Stepmother, that is, what people call stepmother, in people's subconscious, stepmother is often associated with narrow-mindedness and selfishness, whether there is such a saying in many places: the tail of the scorpion, the heart of the stepmother. illustrates some of people's unfair views on stepmothers. But I also encountered a stepmother and stepmother, but I didn't feel the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of the stepmother, on the contrary, I got a lot of maternal love and care.
And my stepmother, like thousands of mothers in China, is unpretentious, kind and tolerant, and she is diligent and simple, and she is a good housekeeper, which has played a very positive role in my growth. My father's education was more important than words. Although her education for me was not deliberate, but in ordinary daily life, with her own rules of life, subtly influenced me, educated me, and made me benefit a lot from my life and work.
When my stepmother came to my house, she was probably in her fifties, tall and erect at the waist, but she was stepping on a pair of three-inch golden lotuses. Although the stepmother has a pair of three-inch golden lotus feet, she walks with willows in the wind, fast and neat. I remember that in the early sixties of the last century, my stepmother was almost sixty years old, and she was still walking on a three-inch golden lotus to filial piety.
Xiaoyi Daxiaobao has one of my sisters, the daughter left by my stepmother's first husband.
I remember that in the early sixties of the last century, my stepmother was almost sixty years old, and she was still walking on a three-inch golden lotus to filial piety
Our village is also as much as 30 miles to Xiaoyi Daxiao Fort. An old lady with small feet of a three-inch golden lotus ran for more than thirty miles, and it was all potholed dirt roads. If you encounter watering the ground, it will be even more sinful, at that time the rural watering, most of them are flooded, when it comes to watering, many places are white, even the road is in the water, so sometimes when you encounter watering, you have to go around left and right and go around and don't know how many detours.
And there is another situation, the traffic situation at that time is very bad, there are no bridges on many channels, and when it comes to watering the ground, it is only used to build two wooden rafters on the canal. People walked up and staggered.
Below is the rushing canal, and above are two rickety rafters only the width of the feet, and everyone who sees them is panicked and weak. The men were easy to do, but the women, especially an old lady who was nearly sixty years old and had to cross the rafter bridge with a pair of three-inch golden lotuses on tiptoe, those difficulties can be imagined.
In that case, according to the stepmother before her death, she could only climb on the two rafters that were only the width of her feet, using her hands and feet at the same time, trembling, and moving forward little by little. People who have not experienced that scene will not be able to appreciate the hardship and helplessness, and at the same time, how much perseverance is required.
The stepmother was born in the 32nd year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty, in the year of Bingwu, that is, in 1906 AD. Warlord scuffle, Japanese devils, World War II zones, hook army, hunger, disease, and the death of several relatives did not knock her down. In the midst of such hardships and hardships, what strength sustained her to survive.
It is her perseverance, self-reliance and self-improvement spirit, and her strong belief in life that inspires her, inspires her, and makes her overcome difficulties and obstacles, so that she is full of passion and hope for her later life.
Speaking of which, the stepmother is also a very hard worker. Her hometown is Xiaoyi County, Da Xiaobao Town, Wenming Village (people also call the village) surnamed Huo, her first husband is Xiaoyi County, the old city of Lou Nanwu surname, I heard that the husband died within a few years of marriage, leaving an infant daughter.
The second husband is a Wang surnamed Yin Shi family in our Yanwu Ancient Town, and has a boy, but the child died of illness when he was a teenager, and the second husband also died of illness in the same year, leaving only the stepmother to live alone and widowed.
It wasn't until later, in the second or third year after my own mother's death, that my stepmother was introduced to my father and became my stepmother, which is what we call a stepmother locally.
There is a saying in our local area: it is difficult to be a stepmother, and it is difficult to raise a stepchild. In our local area, there are families who can't maintain because the relationship between the stepmother and the stepson is not handled well. But my stepmother lived with us for almost 30 years from the time she came to my house until she died in 1987 at the age of 81.
Overall, the relationship between my stepmother and us was very good and very harmonious, and this scene was obvious to all relatives, friends and neighbors. Although my stepmother did not give me life, I will never forget the nurturing grace of nearly 30 years and the subtle education in daily life.
