Yanling County's century-old Xuhuo Jiaxu was founded during the Qing Dynasty. It was built by the Mohe River, the throat of the county town and several townships in the west, and has the convenience of water and land transportation; Located in the center of the two natural areas of Hemo and Hedong, it enjoys exclusive advantages in human geography; The polder is surrounded by ancient trees and the scenery is beautiful, giving people a feeling of being at home and feeling at home. Overlooking the Huojia Laoxu, it is like a pearl embedded in the scenic forest belt of the Hemo River, dazzling and shining. I really admire the wisdom and wisdom of the ancestors of the Huo family in choosing the site of the construction of the Xu.
The polder was built on the east and west sides of the north-south traffic artery of several townships and county towns in the west. Next to the main road at the southern end of the polder, stands a 13-story brick and stone Wenchang Pagoda. The tower is six-sided in shape and has a pointed top. The tower's exquisite painted murals, hideous beast heads and soaring cornices impress. The tower is full of birds and finches, and it is a paradise for birds such as starlings to inhabit and play. Stop and overlook: fields, pagodas, woods, rivers, polders, green mountains, high and low orderly, staggered, a fresh and elegant ink danqing!
It is said that the construction of this tower is related to the feud between the two villages. Huojia Village is located in the upper reaches of the Hemo River, and the downstream Xitai Village diverts water from the head of the Hemodu Bridge and flows through the Huojia Village area. Villagers in the two villages often quarreled over water sources for irrigation of their farmland, and even fought and became rivals. But every time the group brawn lawsuit Huojia Village was in the inferior position, so he paid a wise feng shui master from other places to inspect feng shui and plan to crack the good strategy. The feng shui master really lived up to expectations, and after some tinkering, he revealed the "mystery": from the feng shui of the two villages, Xitai Village resembles a cat, and Huojia Village resembles a mouse. Since ancient times, where can a mouse win over a cat? The best way to change this decline is to build a tower to contain the cat. So the Huo family mobilized the efforts of the whole village to build a tower on the border with Xitai Village.
In the sixties of the twentieth century, the construction of the Dongshan Channel Water Conservancy Project completely solved the problem of irrigation of farmland in the villages of Huojia and Xitai, and fundamentally lifted the antagonistic feelings of old feuds and feuds between the two villages. In 1967, the villagers of Huojia Village voluntarily demolished the tower, citing suspicion of feudal superstition and detrimental unity. Objectively speaking, the construction of this tower has a strong superstitious color, but after completion, it is actually a local cultural landscape.
Follow the main road to the north, cross a wider wooden bridge, and you will come to the south gate of the polder. There is an old theater here, and pedestrians from north to south have to pass through the inverted U-shaped gate in the middle of the theater. The theater has gone through vicissitudes and years, and finally entered the old age due to disrepair and dilapidatement. Despite this, people can still glimpse the majesty, magnificence and grandeur of the year from the mottled land and rafter tiles of the historical remains of the theater.
On the side of the road between the theater and the wooden bridge, there is an ancient willow tree hugged by two people. According to elderly people, after the defeat of the Great Revolution, the Qingxiang team went door-to-door to hang the heads of the captured revolutionaries on this tree for public display. Insiders pass by, inevitably touching the scene and paying respect. Huojiacun Huo Chongde and other revolutionaries were brutally killed during the same period. Their revolutionary spirit and heroic deeds will always be remembered and celebrated by future generations.
On the east side of the theater is a township school that is important in Yanling County. This school is based on the ancestral hall of the surname Huo and was founded during the Anti-Japanese War. Later, it developed into a complete primary school, Hedong Complete Primary School, which was upgraded to a complete middle school in the seventies of the twentieth century, and became the largest township junior high school in the county after the eighties.
I remember that when I finished primary school in Hedong, in order to create an opportunity for us to learn and exercise, my homeroom teacher Teacher Wan took advantage of the convenient conditions of the nearby polder, and often combined with current affairs to compile some simple programs such as oral words and three and a half sentences, and took a few of our classmates to perform in the polder during recess. Although the acting skills are not good, they are also very popular with the masses.
