#RecordMy 2023##Summer Life Punch Season##Headline Cultivation Plan##头条创作挑战赛#
The ridicule of the male villager in the field before was still in his ears many years later, making him realize that as long as he could not marry a wife, it was impossible to gain dignity in his hometown, so it was better to stay in the leprosy house and be a chicken head than a phoenix tail.
Picture | A still from "The Long Season"
The past of the sunken leprosy village丨serialization
Sun Luansheng said that his ancestors moved from Fujian and settled in Chaozhou Anpu, and lived by raising duck mothers. The land is fertile and pleasant, and if the branches are planted, they will take root the next day.
He was born in 1943, a famine year in Chaoshan Province. At that time, the Japanese army had been entrenched in the Shantou area for four years, controlling the price of grain, coupled with the drought that year, the grain harvest failed, and there was not enough to eat. Under the famine, families want to keep men and women, because raising a "port" can "do seeds", and when they grow up, they can stay by their side, raise "walking boys", and finally marry out can only be someone else's family. As a result, many girls are thrown away as soon as they are born, and where the water and grass are abundant, the corrupt smell of death is often hidden. Sun Luansheng's family lives close to the stream, and when he is a few years old, he can often see the corpse of a baby girl floating in the water upstream. Every time he encountered such a thing, his father would dig a pit by the water, scoop up the babies and bury them in the soil, so that they would not expose their bodies to the wilderness.
I also got this past from my mother's mouth. My mother, a native of Jieyang, said that my grandmother's sister was thrown into the field in this way, covering herself with the soft layer of soil that the buffalo had just ploughed. The grandmother's neighbor will put a little red on the child's neck as a mark before losing the baby girl. Later, a girl was born to a neighbor with a little red birthmark on her neck, and they knew that she had found it again, so they did not dare to throw it again.
Sun Luansheng grew up in this land where the souls of baby girls lingered. When he began to remember, one day his sister, who was two years younger than him, disappeared, and the family panicked and looked everywhere, and saw a pair of her sister's small shoes by the pond. When her father stepped into the water and fished her little sister out of the water and grass, she was no longer breathing. Surrounded by neighbors, some people said to quickly lead the old buffalo behind the house, put his sister face down on the back of the cow, lead the cow around, if you can turn the water in her stomach upside down, maybe you can live. Unfortunately, useless.
When Sun Luansheng saw this as a child, he seemed to be just frightened. When people reach middle age, when they recall, they give birth to a dull pain of belated-how can such a small girl wander alone between the light and dark waves of the pond, her black soft hair, floating around like a water weed.
Sun Luan was seven years old, and the land reform began. Some people in his father's family were related to the Communist Party, and they were classified as poor peasants, so it was logical to become the small leader of the land reform team. At night, a kerosene lamp was lit in the empty space in front of the ancestral hall, and the big guys gathered together, and the mother hugged Sun Luansheng and squeezed into the crowd to watch the "struggle". The poor people scolded the rich, the momentum was fierce, the eyebrows were cold, and the little Sun Luansheng hid in his mother's arms to watch the scolding battles of the adults, and his heart jumped.
Those who are classified as landlords have to confiscate the family's finances, and all the contents of the house are removed. After those properties were confiscated, they were said to be returned to the public, but in fact, most of them fell into the pockets of everyone in the land reform team, but Sun Luansheng's father did not want anything, not a single cedar. When asked, he said, "If you can live now." Next, it's up to the child, if the child is incompetent, it is useless if you build his house. Someone wanted to take away the night pot of the landlord's house, and the father couldn't look past it, and would stand up and say: "Someone, you even took his night pot, do you want him to and pee on the street?" Therefore, Sun Luansheng's father was ridiculed as a "three good guys" who "have no fighting power at all".
Broadcast horns made of wood hang in the streets and alleys, singing and broadcasting every day. "Mutual aid societies," "primary societies," and "senior societies," the radio changed word by word, and the land went through the hands of the peasants and went to the collective. Sun Luansheng's father is very active in any sport, and he has followed the club since the beginning of the junior club. But everyone soon found that after setting up the collective canteen, they couldn't eat enough. Sun Luan's childhood impression was that there were many people with big feet - when they were extremely hungry, their feet would be puffy and swollen hugely.
One day, Sun Luansheng ran to the thatched chicken shed at home to shelter from the rain, and was shocked to see two small coffins placed upright inside. When he came home and asked, his father smiled and said, "This is your grandfather and grandmother." "It turned out that after the land reform, the government called for the construction of water conservancy, the mountains were converted into fields, and the graves in the planning area were to be moved by descendants. That was their family did not know the ancestors of the previous generations, the coffin was gone, only two bones were picked up, and his father took the smaller coffin and reloaded it, put it first, and prepared to wait for a suitable place before being buried at a later date.
In the eyes of the Sun family, it was this grave relocation that changed the feng shui of the family, and the originally thin family door was changed and began to "go out" - Sun Luan's father was originally a single transmission, and after his first wife gave birth to a daughter for him, he died in the chaotic world. Later, he married a second wife and gave birth to Sun Luansheng and two daughters. After the grave was moved, Sun Luansheng's mother gave birth to three sons and a daughter in succession, and the whole family was overjoyed, attributing this move to the ancestors.
Sun Luansheng's father had several sisters, and they married in the war, and only one sister remained. There was an overseas Chinese who begged to marry her, but Sun Luansheng's father was reluctant to let his only sister cross the ocean - the eldest brother is like his father, he did not agree, and this matter naturally stopped. Later, her sister married into the next door Stork's Nest Village, a paved road (5 km) away from Xilin Village, where the Sun family lived. When Sun Luan was a child, every day when it was dark and he couldn't see the road clearly, his aunt would walk alone for an hour to his house, sit with his mother, and talk about himself under the oil lamp together.
