Crops flash the montage of the times in the change, and finally reflect in the changes in people, from forestry workers to forest farmers, from more people to fewer people, from daxing logging to daxing farming, and then to returning farmland to forest. This is the reincarnation of an era, and generations of foresters are witnesses to the reincarnation of this era.
Reincarnation | Wang Mingming
We are not called "forest farm" there, but called "village" - "Jiling Village", the accurate location of my home has become the second group of Jiling Village in Taoshan Town. The workers were laid off and became unauthentic peasants.
Farmers divide the farmland into several types, called "garden" immediately behind the house, and grow eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes. Take our house or garden as the coordinates, go north a mile or two, through two thin ditches and a low forest, and you will reach the north land. Lying in the arms of the North Mountain, Beida is neighboring the Hulan River and the mountain road, much larger than the garden, and the crops cultivated have become more extensive potatoes. Before I was born, the land of Peking University had already taken shape, and in the land of Peking University, the fields of every household were basically far away from the gardens of each family, and the part of the North Land opposite my home was the dozens of ridges of my family, the correspondence of Zhang Sanjia's zhang sanjia, and the correspondence of Li Sijia's li sijia. But mountains, rivers, and mountain roads are not regular and vertical after all, and other reclaimed land can only be dishonestly along the direction of the river, scattered in the West River Estuary, Mountain Estuary, Stone Gate, Old Bridge and so on.
Potato fields are scattered on the periphery of the forest farm, and scattered potato fields surround the forest farm with unstoppable momentum.
When planting potatoes, there are usually a few gangs, many people, more power, no tools, or responsible for a simple meal at noon - green onion oil rolls, green onions, sauce, dried tofu... One should be prepared, people should carry the burden, ploughing sticks, hoes, two (three) rulers, sacks... People and things, soft and hard, form a "sowing ball" and drive toward the north of the earth.
In the bustle, the figure of the child is indispensable, the child is unattended, and he has to follow his parents to the ground. For a few years, my second uncle, who lived in another forest farm, would always send his only grandson, my nephew Wang Cheng, to my house for a few days. Wang Cheng's father died young, leaving him alone. The second eldest uncle gave birth to five sons and a daughter, but it seemed to have been cast by a spell: Wang Cheng's father died a few years ago, the eldest son of the second uncle also passed away, and there was a son who was inherited from childhood to another uncle who suddenly lost sight in both eyes when he was halfway through his life, and the fourth son was discharged from the hospital with cerebral hemorrhage and left the sequelae, and the only sound son Xu was to get rid of this spell, he chose to leave his hometown and go to the northwest. The youngest daughter also married early. Wang Cheng was raised by his mother, my sister-in-law who once made a living selling fried cakes, and naturally his grandfather's help was indispensable.
When growing potatoes, Wang Cheng and I were tasked with fetching water from the Hulan River. The scorching sun was high, and the toilers became water-thirsty cattle, whirring and whining, and a few ridges were going back and forth, and they were going to consume two plastic pots. Wang Chengcheng and I set off with a plastic pot, we talked and laughed, but when we got to the edge of the ground, we made a mistake. The forest between the ground and the river is the most abrasive, and the distance of tens of meters may even be only ten meters, but in the eyes of children, it is indescribably long. There are few people walking under their feet, there is no road, there are branches and thorns everywhere. The low trees stooped into nests, mosquitoes began to hiss in our ears, and wasps "big blind " ( flies ) surrounded us. We can only encourage each other.
Grandfather and grandmother had seven sons at the first time, the family was poor, and after the "separation" of the family, the relationship between them became increasingly weak, the so-called family affection became vain, and the scene of estrangement from each other for the sake of interests was constantly staged. But in the child's heart, there is no such boundary and estrangement, and there is not even a generation. My nephew Wang Cheng is the same age as me, and every time he comes, he will bring some fried cakes fried by his mother; when he goes back, we ask him to bring some potatoes or other vegetables to the second uncle...
