New Year's Drama | The Gorge River flows westward

A grassroots troupe in Shaanxi is performing. Visual China|Figure

One

It's been many years since there has been a New Year's drama.

Eight years or ten years, I don't remember. Time is really fast and slow, those singing, chanting, playing, drums, gongs, cymbals, those dark nights and high winds and thousands of lights, those people on the stage and people under the stage, are all blown away by the wind, and they are vividly in front of them.

In my hometown, there is no way to test the year in which the New Year's drama started, and there has never been a written record. Not only the New Year's drama, but also the place of Xiahe, how many dusty people and how many swords and swords have never been recorded in hundreds of years. The people who watch the play, the people who act, live and die like a marquee, and most of them have disappeared into the depths of the years. But even if it is exquisite, in fact, there is nothing, in the end, it is just the last fun of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, there is joy in life, spring, summer, autumn and winter, there is always some fun to participate in the rising sun and the setting of the moon. What is unforgettable is those people and things inside and out, they are more exciting than the play.

The terrain of the Gorge River is narrow, it is rare to see three-foot flat land, and the Gorge River floods every year, so it is difficult for people to fix their dwellings, and it is even more difficult to build a stage in a central and spacious place. The first time I watched the New Year's Opera, I was at Xiahe Primary School, and the last time I watched the New Year's Opera, I was also at Xiahe Primary School. Not only is the opera sung in the playground of the primary school, but every time a mass meeting is held and a movie is shown, it is not an exaggeration to say that the Xiahe Primary School is the cultural and political center of the Seventy-mile Xiahe.

Before electricity, the most remarkable lighting tool was a gas lamp. I've enjoyed the brightness of the gas lamp, but I still don't understand how it works. It hangs high on the two high poles on the left and right of the makeshift stage, which is like a big ship sailing, singing the lively people who cross the ocean by boat, and from a distance, in the boundless night, a piece of heaven and earth and the crowd are as bright as day because of the gas lights. Lighting a gas lamp is also a technical job, not everyone will light it, one night, two gas lamps, to burn a lot of kerosene, good light, fuel-saving and bright, not good, oil-efficient and drowsy. In the village, only Lao Li lit it well, so when the gas lamp is used, Lao Li will light the lamp, and when it is not used, it will be kept by Lao Li. Lao Li is short, usually people call him Lao Li, and some people call him short, only when it comes to using gas lamps, people call him lamp master. Lao Li does not have many highlights in a year, some years three or four times, some years one or two times, Lao Li has a fixed number of times every year, that is, when he sings New Year's operas. Lao Li is usually rarely treated as a person, only when he lights the gas lamp, he is treated as a person, Lao Li also treats himself as a person at this time, he must eat and live with the actors, and when the play starts, he does not sit under the stage, he must sit on both sides of the stage, I don't know, I think this person is a drama officer, or a director.

The day of singing the New Year's opera is not fixed, sometimes singing in the year, sometimes singing outside the year, this half factor, the preparation of the opera troupe, the preparation in time, the play can be produced within the year, the preparation is insufficient, it should be sung at the beginning of the first month, of course, this is to say that the village's own people's grass stage team, if it is to invite a foreign troupe, it will be sung within the year, everyone watched the play, received their hearts, and celebrated the New Year happily.

I have forgotten the New Year's drama and the scene of watching the drama in the early years, and I have always remembered the New Year's drama in 1998. This year's New Year's drama sang "Baolian Lantern". Many years later, the young man who played the sheng in the band became one of my partners in the depths of the Qinling Mountains, and he told me that both corners of the troupe were sick and hospitalized, and the new top horn could only sing "Baolian Lantern" and changed to something else, so he was not sure. It is also true that the 1998 New Year's drama "Baolian Lantern" sang well.

This year's winter was a rare warm winter. As the old saying goes, spring hits six or nine heads, this year, five and nine hit spring early, spring flowers, dogwoods, dandelions bloom brightly. The bright yellow and bright yellow colors make people like, distressed, and naïve, they are just in season, and in the hearts of those who see it, they feel that a good time is coming. Some people wear cotton jackets, some people take off cotton jackets, put on brand new jackets, women's headscarves, men's hats, scarves, take off early, in short, the whole gorge river is a river and two mountains, because of the early arrival of the warm spring a year ahead of the messy dressing season.