Sun Luansheng asked her: "Aunt, why do you always come so late?" ”
My aunt said that there was no way, I had to cook for the children at home first, and after taking care of the side, I would have time to sit. After growing up, Sun Luansheng recalled the lonely shadow of his aunt walking in the dark of night, and always felt a little inexplicable pathos - the times came here, the bean lamp was shining, and the loved ones were few.
According to Chaoshan customs, when children reach the age of fifteen, it is time for both men and women to do "out of the garden (rite of passage)". Rich families should prepare new clogs and clothes for their children, wash them that night, and not be able to go out during the day the next day, and must feast at home for their relatives, and then worship Duke Huamu (two of the many immortals in Chaoshan who specialize in taking care of children). However, in 1958, agricultural products had been sold and purchased collectively, and private trading was prohibited, and the aunt could only cut a piece of pork for Sun Luansheng from her son, who secretly sold pork in the village, and the family rubbed a little balls with glutinous rice flour. After eating pork and glutinous rice balls, Sun Luansheng is an adult.
Two or three years later, Sun Luansheng found that he had some painless red spots on his body. When I went to check, the doctor covered his eyes, took a feather and lightly touched the patch of skin, and asked him: Did I order? Sun Luansheng replied no. The doctor concluded that leprosy had occurred – that his skin was unconscious.
Leprosy is called "Tai Ge" in Teochew dialect, and the word is sometimes used to describe a person's dirty and ugly skin to intimidate children. Sun Luansheng is not the first time he has heard this word. To the south of Xilin Village is a mountain, named "Sangpu Mountain" because of the "planting of mulberry trees", and in the year he "left the garden", a leprosy house was set up under Sangpu Mountain. At that time, there was a meeting in Xilin Village, and the village officials said to the villagers: "These (leprosy) people come here, don't go and say bad things about people's factions, don't go and quarrel with Yi." ”
At that time, the government began to implement "investigation, isolation, and treatment" for leprosy, and within a year or two, a large number of hospitals for leprosy patients were established in cities and counties across the country. Most of the sites of leprosy hospitals are set aside by the government, and groups of lepers are like aliens, suddenly falling into the surrounding areas of ordinary people's lives. Because leprosy has been stigmatized for a long time, clashes between farmers and hospitals around leprosy homes are common, and village officials said these words to prevent the problem.
One day, Sun Luansheng went to his house to play and saw a barge gun hanging from the house with a red ribbon tied to it. He was curious and wanted to take it down and touch it, but was quickly drunk by the neighbors: "Quickly put it down, this can't be scattered (messy)!" ”
In the summer, men, women and children flock to the river beach at the foot of the mountain to fish for shrimp. As an adult, Sun Luansheng was fishing for shellfish by the Han River one day and noticed a small boat parked on the river, and several people were getting on the boat from the shore. They have unusual red patches on their faces and skin, and some have missing fingers. The boat was carrying some wooden benches and luggage, and the boatman stretched out the bamboo pole, and the boat slowly drifted away on the river.
"Hey, it's those lepers under Sangpu Mountain." Sun Luansheng thought. "How did these people get on board and where are they going?" He thought for a moment, and then returned his thoughts to the clams in the underwater sediment—if he could catch some, the smaller one could be marinated, the larger one could be boiled and eaten, and he could add vegetables tonight.
| Today, there are still fishing people on the Han River
I don't know if Dude Huamu did not protect Sun Luansheng, in 1961, not long after seeing those lepers, this disease suddenly fell on him like rain in the sky.
The doctor asked him to pack up his clothes and bed board and go to Linghou Hospital in Guxiang for treatment. When the doctor took him there, Sun Luansheng learned that the lepers had moved out from under Sangpu Mountain, passed through the Dajiao by water, to Xinxiang, and then around Tai Po Pavilion, all the way north, to the hinterland of the mountains west of Chaozhou. Behind a mountain called "Yangtieling", the Chaozhou government carved out these 300 acres of mountain land to accommodate local lepers, named "Houling Hospital".
A mountain separating the hospital from the urban area, and for a long time, only the winding mountain road vegetables could enter the back of the ridge. Thirty years after the establishment of the hospital, a 500-meter-long mountain tunnel without lights was opened. After passing through this tunnel where you can't see your fingers, as soon as you exit the hole, the sky is bright and the trees are green, and the hospital behind the ridge has arrived.
The wooden doors are tall and flanked by cobblestone walls. The campus is not closed, and the mountains inside are undulating and very open. High up the mountain is the medical office, on the mountainside is the administrative office, and the wide, flat valley below is a rice barn, a culture room, a place to play basketball and play movies. The patients who live here call it "Zhai". Female patients have three houses at the gate of the village, the number of male patients doubled scattered on the hillside, and the doctors live on the top of the hill - many leprosy homes are laid out in this way, supposedly related to the flow of water, the upstream water is clean, and the "polluted" patients are placed to live downstream.
| Old Village after Linghou
The people that Sun Luansheng glimpsed by the river before later became fellow patients. At most, there were more than 300 patients from all walks of life, both civil and military. Those who can do carpentry help everyone cut tables and chairs, and the literate ones open a night class to teach literacy for free. Sun Luansheng remembers that there was a patient with sound hands and feet from Dongfeng Town, who was particularly good at drawing, and he drew a map behind the ridge for everyone to see, and the scenery of various places was clearly drawn and praised. However, the man later committed suicide by running into the crevice of the mountain.
