Text: Tsai Keju
It's mid-April 2022 and it's almost May. Sitting on the balcony of my own home in Jiangnan City, enjoying the warm sunshine and the warm spring breeze, I suddenly remembered some scenes when I went to the countryside in the northeast to settle down as a farmer more than forty years ago, and the deepest impression was the strong wind every spring.
Nostalgia Essay: The Wind of April and May in the Northeast
In April and May in the northeastern countryside, it is the time of high winds. The winds of the fifth and sixth degrees were blowing almost all day long, blowing straight into the sky to ash, sand, and soil; the streets, courtyards, and crops around the tunzi were full of corn leaves, sorghum leaves, and broken soybean stalks and other things rolling around on the ground, rolling over, wandering, or flying in mid-air; pedestrians walking on the road, encountering the wind, could only hunch their waists, squint their eyes, and sometimes had to cover their mouths with one hand, or simply cover their faces with their hands. If you don't pay attention, these things will come to your face, hit people's faces with fiery pain, full of teeth are sand, bite, crunching; some people, may be short eyelashes, often confused eyes, can not move the eyes into the sand, can not open. In this case, some women wrap their heads and faces with translucent scarves, and the situation is somewhat better; men have no choice but to stand up, with a mantra often spoken by ordinary people, that is: love the ground, just this thing, what wind and sand, no matter it!
Some people's firewood stacks are obviously piled up well, and one winter is also pressed down enough to be "honest", however, suddenly encountered a strong wind blowing, the upper part, it was like peeling pancakes from the pan, it was peeled down a layer, and then two, three or more layers, turning around leisurely, like an umbrella shed, piece by piece floating in the sky, some high, some low, floating, there is no trace, do not know where to go; there are some as if they are reluctant to leave the homeland, floating around, floating tired, Just fall and rest. Some of them fall on the roofs of people's homes, some on the branches of trees, and some simply fall on the heads of pedestrians and on the walking carriages. Therefore, in this season, if anyone sees a pig sleeping in a pigsty with a pile of firewood, do not think that this is the sudden pity of the pig's owner, who carries firewood and grass to keep warm on his body against the wind and sand; if anyone sees a horse, a cow, a sheep in the yard, and a bunch of firewood on the back, do not think that it is a protective suit specially prepared for them by their master. All of these are "given" to them by God: they fall from heaven and fall on them.
Nostalgia Essay: The Wind of April and May in the Northeast
At this time, it is the time to sow wheat and then start planting corn, sorghum and soybeans. The raging wind and sand are plagued by drought, sometimes without a drop of rain for a month or two. What to do? Fighting with heaven and earth is the "duty" of peasants. Let's just start planting corn this May. Early in the morning, before the stars had faded and the sun had not yet come out, the peasants of the production team drove one carriage after another, ox cart after cart, and pulled a large bucket full of water to the endless crop field. The water was precious, and it was they who poured it up from the wells of each household, poured it into the big bucket of water on the car, filled it, and pulled it into the ground. This place is close, on the periphery of the tunzi; farther, three or four miles or five or six miles away from the tunzi, and some may be farther away. The peasants were distressed by the horses and cattle, and could not bear to sit on the cart, afraid that they would be tired, preferring to follow the cart on their own, encountering ditches, bumps, pits and bags, and trying to help push and pull.
When the sun is in the ground, the sun has basically emerged, and then the group of three people begins to cultivate the land: a person in the front uses a pickaxe to plan a pit, the latter person sprinkles three or four seeds in the pit, and the person at the end has to scoop water into the pit with a water scoop, and then kick the soil with his feet, fill the pit, and then step on it, all the way to the ground, and the ridge is planted. In this way, such a cycle is repeated, one ridge after another, and dozens of acres of land must be planted desperately in a few days, otherwise the solar terms will be missed.
Nostalgia Essay: The Wind of April and May in the Northeast
But the more you need water, the more God doesn't want the farmers to have it. Instead of a single drop of rain for a month or two or three months before and after this, it blew vigorously, and saw the peasant occasionally sprinkle a little water in the ridge or ditch, and evaporated in an instant—as if it were deliberately trying to oppose the hard-working peasant. Moreover, the wind in this field is not the same as the wind in the tun, and it has its own characteristics, that is, it is strong and fast, and it is specially close to the ground, and when it is scraped, it rolls with rolling yellow sand, surging forward, surging away, wave after wave, like thousands of waves, endless; moreover, often it will fiercely throw this yellow sand into the air and then sprinkle it down. The peasants had not yet worked for long, and they were already covered in sand, especially their faces, sweat and mud, "soul paintings", like the little ghosts in the stories of gods and monsters. Of course, needless to say, there is no one who is not thirsty, the more he drinks the water, the more he sweats, the more he sweats, the more he is thirsty, there is no way, he has to endure, wait until he returns home from work and then drink water.
After a dozen days, these corn seeds will break through the soil and sprout. But as soon as they came into this world, they first learned the power of the wind. As the saying goes, rain and dew moisturize the seedlings, and these seedlings should be reborn in the northeast, and they can rarely get the "nourishment" and dew "moist" of the rain, because the heavens do not care for them. Their growth, in addition to relying on the tenacious vitality and strong desire to survive given by their own genes, mainly depends on the careful care of their dear owners, farmers. There was no other way, and the hard-working peasants in the northeast, when the productive forces were still relatively backward at that time, could only rely on cars to pull people to send, scoop up water and water the seedlings one by one, and take care of and serve them without regret like taking care of their own children. Of course, one millet is planted in the spring and ten thousand seeds are harvested in the autumn. This endless seedling eventually grows into an adult and gives back to the farmers with the rich fruits they have produced, thanking them for their nurturing grace.
Nostalgia Essay: The Wind of April and May in the Northeast
Of course, now that society has made progress and agricultural science and technology have become more developed, although the wind in the rural areas of the northeast in April and May is still blowing non-stop and there is no time to rest, modern large-scale agriculture has long enabled the vast number of peasants to really get rid of heavy physical labor, and it can no longer be arrogant. Thinking about this, my mood gets better and better.
The spring breeze is now again, changing the human world...
About the Author:
Author figure
Cai Keju, a native of Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, went to the suburbs of Qiqihar City in May 1975 to join the team and settled down, and returned to the city in May 1978. He has successively engaged in teachers, public security, discipline inspection and cultural radio and television. He is now retired.
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