The old things of the countryside - the river of the hometown

The Yanzhuang River is an old river in the hometown, a tributary of the ancient Shushui Donggang, which belongs to the ancient water river. In the past, the Yanzhuang River originated in the northwest of Jiangzhuang on the West Xinshu River in Shahe Town, flowed through Jiangzhuang, Tangyuan, Qiyuan, Yanzhuang, Laozhuang, Jiuzhuang, Xiahekou, Yuanzie, Qianzhuxu, Heyuan, Xuding and other zhuang villages, flowing all the way to the east, merging with the Lushui River in the northeast direction of Luoyang, entering the Linhong River and entering the sea.

The Yanzhuang River was destroyed in 1964-1975 by the leveling of farmland water conservancy and drought and the boom in the construction of centralized row houses in villages, and this thousand-year-old river that spans several townships from east to west has completely disappeared.

My hometown was originally from Shanghengjie Village in Shahe Town, and when the land reform began at the beginning of liberation, my father was sent to Shahe East Township to carry out land reform propaganda and primary school education.

At that time, the village was divided into four tile houses, and there was a two-story earthen artillery tower next to the gate, the gate was facing east, and the left turn of the gate was a few tens of meters across the yanzhuang river across the village. My family lives in the easternmost part of the village, this place is not too many people, called "Dongwenwei", it is one of the parts of the village, there is a big reed at the mouth of the river in the east of the village, my childhood was spent in Wenjiawei.

When I was a child, I didn't know what the name of the river was, and few people called it by its name, but I was deeply impressed, from the Zhujia large bamboo forest in the neighboring village to the big reeds at the mouth of the river in the east of our village, I remember the riverside environment of these few miles clearly.

Although the river surface is not too wide, the widest place is twenty or thirty meters, the narrow place is only seven or eight meters, but the river is relatively deep, the river is clear, the fish upstream of the water surface can be counted, everywhere you can see the wild diamond horn and a piece of water hibiscus with yellow flowers and white flowers, we children call it "bang fork", because its leaves are not large round, one by one flat on the water, much like children playing with small copper cymbals, very beautiful.

After all, it is an ancient river, and there are many trees on both sides of it and various bushes and bamboo forests. The old bamboo forest is like a hundred grass garden, where there is everything, the bamboo forest near the river, there are many wild kudzu vines, climbing tigers, there are four seasons of dark green wheat winter grass, as well as a lot of purple flowers of the ground, half summer, plantain, wild strawberries and so on.

In the summer, there are several floods in the upper reaches of the river, and when the flood occurs, the adults often go to the mouth of the river at the east end of the village in groups to fish with swirling nets and lifting nets. Listen to the adults say, the big water is the Shiliang River reservoir discharge, so in the summer often catch to more than 10 pounds of large mouth, large carp, large blackfish, as well as the usual rare big "cattle fish", in fact, this cow fish is "carp", is a very fierce freshwater fish, ordinary fishing nets to catch it is not easy, the general fishing net it is through the net, get the fish to run the net broken.

At that time, I was young, I did not have the ability to fish, and so after the summer, when the rice was yellow and ripe, the reed flowers were put in September and October, the water in the river was less, the water flow was stable, some of our children went to the river to find a place to fish, on the shore with aquatic grass and reeds, often caught three or four or half pounds of large plate crucian carp, may also suddenly catch a big catfish big black fish. Autumn is the best season for crucian carp fishing, "Golden Autumn in October", which is a great time of year for crucian carp fishing.

At that time, we fished, there was not so much fishing tackle now, it was to cut a bamboo rod, buckle a cotton thread of ordinary sewn clothes, there was no ready-made lead pendant, cut itself with toothpaste skin into thin strips wrapped in the line, the fish hook was bought on the burden of the cargo man, a penny, the fish drift was even simpler, find a thin stem under the sorghum ear cut into seven stars floating through the line, it feels the same easy to use, not worse than the current commodity floating effect. To tell the truth, there were still many fish in the river at that time, often a handful of rice or corn ballast was sprinkled to make a nest, do not have to pay attention to it as now, add this flavor and that flavor additive, just use a handful of rice to make a nest, you can catch fish for half a day continuously.