This area was once a war zone between the Kuomintang army and the Japanese army, and from the high medical room, you can see that there are still trenches left in the northwest corner. Older patients in the village said that the Japanese had killed many people here, and they didn't have time to bury them, so they brought a group of dogs to eat the corpses, and then the army left, and the dogs stayed. Because those dogs have eaten too many dead people, their temperament has become fierce and violent, and they bite when they see people. The courtyard arranged for Sun Luansheng to herd cattle, and a dime per worker could get more than a piece of cash a month. One evening, as he led the cow, he looked up and saw a huge mountain dog coming down from the opposite hill, the dog was russet, as tall as a calf.
Every month, the government will give each patient 28 kilograms of rice, about two meals of porridge a day, no meat, salt must be saved. Although those with a strong labor force can get a little more work, everyone is almost equally hungry. Really hungry, Sun Luansheng went to the field to catch a few frogs and took them back, pinched off his stomach, boiled the water and threw it in, and did not put salt, just eat it. Sometimes some sweet potatoes are distributed, and the patients boil in the kitchen below, and the wind wraps in the steaming fragrance, which hooks the doctors on the mountain as well.
At that time, it was not allowed for doctors to eat with patients - in order to mobilize patients to be admitted to the hospital, the government advertised that leprosy was very contagious and how dragons and lions were, so the isolation between doctors and patients was also tight. When the doctors came down to see the patients, they had to change their clothes and wear masks in a small house in the middle, and if the leaders found them eating sweet potatoes with the patients, they would have to receive a few words of criticism. But some doctors would still sneak down to eat when the leader in charge of the administration was away, and would whisper to Sun Luansheng: "Don't be alarmed (don't be afraid), leprosy is not so contagious." - To put it bluntly, "the doctor's belly is also (slumping in hunger)".
The farmers near the ridge back, like the doctors, are not afraid of anything for a few bites to eat. The sweet potatoes grown in the village, people from the nearby Fengyang Town will also secretly run in and dig a few. Even if they steal less, for a while they really turned too much, and the village arranged for a local patient from Fengyang to guard the field, saying that among fellow villagers, they always had to give a little face, and then the theft of sweet potatoes was indeed less.
Winter is the hardest time, when the north wind howls in the mountains, wrapped in the chill and glides over one mountain after another. Sun Luansheng, who did not have a few taels of meat on his body, was slender and thin, and his clothes were cold, and he was looking for warm places everywhere in the village - and really found him, not far from the entrance of the village, there was a sugar factory that pressed sugar cane, burning all day. A large area of sugar cane was grown in the village, and there were enough patients to work for labor, so a juice extraction factory was built in it and handed over to experienced patients to take care of. The health department of Guangdong Province has long issued a notice arranging for the city and county governments to actively purchase sugarcane grown by leprosy yards and squeezed sugar. This document also reflects that the health authorities at that time understood that leprosy was contagious and that there was no problem with what lepers had touched.
Eighteen-year-old Sun Luansheng is already a half-human elf. When he sneaked into the sugar factory to roast the fire, he never talked or disturbed the people who worked, just stood by and watched quietly. At the end of the year, when the sugarcane harvest, the two successive Kongming stoves continued day and night, the heat was hot, the fire was warm, and the burning sugarcane leaves and bagasse made a "crackling" sound. The workers stirred non-stop with huge copper spoons to prevent the sugar juice from sticking to the bottom of the pan – a burnt at the bottom, the sugar was bitter, and the pot was ruined.
Three large dings of sugar juice, and finally only one large ding amount is burned. The sugar juice becomes thicker and thicker, and the water vapor evaporates, leaving sugar crystals. Sun Luansheng paid attention to see how the adults judged that the sugar had been burned - to prepare a basin of cold water, hand in the water a few times, and then the index and middle fingers quickly reached the edge of the boiling sugar juice to dig out a little, put it in cold water to cool, and then take it out to see, if it is soft, it is not good, if it is crispy, it means that the moisture has been boiled dry, you can turn off the heat.
After the sugar juice is poured out to cool, the curdled sugar cubes are crushed and poured into a bamboo basket. A lot of sugar juice can be squeezed out in a day and a night, and at dawn, patients with sound hands and feet, each person picks two baskets, goes to the government-opened purchase station in Guxiang, reports the name of the unit, weighs it and then gets a list, and then goes to the bank to ship the money - at that time, you also needed sugar tickets to buy sugar, so the sugar made in the village could not be distributed to everyone.
This is the life history of brown sugar (brown sugar). If you know how a thing comes and goes, the feelings will be different. Sun Luansheng has understood this since he was a child - under the sky, in the wind, thunderstorm and fog, and on the dirt, human beings live with gods, and various animals and plants. In this world, everything is not important.
Three years have passed. In 1963, Sun Luansheng had his skin cut twice for testing, and the doctor said that he could no longer see any leprae bacillus and that he could be discharged. Sun Luansheng was happy, carefully brushed his belongings - two bed boards and chair strips, took them to the sun to dry, and then took a box to fold his clothes. On the day of his discharge from the hospital, he picked up a flat stretcher at both ends and staggered on the 20-kilometer road home.
Halfway through, he suddenly encountered a group of students who stopped him and said that they wanted to test his Mandarin: "And no, these words are said before leaving." One by one, the students asked, "What do you mean by 'slow walk'?" How do you say 'eat'? Twenty-year-old Sun Luansheng, who had only attended elementary school in the ancestral hall for a few years, could barely remember some words, and when the students saw that he could not answer, they taught him over and over again, and when he was right, they raised their hands and let him go. After this delay, he returned home with his things, and it was already past ten o'clock at night.
