old Man Wan", "Old Man Wai Biography", "Little Nanny", "Footsteps Toward the Olympics", "Factory Soul" (group poem), "Buddha Heart", "Housing Provident Fund Helps Him Realize His Dream", "Jinchengguan Reverie", "Reading" Let the dream come true", "Xiao Cui's dream", "Miracle born in his calloused hands", "My family's heirloom", "Overhaul", "Vibrant Equipment Manufacturing Park", "Reading Makes My Life", "The Sentiment of an Old Petroleum Worker", "Giant Panda", "Rejuvenated New Lanzhou", "Ravine with Dream Refining Tower Circle", "I Am Proud of You Lanzhou Petrochemical", "Mysterious Telephone" and nearly 100 other works have won awards. He also published the novel collections "Cherry Blossoms and Apricot Blossoms and Others" and "Li Zhongqing Short Stories Collection".
(Note: All the pictures in this article are taken by Wu Yinghuan)
Editor's note: "Hometown is a very warm word. Whenever I talk about her, my heart is warm, like a warm baby. But when I look back on my hometown, she is like a running rabbit, and she seems to have run far, so far away that I can't see clearly. Today, I share Mr. Li Zhongqing's essay "Hometown Running in Memory" written by Mr. Li Zhongqing.
Running in the memory of the hometown
Li Zhongqing
Hometown is a very warm word. Whenever I talk about her, my heart is warm, like a warm baby. But when I look back on my hometown, she is like a running rabbit, and she seems to have run far, so far away that I can't see clearly. That may be because she has changed. She had changed so much that I could barely recognize her. The crooked cooking smoke had long been blown away by which wind, and even the thick rural sound seemed to have been diluted by the wind. Hometown has become a cute little rabbit, often running in my memory.
The clouds of the homeland
In my mind,the clouds of my hometown are always very faint, as faint as a wisp of white silk drifting; it is also very light, as light as a piece of goose feathers, as long as the wind blows lightly, it disappears without a trace. Therefore, there is always less rain in the hometown, and the water becomes the oil of the hometown. Sometimes, it is more expensive than oil. The sun in my hometown is very warm, always hot and unbearable. Even the seedlings were so hot that they rolled up their leaves, like small hands covering their faces.
We are always eagerly waiting for the clouds, waiting for a wind to blow a cloud, preferably a dark and heavy cloud, and we can also invite Lei Gong to come, and after a bang, it will be a downpour. But to come and go is to look forward to the wind, but it is like a huge broom sweeping the sky clean. It was a blue sky, there was not a single cloud, and the sun was still enthusiastic, looking at us with a smiling face. The ground was boiling hot, playing with us, burning our bare feet so hot that we had to hide in the mud house.
The cloud became a small flower in my dreams, often delicate, warm, and of course fragrant. Unfortunately, it just didn't turn into rain. Rain naturally became another dream, a dream as thin as a crescent, I still hope it can grow fatter, will it also roll round?
My dream woke up. A cloud drifted outside the window, a familiar cloud. You are the thin cloud that your hometown once had, how did you become fat, is it because your hometown is in the water, or because the bare mountains of your hometown are full of small trees? Did you go out of your way to announce the good news for me, and what happy things did you have in your hometown?
The wind of the hometown
The wind in my hometown is still a bit strong, especially in winter, like a knife, scraping on the face, raw and painful. It is not only powerful, but also pervasive. As soon as you enter the door, it sneaks in like a shadow, making the people in the house shiver involuntarily. The wind can not only blow clouds away, but also blow dust. However, the soil in winter seems to be frozen, the wind is easily blown, and only a few dead branches and rotten leaves are teased by the wind like a cat catching a mouse, blowing to the east for a while, and then blowing to the west, blowing everywhere.
The spring wind is relatively wild, running around barefoot. At this time, the soil has been loosened because the land has been cultivated. The wind will boldly pull the little hand of the soil and run wildly. Thus, there was a yellow sky and a dark earth, and we all became tuxing suns, as if we had just drilled out of the soil. We couldn't help but laugh at each other, except for the eyes and teeth, the rest of the face was beyond recognition. Whoever laughs at others is the same.
There are also times when I am looking forward to the wind, in addition to thinking of letting the wind lead a cloud, in the summer, I still hope to have a cool breeze. The summer wind in my hometown is not very much, and even if there is, it is lazy and weak. More importantly, it seems that it is also infected and affected by the sun, and the enthusiasm is also high, giving people a warm feeling. However, the hometown is a small hill, and it is still much cooler than the ravine. Although the wind is a little enthusiastic, it can always blow away some of the sweltering heat. Therefore, in the summer of our hometown, we still like the wind.
The autumn wind naturally became less amiable. He often turns his face and blows the leaves for no reason. As if to play a mighty role for whom, it wants to give me a dismount? I don't eat it. Even if it blows all the leaves off, I can sweep those leaves home so that they can simmer in winter.
When the wind also changed, she actually blew the mountains of her hometown green, and also blew away the flowers of her hometown, red, white, purple, yellow, red and fiery, flowers and flowers. Suddenly my window opened and I smelled my hometown. Are you the wind of your hometown, are you coming to the city to catch up with the bustle, or are you carrying new information about your hometown for me?
The soil of the homeland
The soil of my hometown is loess, like an old woman with yellow muscles, barren is a little barren, but she also raised us, and raised my ancestors. The soil of the homeland is soft, and walking barefoot on it is like stepping on a sponge. Especially when the spring flowers bloom, it is still extremely comfortable to step on.
The soil of the hometown is not only soft, but also very clean, after our bodies are accidentally cut by a knife or grass, we use the soil of the hometown to stop the bleeding, as long as we sprinkle some soil of the hometown, the blood will stop immediately, and it will not take two days, as if it has not been cut. The soil of the homeland is unsynny and soft, and the crops planted on it can be plucked by hand, such as wheat, which we call pulling wheat instead of cutting wheat.
