Written by Zhu Haiyan
Initially, I felt and imagined the Xiqi River from my second brother.
The second brother was studying in the county seat at that time, and when he was studying in the county seat, there was a ferry on the Xiqi River. At the ferry, a farmer surnamed Sun built a small wooden boat to transport passers-by from east to west. The second brother's way of study was not from Wangshi and Madian to the county seat, but from Sun Shuizhai to the county seat by boat. In this way, the county seat and my village formed a straight line relationship between east and west, reducing the distance by more than ten miles. The second brother, who is studying, always takes a boat to walk round trip on the Xiqi River every week. I envy him. I think that a young man with a schoolbag standing on the bow of the broken boat with the wind (the waves are advancing, how much like Jiang Tao who went out to study in "Red Flag Spectrum", standing towards the bow of the boat, the truth, the ideal is like a gust of river wind pouring into his arms. I have this kind of experience when I was a teenager, how can I not point out the country, inspire words, and have the world in mind!
(Image source: Internet)
In addition, my feelings for the Xiqi River originated from my relative, who was the daughter of my grandfather's sister, who called my grandfather my uncle and my father cousin. In terms of generation, I should call her cousin. Her family lives on the east bank of the Xiqi River, and her family has never asked which township or village they belong to. Because of this kinship, she came to my house once a year to visit my grandfather. But I don't like this cousin, I think she likes to talk big. Whenever she came to my house, she always said how good Hedong is, how rich the people of Hedong are, how backward Hexi is, and so on.
In the 60s of the last century, my father, who had been working since the founding of the People's Republic of China, had not yet worn a watch, and this cousin had already worn a shiny watch on her wrist. I felt from the bottom of my heart that she looked down on our family, and the reason why she still walked into this house was because there was her elderly uncle, my grandfather. After my grandfather died, she never came to my house again.
My cousin's expression and tone of voice made me often think about the land on the east bank of the Xiqi River, how did it get rich? Why couldn't Hexi get rich? Is the Xiqi River a boundary river between the rich and the poor?
The Xiqi River flows quietly, wealth grows on the east bank, and poverty spreads on the west bank.
Later, when I grew up, I realized that Hedong was rich because it was close to the county seat, convenient transportation, and convenient transportation conditions, which were suitable for the formation of a commodity economy. Hexi's poverty is due to the blockage of rivers and inconvenient transportation, which hinders the development of the commodity economy.
/Catching soft-shelled turtles (picture source network)/
The further understanding of the Xiqi River is because of the child who can catch the king. He was my teacher's son, a few years older than me, and he was very naughty when he was a child, and his academic performance was very poor, and he was big when he entered the class. His father said that he was not born to go to school, and he couldn't study until the fifth grade of primary school, so he dropped out of school. After dropping out of school, I don't know who learned a set of skills to catch the king. He carried a coarse cloth bag on his back every day, walked around the Xiqi River, and rushed back at sunset, and caught a bag full of Wang Ba. The peculiarity of his ability to catch the king is really unheard of and unseen. When he looked at it and fixed his eyes, it seemed to others to be an identical piece of silt, and as soon as he pulled it into the mud, he took out a king. Such a peculiar ability to make money is breathtaking.
The villagers wrote a limerick poem for him:
Catch the king eight by the Xiqi River,
Rijin has money to spend.
Born with a pair of "old turtle eyes",
Slipping through the water is better than raising cattle and horses.
The boy took pride in catching turtles, and said, "As long as the water of the Xiqi River flows, I will never have enough money to earn." ”
/Anhui Lixin Xiqihe National Wetland Park (picture source: Internet)/
The people of northern Anhui are not like the people of Jiangnan, who are not good at fishing. Although the Xiqi River is a large local river, there are egrets flying together, but there are no fishing boats singing at night. There is no sail to advance into a great river, and there is no boat to cross. Day by day, month by month, month by year, a great river became the independent kingdom of the turtle catcher. As the saying goes, rely on the mountain to eat the mountain, and rely on the water to eat the water. Many people on the river on the Xiqi River also want to learn the skill of relying on water to draught, and countless people carry wine and meat to his disciples, but none of them have learned it after all. There are a lot of comments among the villagers, saying: His "old turtle eyes" are not learned, but born.
A homeless man who walks on the Xiqi River all day long, with his bare feet, wrote a legend that no one has cracked.
Now, this turtle catcher settled on the bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai with a value of 100 million yuan, and he has the first pot of gold to determine the ideal direction with his peculiar ability to catch turtles, and thus laid the foundation for his life's wealth. Can you solve the mystery of his life in the Xiqi River, which has been flowing for many years?
[iv]
/Today's Lixin Xiqi River (Image source network)/
When I was 12 years old, my aunt's Yongxingji wanted to set up a commune, and the newly established commune needed to build a house, and bricks were needed to build a house. In that twenty or thirty miles of land, the only place that can produce bricks is along the Xiqi River. The village where the commune is going to buy bricks is called Sun Shui Zhai, which is quite similar to the gathering place of heroes in the green forest who live in the water in martial arts novels. Sun Shuizhai is located in the bend of the Xiqi River, filled with a vast momentum.