I have loved fishing since I was a child, and slowly began to study and reform my own fishing tackle, because the source of bamboo is easy, I tried to make four pluggable and connecting fishing rods, the top rod is slightly, with a good elastic and strong southern moso bamboo branch, when there is no suitable material, simply draw a broom made of fine wool bamboo branches bought at home to process. Such a fishing rod is very convenient to take out for fishing, and there is no need to carry a long bamboo rod. By the 1970s, it was possible to buy vinylon thread, which was very strong, and there was no need to worry about catching big fish with broken wires.

In those years, there were many blackfish in this river, but because the blackfish were afraid of people, the river was slightly moving, and the big blackfish that was originally lurking under the water and grass on the shore suddenly burst into a big splash and disappeared. A neighbor told me a good way to catch blackfish at night, with a thin hemp rope with a two-meter-long sole, buckle a large hook for the eagle's beak for catching blackfish, put on a thick blue earthworm, put the thread into the water where blackfish are often infested before dark, tie one end of the rope to a small tree on the shore, or buckle on a few reeds, and then go home to sleep, go to the river the next morning to collect the line, pull the rope, there are really fish, a big blackfish that has eaten the hook, must have tossed all night and did not break free, there is not much strength, Pull it up to the shore. This method of putting the night hook is really good, so I made a few more, put down six or seven hooks every night, and went to see the next morning, at least half of the hooks were on the fish.

Spring has arrived, the small fish in the river are the most cheerful, swam in groups near the shore, and there is no one around, there is a small fish, especially like to forage on the shore, especially some people wash vegetables every day to pick up rice, and the spring peach blossoms bloom before and after the most, often a group of jumping on the water. We call it "dogfish" or "gnocchi fish", this fish is not big, at most four fingers long, but it is full of flesh, fat, translucent body, much like a gnocchi made of wheat noodles. I came up with a way to use a bamboo basket, the basket mouth covered with a piece of gauze tied well, cut a small opening in the middle of the gauze, and then throw a few pieces of broken cornmeal cake into the basket, a rope tied to the basket beam, this side buckled on the shore tree roots, the basket thrown into the water, what to do, wait for two hours, go to pull out the bamboo basket, the basket is basically gnocchi fish. Fishing several times a day, you can often catch most of the small fish.

Again, there was no pollution in the river at that time, and there were too many wild fish.

In the summer of 1991, I went to Shahe Land Station to help draw up a basic farmland protection plan, and I was fortunate to see a map of Ganyu County in the 1950s, and at this time I learned that the river that originated from the Xinshu River and flowed through the east and west of the township was called "Yanzhuang River". Yanzhuang is indeed a village through which this river flows, but there are so many villages along the way, why was it marked as "Yanzhuang River" on the map at that time? unknown. Maybe this ancient river originally had no name, but was it a new name added when mapping maps?

Our village is called the lower estuary, which is really worthy of the "estuary", and the bottom of the river is basically a sandy bottom. The underground sand reserves on both sides of the river in this area are very rich, and the fields in some parts of the village are dug down more than a meter deep, all of which are yellow sand, and the groundwater is also very rich, and there are many small quartz stone stones that are not locally available, and there are also a lot of small pebbles that are ground out of the rubble, it is not difficult to imagine that these yellow sands, very early on, are the yellow sand layers deposited by the Shandong guest water in the upper reaches of this ancient river. It is also conceivable that this ancient river may have been very wide and large, or it may have had a history of flooding everywhere.

The Yanzhuang River, an ancient river of history, has disappeared for decades now, and now in addition to older people, they can roughly say where it once was and where it was. After the 1970s, there are no traces of it on the ganyu map.

I have not returned to my hometown for decades, but the shadow of my hometown is still deeply imprinted in my memory, especially the Yanzhuang River that once brought a lot of joy to my childhood, which still appears in my mind from time to time.

2021.10 Fisherman