Trek to a big river Editor: Mu Yu

Text/Yuan Guoyan

The brilliant autumn sun shines in front of a large stone, the flat and wide stone body is soaked with the color pattern of the light, and a row of earthy yellow coarse square bricks lie like a cow's ridge, firmly supporting the stone body, on which is engraved a line of gilded characters - Wang Zhuang Dangerous Works Chronicle. It is this stele that guards the river that calls me to take the high-speed rail, across four provinces, thousands of miles to see a river.

The place where the stele stands is located in Wangzhuang, Lijin County, Shandong Province, less than 100 kilometers from the mouth of the Yellow River. I walked from the roar of the Hukou Waterfall in northern Shaanxi, imagining along the way the eyebrows of the untamed Yellow River as it returned to the sea. At this moment, this stele on the embankment stopped me first, the silent inscription, line by line of mountains and tsunami.

I stood in front of the monument and returned to the thrilling battle of the river.

On February 3, 1951, the first Ling flood break after the founding of New China occurred here. The Yellow River flows ice for thousands of miles and pours for thousands of miles. The raging waves of the mouth are raging with the evil force of destruction. "On the night of the Yellow River in the bright moon, the cold sand is like a battlefield", in the sound of emergency rescue and the howl of running to escape, people blasted and exploded ice, rushed to plug loopholes, and connected with the cold ice flood short soldiers... In the battle between people and water, one hero after another has emerged to cure the yellow.

"Here, Yu Zaotang, the first national labor model of the Yellow River, led a team to face the exceptionally large flood peak, and in the face of the severe situation of the dam collapsing and the stone used up, he invented the silt instead of stone to turn the tide."

I was immersed in the turbid waves, and was pulled into the plot of the year by the inscription - Captain Yu, the stone bag ran out! With this mournful cry, the wild waves opened their blood basins and tried to devour everything. The river worker named Yu Yutang threw down the stone bag on his shoulder and stared at the precarious embankment in the wild waves, with a dignified face. Suddenly, his gaze touched the solid mud thrown by the wild waves, and the electric light flashed in his mind, why not replace the stone bag with mud?

The pioneering work of treating the river with silt stone was born at that moment. The roaring Yellow River, in the collision and breathing, gradually returned to calm.

Now, Yu Zaotang, who had participated in 86 rescues, was gone, and the people who guarded the river like him were gone, and the Yellow River was still there. It wanders at the foot of the stele, like a large yellow flag waving in the wind, singing a gushing song, with the warmth of eternity, and is running to the arms of its mother.

However, the trek was destined to be bumpy, and the terrain held it hostage to a 90-degree bend, suddenly turned northeast, and the water rushed straight into the danger. On the long road of 5464 kilometers of "several" characters, here is a pick of the last pen, a bending hook on the capacity, destined to provoke trouble and challenge mankind.

People who have experienced hundreds of battles have already understood the temper of the Yellow River, relying on each other to soothe it, and people and water symbiosis to nourish it. As early as the twenty-fifth year of Qing Guangxu, the ancestors began to build Wang Zhuang Insurance Workers. Today, 120 years later, the office building of the Wang Zhuang management section of the Lijin Yellow River Bureau stands quietly on the bank of the Yellow River, like a fishing boat, ready to go to sea at any time. The signal tower on the top of the building is like a needle that fixes the river, firmly nailing the provocation of the Yellow River.

"Love the Yellow River, hate the Yellow River, can't live without the Yellow River." The Yellow River is the mother of the Chinese nation, but there is no perfect mother in the world, this kind and violent mother, who nourished civilization with abundant milk, and forged heroes with the cruelty of breaking mouths and breaking currents.

The Yellow River is in the history books, and the heroes are in the history books.

Three years ago, when the autumn sun was shining, I also went to the west bank of the Yellow River to find a special stele, the Dongdu Monument. That was the place where the Red Army crossed the Yellow River in the east in 1948 and left northern Shaanxi for Xibaipo. When I arrived at the ferry port in Chuankou Town, Wubao County, Shaanxi Province, I saw a busy construction site, workers wearing yellow hard hats were busy shuttling around, and a notice board stood up on the side of the road: Dongdu Memorial Park Construction Project. If you look closely, what the workers are carving on the stele is the scene of the Red Army's east crossing in that year.

Step on the yellow sand to the river. There are no boats on the water, and there is a silence of people going to the river. When the Yellow River reaches this section, the mud and sand are reduced, the water color is clear, and the fine ripples glow in the sun, as if the secrets are being spread out one by one to dry. Every wave of light is a mirror of history.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Yellow River was touched by the self-improvement of the old Qin Dynasty, and for many years it could not withstand flooding, nourishing its great cause of unification, and blocking the enemy with a gushing body. Sima Qian wrote in the Benji of the First Emperor of Qin: "Renaming the river 'Deshui' was thought to be the beginning of water virtue. "I think that in the early spring of more than 70 years ago, Mao Zedong, who had the great cause of benefiting the people, stood on the ferry, and his heart must have been uneasy. Looking at the other shore that is about to be illuminated by the light of victory, are you also thanking the Yellow River for its help?

The river does not answer. The ferry boats of that year are long gone, and there is only a row of orange-yellow kayaks, silently on the shore, waiting to surf for tourists.

Continue along the Yellow River, deliberately descending from the "Yellow River Er moraine" embankment and descending to the side of the river. In the distance, the silver waves are gushing and endless. Up close, the rushing waves are like moving peaks, leaping and leaping, preceding and following, lining up the momentum of the mountains. I want to lock my eyes on a wave, but I always see a group of ...

In the midst of my thoughts, my friends in the same group called me for a group photo. Only then did he realize that he was not in northern Shaanxi, but in Lijin County, thousands of miles away from northern Shaanxi. The river is still that river, the water is still that water, what has changed is time and space and the times, what has changed is the people and the river, and what has not changed is the national dream and the yellow river feeling.

At this moment, in front of the Wangzhuang Dangerous Works Chronicle, several old ladies carrying small stools sat on a high river dam, facing the Yellow River, shouting from time to time to their grandchildren who were frolicking by the embankment, and glancing at their wives playing mahjong under the willow trees. Two small children rode a bright stroller in the race, and the younger children ran in the back, chasing after me around the dangerous monument.

Looking around, the Yellow River is still pushing each other by waves, and the sand is rushing. I think it has traveled thousands of years, not only to go home, but also to protect the quiet of the years.

An old woman in a dark green sportswear practiced singing alone by the Yellow River. The lyrics were swept away by the sound of the waves, and I couldn't hear a word of it. But see her raise her arms and legs, one move at a time, sonorous and powerful. The arrogance of the riverside song touched me instantly. How many haojie and how many stories were integrated into her lyrics.

<h1 toutiao-origin="h4" > Editor: Mu Yu</h1>