There was a light rain in the night, and one morning, with a cool breeze, I took a car to Penglai, my hometown of more than twenty years.
Many people tend to refer to Penglai as a wonderland. It is no wonder that the so-called Three Gods Mountain on the Sea recorded in the ancient books is not Penglai, Abbot, yingzhou? The myth of the eight immortals crossing the sea, which is widely spread in folklore, according to the white-bearded old man, is also in this area. For more than twenty years, I have sometimes missed my hometown, but not for any fairy land, but for the deep burial of my childhood dreams. This nostalgia can sometimes be a bit bitter. I remember that it was still the year of the Korean War, and one late autumn evening, just after the enemy air raids, I went to the field to breathe. Shino is covered with the medicinal scent of wild chrysanthemums and the smell of water-filled tateshina. Next to the embankment, two yellow-skinned North Korean cattle herders buried potatoes in the sand, dug a hole underneath, and ate them with dry branches. Seeing this scene, I couldn't help but think of my childhood. I think of the snowy night in my hometown when I was a child, five more days, and the strange and lonely sound of loneliness coming from the streets; I also remembered the late autumn dawn, the northwest wind whining at the paper window, and the fierce sound of military trumpets blowing on the head of the city. The hardest thing to forget is one of my cousins named Wanna, who is much older than me, who has no father and no mother since childhood, and often comes to my house to play, leading me to jump rope, flutter butterflies, and sometimes go to the edge of the sea to collect shells. There are some small eyes on the beach, and Sister Grace will pinch a straw stick into it and pick up the sand along the grass stick. Picking at the pickpocket, a small crab was exposed, its eyes were cleverly upright, like a matchstick, and suddenly it flew and ran sideways, causing us to laugh and chase. Then somehow, Sister Grace didn't come to our house. I often look forward to her, and finally one day, she sat shyly on the edge of the kang, saw me, and just smiled coldly. I was very confused in my heart, and quietly asked my mother behind my back: "Why doesn't Sister Wanna play with me?"
The mother said, "Your sister has set up a family affair, and in a few months she should be out of the cabinet, you have to learn some rules, and you can still be crazy and crazy, and make trouble with you." ”
When My sister got married, I was in school and couldn't go. I heard that the husband she married was an apprentice in a shop, and his appearance and temperament were good, that is, his mother-in-law was very strong and often gave her anger. A few years later, when I went to my grandmother's house, I saw a young woman sitting on the kang, dressed in white, with fur on the side of her clothes, obviously carrying hot filial piety. Her face was scorched yellow, her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and she had a nursing boy in her arms. I could hardly recognize this as the smiling and playful sister of Na Na before. My grandmother's eyes were red, and she told me that Her sister's husband had bookkeeped the store, lying on the table all year, tired and vomiting blood, unable to do anything, and was resigned by the boss. His illness was not light, and he died in this hurry. Sister Grace buried her face in the child's hair, whimpering and just crying. My grandmother wiped her old tears and said, "It's all fate!" How can we live in the future?"
After that, I left my hometown, and for many years, I couldn't hear from my hometown, and I didn't know what the fate of Sister Wanna was.
Somehow, when I saw those two Korean children who were suffering from war, they suddenly came to my mind. I thought: My hometown has long been liberated, and My Sister's children have long since grown up, so her life should be quite good, right? But in North Korea, in other corners of the world, how many people still live in tears! When will we be able to eliminate the war, and I can return to my motherland, return to my hometown, and with a completely comfortable mood, look again at the kind and lovely landscape figures in my hometown like North Korea? For a while, I missed my hometown so much that my heart hurt a little.
In June 1959, when the pomegranate blossoms bloomed, I finally returned to my hometown after a long absence. The car sped along the seamount, and along the way, I smelled a very familiar smell of the sea, and heard the very kind folk sound that flew into the car on both sides of the road, and my heart stirred as if it was about to melt, soft and hot. The mountains and seas and fields on both sides of the road feel very familiar everywhere, but they are not familiar. Look at the beach, there is a sand city piled up on the beach, as if it were a field where I used to bathe when I was a child. Not really. Originally, the sand city should have been a deserted hill, but now it is clearly covered with green trees. Looking at that place again, it seems to be the "school field" of the Qing Dynasty, and I used to play football when I was a child. Not really. The original "school yard" is not seen at all, and there is a large ironworks standing there. The car turned east and west, turning into a strange city, with open and flat streets, bright shops, and very lively people. I was wondering what this place was, and my traveling companion said, "It's here." ”
I didn't think this was my hometown. In my memory, Penglai is an ancient small city, with narrow streets and a cold market, and it is so prosperous now, how can I know it? It also doesn't know me at all. I walked down the street, people came and went, and no one knew who I was. Originally, after more than twenty years of going, the old people of that year were old and dead, and the younger generation grew up, where would they know me? There is no one left in the family, only an old sister who is married, and should go and see her. Along the way, people looked at me with strange eyes. I was a little timid: I was afraid that my old sister was not there, and I didn't know what her fate was.