After Sun Luansheng returned to the village, he saw that the streets and alleys were all reciting Chairman Mao's quotations and learning to speak Mandarin. When he returned home, he found that he was rejoicing a little early, and that life at home was even harder than in the leprosy house. The eldest sister born to the eldest mother is more than ten years older than him, diligent everywhere, and she used to take care of everything in the family. Before he returned, his eldest sister had already been married, and not long after he returned, his father had a heavy stomach bleeding and was sent to the hospital for treatment. After he was discharged from the hospital, the production team took care of him and only arranged some light work for him to pull grass and cut grass. His mother had to take care of several younger siblings, and most of the work in the fields fell to him. In winter, before dawn, he would get up and go to the pond to fetch water, roll up his trouser legs to water the fields, and return home with his hands frozen red and stiff enough to hold his chopsticks. The little sister will embroider flowers to help earn a few bucks, and the younger brother will also touch a few shrimp to come back to replenish his body, they are all still studying and have not yet entered society.
The leader of the production team looked at his father's face, and also took care of Sun Luansheng, who had returned to the village after being healed from the leprosy hospital, and once saw that his hair was very long, and the cashier took the initiative to give him an advance of one dollar and let him take five cents to cut his hair. At that time, his second sister was also married, and the remaining five cents were saved by him, and he would come to buy grain when the Chunwei government sold spring grain - they were still in the grain-starved area.
In a few more years, squads of Red Guards arose in schools, students stopped attending classes, "big tandems" everywhere, and went to the bank to pay when there was no money. In the first year of the Cultural Revolution, the most famous temple in Chaozhou, the Kaiyuan Temple built in the Tang Dynasty, the Buddha statue inside was destroyed. The "camp masters" in various villages have also stopped, some of the old men and ladies have been smashed, and some have been invited home to hide secretly. The three old palanquins and an incense burner palanquin in Xilin Village were also stolen, and these palanquins are usually carved from sunken wood, richly gilded and beautifully decorated - you know, gold-lacquered wood carving is a unique skill of Chaozhou and is very valuable. In a few years, the tandem slowly cooled down, and the government called young people back to "material production".
Sun Luansheng is completely different from his father, he is in the crowd and avoids these sports. At first, the brigade arranged for him to herd cattle, and Sun Luansheng spoke to the cow like a person, and when he asked it to go, he gently pulled the rope and said: "Come and come, come and do the work class (work). "When ploughing the fields, I am also careful not to let the rake plow hurt the feet of the oxen. The buffalo has a thick neck and great strength, and it is relatively effective in ploughing the fields, but it is also difficult to take care of, and when the weather is hot, it is necessary to lead it to the water to bathe. Chaozhou originally had two cattle (iron oxen) in the town of Hanjiang, built during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, standing on the edge of the Xiangzi Bridge facing the river. One of them was washed into the Han River during the flood, and the remaining one was destroyed as a superstition during the Cultural Revolution.
As soon as the seedlings were planted in the spring and the cows had no grass to eat, Sun Luansheng led the buffalo up Sangpu Mountain and lived on the mountain for several months. At that time, there was another brigade of people on Sangpu Mountain who was building roads in the mountain, and it was inconvenient for him to cook by himself, so he entrusted rice and a small basin to others, and asked the opening team to add an extra portion when cooking. If one day the pioneer team came over and said to him, "Today you will cook it yourself", he will know that the pioneer team will have a meal today, and people will have papaya sweet potatoes to eat.
Sangpu Mountain is near the mouth of the Rongjiang River, two mountains running north-south, with residents and cultivated land in the middle. At that time, Chaozhou, Shantou, and Jieyang surrounded Sangpu Mountain, and in spring, the foot of the mountain was clear, but there was a light rain on the top of the mountain. Sun Luansheng likes to climb to the highest peak near Jieyang, looking southeast - the surface of the Rongjiang River is getting wider and wider, the water is rippling, the south flows into the sea, and the boat is like a small leaf, floating on the surface of the river one by one.
If you look in the direction of Shantou, you can see that there are two small hills by the river, and in the early years, the Chaoshan people went to Nanyang to do business, and "Guofan" came out from here - the bottom of the sea at the mouth of the sea is covered with reefs, which is the "dragon stone" of Shantou, the land of feng shui, can not be blown up, when the ship on the high seas wants to come in, the boat inside needs to come out to pick up. In the summer of 1969, a typhoon hit the city, and on the banks of the Niutianyang embankment in Shantou, a hurricane caught a 10-meter-high wave, swept more than 500 soldiers and university students who tried to erect a human wall into the black sea. After that, there were rumors in the vicinity that their spirits could always be heard crying at night, and they could not be peaceful, until the Prime Minister came and said many words of comfort, and these souls quieted down.
After living on Sangpu Mountain for a summer, when the north wind picked up, Sun Luansheng took his cattle and went down the mountain to cut rice.
By 1975, the old custodians in the production team were old and wanted to find someone to take over, but no male member was willing to take the initiative to take the initiative - first, because when the "Four Cleansing Movement" was carried out, everyone saw that the custodial accountant was used as a target, and they were afraid, and second, because this work not only had to be counted and stored when harvesting rice, but also had to move the rice out to dry and work with women. The men went to plow the fields and had an extra meal of sweet potatoes in the afternoon, but the women who dried the grain did not.
The team named Sun Luansheng and two other young people to work together - but as soon as the sickle sounded, the two slipped away, and in the end, Sun Luansheng kept it alone. Because there were no sweet potatoes to eat, the women "rebelled" and protested, which won the same "sweet potato rights", and Sun Luansheng also ate some of them.
