March 24, 2020, Xinyang Village, Zuoquan Town, Liling, Hunan.
The haze of pneumonia has not completely dissipated from people's hearts, the sky is as gloomy as people's mood, when we traveled to Changsha and Liling to Li Renwei's house, he stood lonely on the side of the road, his face full of disappointment.
Father
On September 13, 1944, the day before Tengchong's restoration, Li Yi, commander of the Fifth Regiment of the Second Reserve Division, was killed!
Thirteen years later, Li Yi's mother took the initiative and passed on Li Renwei, the newborn child of the second brother Li Xinyuan's family, to the name of the eldest brother Li Yi, and general Li Yi had a nominal son from then on. However, in Li Renwei's entire life, his father was just a distant imagination.
In 1983, when his father's rehabilitation documents came down, Li Renwei could finally raise his head and be a man, and he finally knew that his father had died in a place called Tengchong in the Baoshan area of Yunnan, a place that was a kilometer or two thousand away from him and did not know where it was.
Thinking of prostrating his head in front of his father's grave, he thought about it for 36 years, but his family was poor, not to mention going to a place one or two thousand kilometers away, in 62 years, he had been to Changsha, a provincial city 90 kilometers away from home, and he had been to the farthest place he had ever been. Tengchong, for him, is a "farthest and farthest place unimaginable".
Until March last year, we learned his story and invited him to fly to Tengchong to participate in the "Spring Festival 2019 • Please Review the Youth of the Anti-Japanese Loyal Souls" held on March 31 to worship his father.
worship
Before leaving, this honest farmer went to Liling County to buy local wormwood, duck with Liling sauce, roast chicken, rice cake, peanuts, incense candles, paper money... Everything he could bring from his hometown, he was eager to bring.
On the day of the Spring Festival, in front of the tombstone of the general of the Twentieth Army, Li Renwei could finally kowtow to his father in front of his tombstone, 75 years after his father's sacrifice! Finally the father is no longer a distant imagination, he said, the father's hands seem to travel through time and space, through the name on the tombstone to hold his hand, the fingertips came a chill, that is the father's body temperature ...
Go home
After last year's worship service, Li Renwei took out a small jar he had brought and brought some dirt home from behind his father's tombstone in the cemetery, when he told us that his father's remains had become integrated with the mountains, rivers and mountains, and could not be found, "But I still want to take him home..."
On the morning of February 3, 2020, a phone call from Liling woke me up, and Li Renwei, who was honest on the phone, asked me: "Is this year's Spring Festival still held, can the Tengchong National Cemetery still be open normally, I want to take my children to see the place where my father sacrificed, and worship my father in Tengchong for the last time." ”
At that time, I couldn't reply to him, and no one knew when the epidemic that had swept the world would stop, or how risky it would be to gather a large number of people to worship during the Qingming Festival. I can only persuade him not to go this year, after all, the Tengchong National Cemetery has also been temporarily closed, and he may not be able to see his father's tombstone when he goes, and he was full of regrets on the phone that day.
Haruka Matsuri
On March 24, when we went to his house, he pretended to calmly tell us, forget it, this year's epidemic is serious, there is nowhere to go, when the Qingming Festival comes, he will invite out the grave soil behind the can of his father's tombstone at home, put his father's photo next to it, make a few dishes, and then burn some paper for his old man's home, make a remote sacrifice at home, and don't think about the whole family to go to Tengchong to worship.
But then, he suppressed his tears, pointed his finger to the southwest, the direction of Tengchong, and added: "But my heart, go to Tengchong, in my father's place." The square world of Li Jia Lane, where his father was killed, had appeared countless times in his dreams in the past year, and the tombstone full of the name of the anti-Japanese general of the 20th Group Army of the Expeditionary Army reminded him all the time that his heart was there, in the distant city of Tengchong.
I took out the notebook I had brought with me and played out a short video of his father's worship last year, and when the background music of the requiem sounded, his whole world seemed to stand still, only the cigarettes sandwiched between his fingers were burning.
He didn't wake up until the cigarette burned out to his fingers, a picture that felt inexplicably painful.
Then we fell into a long silence...
clear and bright
There is no extra land in the village to repair the cemetery for General Li Yi, and last year, after Li Renwei returned from Tengchong, he thought that the only way to go was to start from his own vegetable field and flatten the vegetable field for his father to repair the tomb. Even if there is not even a crown tomb there, even if there is only a small jar of father's grave buried in the tomb, but when he arrives here, his father will even go home.
The vegetable field was under a hill, and there were two ponds not far ahead, and Li Renwei, who could not afford Mr. Feng Shui, felt simply that it should be good to have mountains and water.
"I don't want to, I don't want Tengchong anymore, even if I have discussed with my wife and children countless times that I want the whole family to go to Tengchong to worship this year;
Don't want to, don't want Li Jia Lane, even if the son has already taken the Qingming Festival leave years ago;
Don't think about it, my father knows that when I think of him, I will come to see him in my dreams..."
Tonight at 21:45, Guangdong Satellite TV will tell the story of Qingming, Li Renwei and Spring Festival in 2019.
On April 3 this year, we will launch an online spring festival ceremony, even if the offline spring festival activities can only be suspended due to the impact of the epidemic, but the youth who have been assembled 5 years ago to complete the review of the loyal souls of the War of Resistance have never left!
Even if we can't go to the scene this year to worship the incense offering, even if we can only sacrifice the heroic spirits on our mobile phones, these mountains and rivers will be our witnesses.
75 years ago, the righteousness of heaven and earth reverberated everywhere in this mountain and river!
75 years later, we sacrifice heroic spirits from afar, so we ask these mountains and rivers to rely on them!