On the east side of the theater, about 50 meters north of the road is the seat of the former government office of the People's Commune. The first people's commune in the history of Yanling County, the Spark People's Commune, was born here. In the following year, due to the change of administrative division, the Spark People's Commune was renamed Sanhe People's Commune, which meant to govern the three jurisdictions of Hexi (at that time, several villages west of the Xiase River belonged to the Sanhe Commune), Hedong, and Hemo. Later, it was also understood that there were three rivers in the administrative division, so it was named Three Rivers. Next to the commune was also built the commune auditorium. The auditorium has a large stage that can accommodate more than a thousand spectators at the same time. This is a historical witness of the new Chinese people being masters of their own affairs and participating in and discussing state affairs. The commune auditorium was later reduced to the student canteen of Trois-Rivières Middle School. In the mid-eighties, after the withdrawal of the community and the establishment of the township, the local government agency was relocated from Huojiaxu to Muzituo. In 2015, the township was withdrawn and merged into the township, and Sanhe Town was incorporated into Xiayang Town. Sanhe, as a historical term for an administrative division of Yanling County, has since withdrawn from the historical stage.
There is a vacant lot at the north and south ends of the polder, which is where ordinary people buy and sell livestock and poultry. On the west side of the polder is a large ancient forest, quiet and green, eerie, and from time to time you can hear strange sounds from the depths of the woods, which inevitably makes people feel cold. At the junction of the woods and the polder, there is a large lawn, which is a place for foreign artists to sell their art, often playing circus, knives, sticks, and monkeys selling plaster. Whenever the artist's gong rings and shouts a few times in a row, it will soon attract a large group of spectators of good deeds like a magnet.
In September 1958, the mass meeting of 10,000 people who established the Spark People's Commune was held in the woods of the polder. At that time, the villagers of all villages were happily lining up, or carrying colorful flags, or banging gongs and drums, or dancing dragons and lions, and carrying all kinds of colored lanterns... Huge crowds converged from all directions into the venue set up in the woods. After the meeting, the circus from Hengyang performed aerial acrobatics. The acrobats were highly skilled, the acrobatics were dangerous, and the spectators on the ground exclaimed. My parents left early, and my ten-year-old sister took me to continue watching. When the scene was over, the siblings were crowded out, causing the family to search for an afternoon.
The polder is flanked by two irregular rows of brick houses. The house has a two-story layout, with houses or guest rooms on the upper floor and shops with movable door panels on the lower floor. The main shops are grocery stores, department stores, ironware shops, sewing shops, tofu shops, rice dumpling shops, barber shops, blacksmith shops, tea shops, pork shops, partner shops, credit unions, post and telecommunications offices, and so on. The store is full of goods; The people have everything they need.
I remember the Huo Ji powder shop at the head of the polder, and the lady was a big fat grandmother. She has warm service, good popularity, and a thriving business. At that time, the fan shop was hand-cranked powder, freshly squeezed and cooked and eaten, and the taste was delicious and delicious. Upstairs in the powder shop is a tea house, and my father occasionally went there to enjoy tea when I was a child, and once took me upstairs. Of course, I don't drink tea, my father always buys a few candies to send me.
Connected to the pork shop and the blacksmith shop is Liao's barbershop, and the owner and his wife are both barbers. The two masters treat people kindly, Tong Suo is not deceptive, and has a good service attitude. In particular, the shaving is very skillful, and shaving and picking the ears is simply a pleasure. When you get a haircut on a hot day, you have to pull the cloth fan hanging downstairs to cool down. When I was studying at County No. 1 Middle School, I had to go back and forth through the polder, and my classmates and I used to get haircuts and stay here.
Under the corridors of shops on both sides of the polder, there are various stalls, most of which sell agricultural products to local farmers. The sidewalk of the main street is relatively narrow, less than three meters wide at its widest point, and the pavement is cobblestoned, with a total length of about 200 meters. Like other villagers, my mother would often carry vegetables, eggs, peanuts, soybeans, cowpeas and other local products on her shoulders during the agricultural leisure time to exchange for some money to subsidize the family.
On the day of the polder, the polder is bustling and full of people, what a prosperous and lively scene!
In the late eighties, Huojia Laoxu was restricted by the regional environment and land transportation (water transport was suspended), and could no longer meet the needs of social development, so the polder was moved to the side of the county road. At this point, the once prosperous Huo family's century-old Xu finally completed its historical role as the largest commercial and cultural exchange center in the western film, ended her former prosperity and glory, and gradually faded out of people's vision.
(Zhang Nianfu)