The rice harvest is to be put into storage, the rice is dried, some are weighed back to the farmers, and the rest continue to be stored. The key to the warehouse was in Sun Luansheng's place, and a book recorded who took how much, how much he returned, and how much was left. After winter, thousands of pounds of grain are placed in the processing plant, and everyone must come to get it, and those who drag the plough to work must eat it, those who spray pesticides must eat it, and those who dig streams and sweet potatoes must also eat. Sun Luansheng always said to the person who asked for rice: "It's good to eat enough, don't take more, what should I do after more?" ”
In 1976, the Cultural Revolution ended, and Sun Luansheng's father came to the end of his life. Sun Luansheng went to participate in the "repair of the east embankment" during the day and returned home at night to take care of his father. On the embankment where the day's work worked, a few bamboo poles hung one sentence word by word: Down with the "Gang of Four", great liberation of the mind, great liberation of the productive forces!
Before his death, his father called Sun Luansheng to the bedside, first saying that he wanted him to move more with his sisters who had been married, and not to alienate his feelings, especially the eldest sister, after all, the eldest sister was different from them, and the father was worried that as soon as he left, the children's relationship would be broken. Sun Luansheng said, rest assured, unless the eldest sister does not want us, we will definitely go.
Then my father said that when the villagers were invited to dinner at happy events, "you go boldly, so as not to be alarmed (don't be afraid)."
It was not for nothing that his father said this: Sun Luan was born in a famine year, and when he reached the age of marriage, there were more men and women of the same age, plus he returned from leprosy, which made it more difficult to find relatives. In rural Chaoshan villages, men who have not yet been married are often teased in private. When the villagers had wedding banquets, Sun Luansheng, as the eldest son, often had to attend in place of his father, and every time he went to the banquet, he was like sitting on pins and needles, and the meal was always not very happy.
Sun Luansheng understood what his father meant, and promised: "Okay, you don't have to worry, and we'll see it then." ”
Seeing that his father was about to die, Sun Luansheng went to call his eldest sister back - his father cherished his eldest daughter the most. When the eldest sister heard the news, she ran all the way home, and when she encountered the steps, she took two steps and one step. She made her father a bowl of sweet noodles and sprinkled some sugar that she was usually reluctant to eat. The father ate it and said, "It's delicious, sweet." "After eating this bowl of noodles, the person left.
According to Chaoshan customs, when someone in the family is old, they must ask the "master" to do white things and build a shed to say goodbye to the deceased. But the commune said that instead of making a big funeral, they could take care of their family with 80 pounds of rice and 100 yuan. On the day of the funeral, nineteen teams of the commune sent nineteen wreaths, and the hundred yuan made up for the hole owed by his father's illness and hospitalization - Sun Luansheng's second brother-in-law said that the money owed to the bank, with interest alone, lost a pig in a year. Fortunately, a person in the brigade who could speak said that the children of the Sun family were still young, and the public family needed to help a little, so that the arrears were made up, and the whole family breathed a sigh of relief.
When his father entered the earth, Sun Luansheng was watching from the side, his father's feet were to be tied, and the coffin would be removed again. Do feng shui to see the direction is good, put the compass on the top of the coffin, where the head is facing, the feet are facing the front, the direction should be aligned, as if the deceased can sit up again. There should be a gap between the coffin and the dug pit, and the descendants should go to the ash kiln in advance to take some lime broken by oyster shells, add water, and quickly carry it to the mountain, and when the ash is "haired" and the hour comes, the powerful young man will carry the coffin and gently put it right. Before burial, the entire coffin should be poured with lime, the bottom of the house is thick, the ash is also poured thick, the longer the coffin is preserved, it will not collapse.
Life is still not good.
After the school was restored, Sun Luansheng's second brother and third brother all went to school, and every morning, the mother had to take a small cloth bag to pack a little rice, bring it to the brothers to the school, and hand it over to the canteen to cook together. One morning, when the two younger brothers were scooping rice, her mother called Sun Luansheng over and said, "Someone, come, take a look." ”
Sun Luansheng looked over, and saw that the third man was shaking vigorously with the cloth bag, shaking the rice in the bag firmly, and grabbed another handful and put it in. Seeing that his mother's face was a little angry, Sun Luansheng hurriedly persuaded: "Aunt (mother), there are overseas Chinese in the family, there are rich people, and they have goose meat to eat, we have no money, just this rice, let him take it and eat it, don't think he eats too much." ”
Sometimes when the rice tank at home bottomed out, he would go to his eldest sister's house to ask for a little. The eldest sister's house is far away, and it is usually dark when she comes and goes. After filling the rice with a cloth bag, the eldest sister always had to send him to the door, and then carefully instructed which way to walk back closer - in fact, after walking so many times, he did not know it.
Four months after my father entered the earth, there was another prayer. Originally, Sun Luansheng wanted to go by herself, but the teenage sister pestered herself. He bought two small silver swordfish, cooked another rice cake at home, and the two of them carried them. Just after praying and packing up to leave, a half-old man came over and begged for food in a good voice—perhaps he waited until the brother and sister had finished praying. Sun Luansheng said: "I can give it to you, but I can't give it all, and I have to take some back the things I worship, do you understand?" After that, he broke a large part of the rice cake and handed it to the other party.
When working on the embankment, the young and middle-aged laborers could eat a bunch of sweet potatoes in the afternoon. Sun Luansheng looked at it, and couldn't help but say more: "If you have food, forget it, your way of eating, the old people in the family have to starve to death." "——He finished eating here, and the rest of the food was divided into each family according to the workload, and the old people and children could not get anything. When ploughing the field together, when it is time to eat, someone in the team will come to the field with the meal to share the meal for everyone, and some children will also come with the person who delivered the meal, and the mother who has just rested, a bowl of rice and a few bites, will beckon the child to come over and give the meal to the child. Sun Luansheng looked at it and thought to himself: I don't know when a child will bring me (rice) to eat? It's impossible for me, when will my brother start a family?