My stepmother was a typical working woman in old China, hardworking, self-reliant, hospitable, and sincere. Although her stepmother is uneducated and illiterate, she can tell stories, sing small songs, some local nursery rhymes and folk songs, and come as the old saying goes.
The stepmother speaks neatly, and she is also in a hurry, clean and neat. Although he has no culture, he has a good memory and a high level of understanding. It's an acute child, with a bad temper, an unforgiving mouth, a knife mouth, and a tofu heart, belonging to the kind of people who have good eyes, are kind-hearted, and don't talk around quickly.
I remember that when my stepmother first came to my house, she was already in her fifties, and she had a pair of small feet, but at that time it was collectivization, and she had to participate in the collective labor of the production team. I remember that every time my stepmother came back from labor, there were always loess traces on her two knees, because my stepmother was a three-inch golden lotus, and she couldn't squat when she hoeed the ground, so she could only crawl on the ground and hoe. That's why the pants always break early at the knees.
During the three-year natural disaster, my stepmother often used to use a pair of small feet on the stone mill and process grain on the trough mill. I remember that around 1961, the eating canteen had just been disbanded. It turned out that the pot camel mill that processed grain when eating in the big canteen also stopped because people didn't have much grain processing. Therefore, people can only process grain on stone mills or mills.
At that time, the grain varieties were also relatively monotonous, generally sorghum and corn. If there is a lot of grain, you can also make an appointment with the livestock of the production team on the stone mill to process it. But at that time, there was a shortage of food, and a person could not receive much grain in a month, and he could not process it on the stone mill, and if he used the livestock of the production team, he had to make an appointment to queue up (sometimes he could not wait for the rice to be put into the pot), and the other was to pay some fees for the use of livestock (generally with the scraps of processed grain). So at that time, many people were processing on stone mills by themselves because of time and expense.
I remember that at that time, I used to process grain with my stepmother. The grain is slightly more on the stone mill, and if there is not much grain, it is on the mill.
Like an animal, he counts his steps step by step
Processing grain on a stone mill sounds simple, but it is very hard to do. It was like an animal, counting the steps step by step. It's just that the animals are pulling forward, and the people are pushing forward.
At that time, my father was building the Fenyang Auditorium at the Fenyang Construction Society, and he was often away from home. If you want to process grain, it is my stepmother and I, when it is time to process grain, it is often my stepmother who carries her three-inch golden lotus and carries the grain in the pimple (a container made of strips for storing grain, etc., which can generally hold forty or fifty catties of grain) to the mill, and I take the other tools for grinding.
When I first started grinding, I often volunteered to grab the grinding rod and push it away.
At the beginning of the grinding, it was often me who volunteered, grabbed the grinding rod and pushed it away, at that time, the stone mill also has a size, generally the smaller one is more labor-saving, if it is a larger one, it is more difficult.
And that grinding is not just the strength of the force, some people have low dizziness, and they can't push a few laps before they get dizzy and their heads are swollen.
"Manzhang San, I'll come" then kicked her three-inch golden lotus, and turned the grinding rod in a circle step by step
I was just eight or nine years old at the time, and I didn't have much strength, and I didn't want to push after pushing for a while, and when I saw this, my stepmother came over and held the grinding rod, and said, "I'll do it!" Then he kicked her three-inch golden lotus and turned the grinding rod in a circle step by step. You must know that at that time, the stepmother was already in her fifties, and she was still a three-inch golden lotus, and those who had not pushed the mill could not understand the hardship. It was really a step by step, and it didn't take long for the stepmother's sweat beads to come down, and seeing this, I hurried over to help the stepmother push together.
That's exactly "who knows that Chinese food on the plate is hard work." ”
And if there is less food, or if something else is processed, people go to the mill. And there are two kinds of mills. One is in that round, about less than one meter high platform inlaid with a round polished stone mill surface, there is a big stone round roller on it, can also be pushed up by people, can also be pulled by livestock, larger, more high-grade mill, it is suitable for processing grain and other more quantities of mills.
The stone rollers roll back and forth in the deep stone grooves, connecting us to the source of our life
And there is another kind of mill, which we call it locally.
