Engraved on the walnut, it is a history

Author: Cause

The green tide rolls under the mountain, and the forest at the top of the mountain shoots the clouds.

Walnut trees, walnut trees! Ten years, twenty years, a hundred years, four hundred years... The walnut trees are full of eyes, rolling up a thousand heavy blues and setting off thousands of waves.

Here, walnut trees converge into an ocean.

It is the season when walnuts are hanging fruit. The dripping green circle, hidden in the fat, flashed among the swaying branches, as if the stars blinked in the night.

Waiting for the ripening, waiting for the cocoon to break into a butterfly, waiting for the colorful splash.

I reached out my palm and took a walnut from last year. Round but not slippery, covered with rain marks, wind marks, frost spots and dew stains. Hold it in the palm of your hand and look at it, and the longer you go, the more you feel the heaviness of the weight.

It was a heaviness that almost sagged my palms.

For some reason, gradually, I felt that what I was holding in my hand had become a bronze ding, which was densely engraved with ancient words, and there was a mystery hidden in the cracks of the words.

"Zhang Qian made the western region return, but got the walnut seed." This is the record in Zhang Hua's "Natural history" of the Western Jin Dynasty. For a long time, this sentence has been the authoritative affirmation of the history of walnut cultivation in China. However, in 1980, on the banks of the snow-capped mountains, flash floods washed out an ancient tree. Determined by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this is an ancient walnut wood more than 3,000 years ago.

It turned out that this was an important native area of walnuts.

It is conceivable that in 1639, when Xu Xiake traveled to Yangtao, if he had not been too focused or even addicted to the trek of the strange mountains and rivers, the tip of his pen would not have left a wonderful depiction of a number of wind objects such as The Stone Gate Pass, but passed by the prosperity of walnuts. If he wrote about walnuts, what kind of emotional words would it be?

This small, round, ravine fruit was like a bell tied to the neck of the horse of time. The horseshoe hammer is like a curtain, and the bell on the neck is gently ringing in the long silence.

But the record is not absent after all, nor is it absent. In the Qing Dynasty, Tan Cui, who was a mid-level scholar during the Qianlong period, left such ink in the "Yu Hengzhi of the Dianhai Sea": "Walnuts are based on the Yang river, and the shell is thin and can be broken." ”

Why do walnuts come to the top? There is a myth in folklore:

Once upon a time, there was a Yi girl named Samim, who looked at the wild walnut trees that were full of mountains and thought: Why are the fruits and fruits on the trees as hard as iron? If its shell is as thin as paper and its flesh is as thick as fat, it will surely bring more luck to the villagers. So she worked tirelessly to find such walnut trees. However, year after year, after wearing one pair of shoes after another, she failed to achieve her wishes. One day, exhausted, she fell asleep under a walnut tree. In the dream, she heard the tiger god whom the Yi people most worshipped say, "You will never find the walnut tree you are looking for." Unless..." "Unless what?" Sam asked eagerly. Unless you are willing to sacrifice yourself and become one with the walnut tree next to you. The girl was stunned at first, then nodded without hesitation and said, "I do!" She turned and hugged the walnut tree tightly without letting go. A day passed. Ten days passed. A month passed. After seven days of wind and rain and sunbathing, the girl melted into a flood of liquid, seeped into the trunk, flowed into the soil, and was absorbed by the roots.

The walnut tree grew taller and denser, and the walnuts that produced it gradually became the bubble walnuts that the girl expected. The people of the mountains took this tree as their mother and continued to graft and plant, and finally the wild pickled walnuts in the mountains were everywhere.

People worship Samim as the walnut god. It is not difficult to understand that this god is actually the embodiment of the blood and sweat of the people. It is precisely because people have been diligently cultivating and improving for thousands of years that the walnut has become the best product.

Engraved on the walnut, is a history, in the ripples.

