Remembrance of Hua County in the Early Years of Liberation (I)
Author Hao Qingnian
In May 1949, Hua County was liberated, and in the autumn I was admitted to the First Complete Primary School of Hua County (now Hua County Chengguan Primary School). Two years from home, twice a week back and forth through the county town east and west gates. In the autumn of 1951, he was admitted to Xianlin Middle School, junior high school for six years, still carried by the family, twice a week, still into the east gate of the county, and then north through Sanmen Lane to the north gate of the county. In the past eight years, I have paid attention to the hua county town and seen it hundreds of times. In retrospect, some of the sights from that time are still vividly remembered.
Sanmen Lane South Entrance Song Chao Feng photo
The city of Hua county is about a mile square. In 1949, the city walls were still relatively complete, and the four gates of the east, west, south, and north were all there, of which the west gate was the best and tall, and the inside and outside were stone paving; the east gate was slightly higher, and the north and south gates were shorter. The county government is basically in the middle of the city, and "the world is facing south." Inside the government gate is the detention center on the west side, on the east side is the armed forces department, and on the north side is the government office; in front of the gate is an east-west street, and there is a shoe shop on the east side of the door, and the shoe is a mute, the middle and high are very sharp, and the work is very good.
Further east there is a "Fu di chun" restaurant, a façade, the owner is a foreigner, meat dishes are more skilled, red meat boiled steamed buns are famous. From this east is a downhill slope, and the south of the slope is Hua County Hospital, with a narrow door, like the house of a wealthy family.
The building on the left is painted by Liu Hexin of Huaxian Hospital at the beginning of the liberation
To the east, to the north of the road is the "City God Temple", and around 49 years ago, there were some broken flagpoles, buckets and other things in front of the temple, giving people a sense of decay. There is a theater building on the north side of the west side of the temple gate, where some mass meetings were held when it was first liberated, and some troupes in Xi'an occasionally performed here. The east of the temple is Sanmen Lane, which is about half a mile long from north to south, and the terrain is very low, which is said to be caused by the sinking of the "Huazhou Earthquake" in the Ming Dynasty in 1556. There are dozens of families living on both sides of the alley, and the ancient locust and some toon trees grow lush, and the roadway can hardly see the sun in summer. The northern end of the lane leads to the north gate of the county seat. There are also 30 to 40 households outside the north gate, called "Lower Three Doors Alley".
Directly outside the government gate is a general store and a TaipingLou restaurant, which is not very good, and I am not impressed. They sit on the east side and the west side has the "Huazhou Chamber of Commerce", with green brick walls, which is an association organization of the Business Community of Huaxian County.
Today's Liren Lane Lane Entrance Photographed by Yang Mannian
There is a "Wansheng East" shop in the south of it, the store door is facing north, it is a larger business in the city, dealing in sugar, tobacco, alcohol and salt, and the business is quite OK. In the store, you can often see a few clerks with melon skin hats and scoops, with little blood on their faces, smiling and greeting customers. In front of the East Gate of Wansheng, there is a road leading to the east gate of the county seat. Before the 1940s and 1950s, there were no postmen in the countryside, and most of the letters from villagers in the southeast township fell to the store and were delivered by acquaintances, thus increasing its popularity. To its north, there was a firm called "XieShengkui", which seemed to have decayed in my memory, and several black shop doors were often closed.
The most lively in the county are several hotels in the west of the government. A bakery pot helmet shop, round and dry yellow pot helmets leaning vertically against the fireside, mouth-watering. Next to them are the "Mazi Hotel", "Bald Hotel" and the "Hu's Hotel" opposite them. The owner of the Mazi Hotel has some numbness on his face, and the bald restaurant owner has a little baldness on his head. The two restaurants mainly sell noodles, thin noodles, baked cakes, steamed buns and the like. The "butterfly noodles" (i.e. "slices") of the Hu Hotel are very popular because of their long oily taste. When the summer harvest of 1950 was over, my mother didn't have time to steam steamed bread, so my father sent a bucket of wheat to the Hu Restaurant for me to eat there. I eat noodles and steamed buns every day. On the twelfth day, Uncle Hu said to me, "Baby, go home and tell your father that you have run out of food and will run out of food tomorrow." "It was the best day of my eight years in elementary and secondary school.
The former site of several hotels in the west of the government was photographed by Song Chaofeng
In addition to selling passing guests, these restaurants are mainly sold to students in several schools inside and outside the city. Groups of students from school around noon came in groups of three or five, and the hotel suddenly became lively. The master of the spoon in front of the noodle pot slammed the iron spoon on the edge of the pot to make a "fluttering" sound, and the person who burned the cake also knocked a small rolling stick on the board to make it "bulenlen" crisp. The clerks shouted in their voices. After the guests are full, the runners in the hall are full of joy and bring soup and food. Students generally don't have a lot of money, buy a bowl of noodles, then soak their steamed buns in noodle soup, and spice up the salt vinegar and chili peppers in the restaurant for free. It would be a luxury to eat a bowl of "double-paired dry noodles" (two noodles on one wrist). Some clerks have a good memory, and several customers eat several meals and report each person's accounts with a loud "one bite clear". (To be continued)
Original source: 3 reasons to recommend "nostalgia under the mountain of Shaohua"
Original author: Hao Qingnian
Compilation and editing: Huazhou Literature and History Collection