The groove mill is made of all red sand stone, about three meters long! It is sixty or seventy centimeters wide and about sixty centimeters high, and its appearance is roughly like the boat-shaped mill that grinds Chinese medicinal materials in the Chinese medicine shop, but the difference is that the mill in the Chinese medicine shop is iron, small in size, and it is pedaled by human feet.
We have this kind of groove there is a stone, the body is large, such a large piece of red sand stone, the middle of the polished out of a big stone groove, the stone groove is also deep in the middle, shallow at both ends, the deepest part is about 40 centimeters, the width is about 20 centimeters less than 30 centimeters. Then pick a suitable, flat place, build a brick or stone platform, and install the groove on it, with a round stone roller with a diameter of 80 or 90 centimeters and a thickness of about 20 centimeters, and use a small bowl thick wood through the middle, the long end is installed on a wooden pillar in the middle of the mill, and the short end is pushed back and forth by people. In addition, at the back of the mill, a matching stone pier will be built, so that people can push the big stone roller up in the middle of the grain processing, etc., and it will be like a parking spot and rest place for the stone roller.
In this way, rolling back and forth, the stone rollers rolled back and forth in the deep stone troughs, connecting our source of life, and many grains and so on were endlessly crushed back and forth, becoming the various ingredients we relied on for survival at that time, that is, the source of our life, the pillar of our strength.
At that time, especially in the sixties of the last century, it was the most prosperous time for our hometown trough milling, you see, basically every morning early, as long as it is ordinary weather, not windy and rainy, the trough mill in the hometown began to be busy, at that time our local millet was also relatively scarce, so people found a way to get some millet, the general number is not much, most of them are milled on the trough.
There are also pounds (at that time, we collectively referred to them as pounding on the grass trough to process grain) corn grits (that is, the corn is crushed into quite small grains, and after the pot is boiled, it is put into the water and used as the staple food. At that time, there was a serious shortage of food, and many families had two or three meals a day, which was called sassa and sorghum. Sorghum is generally milled to grind flour, but some people have to crush a small amount of sorghum into granular powder on the trough mill in order to save money, and make the whole sorghum flour nest, which we call the material nest locally.
There are also those who pound cake noodles and those who pound fried noodles. There are also those who pound elm bark noodles, which are the noodles that are pounded after the bark of the elm tree is peeled off and dried. At that time, for a long time, we were mainly red noodles, and the red noodles had poor toughness, and if we didn't stir the elm skin noodles, we couldn't make it in the pot. Therefore, every household is inseparable from elm bark noodles, some buy some, and some secretly peel off the elm bark and process it themselves.
There is also the lantern plant pounded on the trough mill, lantern grass, we call it monk flower locally, there are also ghost lanterns, the nature of lantern grass is also the same as elm bark, it is also dried and pounded off, stirred into the red noodles, and the local people call it "green noodles". But it is not used as much as elm bark noodles.
There are also grass seeds, grass seeds are straw grass, we also call the seeds of the grass that have matured, that is, after the grass seeds are ripe, the grass seeds are dried and pounded into noodles. However, most people feed pigs as feed, and some people who are too short of food stir grass seed noodles into the grain to eat.
There are also salt-pounding people, and there are also a few chili pounding people, and at that time, there were not too many people who ate chili peppers in our local area. If you encounter the last one who pounds chili peppers, then the next one will have to gamble, and it will be even more troublesome to encounter those who don't eat chili peppers, sweeping left and right, and even having to rinse with water.
And processing grain on the mill, etc., it was the stepmother who carried the grain with a three-inch golden lotus, and I held a broom, and on the stage, I followed my stepmother with a fart.
At that time, especially in the late fifties and early sixties of the last century, it was the most prosperous time for the trough mill in our hometown, you see, basically every morning morning, as long as it is ordinary weather, not windy and rainy, the trough mill in my hometown began to be busy. If you're late, you'll have to queue up.