The old sister was not there. A sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl came out of the house, weighed me closely, and interrogated me about who I was, and finally said twice, "It turned out to be the second uncle." My mother went to the street to buy vegetables, and I went to look for her. ”
After waiting for a while, a woman of about fifty years old came into the house, gently put down the basket, stared at me very gently, and said, "Are you a second brother?" I just saw you on the street, I watched it for half a day, I thought, 'This is an outsider,' and I walked over—I didn't think it was you. ”
I didn't recognize her just now. Her eye sockets collapsed, her hair a little gray, not at all like when she was younger. But the temperament has not changed, still so thick, speak slowly and slowly. She told me that she had three daughters, two of whom were engaged in agricultural labor in the people's commune, had just finished pulling wheat, and were busy planting beans and peanuts in the fields; Just now it was the youngest, studying in a private middle school, and in his free summer vacation, he embroidered flowers for the Yantai Handicraft Cooperative at home. We talked about some household words, and at the end, the old sister knew that I lived in the county office, so she asked me to come to her house for dinner the next day. I was afraid she wasn't rich in food and didn't want to come. She said, "Come on! What are you afraid of?" He pointed to the wheat dried in the big basket and smiled: "You see, this is all new, not enough for you to eat?" Last year's harvest is not bad, this year's wheat harvest is stronger than in previous years, can you still eat poor me?"
I had to say yes. I thought it was a home-cooked meal, and I didn't want to go the next day, but this old sister actually took me as a guest and put out the four most exquisite plates in my hometown: a plate of braised graded fish, a plate of scrambled eggs, a plate of fried potato shreds, and a plate of cold mixed powder skin. Finally eat the noodles, and there are freshly dried prawns in the brine.
I couldn't help but say, "Your life is good." ”
The old sister smiled casually and said, "Yes, you want something or something." ”
We ate meals and drank pear wine, talked about the situation after all these years, and also talked about relatives and friends in the old days, who died, who is still alive. I suddenly remembered Sister Grace and asked, "But, how about our cousin?"
The older sister asked, "Which cousin?"
I said, "Sister Grace." Young widowed, pulling a child, the child should have grown up long ago. ”
The old sister said, "You're asking her." You didn't see her child, and then she grew strong, and a few sticks could not be knocked down. The child was also really filial, and when he was a teenager, he went to be an apprentice and earned money to support his mother. They all said, 'This time Sister Grace can come out!' I didn't think her child was dead again. ”
I opened my eyes wide and asked, "Why are you dead again?"
The old sister sighed softly and said, "Whew! Also need to ask, anyway will not be good to die. I heard that when it was a fight against Japan, the traitor team arrested the soldiers, and the child who was chasing it had nowhere to run, so the traitor team shot and killed, and the corpse was thrown into the sea. ”
I hurriedly asked, "What happened to Sister Grace then?"
The old sister said: "She, as soon as the child dies, leaves her alone, lonely, helpless, like an idiot, sitting alone on the edge of the sea, crying for a day and a night, crying at the end and saying: 'Son, you take a slow step, waiting for your mother!' Just take the jacket and cover your face, and touch the sea. ”
I listened, my heart was so miserable, I couldn't speak for half a day.
The old sister sighed softly again and said, "Whew! She had suffered from a young age, suffered all her life, and died a pitiful death. ”
At this time, my youngest niece glanced at me and said, "Mom! How do you keep believing? I didn't believe it. If Cousin Grace could live to this day, do you think she would end up in such a miserable situation?"
That's right, good girl. Fate is not dominated by any gods in the underworld, and it is destined to be difficult to move. Fate can be overcome. Fate is not in the palm of the hands of all kinds of cannibals and goblins, and the people are rubbed with as mud, but in the hands of the people themselves, and the people can create a new life, a new history, a new destiny. And look at how the people of their hometown are urging thousands of troops and horses to create their own golden causes.
They can carve out large orchards of turquoise green everywhere on a deserted beach, planted with thousands of grapes and apples. The grapes have a rose aroma, and the apples have green bananas and red bananas, all of which are extremely precious varieties. There are also many miscellaneous fruits: purple cherries, peaches, large white begonias, etc., all in color. The sea wind is hard, and when the north wind blows in winter, the fruit saplings will freeze to death and sprout again in the spring, and then after winter, they will die half of it. The people built a windbreak around the boundary outside the orchard, planted the most hardy pines, black pines and masson pines, as well as the most abundant locust and purple locust, and planted the trees almost all the way to the sea. So the members of the commune called the previous desert beach a golden beach, and every fruit tree was called a cash cow. ......