The troupe comes from a small town in a neighboring province, and it is actually not a troupe, it is a band team of more than a dozen people, usually serving the red and white things in the vicinity. The members of the band, some of whom are self-taught, and some of whom are from professional troupes, their original troupe has gone out of business, and those who have sung all their lives can't do anything else, mainly because they love it all their lives, and they don't feel comfortable singing. A group of people get together, run in and run, and can also sing operas, sing single dramas first, and slowly, they can also sing excerpts, singing and singing, and they have become famous in the local area, singing out of the county and out of the province. This time, the troupe does not charge money to perform, in addition to food and housing, there is also a condition, in the future, they will be invited to do more things. There is nothing that everyone disagrees with, anyway, the band must be invited for red and white things, and whoever is invited will be invited, and it will cost money. There is no money for acting, which is equivalent to watching the play for nothing, and everyone is happy. Although it is a play, it can be acted, and on a cold day in the wax moon, it blows, pulls, sings, flies and moves, and none of it is a play.

At that time, the Seventy Mile Gorge River governed three villages. There was no stage, so the three village chiefs went to a meeting together, and finally decided to have ten door panels for each village. Thirty door panels, set up a stage, but also spacious, even the backstage side compartment. The people of the troupe also did not have a shelf, they helped to build the stage, and the head of the troupe was a big man with great strength, and he could lift two door panels at a time. He was originally a bricklayer, surnamed Zhang, when he was young, he made bricks and tiles for people, and burned tiles in our village once, and the tiles were burned blue, strong and beautiful, and everyone recognized them. He had no sons, gave birth to three daughters, and was fined a lot, and later, the three daughters, like flowers and jade, have many stories.

"Baolian Lantern" is also called "Splitting the Mountain to Save the Mother", and when it comes to us, people call it more directly, called "Agarwood Saves the Mother and Splits Huashan". The characters, the story, and the locations are all there, and it's clear when you hear it. Huashan, not far from the Xiahe River, many people in the village who have been to work in the Qinling gold mine have passed under its feet, seen its majesty, and liked the blue sky and clouds on its top, but how a mountain was split by an axe, no one has ever seen it. In the 1998 New Year's Opera, there were a lot of people watching the play, and the stools were lined up all the way to the edge of the gorge river. On the edge of the gorge river, the boundless reeds on both sides of the river have survived the winter and are turning white in spring.

Two

It has been ten years since Feng Qinshi left everyone, and ten years seems to be a flick of his fingers, but it is not like a flick of his fingers. Whether it looks like it or not, the paulownia tree in the west of the village has grown from the thick mouth of the bowl to the thick of the hug, and the purple flowers of the tree bloom every year and fall every year.

In 1998, Feng Qinshi was still very young, and he was as graceful and energetic as his piano sound. He turned out to be a teacher, and he didn't know what the reason was, so he came down, except for the occasional work in the field, and he shut himself up in the house, that is, he played the harp, and the sound of the harp sometimes pulled him far away, and then pulled him back from a great distance, sometimes pulling out his crying, sometimes pulling out his laughter. Some people say that Feng Qinshi is very good, and some people say that he is nothing. Feng Qinshi didn't care, just pulled. That night, he was in bed with a fever when he received an urgent notice: rescue. It turned out that "Baolian Lantern" was being performed smoothly, and the laughter below was endless, and suddenly, the huqin had no sound, and the people on the stage had no piano sound to lead, like a ship with broken sails, no direction, and at a loss. The young luthier was playing the piano, and suddenly gallstones attacked, and the pain came flooding the sea, and he couldn't hold his hands to cover his stomach. The head of the regiment suddenly ran out of ideas, as if the beams of the house had collapsed. Asked the village chief, there are people in the local area who can play the violin, and the village chief remembered a person. Feng Qinshi turned over and got out of bed, played the piano, and ran to the field.

The sound of the piano sounded again, the sheng strings and gongs and cymbals should follow up, and the people in the play returned to the play again. The man sang:

Liu Yanchang cried with tears,

Embracing the delicate little agarwood,

It's not your biological mother in the official mansion,

Your mother is Huayue Sanniangniang.

……

Huqin got up from the corner of the stage, circled on the stage, and circled around Liu Yanchang. It's like seducing, it's like whipping. Playing Liu Yanchang is a woman, a woman's figure, a man's voice, maybe she is a female voice, but if she wants to sing a male voice, she has to change her voice, and it is not easy to change her voice, if she doesn't change well, she will become neither male nor female, nondescript, but this woman did it. The change of voice has been done, but it is not easy to enter the grief and anger of a man who has lost his wife. She wants to work hard to become Liu Yanchang, feel all his pain, and always wander outside, like facing a door, which is half-open and half-hidden, and she can't get in. The sound of the piano turned into a hand, pulling her, pushing her, and walking towards the door, the door creaked open, and there was darkness in the door, and there was wind, and dead leaves were blown down to the ground. The woman suddenly felt that she was Liu Yanchang, studying, rushing to take exams, being an official, and her beloved was pressed under Mount Hua and could never see each other. Women are sad from it, and sorrow is like a spring.

