In the daytime landscapes and situations of the fields, some poets write it as a beautiful poem, and some painters paint it into a vivid painting. In the night the poet was drunk, somewhat drunk; the painter, who was holding a delicate instrument, was singing lowly: there was no time to come into the field. So, who else tells people about the nighttime scenery and situation in the field? There is, and there is, the Scarecrow.
When I was a child, I heard my mother tell the story of Nuwa using dirt to imitate her own soil to create people, and I don't know whether it is true or not. And the scarecrow was indeed made by the farmers themselves. "His skeleton is a thin bamboo branch in a bamboo garden, and his muscles and skin are yellow straw from the next year. Broken bamboo baskets and residual lotus leaves can be used as his hats; the face under the hat is flat, and it is impossible to distinguish where is the nose and where the eyes are. His hand had no fingers, but he held a broken fan—not really, but he tied the handle of the fan with a thread and hung it on his hand. His skeleton was very long, and there was a section under his feet, and the farmer inserted this section into the dirt in the middle of the field, and he stood there all day and all night" (Ye Shengtao, "Scarecrow").
Neither the poet nor the painter knows the landscape and the situation of the field at night, and only the scarecrow knows best and knows the most. He knows how the dew spills on the blades of grass, how sweet the dew tastes; he knows how the stars blink, how the moon laughs; he knows how the fields at night are quiet, how the flowers and trees sleep; he knows how the little worms find me, I find you, how the butterflies fall in love: in short, he knows everything at night.
Zhou Wei and his friends went to the beach to collect wind, passing through a rice field, which was late autumn, the rice was full of maturity, full of golden valleys, and there were many "scarecrows" planted in the fields. Suddenly I remembered reading Ye Shengtao's "Scarecrow" when I was a child, stopping and shooting.
Now the scarecrow has less straw, more modern elements, looks wonderful, looks good, everything in the field he still knows clearly, waiting for the wind to blow through the swinging hand shaking his head, trying to scare the sparrows that steal grain.
I don't know if the scarecrow still knows Ye Shengtao, but I think the scarecrow's heart is as helpless and helpless as Ye Shengtao's scarecrow a hundred years ago, and even the timid sparrow can't be frightened.
Text/Photo: Luo Weiling
Editor: Li Huachun