Heyang is my hometown. This has been burned into my life since the moment I was born in 1966 and cannot be erased.
When I came into this world, I didn't cry like other children, but I didn't say a word, and my eyes were closed. The midwife couldn't feel my pulse, couldn't hear my heartbeat, said I wasn't alive, and asked my parents to take me and bury me. My parents did not give up, my father quickly went to invite the old Chinese medicine doctor in the village to see, the old Chinese medicine doctor diagnosed me and said that I had extremely weak signs, gave me a needle, said that the next day when the sun came to the west window of the courtyard and did not cry, it was not saved. That's what my mother told me later.
The hardships at birth foreshadowed the ups and downs of my life and the tenacious vitality.
In the year I was born, there were many changes in the family, first my grandfather was pulled to criticize and beat himself because there was a land in the family before the liberation of livestock, and then my eldest brother and sister died one after another. The eldest brother had just finished studying medicine at that time, and was about to work, after doing farm work, he fell into the water when he washed his hands in the waterlogged pond on the east side of the house, he could not swim, others saw and quickly took the hoe to save, the hoe that was caught fell, and the person who carried the water quickly used the water burden to save, and the result was that the water carrier hook that was caught fell off again, and there were fewer people in the afternoon, and it was the summer rain after the waterlogged pool rose over the water, and the big brother finally drowned. Years later, I learned to swim and learned that the water at the edge of the waterlogged pool is a steep slope, and when a person falls into the water, he will suddenly leave the shore far away. In the autumn, the eldest sister also died of abdominal pain.
My mother blamed me for the death of my grandfather, big brother and sister, believing that I had killed them. Because my mother was greatly hit mentally, she rarely cared about me, often scolded me, and my childhood was basically spent with my second brother, who managed my food, housing, and transportation.
I didn't have any impression of my grandfather, big brother and sister. The death of his grandfather was a tragedy of the times, and it was also the result of his lack of strength in his mentality of suffering setbacks. My father said that when my grandfather went to my uncle who worked in Beijing, my uncle asked him to go back and sell the family's livestock and land quickly, but my grandfather did not listen, which eventually led to tragedy. The death of the eldest brother, want to come today, can not be explained, is fate. The death of the eldest sister may be acute appendicitis, when medicine was not developed, and rural people lacked medical knowledge and failed to treat it in time.
Due to the high composition of the family and the small body, when I was a child, few people played with me, and a classmate in the same group during elementary school often bullied me, which made me form a taciturn and introverted and cowardly character. Fortunately, at that time, my memory was very good, and after going to school, other students could not memorize the texts, I could memorize them, so I was very fond of the teacher who beat the hands of the students with a latte ring. At that time, the winter was very cold, and we all carried an iron brazier to school, and now we can still remember the black road on the faces of the students who could not recite the texts and were beaten by the teacher with an iron ring ruler.
When I was in school, there were almost no extracurricular books, and 10 groups of students had Chinese textbooks from the Republic of China period at home, so I borrowed them to read. Later, he borrowed chivalrous mythological novels such as "Seven Heroes and Five Righteousness", "Sui and Tang Dynasties", and "Journey to the West" from the same group. My liking for literature, that little bit of knowledge, chivalry in character was formed at that time.
When I was in high school, mathematical chemistry was a mess, but I was better than most of my classmates in Chinese and English. The Chinese teacher often used the composition I wrote to read to the students in the composition class he led two classes, praising me for having a certain writing foundation; the English teacher asked me to represent the school to participate in the county English competition, and I won the seventh place. My spoken English is very bad, but I admire myself in the written test. In the year of the college entrance examination, my English score was 99. The total score line of the Xi'an Outer Courtyard is 20 points higher, but unfortunately the volunteer did not report it.
When I was a child, there was a date tree and a grape in the backyard of the family, a toon tree on the west side of the yard, an apple and pear tree in the north of the yard, a pomegranate tree next to it, and a mulberry tree in the south, all of which my mother asked my father to plant. When I could climb the tree, the tree was already very thick, and I often went to climb the tree to pick the jujube apple and pear mulberry before it was ripe, and when my mother saw it, she scolded me loudly, afraid that I would fall from the tree and fall or fall to my death, and my father did not say a word or say anything about me. My mother came from a large family, she was wrapped in her feet since she was a child, she was thin, but she was very skillful, she could cut clothes, she could draw shoes, and her food was also very delicious. Because of the drowning death of my eldest brother, my mother strictly forbade me to swim in the waterlogged pool, and as long as I found out, I would inevitably be beaten and scolded. She would whip me and pinch the inside of my thigh with her hand. This scolding continued until I snatched the whip and threw it on the room, and never hit me again. I always remember that the first novel I bought was "Stone Ride", which cost more than 1 dime and bought it after I climbed a tree and picked a toon and sold it.