No one in the audience dared to speak out, and everyone became Liu Yanchang, embracing all the grief of Jiao'er and a man. Even the children stopped frolicking. The sound of the piano, the play, covered everyone.

At this time, snowflakes floated in the sky, the snowflakes were not big or small, unhurried, it just floated, it did not seem to fall, as if it was dominated by the sound of the piano, and it was involuntarily. In this season, snow is normal, after all, it has only been spring, winter is still there, and although some of the grass buds on the mountain are sprouting green, they have not yet fully stretched their bodies. Many years have passed, and people think of the 1998 New Year's drama "Baolian Lantern", think of the snow, and still say that it is not the snow of spring, it is the snow of Liu Yanchang, the snow of the Three Virgins, and the snow of agarwood.

Feng Qinshi became famous in a fight, and no one said that he was nothing, but said that he was a lying dragon, the elephant was invisible, and the voice was silent. Head Zhang said, don't stay at home, it's a car, you have to pull goods, it's a horse, you have to ride people, come with me. Feng Qinshi followed the troupe, and I heard that later, he pulled the piano to Kaifeng and Luoyang.

Three

New Year's opera, not every year has a play, there are some years, I can't find a troupe, sometimes, there is a troupe willing to perform, but the price is high, I can't afford it. In this way, there is a blank year, and although the days go by day by day, people always feel that something is missing, as if they have eaten a meal less, or have not eaten enough. Small troupes everywhere have closed down, and the actors have fallen apart, and those who persist are rare. In the early years of the village, it was still possible to set up a grass team, but slowly, it couldn't be set up, and it was not only an economic problem, but also because there were no people, the old ones couldn't sing, and the young people went to other places to work.

The last New Year's drama I watched was Huangmei Opera "Tianxian Pei". As for whether I sang the New Year's opera after that, where the people came to sing it, and what drama I sang, I don't remember, like most young people, I was more away, less at home, and drifting around. Life has made a generation think of their hometown as if it were a foreign land.

Xiahe is a place sandwiched between two provinces and three counties, influenced by the Qin dialect and Henan opera, but it seems that it is only an influence. Three hundred years ago, the ancestors left their hometown and traveled thousands of miles, in addition to pots and pans, ragged clothes, and also brought Huangmei Opera.

Or Lao Li is responsible for lighting the gas lamp, this is also the last year to light the gas lamp, a year later, the electricity is on, the bright electric lamp, I don't know how many times brighter than the gas lamp, the gas lamp has since withdrawn from the stage. Lao Li didn't know that this was the last gas lamp he lit, but he still lit it very seriously and very brightly. At this time, Lao Li was already a little old, and he looked even shorter. He could no longer climb the pole, so he learned how to raise the flag, using a rope to pull the gas lamp to lift and lower.

The plot of "Tianxian Pei" is simple and there are few characters, I guess this is also the reason why everyone chooses to sing it. The plot is complex, it is not easy to sing, there are many characters, where to find actors, especially actors, is both hardware and weakness.

The organizer is a cousin of my family, although my cousin is not close, I have to call him when I see him on the road, I call him cousin. This cousin works in the town's highway department, and has been engaged in rural highway exploration and design all his life, he is a doer, and has made a lot of good roads, but his culture is low, and he has no professional title all his life, everyone still thinks he is a great engineer, and calls him Liu Gong. Originally, there was no highway department in the town, but in consideration of the needs of grassroots construction, a department was set up, and later, the rural roads were almost open, and this department had nothing to do. My cousin has nothing to do, but he still has a salary. Without a specific job, he fell in love with this piece of entertainment, and at that time there was no square dance, only rural opera.

The one who plays the cowherd is his eldest son, the Weaver Girl, who has no suitable candidate to find him, so he can only play with his daughter-in-law. It's also logical to act like this, and there is less embarrassment. Originally, the two of them opened a hotel outside, and they opened it for many years, and when the year closed, the business was just right, and they were dragged back by the old man. The two of them can only temporarily give their business to others.

