"The Long Song of the Lantern" - a song of vanishing dirt, a song of the earth going to the future

Reading Fu Fei's essay "The Long Song of the Yuan Lantern" always reminds me of another essayist, Reed Bank. "The soil is next to me" of the reed bank, with the countryside as the object, with simple and simple words to praise agricultural civilization, expressing the attachment to the local spirit; and Fu Fei more often explores the countryside, explores the regional culture, explores the rural status quo at the time of the transition from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, and explores the ecological ethics of the countryside.

"The Long Song of the Yuan Lantern", Fu Feihu, South Literature and Art Publishing House

Fu Fei said: "The upper reaches of my blood are the birthplace of a river. It is the coordinate origin at which I look and examine the world. ”

In a sense, Fu Fei has always been a farmer. He is looking for another future of the land: when the traditional countryside is gradually drifting away, in the context of rural revitalization in the new era, can the hometown become the original hometown of our spirit? Fu Fei gave the answer:

"My feet are deep in the ground, and my roots are intertwined under the ground. I know the hidden path a grain seed takes to rice, like a family branching out. I am connected by blood to the people of the land. The land is their testimony and my testimony. ”

Perhaps, in Fu Fei's view, only those who have established a secret connection with the land can truly discover the future of the land.

A lamp of hometown that never goes out

The Lantern is the lamp of origin, the lamp of hope, and the lamp of the beginning; it is the beginning and the end.

The story of the Yuan Lantern begins with death. The violent death of his brother, the death of his wife from the epidemic, the death of his father... A series of tragic events opened the prelude to the life of a "stupid boy" in the big era. This "stupid disciple" was called Fu Yuandeng, and he was Fu Fei's father(s grandfather). When Fu Fei's grandson Fu Wenbiao used the word "Yuan Lantern" to name his son, the meaning was self-evident.

"When I was a teenager, my father often said to me: Everything can be lost, people cannot be lost, nothing can be left behind, and people must be left behind from generation to generation."

The bumpy fate did not crush the young man, he did not bow to fate, but resisted the torrent of the times with indomitability, just like the "old Fugui" in Yu Hua's "Alive". Then there are the stories of Jiang Guisheng, Jiang Herong and others appearing——

"Jiang Guisheng of Jiang Village is a large family in decline, and his wife Yue'e gave birth to a baby girl at noon. This is Guisheng's first child. The baby girl was fat, her face was fat and white, and her cry was loud. "The Jiang family has an ancestral hall and a private school. At the age of eight, He Rong attended a private school and studied for three years. At the age of sixteen, Lotus has come out and fallen like a lotus flower, and the people who say that they are close to him are endless..."

Jiang Herong was Fu Yuandeng's second wife and Fu Fei's concubine (grandmother). Due to the unexpected death of her husband, she remarried into the Fu family:

In 1932, Jiang Herong himself carried a basket and turned his little feet upside down to come to the Fu family. In the autumn of 1935, the soil was dry and dry, and Herong gave birth to a son, who was destined to bring soil, and in the year of the chaos of soldiers and horses, he was named Tusheng. ”

Probably because of "pity for the same disease", Fu and Jiang lived a new life in Fenglin Village. "In 2007, the centenary of my father-in-law and my grandmother's birth, there was a big family gathering. The bloodline under my public gate, more than a hundred people..."

With the change and evolution of the times, Fu Yuandeng finally fulfilled his original promise - "People want to stay from generation to generation." "And their past, scattered in the dust of history, has become an unquenchable lamp in this village, illuminating future generations." Gong Yan's cemetery, on a low hill in the Tomb of the Xia Family. After the coffin was released, I never went there again. But every year in the morning, I have to go back to Maplewood. I stood in the doorway, looking at the grassy hill in the distance. Oval basin, the mountain is close to the human settlement, and the black and black ancient city mountain resembles a high wall. The sun jumps out of the top of the mountain... Yuan Lantern: Origin, Lamp of Hope, Lamp of Beginning. I didn't understand the term until I was fifty years old. Taking it as a person's name is the best name in the world. I live under this lamp, like a fish living in the Raobei River. ”

Those who disappeared from their hometowns

Fu Fei is not a simple observer or witness, he is a member of Fenglin Village, and everywhere he goes, he has his own temperature-

Yan Chun was almost sixty years old before he ate cherries for the first time. Before planting cherries, he didn't know that there was another fruit in the world called cherries. The cherry is sweet and sour, the juice is abundant, and he loves to eat it. ”

"Mo Li, this person, it seems that never existed, only his parents occasionally remember, where did that demented son go?" Is he still alive? Until his parents died, he never saw this son again. ”

As a "presenter", he presents what he has seen and heard, like a documentary, recreating the stories of craftsmen, seriously ill patients, widowers, divorcees, gamblers, alcoholics, entrepreneurs and veterans in his hometown. They are no longer labeled, but become living "people" who live all around us. Through them, Fu Fei established a blood connection with the land under his feet.

"I focused on the living conditions, inner troubles, spiritual outlook, and changes of the times of the people in the Ink Basin, and in the form of village records, I set up a legend for the river, carved a statue for the earth, and carved a god for the people... Write about their noble feelings of dependence on the land for life and death, write about their indomitable spirit of resistance against fate, and praise the beauty of human nature, the beauty of labor, the beauty of ethics, the beauty of life, and the beauty of the times. ”

In Fenglin Village, Fu Fei uses the feelings of a naked child to write everything that happens in this village, pursuing the eternal dilemma of life. While recording these life forms, he also witnessed their disappearance.

The essay collection "The Long Song of the Lantern" is like a real social documentary, showing us the real situation of a village in the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society: there is poverty, desolation and the struggle for survival; there is also industriousness, narrow-mindedness and friendliness. Whether it is Lin Cewei who went to Beijing, Ah Luo, who was tied to the village, or Xiao Yan, who had long passed away... Together with the land beneath their feet, they built the whole of the village and became part of the village's memory.

The Long Song of the Yuan Lantern, a song of vanishing dirt, a song of the earth towards the future.

Original title: Song of the Earth Towards the Future

Text/Huang Yong

Source/Beijing Evening News