The soil of the hometown may be soft because of the lack of water, or it may be soft and soft, and it has become a habit, even if it rains, the soil is still soft. Although the soil of the hometown is very soft, it can still be beaten out of the huji, and it can also be built into a courtyard wall. The mud hut we lived in was built with a base and mud, which was warm in winter and cool in summer, which was also very good. I miss my family's mud huts very much. Of course, it has long ceased to exist.
The soil of the homeland is also subject to change, although it is thick and secure, unlike clouds and winds. But it still has to change. In the past, it was impossible to grow eggplant and melon fruits due to altitude or climate, but now it can be planted by covering the mulch film, and you say that it will also change. What is even more gratifying is that my hometown has engaged in cooperative development, built roads, put on water, leveled the land, and built some ecological agriculture demonstration gardens.
Mountains of hometown
The mountains of my hometown can still be described as spectacular. It's mountain after mountain, ditch to ditch, so that you can see that your eyes are full of mountains. And the mountains were all bare, not even a single grass of artemisia grown. At that time, there were very few roads on the mountain, and if there were any, it was also a sheep's gut trail, and because of the steepness of the mountain, the road was also very steep, like hanging a whip on the mountain. At the bottom of the road is a deep ditch, in which there are three or three or two buried steamed graves, the other side of the ditch is still a mountain, the other side of the mountain is still a ditch, a ditch, a mountain, an endless view.
On the top of the road is a hill shaped like an official hat, and there is a small temple at the top of the hill, and it is said that the gods in the temple are very sensitive. The old people said that they saw a puff of green smoke rising from here to the blue sky in the daytime. So, here the cigarettes linger. However, now that the temple had collapsed, I didn't know where the god who sensed it had gone.
The road is very thin and long, and it is said that it is a whip, even if it is the whip of the gods, it is beyond the reach of the whip, and it seems that people cannot walk to the end of it. One day, a small cargo man who bought flower threads brought information from outside the mountain. One by one, the girls listened and froze. Before they could, they ran out of the mountain and married to the other side of the mountain. The old people were worried, watching their children and grandchildren grow up. So the boys ran out again...
One day, the spring breeze finally closed the jade gate, and the wind of rural revitalization blew into the mountains. The whip-like path has finally completed its mission. Roads have been built in the mountains, cars have been connected, and vehicles carrying mountain goods have been flowing endlessly every day. Here is another day by day lively, girls wear skirts, draw eyebrows, young men also pay attention to dress up, talk about what image, they also opened e-commerce, online shopping or something, as well as Internet celebrities ...
The mountain is still this mountain, the soil is still this soil, but are people still those people?
The courtyard of the hometown
The courtyard of the hometown has changed the most, and the earthen houses seem to have suffered from severe frost one by one, and they have suddenly fallen. Then came the tile houses, all of which were high gate buildings, red tile houses, and even the courtyard walls were made of red brick. Standing there majestically was not imposing. But the people are a little bit less prosperous. Take my family's original Lujia Danzi, for example, there were originally about ten households, about seventy or eighty people, but now there are only three families left, and the long-term population does not exceed ten people. Walking around the village, you can hardly see a figure, and occasionally you can hear a few dog barks.
Although the house is still standing there, most of them have gone to the house to empty. Walking in such a village, I suddenly seemed to have traveled to other spaces and forgot where I was. In an instant, I heard chickens barking and dogs barking in my ears, people shouting donkeys, and babies crying and laughing. At that time, it was still relatively lively. But where have people gone today?
In fact, this is also a manifestation of social progress. Now it is more convenient for people to move. It's not hard to go into town, as long as you have that desire. As the saying goes, water flows to the low place, and people go to the high place. Even though my hometown has become very good. But there are better and more attractive places that attract the descendants of their hometown like magnets. Fortunately, now that the land has been transferred, I am not afraid of desertion.
I heard my cousin say that the government is now planning the new countryside and concentrating them in other villages. He said he didn't want to go. I said, it is good to concentrate, it is convenient to have many people, and it is good to do things. But he said, this is the place where our ancestors have lived for generations, how to say that we moved it. I said that it is the information age, and it is not okay for a family to nest in a place where there is no telephone signal to connect. I believe it will be better and better. Of course, I also understand my cousin's nostalgia, why shouldn't I?
In the past, there was a word that warmed me in my hometown, which was cooking smoke, and as soon as the cooking smoke rose, we knew that our mother had cooked for us, and we had to go home. But now every household does not use firewood to cook, either with electric cookers, or with smokeless charcoal, or with gas, and there is no longer any cooking smoke that bends and flutters with the wind. This is naturally the progress of the times, of course, this is also my faint nostalgia.
My hometown is still black and white in my memory, even barren. But in fact, she has changed, become colorful and colorful. Her hometown is running, and she wants to catch up with the pace of the times. She was still running, she was running in a better direction.
Thinking about my hometown that has gone away, I can't help but ponder, what is the hometown, is it the hometown that remains unchanged? What is the relationship between the hometown in the traditional sense and the hometown in the modern sense, is it only the local atmosphere that is the hometown? Don't city dwellers have a hometown? Shouldn't the hometown change? Isn't it the hometown that has changed?
My hometown is still my hometown, but when we meet face to face and can't recognize it, our hearts are still like overturning the five-flavor bottle, and we can't taste it. I'm often a little lost, and even a little tangled, but I'm more happy, like replacing a nine-inch black-and-white TV set with a sixty-five-inch color TV, which is still a good feeling. Is this the thick, sweet, and astringent nostalgia that often runs in my memory?