Roadside well
Wen | Chen Gang pictured | Zeng Ming
Nearly twenty years ago, the roadside well, a unique landmark place name that emitted the smell of salt and brine, was replaced overnight by the name "Old Street" in the broad sense and universal to all old city streets.
The roadside well, the name inscribed with the city's historical memory, disappeared into books, newspapers, radio, television and the Internet, disappeared into people's memories until it disappeared without a trace.
Today, we once again hold up the "roadside well" of our relatives.
The west end of the new bridge goes north to Datong Bridge, about 1500 meters, and this area is a roadside well.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, on the riverbed beach west of the Puxi River, brine naturally erupted from the river beach and between the rocks, and people called this phenomenon artesian well. During the Republic of China period, Yuhe Shanqiao wrote "Artesian Well" recorded, "Decheng well water erupts from the wellhead, up to three or four zhang, day and night can accumulate more than a thousand cartons, shuangfu well also sprays a thousand cartons day and night ..."
During the Tongzhi period, Wu Ding, who had been in Fushunzhi County, wrote a "Record of the Names and Facts of the Artesian Wells", saying that "the artesian wells are under the new bridge and on the lower bridge". The so-called new bridge here is not the current new bridge (aftermath bridge), but the old upper bridge. This section of the road is now the roadside well.
As early as the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, Xiong Guo, a Fushun man, said in his "Collected Works of Nansha", "Fuyi and Deng Jing have been collapsing for a long time, and their newly opened artesian wells can be taxed to make up for the original amount." The gist is that the Fuyi well and the Deng Guan well (of Fushun) have been collapsed for a long time, and the newly excavated artesian wells can make up for the tax shortfall of these wells. Extrapolating from this, the history of taking brine salt in this area is very long.
In summary, it can be clear: as early as the Ming Dynasty, the roadside wells on the west bank of the Puxi River, that is, the so-called artesian wells, began to take brine boiling salt. To this day, there are still five or six ancient well ruins in the roadside wells, which is enough to see the prosperity of that year.
At first, artesian wells were a natural phenomenon, but as the number of wells dug in this area increased, it gradually became a place name. In September 1939, Zigong City was established, and a word was taken from the names of Artesian Well and Gongjing and named Zigong City.
In the past, when I went on business trips to other places, I was often asked by others where the treasure land of your hometown was, saying that Zigong, many foreigners shook their heads, looked confused, and did not know. He also said that the artesian well, which produces salt, is convenient and enlightened, "Oh oh, I know, I learned it in elementary school textbooks."
With the increase of well stoves, people flow, and passenger flow, the roadside well has a rudimentary shape of the street market, which has gradually become a scale since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the streets paved with bluestone slabs are meandering and winding, just like Dai Wangshu's deep rain lane, and the residential buildings rising from the edge of the mountain are stacked on top of each other, which should be the ink jiangnan in Wu Guan. The tung oil lime bamboo shop that deals in the means of production, the hotel tea shop for consumption shaves the head and the head shop, end to end.
It is undeniable that the roadside well really has a history. In this sense, the roadside well is not only an old street, but also an artesian well, and even a breeding ground in Zigong City.
The picture shows a roadside well across the river, along the river with green water and green mountains, and the houses look like houses. The location of the high chimney is the brewery, raw soy sauce, watercress, Zigong people have eaten for decades, to this day I still love to buy this soy sauce, I think this pure soy sauce is much better than sweet soy sauce with various seasonings. In the upper part of the frame, from top to bottom is a flat cable car track carrying salt bales, and below is the dock where the boats are moored.
My birthplace is in the roadside well, which is my grandfather's home, a green-tiled house built on a mountain. Before I started studying, I lived in a roadside well for a while. Years later, I still remember my grandmother, who had been lying in a hospital bed for many years, very thin, coughing all over the room, and then eating a small paper bag of headache powder, tearing open the seal, pouring it into my mouth, pinching the paper bag with my thumb and index finger, flicking my middle finger a few times, shaking the residual powder into my mouth, I handed her half a bowl of water, grunted down, sighed, and lay down again. I went to Shuping for elementary school later, and when I went back, she had become a black-and-white photograph on the wall.
My maternal grandfather was a porter for a loading and unloading company, and they carried the salt bags of marijuana onto the flat gondola and sent them to the river to load the salt boats moored at the dock. From here, these boats set out and traveled from the river to the sea until far away. In the bitter summer heat, he rolled up his trousers to his thighs, put on a sweat coat, and two people carried salt packets with a bar, and sweated on the ground. I saw the varicose veins on his calves bulging like earthworms, and the grass shoes were dusty. After my grandfather retired, he moved to Guangda Street and lived in a red brick building. When I was in elementary school, my brothers and sisters often went to my grandfather's house, and before leaving, he would always open the cowhide box tied around his waist and give us one or two yuan. At the dawn of the new century, my grandfather died, and the deposit was 850 yuan.
The roadside well was also remodeled at the beginning of the new century, basically repaired and repaired, leaving the old pulp, and a archway was erected at the entrance of the new bridge, named "Artesian Well Old Street", which roughly retained the appearance of the old time. In 2008, a friend of the Chinese Opera and Dance Theater who went to Japan to do cultural projects, I took him to the side of the road to drink tea by the Jinghe River, and I have never forgotten it ever since.
Author's artistic resume
Chen Gang, male, is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and the Sichuan Calligraphers Association. He has published more than 1 million words of novels and essays in newspapers and periodicals throughout the country, inside and outside the province. He has written columns for several newspapers and periodicals. He has published a collection of short and medium stories, "Our Time," and a collection of essays and essays, "A Wisp of Ink." His prose works won the National Essay Contest Award held by the China Prose Literature Association and were selected as the Grand View of Contemporary Prose in Sichuan. His television literary work "Poems and Songs of Xianquan Gushing Streams" won the Sichuan Provincial Government Award excellence award (first prize) and the nomination award of the 22nd China Television "Starlight Award". There is the film "Red Cuckoo" adapted from the novel of the same name. The calligraphy works were selected for the Sichuan Provincial Youth and Middle-Aged Exhibition, the First Joint Exhibition of The Twelve Provinces and Regions in the Western Region, and the First National Exhibition of Calligraphy Works for Civil Servants. Calligraphy works were invited to participate in the Shenzhen Xiaofeitian Autumn Auction (transaction). It is collected by Ba Jin College of Literature, Jilin Library, Yibin Science and Technology Museum, Zigong Archives, Zigong Library, Western China Academy of Calligraphy and Painting, and has many stone inscriptions in many places.
Introduction to the author's art
Zeng Ming, graduated from the Department of Arts and Crafts of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, served as the president of Zigong Painting Institute, a national second-level painter, a master tutor of Sichuan Institute of Science and Technology, a vice chairman of Zigong Artists Association, a member of the Watercolor Art Committee of Sichuan Artists Association, the first Chinese member of the St. Petersburg Artists Association of Russia, the vice president of Sichuan Watercolor Research Association, a member of Jian Chongzhi Watercolor Studio, a contracted painter of Chongqing Ming Gallery, involved in Zigong Lantern Society for more than 30 years, and has served as the artistic director of Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Society and the consultant of Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Society for six times.
Look at the first end of Zigong 丨 Zigong news
Source 丨Zigong Jingwuzhi (with deletions)
Editor 丨Li Wanjiang
Editor 丨 Chen Qi
© Zigong City Radio and Television Station