At that time, the defeated uncle had not yet been liberated, and my uncle's family was very difficult, in order to solve the problem of my own school tuition, during the summer vacation, I helped those strong laborers to go to Sun Shui Village to pull bricks, and I could earn six cents a day. In a summer vacation, I don't remember how many days I pulled bricks, and I don't remember how much money I earned. But I remembered Sun Shui Zhai and the Xiqi River on the edge of Sun Shui Zhai Village. The brick factory in Sunshuizhai is not on the bank of the river, but in the bay above the riverbed. The embankment of the river is an unequal irregular distance from the river, in that irregular land, due to the rise and fall of the river, there are no crops, but many persimmon trees and jujube trees are planted all over, and there are patches of bamboo forests between them, which are sparse and dense, dense and sparse, some places are dense and impermeable, and some places are sparse and can be walked. A few old brick-burning kilns are just behind the woods, behind the kilns is the high yellow embankment of the Xiqi River, and in front of it is the rolling blue river.
/Labor in the brick kiln (picture source: Internet)/
The soil used to burn bricks is the clay on the embankment, because it is viscous and plastic, and its delicate texture and organic matter are very suitable for making high-quality bricks, and after firing into bricks, it is hard and very strong.
As far as I know, the Xiqi River is a natural river, but judging from the high embankment, it is also a river that has been continuously repaired and excavated by artificiality, otherwise, how can the embankment have the high loess like the Great Wall for burning bricks? This river was built in which generation, was it the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty? In ancient times, when the productive forces were extremely underdeveloped, in the era of sparse population and lack of labor, with what kind of bravery and hardship did the ancestors of this land be able to build and dig such a magnificent river. Perhaps, it was the baskets of loess they carried up from the river that became the raw materials for future generations to burn bricks hundreds of years later.
At that time, for me, a child who grew up on the plains of the Ichima Flat River, I had never seen mountains, I had never seen hills. So I took the undulating and irregular river bays and high embankments on the bank of the Xiqi River in Sunshui Village as mountains and hills. Here I saw the magic of the plains, and I knew the moving shock brought by the geographical environment.
The road to pull bricks ashore is a long slope. Caves were dug in the steep walls on both sides of the road where people could be hidden, and black locusts of uneven height grew next to and on the top of the caves. Obviously, those caves are not like the caves on the Loess Plateau, which can be inhabited, and the caves here are the masterpieces of the amateur labor of the children of Sun Shuizhai when they were herding sheep. Here, the plain loses its meaning, and the banks of a Xiqi River are like the sand table of war, and the soldiers and horses played by the children play a creative "war" to their heart's content, among them naturally there are "Little Soldier Zhang Ga", "Little Hero Yulai", and "Double Gun Li Xiangyang", in the land of their hometown, they reproduce the wonder of war.
/Villages on the banks of the Xiqi River (picture source network)/
During the War of Liberation, there was a man named Sun Changfeng in the village, who, under the leadership of the party, took advantage of the unique geographical advantages of the Xiqi River to establish revolutionary armed forces on both sides of the Xiqi River. If the enemy comes from the west, they cross the river to the east bank, and if the enemy comes from the east, he crosses the river to the west bank. At that time, the Xiqi River became a barrier for the guerrillas led by Sun Changfeng to fight against the enemy, and without the cover of the Xiqi River, the revolutionary struggle could not gain a foothold. In February 1948, when Sun Changfeng was holding a meeting in the village of Xiaoshenying, the enemy learned the information and surrounded the village in the dark night. There are eight or nine miles away from the Xiqi River, and there is nowhere to transfer. Sun Changfeng led the crowd to resist, and was finally captured because he was outnumbered. The next day, the enemy cut off his head and pulled out his heart......
But his name remained in the hearts of the people on both sides of the Xiqi River.
[v]
Xijie River Quiet Tranquility Drift.
In the years when the Xiqi River flowed quietly, I gradually grew up. I ate sweet potatoes, soybeans, sorghum rice, and rode a dilapidated bicycle, crossing the Xiqi River from the Xiaonigou Bridge or from the Dabukou Bridge to my favorite county seat.
/Ferry (picture source network)/
I have also crossed the river from the ferry in Sunshuizhai to the county seat many times. If it's a hot day, the ferryman is always shirtless and swaying and bracing. When there are no women crossing the river, he also dares to row with his bare butt. At this time, the Xiqi River is like a mysterious world, the east bank of the river is a dense sorghum field, and the west bank of the river is also a dense sorghum field. It seems to have laid a big stage for men to be strong. The ferryman said that the river is a man's world, and the boat is a man's world. There are no women on the boat, the man is bare-bottomed, and no one says that he doesn't know how to be polite, and no one says that he is a hooligan. Ferrymen often chatter with boat passengers, climb relatives, and get closer. As for the boatmen, they often have dry tobacco pouches in their mouths, and they smoke while looking at the water, and they don't know what they are thinking. After meeting the business guests tower boat, after a polite exchange, the ferryman started a complaint, telling how the ferry did not make money, and he planned to drive the boat to Huainan, pull some coal, pull some wood, and do a business in Lixin, a place where coal and wood are lacking. But the next day, the ferryman was rocking the boat at the ferry. The following year, he was still ferrying at that crossing.
