The village of Rice Paddy
Author: Wan Huihua
Rice paddies, what a good place name. When I think of rice paddies, I seem to see the green rice fields of spring ploughing, the tender green fields that flutter with the wind, and the golden fields of rice...
However, a village in my hometown was once called Daotian, and it was also called Daotian Township, or Daotian People's Commune. That's a long time ago.
When I was about four or five years old, I went with my mother over the mountains to the Rice Field People's Commune for a meeting, maybe at the turn of spring and summer, and I remember that in a pond, the diamond horn had matured, and the water surface was floating with green leaves and vines, and the diamond horn was sinking in the water. Some farmers moved the foot basin to the pond, and the person sat in the foot basin, paddled the water with his hands, and then lifted the vines with the diamond horns, fished up the strings of pointed edges and corners, and plucked them off. This black thing, the skin is hard and thick, I am too small to bite, I need adults to smash it open, in order to eat such delicious and sweet meat.
The memory of this Lingtang made me remember the name of the village, the name of the township, and the name of the people's commune of the rice field.
There is also a layer of closeness and cordiality, because my mother worked as a telephone clerk in the Rice Field People's Commune when she was young. She was only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time, and every day she guarded a dense row of telephones, which one rang, immediately took over, and immediately answered the communication number, and her hands were busy. At that time, she may have left her hometown, she was not familiar with the land, and found a job in the rice field commune. After she got married and gave birth to me, she still became a farmer. Perhaps her short life as a clerk is worth remembering how desirable her new life was when she was young.
She didn't take the initiative to reminisce about it with me, and I still heard about it from other relatives. This reminds me of why the Rice Field People's Commune met and why it remembered Lingtang and remembered this beautiful place name. Isn't it true that the place where my mother used to work naturally has a kind of fate and closeness?
In fact, Daotian Village is close to my hometown of Yuetian Town, Xinnan Village junction of a boundary mountain, called Kinmen Jie, because there are three or four arbutus trees on the mountain, so it has become our best gift to welcome the arrival of June 1st, I and my friends, climbing the mountain and walking for several miles Oh, to the mountain to pick bayberry, this is a risky thing.
There is a family living in this Golden Gate, the grandmother is called Ju Jiao, she has a son who patrols the mountains, called Si Ling, about 30 years old, not married, always holding a machete, patrolling the mountains every day, and a very tall black dog. We are afraid of the four men, and we are afraid of the black dogs. If he found out about stealing bayberry, he might be beaten.
Children also have their own little cleverness, we will choose when there is fog, or when it rains, there is fog cover, we quickly climb the tree, one person on the tree to pick, two people under the tree to pick. As long as you don't speak, the fog is thick and white, and no one can see anyone. If it rains, at most the clothes are wet, the four men will not go up the mountain to patrol the mountain, and the adults generally will not go up the mountain to steal trees in the rain. Therefore, these two times became an opportunity for us to steal bayberry, although we wet our clothes, but harvested a large handful of red purple yellow bayberry, let us show off to our classmates on campus, attracting attention and saliva.
One day of a certain year, I went with my parents to the Golden Gate to pick up pine balls and pine needles, and passed in front of the white-walled green-tiled farmhouse, and we were thirsty to beg for a bowl of water. However, when my parents saw Kikuto, a mother-in-law, and Shou Tuo, who was sitting in the hall and snoozing, had a long white beard and a chrysanthemum-like pattern on her face.
We drank pepper tea made in mountain spring water. She also left us for lunch, bacon soup to cook flour skin. There are also mushrooms picked from the mountains, ground fungus and so on.
It turned out that our Wanjia family was related to their Huang family. My uncle Yiming's daughter, Fugui's sister married the grand duke of Shou Ta, naturally we became relatives, but I didn't know it in the past. Later, when I went up the mountain to the Golden Gate to dig pine trees, picked pine balls, pine needles, and even wanted to pick bayberry, I was no longer afraid of the four men and his dog, because Ju Jiao recognized me.
There is also a memorable thing, in the upper reaches of the four-type reservoir in The Village of Daotian, there is a village called Jiapoli. When I was in the third and fourth grades of primary school, I heard that my cousin Li Shiguan was playing a movie in Jiapo, because my neighbor's sister Volunteer was in love with Brother Shiguan, he went to the uncle's house of my sister-in-law to play a movie, so he notified us to go to the movie, we went out at about four o'clock in the afternoon, walked an hour's walk, and arrived at Jiapoli.
A green brick house shaded by bamboo trees, the walls are also painted with the slogan of the agricultural village, shining in the afterglow of the sunset. Everywhere you smelled the smell of bacon.
Entering the house of my uncle, my aunt warmly made us tea, and after a moment, beckoned us to the table to eat. What I remember vividly about that night's dish is that it is not a large piece of bacon, nor a fried yellow fish nugget, or a bowl of green lettuce, sandwiched with chopsticks, it is not bitter, sweet, and the lettuce planted at home, but it is bitter, we usually dare not eat more, the lettuce eaten in the slope is not bitter, this is really a miracle.
That night's movie was called "Shining Red Star."
In the decades that followed, I ate many lettuce shoots, but they did not have the fragrance and sweetness of the night.
The memory of the rice field also has the type IV reservoir, which I have passed by in recent years, and when I have driven past it, it does not have the blue waves of the past, and it seems to be not much bigger than the large pond. When I was a child, it was a huge existence, which made me afraid to get close to it, afraid that it would not be bottomless, afraid of its tall, afraid that there were water monsters in it that would take away the shadow of people...
Time has passed, and I heard that this village is still called Rice Field. A few years ago, the secretary of the municipal party committee used it as a counterpart poverty alleviation point, maybe there is such a good luck, and the village retained the beautiful name of Daotian Village, so that when I think of it, I feel as if I have returned to its embrace of green water and green mountains, and I can reunite with my fathers and fellow villagers in my hometown. However, the house in the Golden Gate area has long since collapsed, and the road that left the footprints of my youth is probably also covered by trees.
About the Author
Wan Huihua is a member of the China Literary and Art Critics Association, a member of the Hunan Writers Association, a member of the Hunan Poetry Society, a vice chairman of the Hunan Yueyang Critics Association, and a deputy editor-in-chief of The Hunan Yueyang Evening News. He has published more than 200 essays, essays and literary criticisms in central and provincial newspapers and periodicals such as "Literature and Art Daily", "Everyone", "Works and Controversies", and published three literary works such as "Feelings of Shusheng", "A Landscape of the Soul" and "April Objects", and his works have won many awards from the Hunan Provincial Writers Association and the Hunan Provincial Journalist Association.
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