A large number of children, big pulling small, small taking care of the big, finally one after another. Sun Luansheng's second brother and third brother read a lot of books, one went to the grain control office, and the other became a teacher. One day, Sun Luansheng came back from cutting grass in the field, and the villagers came up to him and said with a smile: "There are two girls in your family!" Astonished, Sun Luansheng walked home quickly, and there were really two girls he had never seen sitting in the house—one of them worked in the health department, it was the second brother's friend, and the two met at a meeting on political lines.
This girl has a very good physique, and Sun Luansheng and her mother like it very much. The marriage was negotiated, and the mother handled it, and Sun Luansheng was only responsible for one thing - to negotiate the index of a cedar tree with the grain management office, cut a cedar tree on Sangpu Mountain to transport it home, and ask someone to come to the house to make a big bed for the newlyweds - otherwise the house would be poor and white, and there would be no new object.
Since he promised his father, Sun Luansheng had the consciousness of being the eldest son in his heart, someone outside was married, and he needed someone from the family to go to the banquet, no matter how unwilling, he also forced himself to go. One day, he was working in the field, and a villager suddenly smiled and asked him: "Someone, how do you feel about eating at the table (table)?" This was clearly to taunt him, Sun Luansheng suddenly straightened up and said loudly: "How is it, it's fragrant and sweet!" The man then scowled and shut up boredly.
Sun Luansheng's heart was angry, although he did not show it on his face, but when he saw this villager later, he would not even say hello, all as if he were air. Of course, he will not pour this matter into the house, because the second brother has a bigger temper than him, and he is afraid that he will go to someone to fight.
By 1979, Sun Luan was thirty-six years old. While bathing in the pond, his cousin suddenly came to look for him, and without saying anything, he first asked: "Someone, how is your health lately?" ”
He said: "The body is flat, there is no problem. What's wrong? ”
The cousin said, "Do you have three hundred dollars?" If you have, you can go to Xingning to bring a girl back. ”
It was the cousin-in-law's family next door in Xingning's hometown, saying that as long as he had three hundred yuan for his son, he could marry his daughter. At that time, rice was a dime and four catties, in the words of Sun Luansheng, "a hundred yuan is greater than a big gong", the local bride price is called "sending pollen", three hundred yuan of pollen money, almost can buy two thousand kilograms of rice, is undoubtedly sky-high.
So he said, "Where is this money? I had a little on hand, and before I could cover the heat, I bought fertilizer and put it in the field. ”
At that time, Sun Luansheng's body was indeed not abnormal, who knew that in the second year after saying this, he felt that his body was not quite right - when hoeing the ground, the fingers of his left hand were a little stiff, and he couldn't grasp the hoe steadily. Sun Luansheng thought to himself, this is over. He rode to Shaxi by himself to find a leprosy doctor who used to work in Linghou, and the doctor saw that the leprosy had recurred.
He had boundary leprosy before, the kind with a small number of bacteria and mild symptoms, but the leprosy drug at that time only had aminophenol, and there was a recurrence rate of 30% after cure, and after cure, he should also supplement nutrition to recuperate, but he worked all day, and he didn't eat enough - well, after returning to Lingling, it was already a certainty, and he handed over the things kept by the production team to others, how much grain was left in the warehouse, which were "early seeds", which were "late seeds", which were sunburned, which were not, how to repel insects and moisture, and wrote labels one by one, After handing over each item, the burden is removed.
As for the family, the younger siblings are adults, and there is nothing to explain.
The second brother just got a bicycle license, and the whole family pooled more than a hundred pieces to buy a 28-piece red cotton - red cotton is not as famous as the phoenix and the permanent brand, but won the national championship in the 1978 bicycle load competition, just enough to ride Sun Luansheng into the ravine. This bicycle later came in handy in Sun Luan's life after Shengling.
That was the year that Chaozhou abolished the revolutionary committee, the storm stopped, and the "reform and opening up" came out of the peasants' mouths like this: "The system is decentralized!" "Expats from Southeast Asia and Teochew merchants from Hong Kong raised funds to restore the Kaiyuan Temple, and then the destroyed cattle along the Han River were re-poured. The whole society is slowly recovering from the ruins, only Sun Luansheng, riding a bicycle and turning around, walking towards the mountains.
The second time "entering the palace", familiar with the door, the early years, the hospital also emphasized that patients should bring their own bed boards, this time there is no need to bring anything, empty tongue can also be. In the hospital with more than 300 people in the past, now there are less than 100 patients, and Sun Luansheng has returned to the mountains of the past, every wood and stone are so familiar, but those who know face are more than ten years old. He stood in the mountains, looked around, and felt the trick of fate thundering in his ears.
In his later years, Sun Luansheng said, "Once confused, the second time." When he was admitted to the hospital for the second time, he had clearly seen that in this life, it was no longer possible for him to sever ties with the leprosy hospital. He firmly believed that his cousin's relationship between the two events of affinity and the recurrence of leprosy was a footnote to fate. This marriage was broken up, and it was all God's arrangement.
Less than twenty days after Sun Luansheng was admitted to the hospital, his third brother came into the mountain to inform him that he was going to get married. Sun Luansheng was very happy and asked who introduced the object, and the third brother said that it was a cousin. Hearing that the introducer was a relative who knew the roots, Sun Luansheng put down his heart, thinking of wrapping a red envelope, groping all over his body, and the total amount of broken money, adding up to twelve, just a double number, just like that, it was all stuffed. Later, when the younger brother got married, the peanuts he planted in the village had just harvested, so he plucked a bunch and carried them home to entertain the guests.
"Marry a daughter-in-law's room is red, marry a daughter's room is empty", Chaozhou's marriage custom is that the man's family does the wedding, but the woman's family does not do it, so the sister's marriage, Sun Luansheng has nothing to help. My sister has been relying on embroidery to help supplement the family since she was a child, and every day after school, before anyone stepped into the house, my mother beckoned: "Sister, come and make flowers." ”
Sun Luansheng occasionally thinks that if he really became a family first and then became ill and was admitted to the hospital, leaving his wife at home alone would be inconvenient for others.