Before graduating from high school, I had never seen a train, and the farthest places I had ever been were Heyang County and Hancheng County, and I went by bicycle, and I went back the same day on the same day, a total of two times each. Although there was no problem with ordinary undergraduate students in the college entrance examination, I went to a normal school because of the error in the evaluation of volunteers and the first enrollment of teachers. Before work, the farthest place I went was Xi'an. All this has caused me to have a small and narrow vision after I entered the society to see things and look at problems.
After a few years of college, I barely learned anything, which may be related to my lack of love of learning. After participating in the work, I learned that the village where I was born was very much from the beginning, it was the fiefdom of xia qifeng branch "Youxinguo", which was called "Qinzhuang" in the Xia Shang dynasty, called "Xinguo" in the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and after the King of Zhouping of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty moved the capital to Luoyang, the Xinguo was abolished and merged into the Jin State, and the name of the village was changed to "Youxin Village", which was referred to as "Xincun" during the Ming Dynasty, and it has been called to this day. In the southeast of the village, there is the tomb of Shangxian Xiang Yinyi. The allusions recorded in the history books that "Yin Yi cultivated in Xinye" and "Shang Tang Three Hired Yi Yin" all occurred in Xincun. Heyang is the birthplace of the Book of Poetry, and the opening "Guan Ju" tells the love story of King Wen and Tai Ji that took place on the banks of the Yellow River in Heyang last week. But none of this had an impact on my growth.
When my parents were alive, I had to go back to my hometown every year, alone when I didn't start a family, and as a family after I became a family. At that time, every time I went back, I had to take the train early in the morning, and then reverse the bus, and I couldn't get home until it was dark. Special ordeal. The golden water ditch to be walked in the middle of the light, before the bridge was repaired, it took more than 40 minutes for the shuttle bus to pass. When I got to the head of the village, I saw my father waiting outside. Leave home and repeat the procedure when you come back. My parents got up before dawn to cook for me and put me in the car. By the time the highway shortened the road, I bought my own car, and I could make a round trip a day, my parents were gone.
My parents' graveyard was buried in the contracted land allocated to us, not far from the road, where my grandparents, uncles and aunts, and my eldest brothers and sisters were buried. That large piece of land was originally our family's, but after liberation, it was divided into another group, and the graves were gradually leveled by others. When their parents were alive, they saw this situation and were powerless and asked to be buried in the contracted land after death. This is where they are smart with their grandparents.
Standing in front of my parents' graves, when the sky is clear, you can see the Yellow River more than ten miles away to the east. I have only been to the Yellow River Beach two or three times, and my parents said that there used to be our family's land there, and I have no impression.
Fragments of the past string together my sporadic memories of my hometown. After my parents died, I spent less and less time on the sun, but every time I went back, there was always an indescribable sense of intimacy.
In Baoji for more than thirty years, the ups and downs during the period are difficult to say a word, but fortunately, there are noble people supporting all the way, and it is still safe and secure.
Speaking of which, I only lived in Heyang for 19 years, and when I was 22 years old, I went to work in Baoji, and then got married and had children. It is said that Baoji has a greater relationship with me, but in my heart there is rarely the same intimacy as for Heyang, I think it may be because my blood is flowing with Heyang blood.
From the easternmost part of Shaanxi to the westernmost part of Shaanxi, from the Yellow River to the Wei River, it is also somewhat interesting. Nowadays, it is not because it is my hometown, but more because there are my grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers and mothers buried there, and that is where my roots are.
Time flowed forward like water, I lived in the westernmost part of Shaanxi, stumbling all the way forward, and my hometown was getting farther and farther away from me.
I'll be out of this world on an autumn afternoon of this century, walking calmly, with the sun shining outside the window, and you'll see a big bird flying by. If my son erected a monument to me, the inscription would read "xxx, a native of Heyang, Shaanxi."
Source: Wentan, Shaanxi
Author: Ma Gaoqiang
Editor-in-charge: Wang Qing