Long Yingtai: It is difficult to cross the mountain

Hey—how are you today?

......

How is today? Do you hear me?

He recited poems and chanted melodiously in the ancient voice of Hunan and Chu: The sun is at the end of the mountain, and the Yellow River flows into the sea. He tests you to recite:

The heavens and the earth are far away, and the universe is infinite...... It is difficult to cross the mountain, who is sad and lost the way? When we meet in Pingshui, we are all guests from other places.

He asks you to write calligraphy, "with your elbows raised, sit upright, and your waist straight":

"Pengzhi migrated to the south of the underworld, the water hit three thousand miles, the one who fought to rise was 90,000 miles, and the one who went to rest in June. "Wild horses, dust, and creatures. The firmament of the sky, its righteous color and evil, its far away and no extreme evil, its eyes are also, if it is, it is already gone.

You ask, what is a "wild horse"? What is "dust"? Is it the "wild horse" galloping that causes the "dust," or is the "wild horse" just "dust"? He said that it refers to life, and no matter how brilliant and vibrant life is, it is just the breath of the earth, like a wild horse, like dust. But it doesn't matter, you'll understand it when you grow up.

He wants you to recite the "Presentation Table." You don't know why, but you didn't ask much, and you didn't rebel, because, at the age of twelve, how much you like words:

The minister secretly said: The minister is dangerous and provocative, and he is murdered by Min. When the child was born in June, the loving father saw his back, and when he was four years old, his uncle took away his mother's will. Grandmother Liu Shuchen was lonely and weak, and she was raised by her relatives. There are few ministers and many diseases, nine years old is not good, zero Ding is lonely, as for the establishment...... The cocoon is independent and inseparable. And Liu Shu's infant illness is often in bed. The decoction of ministers has never been abolished......

He sat in a ragged rattan chair and wore a white undershirt, which was thinly washed, and that's what you think "ragged" means. It's hot, the old electric fan is blowing in the corner of the wall, and Galagala seems to be disintegrating and scattering at any moment. He chanted a sentence in a thick Hengshan village accent, and you followed a sentence in standard Chinese. Reading "Independence and Shadows", he sighed and said, "Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful." "

Then, out of the blue, he asks you to take that shoe out of the drawer and give it to him.

Actually, it's not shoes, it's cloth. The cloth, cut into the shape of a foot, is stacked layer by layer, sewn into it stitch by stitch, and sewn into a thick cloth sole. It turns out that maybe there is no known suit, you see it is just a faded whitewash. Too many times, he tells you the origin of this "one sole", and you have long been uninterested. Anyway, the artillery fire had already hit what river and city, and the train was no longer working, so he went to the foot of Hengshan Mountain for the last time to see his mother, and he said "love yourself" - Hunan said that grandma "loves yourself", and you "love yourself" are collecting firewood in the tea forest. At the time of parting, on the muddy loess road, "Aiji" stuffed the sole into his arms, and said with tears in his eyes that he could not afford to buy cloth, and the rags he saved were only enough to sew a sole. "Son, you're going to come back in it. "

He took out his handkerchief, the square-lined cotton handkerchief, folded neatly, sat down in the wicker chair, and began to wipe his eyes, tears still dripping on the gray soles of the cloth shoes.

You calculate that he was twelve years old, and he was only forty-six years old that year, which is younger than you are now. It has only been fourteen years since the panic of war, the division of the country, the mourning of life and death. The idea of going home to see my mother in cloth shoes is probably still very vivid and strong. As you remember, every day there were "missing person notices" in the newspapers, in which wives were looking for their husbands and fathers were looking for their children, and that in three days, two people committed suicide by lying on the rails, and the reports were all called "a nameless corpse."

Did he really want to talk to you, when he ordered you to take your shoes?

During the day, he wore a dark woolen police officer's uniform and patrolled the streets with great vigour. When acquaintances gathered, someone would always ask his mother if he married him because he was so handsome, and his mother squinted at him, with a little pride, "Yes, he came to Hangzhou on a horse wearing long boots." When I arrived at my silk village, I pretended to buy something and talked ......to me," he laughed, "At that time, there were many Miss Hangzhou who wanted to marry me......