Rolling back and forth, it connected us to the source of our life, and became the various ingredients that we relied on for survival at that time
When the grain began to be milled, the stepmother cleaned the belly of the trough, poured the things to be processed into the mill, spread them thinly, and then pushed the big stone roller down and rolled it back and forth. At the same time, I also ran back and forth left or right, helping my stepmother roll the big stone roller, and just like that, the stone roller rolled back and forth in the deep stone trough, connecting our source of life, and many grains and so on were endlessly crushed back and forth, becoming the various ingredients we relied on for survival at that time, that is, becoming the source of our life, the pillar of our strength.
In short, most of the edible materials that are not in large quantities and cannot be processed on the mill are processed on the trough mill in their hometown. Therefore, the trough mill in our hometown witnessed the hard and sad past of the people in our hometown at that time. At the same time, it also witnessed my stepmother pedaling the three-inch golden lotus and toiling the groove.
On the one hand, she sat down cross-legged and helped her father pull the saw
Although the stepmother is a woman, she can endure hardships and will run the family. I remember that in the early 60s, my father was a carpenter, and sometimes he needed to sawn large pieces of wood for woodwork, so he had to cooperate with two people and use a large saw. At that time, I was just over ten years old, and I either helped my father pull the bend of the stream, or I didn't want to do it after a few pulls.
Seeing this, my stepmother counted me, "It's really Mangzhangsan" ('Mangzhangsan' is a term used by my stepmother to count me when I was a child, referring to no perseverance in doing things, and I can't persevere), while tiptoeing on her little feet, sitting down cross-legged and helping my father pull the saw, and at that time, my stepmother was already nearly fifty years old, and there was still a pair of "three-inch golden lotus", and she was still decent.
I also remember following my stepmother to pick up wheat. It was the early 60s of the last century, and it was also the second or third year that my stepmother came to my house, it was a difficult period for the country for three years, people generally did not have enough food to eat, and white flour was very scarce at that time, so in the summer of several years, my stepmother had to pick up ears of wheat under the scorching sun with her pair of "three-inch golden lotus".
But just like that, the stepmother still didn't care, and went to the scorching sun to pick up those pitiful ears of wheat.
After the summer solstice, the wheat field of the production team was harvested, but at that time, the collective did not allow people to pick up wheat casually.
At that time, the yield of wheat was not high, and after the production team collectively picked up, the remaining ears of wheat can be imagined.
Look at it! In the open field, the sky is clear, there is not a single cloud in the sky, the sun bakes the ground hot, the sun is like a big fireball, hanging high in space, the direct sunlight is so hot that there is nowhere to hide, the weather is so hot and humid, there is not a single wind, and the thick air seems to be frozen.
Besides, the land where the wheat was harvested was full of wheat stubble, and if she was not careful, she would be stuck in the hips, but just like that, the stepmother still ignored it and went to the scorching sun to pick up the few ears of wheat.
The stepmother called it "grinding stubble".
Under the scorching sun, her stepmother is still her signature dress, with a black gabardine tweed placket on the upper body, black gabardine wide pants on the bottom, a pair of "three-inch golden lotus" black Daphne embroidered shoes, a white belly towel on her head, and a cotton bag under an apron tied around her waist. I was only about ten years old at the time, and I was picking up the ears of wheat with my stepmother.
Whether that scene is really like the famous Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi's "Guanjiamai";
......
The feet are steaming in the summer and the rustic, and the back is burning in the sky,
I don't know the heat, but I regret the long summer.
And there was a poor woman, with her child by her side,
The right hand holds the relic, and the left arm hangs the basket.
Listening to their words, those who hear it are sad.
The family land lost all the taxes, and they were hungry.
......
In that way, at the end of the day, the stepmother could pick up 357 catties, and then the stepmother rubbed the ears of wheat, cleaned them up, stored them, and then pounded them into whole wheat noodles (we call them a package of noodles locally) on the "trough mill" in her hometown to make up for the lack of food.
Later, the production team smashed chemical fertilizer, at that time it was called fertilizer flour, generally ammonium nitrate fertilizer, at that time it was packaged in kraft paper, if it was damp, it was like a stone, very hard. I remember when I smashed the fertilizer at that time, I always used a sledgehammer to smash the fertilizer into small pieces, and then my stepmother smashed it with a small hammer, and then I had to sift it down with a sieve. At that time, in order to build roads, every family had the task of smashing stones, and I first used a sledgehammer to smash large stones into small pieces, and my stepmother used a small hammer to smash small stone seeds suitable for paving roads.