They can also turn the poor ravines of the former barren mountains and bald mountains into green flowers and fruit mountains. The Qijia Commune at the foot of Lai Mountain in the southwest of Penglai City is one of these miracles. Originally, the peasants all felt that there was no place here: the mountains were not good, the land was not good, and the roads were not good - what hope? Water is scarce, and crops will die of thinness. There is a village called Guojia Village under Laishan Mountain, and four songs have been circulated for many years:
There are girls who do not give to the Guo family village
Carry the water to Laishan Root
Wear embroidered shoes when you go
Come back with your heels bare
You can see how hard it is to draft water. But this is all the same thing. At present, you have to go to see, the slopes are full of persimmons, walnuts, hawthorns, du pears and other mountain fruit trees. As soon as the wind shook, the green cloud-like leaves turned over, revealing a delicate yellow and fresh apricot under the leaves, which was ripening. Along the mountain, high and low built a number of small reservoirs, storing landscapes, leaving water, you must go to see Guojia Village, the watering canal is passing through that village, in front of the door is full of running water. An elderly woman in her fifties sat cross-legged on a cushion, washing clothes in front of the door, and a little granddaughter ran next to her, holding an artemisia tree to catch dragonflies. Perhaps for the sake of draft, this old lady once worn the embroidered shoes she married. I took a red pomegranate flower to give to the little girl. The old lady looked at her little granddaughter and smiled and said, "Flowers! Flowers!" But he reached over, tilted his head to the back of his sideburns, and took a picture of the water shadow. Maybe she saw her handsome face again.
The most exciting thing is the Wangwu Reservoir, which was built last year, which has a larger water storage capacity than the Ming Tombs Reservoir, but is borne by the power of a county alone. The mountains have always been rainless, nine droughts in ten years, and one year the riverbed was naked, and the grass on both sides of the river was dry. The people then chose a place called WangWu more than seventy miles southwest of the county seat, dug a mountain, and blocked the Huangshui River from the Silkworm Mountain in Qixia County, creating a vast lake. When I went to visit, thousands of farmers were digging spillways. Commissar Li of the reservoir was a warm and capable soldier who led me to stand on a high slope, with his left hand crossed at his waist and his right finger pointing at the distant mountains and near the water, telling me where to build a power station and where to open a rice field in the future; Where to plant lotus flowers, where to feed chickens and raise fish. Speaking of warmth, his words were like flowing water, gushing endlessly. The ending says: "If you come home for a few more years, you can eat the apples planted on the edge of the lake, the fish and duck eggs raised in the lake, and you can write about your hometown under the electric light emitted by the power station of the reservoir - but it is best to write on the island in the middle of the lake, when there is a sanatorium." ”
With that, Commissar Li pointed to an emerald green plateau in the distance and showed it to me. Originally a village, it is now surrounded by a lake. When I asked about the name of the village, Commissar Li said like a fountain: "The name is Changlunzhuang, in order to commemorate a hero during the War of Resistance Against Japan." The hero's name was Ren Changlun, and he was in that village. Ren Changlun is really bold and loyal to the party and the people, and has no reservations. Later, in 1943, when the Japanese devils 'swept' the Jiaodong anti-Japanese base area, Ren Changlun held a machine gun and ambushed the enemy on a hill in Qixia in advance, killing many devils, and at the end of the day, he struggled with the devils with bayonets and sacrificed himself. The people remembered his loyalty and cast a bronze statue for him locally. ”
As I listened to these words, I looked at the Changlun Zhuang surrounded by mountains and rivers in the distance, and my heart was unspeakably agitated. This man, and many people like him before and after, fought to the death in order to lift the sinister mountain that weighed on the people and realize a lofty ideal. They are dead, but their ideals are alive. Please see, are the people of Ren Changlun's hometown boldly creating their own ideal life with the same belief as him?
And today, in this warm dusk, after more than twenty years of chaotic separation, my old sister and I can rejoice and get together, is it easy? Sister Grace knows when she dies, and she will also envy the fate of the old sister's life.
The little niece finished eating, and with a little darkness before dark, she went to embroider her head again. For a moment, I felt as if the people of my hometown were drawing needles and threads in different labor constructions, and together they were embroidering a five-color painting. Wrong. In fact, the whole Chinese people are using the earth of the motherland as plain silk, meticulously and meticulously, and jointly embroidering a great masterpiece. The content of the embroidery is nothing else, it is the "Penglai Wonderland" that the people have dreamed of for thousands of years.