The Xiqi River is a beautiful river, but it is not a river of trade, not a river of commerce, not a river of market, perhaps because the commodity economy in this area is not developed enough, perhaps because it is located in the plain, the highway has met the supply needs of people, maybe because the materials produced here are not rich enough, it does not need to squeeze into the sea of the market, so it flows naturally and cleanly, and has nothing to do with industry and pollution for hundreds of years. It feeds the healthy children of both sides of the strait with extremely pure and sweet milk.
The Xiqi River, just like this, all the way, just like that, almost every Lixin son and daughter has crossed such a river in front of their eyes, with a grateful mood, it is affectionately called the mother river, like the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, by the people of their hometown chanted, no matter how far you and me are from this river, this river will flow in the heart or dream, and maintain a continuous relationship with this river.
/Lixin An unpolluted Xiqi River (Image source: Internet)/
Whether it is a river in a narrow sense or a broad sense, it is a kind of material real geographical space, or it is the hometown and hometown that are closely related to the individual's life, because the individual's life flows and swayes here, so it breeds a unique and deep emotion, and in the series of actions and thoughts such as leaving the hometown, returning to the hometown, and nostalgia, the river of the hometown is a heavy topic that cannot be bypassed.
On the other hand, the river of the hometown not only exists as a material geographical space, but also a cultural space containing rich social, historical, humanistic and other factors, and is a synthesis of spiritual and cultural characteristics such as cultural traditions, customs and customs in a specific region, with metaphysical colors, and a certain poetic and even religious mystery in the hearts of many people. China is a large country nurtured by river civilization, and many inland rivers have become the closest "countryside" to people, or the rivers themselves are an important part of the countryside.
(Image source: Internet)
However, I regret that my understanding of the Xiqi River in the countryside is too superficial, and I have not really entered its body and mind. I remember the first time I went to the county seat from the North Road through the Xiqi River, and it was someone else who took me on a bicycle. The man who took me warned, "Don't look under the bridge when you cross the bridge!" but I still sneaked a look. The bridge is really high, and the river under the bridge is clear and flowing south. People who live on the plains will be shocked to see this kind of landscape. Later, after walking a lot, I realized that this kind of precipitousness was really an ordinary scene. Now it seems that it is not a strange thing for people who have not stepped out of that land to think of cattle as elephants.
It was still when I was recommending workers, peasants and soldiers to go to college, and I, as a young man returning to my hometown, was also recommended. At that time, my writing was so good that it became the talk of many people in the county. Soon after the exam, I rode home from the county seat, and the daughter of a county bureau chief insisted on seeing me off. When she arrived at the Dabukou Bridge, she got out of the car and said, "Let's walk across the bridge, shall we?" Looking at the west bank of the Xiqi River from the bridge, sorghum is also in full bloom, and looking back at the east bank of the Xiqi River, sorghum is also in full bloom. She looked at the river of her hometown flowing south at her feet, and asked me very seriously, "What are your plans for the future?"
This is a topic related to the future of life, and I don't have the courage to answer this question because I haven't completely jumped out of the farm.
Silence, long silence.
After that, there were no more words, no laughter. We each pushed our carts and slowly measured the bridge and the width of the river. And it is difficult to calm down. What is the width of the river in the heart? How to measure it?
Soon after, I left the Xiqi River, not into the campus, but into the barracks, and the river of my hometown flowed endlessly in my chest.
Sometimes agitated, sometimes soothing, shouting, moaning, singing, laughing...... (End of full text)
Introduction of Zhu Haiyan
Zhu Haiyan, a native of Lixin, Anhui Province, enlisted in the army in 1976 and served as a soldier, platoon commander, deputy instructor, and cultural officer of the division's Political Department in the Seventh Division of the Railway Corps.
In 1983, he was transferred to the "Railway Soldier" newspaper, and in February 1984, he was transferred to the "People's Railway" newspaper and served as a reporter, chief reporter and chief reporter. In 1998, he served as editor-in-chief, president and editor-in-chief of China Railway Construction News, and a senior reporter. In March 2010, he was transferred to the Engineering Management Center of the Ministry of Railways as the deputy director at the bureau level, specializing in the writing of railway construction reports.
The winners of the 6th Fan Changjiang Journalism Award are the "four batches" of talents in the national propaganda system, leading figures in China's press and publishing circles, and senior experts directly controlled and contacted by the central government. He has won the China Journalism Award eight times, won the first and second prizes of provincial and ministerial news awards more than 90 times, and won the "Five One Project" award of the Central Propaganda Department for his long-form reportage "There is War in the North". He has published 40 collections of various works, with a total word count of 20 million words. He enjoys the allowance of the State Council and is a member of the Chinese Writers Association.
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