Later, I looked at the children. Looking at children, a local dialect saying, refers to children, that is, at that time, in order to improve the attendance rate, let young women participate in production labor, entrust their children to some elderly women to take care of, at that time, look at the children for a day, earn two divisions, if a worker is a dollar dividend, see a day children can earn two cents, if it is five cents dividends, see a day children can only earn a dime.
Watching my stepmother do something with a pair of "three-inch golden lotus", it is inconvenient to do anything, at that time, I wondered very much, why should a good pair of feet be wrapped like zongzi?
Why do you want to wrap a good pair of feet like zongzi?
According to the stepmother, at that time, all girls had to bind their feet, and if they didn't bind their feet, they would be looked down upon by many people, and they couldn't get married, and if they couldn't get married, they would have to be raised by their parents at home. So no matter whether the parents can't bear it or not, they must force the girl to bind her feet.
At that time, I heard my stepmother say, "A pair of small feet, a jar of tears." "It is very painful for a girl to bind her feet. Her stepmother said she was four or five years old, and when she was an adult, people began to bind her feet.
When wrapping, first bend the four toes other than the hallux toe to the soles of the feet, wrap them tightly with white cotton strips, and take them astringent and not easy to loosen. After the foot shape is fixed, put on "pointed shoes", and the family members help them walk during the day to move the blood, and at night the foot cloth is sewn with thread to prevent it from loosening. When he was seven or eight years old, he bent his phalanges, tied them tightly with a footcloth, and tightened them day after day to deform his feet, until he walked only on the big toe at the end of his toes.
In short, the pain and helplessness of foot binding are unimaginable to girls now.
People call the wrapped feet "lotus", and the feet of different sizes are different grades of "lotus", those larger than four inches are iron lotus, four inches are silver lotus, and three inches are golden lotus. The "three-inch golden lotus" was considered the most beautiful little foot of a woman at that time.
After the woman is wrapped enough, her "three-inch golden lotus" becomes the most private part, which must not be seen by strange men.
But at that time I had seen my stepmother's little feet, and as a child I loved to read. At that time, there was no electricity in the place, and often when I was reading under the dim kerosene lamp, it was basically the dead of night, and it was often the time when my stepmother Cheli (in the local dialect means repair, here means pruning) to wash her "three-inch golden lotus".
The stepmother first warmed most of the washbasin water in the sand pan on the fire, and took out her foot-trimming tools, small scissors, knives, and grinding stones, and so on, and waited for the water to heat up a little, and then untied her footcloth. The footwrap was really smelly and long, it seemed to be seven or eight feet long, and I didn't usually see my stepmother wash her feet, as if I only saw her wash her feet once in ten or eight days or longer, so it smelled very good.
When the water was hot, the stepmother brought the washbasin to the junction between the fire and the kang, sat on the edge of the kang, and began to wash her feet.
"Three-inch Golden Lotus" sounds good, but what I see is a pair of strangely shaped pale feet. Except for the big toe, the other four toes are bent inward, becoming a plane on the sole of the foot, only one big toe is facing forward, which looks very abrupt, and the flesh of the heel is wrapped in the center of the foot, which is really shocking and miserable.
Every time I think about it, it feels very scary and painful.
And the stepmother's foot washing process is also more complicated, first simmer the feet into the boiling hot water, simmer for a while and then wash left and right, wash slowly after washing, cut with small scissors, cut with a knife, grind with a foot grinding stone, in short, it is very troublesome, it seems to take two or three hours or more.
After cutting the feet, two smelly and long foot wraps and cool boards (socks in dialect) should be washed clean, and baked on the fire neck (the section between the fire and the kang in the local dialect) to dry, so that the first Ming (the first dialect indicates the day) morning, get up early to wrap the feet.
Her stepmother said she was four or five years old, and when she was an adult, people began to bind her feet.
After everything was cleaned up, I poured out the dirty water for my stepmother and continued to read under the kerosene lamp, and my stepmother often said when she was lying in the bed, "It's so comfortable, I have survived my sleep again, and the word "boil" fully reflects the satisfaction of a low-class ordinary person.