The streets of the countryside are full of life. The shops are full of squid skewers barbecuing on the street, long benches for old women to bask in the sun, half-woven fishing nets and fishing gear for aunts, and vats selling winter melon tea and grass tea, all crowded to occupy the only road in the village. Sometimes, a few black-haired pigs swayed over and lay down in the sun when they were in the street. When the passenger bus entered the village, it was blocked in the middle of the road. You see him leading a couple of police officers, yelling at people to pull things aside. From time to time, someone invited him in for a cup of herbal tea. You don't know how he communicates with the villagers, his Hokkien is impossible for anyone to understand, and his Chinese language is often laughed at. His Hunan accent, you listen to it, but you don't bother to learn it. You learned standard Chinese, the kind of Chinese that you participate in speech contests.

At night, he sat alone on the tatami mat of the Japanese-style dormitory, reading the newspaper and listening to "Shiro Visits His Mother", always singing along with those lines: "I am like a caged bird, with wings that are difficult to spread; I am like a tiger leaving the mountain and lonely; I am like a shallow water dragon, trapped on the beach......". When the strings passed through the door, he "got the long time" and hummed to the accompaniment, his overlapping legs swaying to the beat. "Shiro Visits Mother" is simply the background music of your whole growth, and you are familiar with every word and every sound of it, but you have to wait forty years before you understand its meaning.

Or, when Ai Ji stuffed his shoes into his arms, he was also extremely impatient? It will take decades for him to understand when the white mountains and black waters are exhausted and there is no way back?

You want two children who grew up in a foreign country to get close to him and please him. "But we have nothing to say to him." Moreover, he doesn't talk much anymore. "Yes, I don't know when it started, his walking steps have slowed down, his back that has always been straight is a little bent, and there are fewer and fewer words, and there is more and more time for silence. Strange, when did it start? Apparently for a while, you didn't even notice it.

In this way, you say, you two go to the competition, and whoever has the topic can make "Yeye" open the conversation box, who wins. One hundred. The boss knows a lot, and when he throws out a few questions in a row to lead him to speak, he answers in monosyllables, "Hmm". "Good".

"Not bad". You prompt the boss, "Ask him what his hometown has." The boss asked, and he said,

"Yes...... Camellia oleifera, white flowers, camellia. "

"What else?"

"And ...... Lizard. "

"What??lizard?" both children pricked up their ears, "what kind of lizard?" chameleon?"

"Gray," he said, "but there is a blue, very bright blue stripe on the back." "

He stopped talking, no matter what the child asked.

You give the dick a look and whisper in his ear, "Ask him, ask him how he was with his mother when he was a child—"

The second child said in a crisp children's voice, "Yeye, how did you and your mother when you were a child?"

"My mother?" He was eating with his head down, but suddenly raised his head, very energetic. "I'll tell you—" He put down his chopsticks.

The kids are snickering at you, kicking their feet under the table.

"One day, I was coming home from school and it was snowing heavily – it was a two-hour walk from school. The snow was so white that it pierced my eyes and I couldn't see. When I got home, I was cold and hungry, and my mother brought me a bowl of white rice—" He stood up, gesturing his body and his movements to where he and his mother were. The children laughed, and the boss lowered his voice to protest, "No, you have to share a hundred yuan with me, and your mother will help you cheat—"

"I took the rice bowl from my mother's hand and wanted to put it on the table, but my eyes were dazzled, and I didn't expect that when I didn't put it on the table, the bowl hit the ground with an 'empty' sound and broke, and the rice spilled on the ground. "

The second brother was about to kick his brother back, but his brother sternly "booed" him and told him to be quiet; "Yeye" was in tears and choked up, "My mother is so sad." She didn't know that I was dazzled, she thought I didn't have any vegetables, only rice, and got angry and hit the bowl. She herself was so cold that her hands were purple and blue all day, and she could only eat porridge, leaving dry rice for me to eat, and as a result, I hit the only bowl of rice on the ground. She's hugging her head and crying......"

He couldn't stop crying, and said, "I'm sorry for my mother—"

The children look at you and whisper, "You're so bad." It's all you. "

You get up, pour him a glass of hot water, and say, "Dad, can you teach the kids how to read poetry?"

He wiped the corners of his eyes and became happy again, "Okay, let's teach them 'the end of the day', right?"