Further north of the north mountain, there are rolling mountains, where the harvesting and mountain collection in the early years were carried out, and the wood and mountain goods were continuously transported out. The forest farm became a village, and within a few years, new fields were born in these farther mountains, such as mountains and rivers, nurseries, eight kilometers, twenty-six... In these places, farmland has appeared, which was collectively reclaimed before the Forestry Bureau changed its name, and then leased to us in the name of the public to cultivate a large crop for our families, soybeans. In order to provide my sister and me with reading, our family has dozens of acres of new land in eight kilometers, and they are on a hillside, sandwiched into two pieces by the land of the old Sun family and the old Geng family, which just constitute a "tian" font, and the two pieces of my family are in the upper right and lower left of the "tian" character.
It is extremely laborious to plant such a land. The road is too far, the mountain road is rugged, just in time for the rainy spring, the mountain road is potholed, or the river water rushes to wash away a certain section, and the car cannot enter. Gradually, in addition to the spring sowing and autumn harvest requiring tractors to enter the mountain, the tractor needing to carry the medicine jar into the mountain when spraying medicine, other times of maintenance, including weeding, simple watering, people will still choose to go by bicycle. Eight kilometers by bike, it takes two or three hours to get back and forth, and lunch can only be solved in the field. My mom would bring her steamed buns, green onions from the garden, cucumbers, and the sauce she made...
Not only is it hard work, but it also has to deal with animals in fear. Bears known as black blind people are almost extinct, but roe deer and wild boars can always leave clear footprints on the soil after the rain. Soybeans should be planted for a long time to change the stubble, otherwise the harvest is getting worse and worse. For two years, my dad replanted one of the pieces of corn in order to change the stubble of the land, and the traces of wild boars began to show an explosive momentum. When the corn first grows, large footprints appear on the ground. At first, my father was optimistic that the wild boar was just hitting the edge of the ground, until one day, he crossed the layers of green gauze tents to the middle of the ground, and found the cunning of the wild boar. The wild boar is not small, it keeps the periphery of the field intact, but it spoils the corn in different places in the middle. My dad was furious and decided to fight the boar. He began to build a temporary shack on the edge of the field, borrowing two thick trees, and then knocking into the soil two wooden stakes, the roof and the surrounding area were surrounded by plastic sheets, and the shacks were nestled under the trees, which was very hidden. For a long time in the summer, my dad rolled up and moved to the eight-kilometer cornfield. My dad brought a few stainless steel pots, bought a few hanging whips and some "double ringers", and when there was an inexplicable sound at night, he would open the shack door, knock on the basin a few times, or light a whip, or light a few double ringers. The sound echoed in the mountains, and the effect of the sound to scare the wild boar away really worked.
Not only that, in the few years of farming, people did not grasp the season of cultivation, the amount of fertilizers and pesticides used, and the slightest error was punished by nature. Nature likes to be scheming with people, and the land is always eager to win favors. There is less fertilizer, soybean seedlings do not come out, more fertilizer, and burn seedlings; less pesticides, soybean fields have become grasslands, more pesticides, and yellow leaves. The time of sowing must also be precise, three or five days earlier, a frost will force you to plant two stubble, once two days late, when the harvest will catch the autumn rain or frost... Nature will teach you to be measured and respectful.
The measure of people is also vividly displayed in such fields. Such a land is not as clear as the north of the country, and it is not clearer than the ownership of the garden, and the "ten" character that turns the word "mouth" into the word "field" is the interval road of several fields, or the drainage ditch, it is not a well-behaved "ten" type, which side it is biased, the drainage ditch rushes to whose land is washed, whose home land uses more water, who has a variety of ridges in which year, it is likely to become the fuse of disputes. The exclusion of these episodes ultimately depends on the word "proportionality".
This is the simplest philosophical proposition that applies to all things in heaven and earth.