At this point, the first thing to consider is to treat the disease. If you don't treat it well, if you leave your hands and feet disabled, you won't be able to work in the fields, you can't support yourself, and you will become a burden to your family. Many people in the village have actually been cured, but because of the sequelae, they can't go home and can't leave the hospital. There is a doctor in the hospital who went to Guangzhou for training in his early years and is also a leprosy rehabilitator. Sun Luansheng knew that he had medical skills when he first came, and when he came this time, he often went to him, helped him prescribe a few stickers of Chinese medicine, and then took a small stove by himself, squatted there every day, and seriously boiled Chinese medicine twice. The administrative officer of the office, Lao Lu, saw it and quipped him: "Why are you boiling medicine every day?" Sun Luansheng said: "Of course, it was originally a broken phase (sick) to cure the disease." ”
He is still the same as the last time he was hospitalized, taking aminophenol, plus several years of Chinese medicine, and he has recovered, and he has no experience of bacteria in his skin. He was grateful to the doctor and felt that he had saved himself from crippled hands and feet. But there are still some imprints on the body left: the left hand, which was originally the same as ordinary people, the fingers have been bent to a certain extent, and they cannot be straightened into a plane, and the meat on the palm of the hand has fallen off a lot, especially the mouth of the tiger, and it is almost impossible to touch any meat; The left foot also had some "dead meat" because of ulcers, and later when he had money to wear socks, even in the summer of his thirties, he would not take off the socks.
In 1983, the leprosy yard also followed the "system decentralization" outside, marking the land for individual contract farming, and no longer engaged in collective production. To encourage farming, those who remained in the village not only took out interest-free loans to buy fertilizer, but also abolished their share of public grain – the agricultural tax was not abolished until 2006.
Sun Luansheng also didn't want to go home, he first cooperated with another patient from the iron shop to contract farming, that person has a wife at home, often goes back to "spend good time" with his family, Sun Luansheng found that he worked a lot, suffered losses, and was very angry. The next year, the other party wanted to ask him to raise one more pig, but he simply refused, left the other party, and contracted four or five acres of land to work alone. During the harvest season, the rice is not full, and there are a dozen in the wind cabinet, and most of the particles are light and shriveled. He went to ask the old farmer in Fengyang, and people asked him: "Did you have any more fat when you just smoked the ears?" "He said no. In this way, he consulted with the experienced old farmer little by little, and the rice that grew again was full, and the sound of the wind cabinet hitting it was very good to his ears—it was grain.
After all three younger brothers got married, her mother said that she could not manage such a large family alone and would break up. The brothers and sisters gathered together to discuss the separation of the family, and Sun Luansheng also went back. When the eldest sister heard the news, she also came, she did not come for herself, but to persuade Sun Luansheng: "You have to keep a little house, otherwise no one will love you (want you) in the future." ”
In 1986, the state officially abolished the compulsory isolation of leprosy, and even if the disease was detected, it was no longer required to be admitted to the hospital, and only needed to take medicine at home. But Sun Luansheng had decided to take root in Linghou - the ridicule of the male villager in the field was still in his ears many years later, making him realize that as long as he could not marry a wife, he could not gain dignity in his hometown, so it was better to stay in the leprosy house and prefer to be a chicken head than a phoenix tail. He didn't end up asking for a house because he decided he wouldn't have a chance to start a family in his life.
But he is still the eldest brother.
The younger brother worked as a farmer at home, but he was not allocated much land. Once when Sun Luansheng returned to Xilin Village, his younger sister-in-law told him that the rice at home was about to run out, and Sun Luansheng said: "You don't have to worry, (my) field is about to cut rice, you must feed the children." After that, the rice grown in the four or five acres of land in the Leprosy Courtyard of Linghou was transported back to Xilin Village, more than 30 kilometers away, by the red cotton bicycle.
The summer in Lingnan is hot and rainy, and in the days of the June harvest, if there is a sudden heavy rain, as soon as the yellow rice is wet, the tail is heavy, and the pole is soft, it will all be wilted, and the grain cannot be beaten. Therefore, after eating at twelve o'clock at noon, even if the ground was still steaming, Sun Luansheng had to hurry up and get off the ground. He put on a cloak and tied a long sweat towel with a red plaid to his stomach to "prevent the heat from entering through the belly button." After the rice was beaten and dried, he took a wooden ladder and leaned against the eaves, carried bags of rice to the roof, dried it and carried it down. The air in June smells of grain, but the heat wave still causes him to suffer from heat stroke and blood in his urine. He plucked some herbs in the mountains—a plant that sticks to his trouser legs when he walked and had black burrs — and added a little brown sugar and cooked them.
