Column | Qinling Notes - Village

It's an abandoned village, a village scattered among the mountains.

In the sunset, there is no cooking smoke, no sound of chickens and dogs, no farmers returning with hoes, no naughty boys riding yellow bulls and playing flutes. Not even a crooked sheep gut trail.

Broken bricks and tiles everywhere, short walls collapsing everywhere, show that this place was once a village, a prosperous village, a village that carried the happiness and dreams of countless people.

I think that many years ago, there was a group of people who came here after a long journey, helping the old and the young, with dreams and expectations. Perhaps fascinated by the beautiful scenery here, or perhaps exhausted and exhausted, they stopped, unloaded their burdens, and began to level the ground here, build stone walls, and sow seeds.

In the midst of the mountains, beside the babbling water, the prototype of the village is revealed. Time flies, the years flow, day after day, year after year, as the population multiplies, as new trekkers join, the village spreads, growing stronger and more prosperous.

Here, stop at will, in front of you is a beautiful picture of green mountains and green water, this painting is flexible, the verdant thickness of the mountains is constantly changing, the sparkling waves on the green water are jumping, the birds and finches are happily chasing and playing, and the clouds are lazily stretching out their arms under the blue sky. Even I feel as if I am in this painting.

Here, you can follow a flower path all the way forward, follow the rabbit trail through the dense woods, look for the shadow of the birds in the gentle and crisp song, or close your eyes and walk, feeling the softness of the grass and stones under your feet. You don't need to discern the direction, you don't need to remember the way back, when you are tired, you just have to look back, where the smoke is, where the green bricks and tiles are, is your village, is your home.

Here you can stare at a stone, see how its lines stretch, see the traces of the river on it, see the spots of hail rain and snow hitting it, look at the dense moss on it, and see a small grass peeking out of its crevices.

Here, in one breath and one breath, your heart is filled with sweet floral fragrance, delicate grass fragrance, faint rice fragrance, earthy fragrance, and fruit fragrance.

Here, smell the chickens, return at sunset, and even the labor is full of poetry. Sow a seed, sow a seed. Plant a seedling, plant a little happiness. The rice paddies and fruit trees of the mountains reflect infinite hope and happiness.

This happiness is primitive, authentic, pure.

No matter how beautiful the view, you will feel tired of seeing more. Any happiness, after becoming commonplace, the perception will gradually fade. What does not change is that the grass is long and the warblers fly, the flowers bloom and fall, and what changes is people's vision and touch. After many years, people began to walk out of this quiet, closed village, through the grass, through the dense forest, through the heavy mountains, and outside to find the rich and splendid world of expectation. As there were more people walking, trails appeared on the grass, and more people walked out along the paths. Gradually, it fell silent again, returning to its original silence.

The grass soon covered the rice paddies, the fruit on the trees ripened and fell to the ground, and the houses began to mottle and collapse in the wind and rain.

I wonder if the last person to leave the village was lonely, helpless, or with the expectation of new happiness?

Or maybe it was an old man who hadn't left the village at all. He did not leave because when he was young, he also fought with a sword to get out of the pass, look up to the sky and roar, and he also had great ambitions and qi through Changhong. With light madness, with stubbornness, running across the heavens and the earth, setting sail in the wind and rain. When youth is no more, when the prosperity is over, I suddenly look back, only to find that everything is like a dream, I am still standing at the original starting point, the trees are still the same, the cottage is still the same, the river is still the same, the change is the green silk to white hair, the change is that the straight body has been rickety, the change is that the torch's gaze has been blurred and sluggish, and the long sword in his hand has rusted.

Why did I fight in the first place? What did I get in the indulgence and wantonness of youth? What about the happiness I have spent my whole life pursuing? What about my green years?

In the midst of these confusions, he staggered forward. On the way forward, he met one person after another who had the same experience as him, and they came together, continued to move forward, aimlessly, for the sake of moving forward, in order to feel their own existence. Finally one day, they came here. Here, they found their own home and found their own happiness. Here, they understood that happiness was not the golden horse, but the sound of birds chirping in the flowing water. Happiness is not boiling with blood, but calm and calm. Here, they create their own happiness and enjoy their own happiness.

One by one, the companions who had trekked together returned to dust and merged with this mountain and this water. When the new generation leaves here with longing and longing, it is once again a depressed and cold silence. He did not block any man, he knew the heart of the young man. He felt that all he had to do was to stay here. He thought they would come back one day, confused, dusty, and stumbling.

Every day, he stood at the head of the village, waiting to see the figure of the returnee. Day after day, year after year, he waited. In the blue sky and clear water, surrounded by green mountains, he enjoys this happiness and cherishes this happiness in waiting. Until the rain ploughed out the ravines in his face, until the wind blew his body thin and dry, until he stood like a stubborn rock, or a piece of decaying wood, or a broken wall, or turned into rain into wind. He was one with the village.

The sun is like blood. Wandering through the village, I saw wild grass growing vigorously among the ruins and walls. Under the wind and rain, the village will one day be flooded with weeds and return to its original state. Many years later, there are no traces of the village here, and like other barren mountains and wild mountains, the grass is barren and the breeze is cool. The village will be forgotten forever.

On a severed wall, I saw a small lilac flower quietly blooming. Did it come here with the wind, or was it an inconspicuous seed that was discarded by the outsiders before they left? On its petals, I saw a few mottled marks, was it that it woke up from its sleep and was soaked in tears, or was it eroded by dewdrops in the cold night?

I wondered, will I be one of the dream-hunting teams that will come back here in the dark after being weathered and frosted, when I am confused and confused? In the evening wind, are my childhood dreams scattered? Is there a laugh of my childhood flowing in the babbling water?

In the mountains with no end in sight, in abandoned villages, I search for happiness that is buried deep in the ground. In the spreading and growing wild grass, I look for the footprints left by the pioneers.

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