At this time, electricity has been on for several years, every family has a TV, audio equipment, cold days, people are at home to watch TV, listen to opera, all winter, these two are the main life of every family. Uncle Cousin knows that no one will come to watch the New Year's Opera, no matter how well you sing, you can't compare it with the one on TV, he came up with a way, anyone who comes to the play, men, send a pack of cigarettes, women, send a pack of sugar. On this day, there were really a lot of people present, not for the show, but for cigarettes and sugar. Time seems to go back to that day in 1998, the playground of the primary school is crowded with people, and the stools are lined up to the edge of the gorge river. On the edge of the gorge river, the boundless reeds on both sides of the river have survived the winter and are turning white in spring.

Feng Qinshi is already sixty-five, his hair has turned gray, and his body is a little shaky, but he is in good spirits. Head Zhang's troupe has been disbanded for many years, and Head Zhang went to Haikou with his youngest daughter and never returned. The troupe was gone, and a piano that pulled the sky and the earth was useless, so Feng Qinshi returned to his hometown. On this day, he also rushed to cheer. Feng Qinshi felt that he had no money and was old, so all he could do was to hold a piano field, which was a must.

Piano, play up, drum, play up, strings, play up. The Seven Fairies Sing:

I see that he is loyal and honest and good-looking,

The bleak background is pitiful.

Where he is sorrowful, here I am troubled,

He wept there, and I was sad here.

The seven daughters have the heart to go down to earth,

and afraid that his father would be strict,

If I don't go to the mortal world, I will be alone for how long I will be alone

……

The Seven Fairies sang a little emotionally, her eyes lit up, she may have remembered her first love time, when she fell in love with her current husband, she was only seventeen years old, still in high school, and loved a person to death, so she didn't love textbooks and classes very much, so she was not admitted to college. has gained love, has no future, is it worth it, she can't tell, no one can calculate this life account.

Ushiro Glue Chanting:

满含悲泪往前走,

Seeing the intersection of the village girl station, but why,

She looked at me with her eyes,

How can I have the heart to look at Jiao'e,

My father said to me when he was alive,

Men and women talk a lot,

The big road does not take the small road,

And I saw her stop me

……

The Cowherd hadn't tasted the sweetness of love at that time, and he was a stupid and stupid big boy.

The people in the audience could hear that these two still had some kung fu, every move, every thought and singing, all online. They don't know that the hotel is bigger, there are karaoke, the guests sing, the boss also sings, the hotel service industry is no longer a Longmen inn, there is wine, meat and beds are far from enough, good business, half of it is sung.

After singing this play, Lao Li put away the two gas lamps, hung them on the beams of the house, and never took them out again. The two gas lamps have completed their journey, Lao Li's journey has not yet ended, and he is still walking, but he is walking slowly, accompanied by staggering.

My cousin never organized a village drama again, and the next year, he suffered a stroke, and since then, he has never spoken again. I remember one year, helping people blow up rocks on the side of the road, he happened to pass by, saying that the explosives had damaged the road and that he was going to call the police, and I never liked him again.

If this cousin can still organize a play, I don't know if anyone will watch it, maybe there is, maybe not. With the Internet, everyone is brushing Douyin, unless the local drama is more lively and attractive than Douyin.

My cousin's son and daughter-in-law returned to the southern city and continued to open hotels, three years ago, the hotel industry was in a depression, it is said that they performed well, and developed an entertainment program "Tianxian Pei", with a lot of Tianxian and a lot of wild mandarin ducks.

Four

I haven't been back to my hometown for three months.

When the car entered the Gorge River, it was already dark. The headlights turned on, and bright pillars of light swiped on the side of the mountain and the river. During the dry season, there is hardly any water in the river, and the sound of water can only be heard in places where there is a drop. The riverbed is wide and narrow, nine bends and ten bends, the white vast things are full of it, because of the situation, they are abundant and mighty, waving the flag and shouting, the front does not see the beginning, the back does not see the end, that is the reed flower.

Only the reeds are still there. It has no intention of witnessing anything, but it has witnessed everything, and it has no intention of saying anything, but it has spoken everything. It witnesses the journey from a teenager to middle age, and witnesses the light and shadow of the New Year's drama from rise to decline.

Luhua goes to the end of the world every year, it is another country opera and New Year's opera, it sings strong, soft and gentle, sings along the Yangtze River until the sea, sings to the wind, sings to the water, sings to heaven and earth.

Hi Nian

Editor-in-charge: Xing Renyan