These farmlands, which live in the mountains, are inconvenient to manage, and people will naturally not be so honest in the face of such fields. When it is time to wait for the beans to grow, people will not be idle, it will be a tree falling on the side of the ground today, and a small fire will open up a few acres of wasteland tomorrow, and the extension of the land will expand wider and wider. At the same time that I discovered this secret, according to this logic, I also discovered the secret of the Northern Land that was born before I was born: it should also be a low forest and thorns. The meaning of the existence of the forest is to put on the jacket of the original palm-sized farmland, and the more the farmland is eaten, the fatter it is, and the thinner the jacket is. After the harvest year after year, the crops bluffed, leading the fields to spread to the river valley little by little, and when the late autumn passed, and then cooled down a few times, the wind swept away the cotton wool of the jacket, the forest leaked teeth and leaked wind everywhere, and the farmland finally kissed with the river.
Beyond that, there are more secrets I can't find. I couldn't hear the sound of eight kilometers of soybean seedlings breaking ground, they were too far away. During the growing season, if the rain blocks people's pace into the mountains, it only takes a few days for them to complete their metamorphosis. I also couldn't know more about my nephew Wang Cheng's secrets. I must admit that his adult life was a huge secret to me.
I heard he still hated his grandfather a little. I've heard that his grandfather chose to stand by and watch when he was most difficult and in need of help. After his grandmother passed away, his grandfather changed his wife several times. Relatives said that in the end, his grandfather's money was on the last wife, and he was deceived.
These are indeed very similar to the style of my second uncle, an old man who acts quite strangely in the eyes of many of our relatives. I have seen him a few times, the impression is that he always loves to laugh, his laughter can immediately open the distance between you and him, his laughter is full of contempt and disdain, full of the arrogance of the elders to the younger generations, full of strength and domineering. This old man was born in North Korea, experienced the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea as a refugee, and was later taken back to China with my grandparents as "overseas Chinese." Perhaps, having experienced too much, he has seen a lot of things, about life and death, about family affection, about many unknown things.
Last year, we went back home from the south and found that the crops we cultivated had changed. In the years after we left, the garden was either given or sold for relatives and friends who were still in the forest farm to cultivate. The few cultivators in the forest farm do not need to consider the headache of planting corn to change the stubble of the land, the harvest is not good, anyway, there are many fields, there is always a good harvest. In the end, the forest farm has become the forest farm for those few people, and the forest farm has also become a deep mountain, a deep mountain that we returnees have to wade through the mountains and rivers and waste the strength of the nine cattle and tigers to reach. Those who remained also planted fungus and mushrooms in the empty fields of this deep mountain...
From vegetable gardens to potato fields, from soybeans to corn, to only soybeans left, to fungus and mushrooms... Crops flash the montage of the times in the change, and finally reflect in the changes in people, from forestry workers to forest farmers, from more people to fewer people, from daxing logging to daxing farming, and then to returning farmland to forest. This is the reincarnation of an era, and generations of foresters are witnesses to the reincarnation of this era.
A few days ago, the news of the death of the second uncle came suddenly. A cousin of my great uncle's family who went to the funeral said that in the crematorium, the second uncle lay there quietly, and there were not even incense candles, wreaths, or burning paper on the top of his head.
We were all vaguely sad. I suddenly missed the second uncle a little, he was so lonely. I don't think anyone born into a big family of seven brothers would be given extra preferential treatment in that difficult time. He was also lonely at birth, alone, and no one would gather around his grandmother in particular to look forward to his arrival, as if he were gone. He is also like a reincarnated crop in the land, but with a shorter cycle.
About the Author: Mingming Wang
Wang Mingming, born in 1986 in Xiaoxing'anling, Heilongjiang, graduated from Jiangxi Normal University in 2008 and now works for Fuzhou Postal Company. His works have been published in "Flower City", "Mountain Flower", "Youth Literature", "Yangtze River Literature and Art", "Prose" and other periodicals, and some essays have been reprinted by "Selected Essays" and "Essay Overseas Edition", and the novel collection "Dancing Dance" has been published. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and a student of the 39th Advanced Research Class of Lu Xun Literature Institute.