And when did the trend of foot binding among Chinese women begin?
There are different theories, and the more common saying is that the queen of the Southern Tang Dynasty had palace maids and concubines, who were delicate and good at dancing. It is destined to be a golden lotus, six feet high, decorated with treasures, net belt Yingluo, the Chinese work is Seruilian, so that the concubine wraps her feet with silk, bends up to make a crescent moon, wears plain socks in the dancing lotus, and whirls with the state of Lingyun. Later, this wind spread from inside the palace to outside the palace. Some people generally believe that this is the beginning of women's foot binding.
The old society took the small as the beauty of the "three-inch golden lotus"
In the Song Dynasty, women's foot binding was gradually promoted from the court to the people, and at the end of the Song Dynasty, there was a trend of "being ashamed of big feet" in society. In the Ming Dynasty, the trend of women's foot binding was more prevalent, and they all thought that it was fashionable, and the prostitutes in the fang song all used small feet as a tool to flatter men.
The ancients believed that a woman's feet were small and pitiful. Because of the small feet, walking gracefully will also make the man think about it, and he can "enjoy it during the day and play at night". Gu Hongming, a Chinese scholar at the end of the Qing Dynasty, said: "Foot binding makes blood flow upward, which makes the buttocks plump and sexy." He thinks that European women wear high heels in the same way as they wear small feet.
In ancient times, many people, especially those of culture, were "foot worshippers" and chanted about the "three-inch golden lotus". For example, Su Zizhan of the Song Dynasty wrote a poem about women's foot binding "Bodhisattva Man", which is considered to be the earliest song of women's foot binding: Tu Xiang Mo Xi Lian Chengbu, long sorrow Luo socks Ling Bo go. I saw the dance back to the wind, and there was nowhere to go. Stealing through the palace is stable, and standing double falling. It should be difficult to say delicately, and it must be seen from the palm of your hand.
Tang Bohu Tang Yin of the Ming Dynasty also wrote a "Song of Slender Feet": The first delicate baby, the golden lotus is the best, and the pair of crested heads can be boasted. The new lotus leaves the petals and the moon sprouts, and the sharp and thin help is soft and embroidered with flowers. After parting, I don't see him, and I will give him another day. Hug your waist, put your shoulders on the shelf, and hold your hands on your back.
Xin Qiji's "Bodhisattva Man" has the sentence: "The light yellow bow-like shoes are small, and the waist is only afraid of the wind blowing down", which is often quoted by people.
The woman's foot binding completely changes the woman's demeanor and gait, and its effect is equivalent to that of a modern girl wearing high-heeled leather shoes, and produces a very restrained and delicate gait, so that the whole body forms a weak wind and crumbling, so as to produce a feeling of pity.
Later, some people simply made the porcelain wine glass into a "three-inch golden lotus" shape to "enjoy".
Some men in ancient China can be said to have become "foot worshippers" and "golden lotus addicts". At the banquet, some men often use women's golden lotus shoes to serve wine and drink, which is called "golden lotus cup". Later, some people simply made the porcelain wine glass into a "three-inch golden lotus" shape to "enjoy".
In the Qing Dynasty, it was forbidden for women to bind their feet, because the Manchu rulers considered it a bad custom. In the first year of Shunzhi (1644), Empress Xiaozhuang decreed that those who entered the palace with bound feet were beheaded. Two years after Shunzhi, women born to the people were forbidden to bind their feet.
Later, in the seventh year of Kangxi (1668), the ban on women's foot binding was lifted, so foot binding became popular all over the country, not only Han women bound their feet, but also many Manchu women have learned from it.
After the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, Sun Yat-sen officially banned foot binding. During the "May Fourth" period, foot binding became the target of crusade against various revolutionary movements and radicals, and Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and others wrote articles denouncing the destruction and oppression of women by foot binding. It was only after the Communist Party of China (CPC) entered the political arena that the Chinese government under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong truly eliminated the little feet, and Chinese women were completely liberated.
The above is an extension of the "three-inch golden lotus" after talking about the stepmother's small feet.