Some maple foreigners saw that Sun Luansheng had planted so much land alone, and offered to buy grain with him, and he waved his hand: "I am not willing to sell a single grain of grain." ”
| Sun Luan gives birth to a ladder for drying rice and a fishing rod for fishing
Relying on these four or five acres of land behind the ridge, the third generation of the Sun family no longer has to starve like the previous generation. Later, potatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, and peanuts were added to the field, and every New Year's holiday, Sun Luansheng could also catch a 20-pound fresh grass carp from the fish pond, tie it in a basket and bounce alive and bring it back to Xilin Village. When his sister-in-law saw Sun Luansheng go back to his home to carry things, saying that he was doing a "loss-making business", he just smiled and said that he was a "hope project". The younger brother swore and said, "Brother, my children will be your children in the future." ”
At home, Sun Luansheng really values his little sister-in-law the most, she is too diligent, diligent enough to let Sun Luansheng take a look high - every time he returns to Xilin Village, his little sister-in-law works in the ground with her back to the sky and the earth. After 1990, many people went to the sea to do business, and one day when he returned with rice, his little sister-in-law pulled him and asked embarrassedly: "Big brother, did you lend me two hundred yuan?" She said that she wanted to do some clothing business, but she didn't have enough capital, and Sun Luansheng listened: "Say what to borrow, just take it." ”
When the younger sister-in-law was pregnant with her third child, the family planning person asked her to kill the child. Sun Luansheng's mother disagreed: "Can't fight, my eldest son has not started a family, this child, regardless of gender, will be given to him in the future." Later, the younger brother-in-law gave birth to a boy and nominally gave Sun Luansheng a son, and Sun Luansheng said: "When I fell into account (died), he had to come and do something." ”
Back in the village, day and night, the patients sat together in their leisure time to talk about the world. That day, a relative came to Linghou to look for Sun Luansheng, and a Fengxi patient saw it and asked him: "Who is that person who came just now?" ”
Sun Luansheng said that it was a relative's child who came to buy fruit.
The Maple Creek people said: "This kid seems to be doing business only for himself. ”
Seeing that he was accurate, Sun Luansheng was surprised: "How do you know?" ”
"I'll look at the face." The Fengxi people said that when he was very young, in order to avoid the war, his family sent him to a family in the Phoenix Mountain of Guihu Lake as a son, and his adoptive parents' family sent him to Shantou to learn the art of the five elements, and later he was admitted to the hospital with leprosy. After speaking, he carefully looked at Sun Luansheng, asked him if he had a wife, listened to the answer, and said: "You still have a chance to get married." ”
Sun Luansheng smiled: "Where to find it?" How could anyone want me? I didn't dare to think either. ”
The man said, "Really, you see." ”
One day not long after, Sun Luansheng returned from shopping for vegetables in the ancient alley and rode on the mountain road after returning to the ridge. The trees on the mountain are luxuriant, the weeds are overgrown, and when you reach the steep point, the car cannot ride it, so you have to come down and lead it. There was a young girl in the back, also leading a bicycle, and when she saw Sun Luansheng, she asked: "Brother, how to go after the ridge?" ”
Sun Luansheng asked, "What happened after you arrived in Ling?" ”
"I have a village man who lives there, and his family is there to help plant seedlings these days, and I came to drive his mother home."
"Have you been here alone?"
The girl said that she had not come, and Sun Luansheng was very surprised - it is easy to get lost when entering the mountain, not to mention that this is still a leprosy village where outsiders are terrified: "Why are you so bold, you dare to come if you don't know the road?" ”
The girl said: "Wen Ancestral Hall, Phoenix and those places, I will also ride alone!" ”
The two places mentioned by the girl are secluded and remote places in Chaozhou, the Wen Temple is in the west corner, the road is deep, and the phoenix is in the north, and the mountain is thousands of meters high. Sun Luansheng saw that she was tall and big, so he knew that she was a person who often worked, and saw that she was bold and careful, and he also had a little respect in his heart: "I am from the Linghou family, I just want to go back, you follow me." ”
Sun Luansheng pushed the car in front, the girl followed behind, and the two did not speak, Sun Luansheng only occasionally turned back to see if she had followed. After walking for a while, the two pushed the cart to a slightly flat place, and Sun Luansheng pointed out to the girl the clusters of houses sitting on the mountainside - that is, the leprosy courtyard behind the ridge. When he arrived in the village, Sun Luansheng took the girl to find someone. The girl was not afraid of the patients here, and seeing that everyone was working in the field, she tied up her trouser legs and went down to help. That night the girl stayed behind the ridge – there were still many people who feared leprosy, and she was really bold.
The next day, Sun Luansheng was cooking, and the girl came back to him from the field and asked him if he had any shirts and pants to wash, saying that she could help him wash them together. At that time, Sun Luansheng moved alone to the abandoned medical room, far from the collective dormitory, and the picture was quiet. There was a spring water flowing down from the mountain, clear and cool, and it was convenient to bathe and wash clothes, and he lived very comfortably, so he replied with a big grin: "What shirt and pants?" I have nothing to wash, I just have a pants. ”
After that, this girl from the deep river came to Sun Luansheng several times by herself, asking him if he wanted to help carry water or something. The acquaintances in the village saw a little meaning, so they joked in person, asking her if she wanted to marry Sun Luansheng? She didn't admit it either. Hearing the patients chewing their tongues in private, Sun Luansheng realized it later, and pondered in his heart: "Could it be that this girl wants to talk to me?" A patient said bluntly to him: "Hey, you just don't know, if you know the world, you can talk and talk." After hearing more such words, Sun Luansheng would also defend himself: "I don't have money, how dare I ask for someone?" ”
After the farm rush ended, the family of the patient in Shenhe was going back, and Sun Luansheng rode to help him carry his family back. After riding twenty kilometers to the boundary of the deep river, the patient pointed to a place at the foot of the mountain and said, "Naw, this is the home of that sister." Sun Luansheng glanced at it from afar and thought, I heard that she still has three brothers, and it seems that she is also a poor family.
The girl was never seen again. More than thirty years later, when Sun Luansheng told about this past, his eyes looked at a place in the void for a long time, and his thumb and middle finger gently rubbed each other, like a sigh to the past—unexpectedly, what the Fengxi man who learned the art of the five elements said was true.
For Sun Luansheng, some thresholds in life may have a second path, but he has not chosen it. (Hong Mengxia)
(At the request of the interviewee, Sun Luan was born as a pseudonym)
(Excerpted from the WeChat public account theLivings)