Ever been in tatters? Walnuts can be a shy patch; Have you ever had the misery of a leaky house and rain? Walnuts can become a thin baffle. In the days when they are exhausted by the rice oil and salt sauce vinegar tea, walnuts have become the charcoal in the snow that the heavens gave to the yangpi mountain township.

The Ming Dynasty's "General Records of the Southern Zhao" records that Duan Siping, the founding monarch of the Dali State, "received a cage of walnuts left by a merchant". From that time on, no, it must have been much earlier, and walnuts had become commodities, out of the mountains and mountains.

One walnut for one egg. One carton of walnuts for ten tons of rice. In today's growing market economy, walnuts have become the golden fruit of wealth in the mountains.

Someone told me that when a girl gets married, she often marries with jade bracelets and luxury cars elsewhere, but in today's Yangtao, the dowry is often a garden of walnut trees.

A three-foot-wide trail appeared at my feet. The pavement is dark brown with knots in it. Stepping on it, there is a sense of grain in the heart of the foot plate. It is a large granule that can give a soothing massage to the relevant acupuncture points and has health benefits.

Looking down, the pavement was covered with one iron walnut after another.

In Yangpi, walnut shells are made into various handicrafts. Sliced, de-nuted, dried, shaped, polished, polished, bonded, finely carved, made into pen holders, vases, table lamps... Quaint and natural, exquisite and transparent.

In a sense, the road under your feet is also a creative craft, a craft that goes straight into nature. It wrapped around the waist of the green mountain, fluttered and fluttered, and finally disappeared into a walnut forest.

Is it a parable, or is it a symbol?

Walking along this road, on the other side of the mountain, there are villages dodging in the walnut forest, some courtyards are quietly looking under walnut trees, and there are farmers standing in the quiet woven with walnut branches and leaves, with smiles on their faces.

The village is a bright village alias Yunshang Village, the house is a green tile house, and the people are Lao Cha and Lao Su.

The walnut tree in the courtyard of the old Cha family is old dragon clock. Its trunk is divided into two branches, one picks up the white clouds as a flag, pointing directly at the blue sky, and the other trembling and majestic across the center of the courtyard, leaning down, supported by Lao Cha with wooden pillars, as if on a crutch. A few pine square tables were lined up under the tree, and the willingness of the mountain village to welcome guests was simply stated.

Laid out: a plate of purple walnut kernels. Amber-like endoplasm, cheese-like mellowness. Old Cha beckoned the guests to sit down, and with a thumb-sized push, push, push, push on the walnut kernels... Thin, transparent snowflakes drift slowly into porcelain bowls filled with golden honey. Walnut shaved tea is the hospitality of the Yi family and the greeting of the people in the mountains.

The walnut trees in the old Su family courtyard are flourishing. Its trunk is thick and strong, and its branches and leaves are scattered to hold up a large umbrella, holding up a warm sun and sprinkling a cool place. You see the wooden fence calmly encircling the beating birds of the branches, and a wisp of light blue cooking smoke rising from the roof of the house on the west side of the courtyard to the clouds, as if someone was waving a silk silk to attract customers.

Stir-fried fresh walnut kernels with green peppers, fried ham with walnut leaves, stewed sheep brain with walnuts, lotus leaf cake with walnut kernels... Here all the taste of the mountains and wilds is inseparable from the walnut aroma, and more than a dozen kinds of delicious dishes are inextricably linked to walnuts. A dazzling walnut feast is an irresistible temptation.

It is not a peach blossom source, but a peach blossom source. A few degrees of acacia sent, a few degrees of dream back. Along this three-foot trail paved with walnuts, there are many longings for admiration, eagerness to walk away, willingness to see it, and feeling of not taking the trip, towards this village on the clouds, paradise outside the world.

This road, wrapped around the waist of the green mountain, flutters and flutters, and finally disappears into a thick green; This road, which originated in the wilderness and ancient times, experiences the present and then winds into the future.

There was a bright glow that stained it.

Guangming Daily (2022.07.29 14th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily