Time 2021 Mid-Autumn Festival | Zou Anyin: This evening the moon is round

Text/Zou Anyin

After the hot summer, the autumn wind gradually rises, the so-called "crab leaf is green, and the white dew is frost". Watching the weather cool day by day, the yellow leaves floating on the trees returned to the earth. Whether it is rice grain or melon fruit, after being collected and stored by the farmers, the wilderness shows the color of the canvas, and the peaceful atmosphere is condensed in every household in the village, but autumn is sad!

The Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, looking at the homeland, as if seeing a canvas full of nostalgia, hanging in the courtyard of our family. At that moment, the mother showed a kind smile on her face, standing at the stove, wearing a blue apron tied around her waist, preparing the simple ingredient needed for the Mid-Autumn Festival - glutinous rice. She moved sharply, washing and steaming the freshly threshed glutinous rice to complete an emotional and ritualistic holiday feast.

In the wood stove, the flames burned fiercely, reflecting the beautiful face of Tim Chairen's sister; in the courtyard dam, the stone nest that had been returned to green had been washed, and the brother had already found a long pine stick and waited for the steaming glutinous rice to come out.

The mother ran up and down, pouring the steamed sticky rice into the stone nest by the courtyard dam, waiting for her brother to beat it hard with a mallet, and then generate a white and sticky rice dumpling; while loading them into a mud-colored enamel wine vat, sprinkling round rice koji, waiting for time to brew and sublimate.

Under the dam, in the pond, a flock of ducks flapped their wings and "quacked" and shouted, and in a moment flew into the bamboo forest to greet the chickens that were shouting and screaming there; and then they rushed to the field and stepped on the freshly grown radish seedlings. They always seemed to have endless happy words, but the small river under the field was not so high-profile, and it silently bypassed the village and flowed quietly into the distance.

As a child, I was once one of the people in this painting. I squatted on the embankment and happily washed the freshly unearthed ginger, green onions, etc., because these can be used to stir-fry meat. Imagining that my mother would catch a chicken or a duck to kill next, my taste buds couldn't help but open my mouth, and I felt that the waves in front of me were particularly beautiful.

At that time, I didn't seem to understand things very well, and I didn't quite understand the hardships of adult labor and the survival of the villagers, and the ingredients for a festival may take months of family efforts, such as feeding a chicken or duck, and the long process of a pot of wine from planting to brewing. Despite life so difficult, according to the ancestral tradition, my family attaches great importance to the continuation of each festival, and so do other families in the village.

In my mind, I think about the festival, because I eat good things for energy saving, there are meat, wine, eggs, etc.; a small age, following the flow of the four seasons, from the Spring Festival to the Dragon Boat Festival, and then looking forward to the Mid-Autumn Festival, the cycle begins, waiting for the full moon.

In the days of poverty, the rich emotional imagination is the greatest comfort that people give to life, and many stories and legends are as endless as the grass that grows on the land. My mother told us one folk tale after another, and the story about the Mid-Autumn Festival was very romantic and warm. I grew up believing firmly that there was a beautiful moon palace on the blue sky, and there was a beautiful fairy named Chang'e in the moon palace. Under the golden osmanthus tree, Wu Gang cut wood, chang'e carried the rabbit... The moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, how round.

In fact, most of the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Sichuan Basin has no chance to see the moon, and it is always covered by the gentle autumn rain, and the bright moonlight can only be placed in our hearts. It was night, the family sat around the black paint eight immortals table, burning incense to sacrifice the ancestors, while drinking rice wine, while tearing rice dumplings, eating fragrant chicken, duck and fish meat, feeling the most affection brought to us by the traditional festival of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The place of heaven, home and friends, corresponding to this traditional festival, is always the strongest nostalgia. Every Mid-Autumn Festival night, the neighbor Grandma walks on her small feet and goes door to door to bring red oranges plucked from her own tree. In the dark night, the red heart orange shines brightly and becomes the delicacy of our meal, flowing into the blood and growing up with us.

Year after year, in the courtyard dam, the tall and lush red-hearted orange trees have become the spiritual symbol of this courtyard. On its body, the flowers have blossomed one stubble after another, and the fruit has borne season after season; at its feet, it knows that the holes dug are one after another, and the dirt cut out by the ants is pile after pile. Its leaves flutter in the autumn wind and fall into the paddy fields by the ponds, becoming nourishment for the land, waiting for new greens to emerge in the coming year.

No one expected that when the new green covered the earth, the middle of the red-hearted orange tree would be empty, and it would finally return to the land where it was born. At this time, we have all grown up, the adults of that year have become old, and the grass and flowers on Grandma's grave have withered and flourished several times.

Over the years, I have traveled to many places, and I still remember that there was a Mid-Autumn Festival to go to the north and saw autumn flowers blooming scorchingly. In Tianjin, after walking through Nankai University, in front of the living room of Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao, I saw several dense begonia trees, red flowers, gorgeous and crystal clear eyes; in the backyard of the Imperial Palace in Shenyang, in the two pots of emerald green jungle, pink flowers inadvertently whitewashed the old bricks, which was the most moving color left by oleander in the deep palace; in Zhang Xueliang's former residence, a cluster of autumn chrysanthemums competing to spit out flowers brought a little vitality and vitality to this place, together with the tall plane trees. All of them show a noble and noble quality.

No matter how time and space change, no matter how regions blend and cross borders, history and the present, poverty and wealth, can not change the vigorous vitality of natural flowers, this is eternal.

Remembering last year's Mid-Autumn Festival, it was also raining, and it kept raining. In the evening, I received a call from my sister saying that my mother had been waiting for my call. Originally, I was about to call her old man back at that time. Hurrying back, my sister said she answered the phone for a while and then slept quietly. Suddenly, I found that all the previous reasons were not reasons, busy was not a reason, bad health was not a reason, busy work was not a reason, missed calls, or missed waiting and looking and mood.

Like the moon tonight, whether it's sunny or rainy, whether it's north or south, it's hanging there, perfectly. But after today, it is not today's moon, it will not always be there round waiting for you to come to you.

The most important thing in life is, after all, those who are closely related to themselves, and their feelings.

【About the Author】

Zou Anyin is a member of the Chinese Writers Association. His works have been found in People's Literature, People's Daily, People's Daily Overseas Edition, Literature and Art Daily, Selected Essays, Hundred Families of Essays, Southwest Military Literature, Tibetan Literature, Grassland, Qinghai Lake, Sichuan Literature, Peony, Young Writers, etc.; he has won the 8th Bingxin Prose Award, the 6th China Gem Literature Nomination Award, the 3rd People's Literature Beautiful China Award, the 1st Qiu Xinru Women's Essay Award, the Second Prize of the National Tourism Administration Travel Essay Contest, the 3rd Sichuan Prose Award, etc. The non-fiction documentary literature collection "Jialing River Flows In Front of the Camera" was selected as a designated in-depth life project of the China Writers Association in 2019. Published essay collections such as "Qingju on the Heart" and "Bodhi Blossom".

【"Time" Literature Column Call for Papers】

Tell true stories, your own, others'. The word count is controlled within 1500 words, and the original debut is first published. Drafts are available for sichuan province. Do not use attachments, the title must be marked "Time". Some of his works will be selected by the supplement of the West China Metropolis Daily "Wide and Narrow Alley". The author's information includes the bank card account name, detailed and accurate information of the bank and outlets, card number, ID card number, and telephone number. Submission mailbox: [email protected].

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