Yin Zhongxue: A Hometown Without Legends

no legendary hometown

Author / Yin Zhong learn

home on the Great Plains is a very humble small rural areas. Because the village was small, the ancestors directly used "Xiaotun" as the name of the village. The Great Plains and Mapingchuan are magnanimous. There are no ups and downs, few gullies, and the scenery is the everlasting autumn yellow and summer green, dull and boring. After walking for ten miles and eight miles, three hundred miles and five hundred miles, the cloth shoes with melaleuca bottom were worn out, and they still felt that they were spinning in place. Involuntarily, you lose your interest in walking. Unprovoked will give birth to a small, helpless, sad feeling. When
was young, the Great Plains were sparsely populated, and there were fewer roaring vehicles. Walking in the paddock in spring, the wild flowers next to the Loess Road are blooming lonely. Although bees and butterflies are camping vigorously, how much noise can a group of small insects and ants make on this vast plain? Looking from afar, there is a farmer who plows the plow in the distance, plowing the field like snails. If you are closer, you can hear the farmer's whip and the sound of cows, but you can't hear it in the distance. The great plains are unobstructed, and there is no echo. The sound melted shortly after it came out. The Great Plains seemed quiet and lonely.
The land on the great plains is fertile and soft, and the land after spring ploughing, lie up and soft. The warm earth energy slowly rises, and the earth veins and human blood veins melt together quickly, so comfortable that you just want to cry.
Groundwater is also abundant. Two guys help each other, and they can pull out a well without stopping at noon. The water is sweet and sweet, and it tastes many times stronger than the city's tap water.

Just this kind of land,For many years, it has not been able to feed the hard-working crowd. If there is not enough food to eat, it will be replaced by melons and vegetables. Melon is not often available, and most of the time it is a "cuisine substitute". All kinds of edible leaves are called "tree head vegetables"; dried leaves, radish tassels and sweet potato leaves that can not be eaten at a time are dried vegetables; the wild, non-toxic and palatable weeds in the ground are wild vegetables. The main dish is cabbage radish. At that time, every family’s vegetable cellar was the size of a house. Regardless of the dish, the cooking method is the same: add a scoop of water to half of the dish in a large iron pot, sprinkle a handful of salt, and serve it when it is cooked. Until now, my hometown still calls "stir-fried vegetables" "boiled vegetables". In the big iron pot of generations, the boiled dishes are inseparable from the bitterness and bitterness.
is also sweet potatoes. At that time, sweet potatoes were food and not vegetables. There is a folk saying in Henan that has been circulated for hundreds of years: sweet potato soup sweet potato bun, you can’t live without sweet potato. That year and month, although the rhetoric of "establishing lofty revolutionary ideals and striving for the liberation of all mankind" broadcast from the tweeters was floating on the Great Plains, everyone's goal in life was not revolution, but: live!
On the Great Plains, naked babies were born, fluttering in this loess for a lifetime, and then blending into this loess silently. The life of a person is the life of a group of people; the life of a group of people is like the life of a person. Everyone's life formula is surprisingly consistent: birth-work-death. From beginning to end, it is a straight line without twists and turns. There is no legend, no history, no glory, and no regrets.
After thousands of years of nourishment, human temperament is just like this great plain: open-minded, not treacherous, not lying, not jealous, not irritable, not tepid, not fighting, not delusional, not Enterprising. The cold wind blew and shrank. The thunderstorm came, hid under the eaves. The government came to pay food and taxes. The robber came and hid with the cow. The house was burned, and then built. The woman was robbed, crying, cursing, and using words to ruin the robber's female relatives (whether alive or dead) in turn, felt revenge. There is a line in Mr. Lao She's play "Tea House": "The Japanese are amazing, we can't stand it." Mr. Lao She, you are so "poisonous" that you can see people into the bones.

Several legends that have been circulated for thousands of years in the village are like this: There is a bachelor named Lao Jian who drills the widow’s door in the middle of the night.The widow used a door bar to collapse the bridge of her nose; Ma Liu was naked in the middle of the night to add grass to his home called Donkey, and the called Donkey bit off the egg. He said that that day someone led a female donkey and wanted to use Ma Liu to call a donkey for breeding, but Ma Liu tightly used a donkey to mate. Everyone thinks about calling a donkey like this: You make me feel unhappy for a while, and I make you make me feel unhappy for the first time.
What a vicious call as a donkey!

My hometown, Xiaotun Village, has not had a single hero, and there has not been a robber in a century. No matter how the dynasties change, everyone will always be obedient. In the history of the village, there have been no high-ranking officials or wealthy businessmen, no scholars, and no entertainers. Even the most common blacksmiths, tinkers, locksmiths, pasters, painters , and shopkeepers are not available. In addition to farming, the crafts handed down from generations to ancestors are still farming. When I was young, there were often wandering artists who came to the village to talk about drums. These artists came from hundreds of miles away. The people in the village are both curious and admired for them, but in their bones there is a kind of contempt that is not my race. The old people warned young people not to sit on a bench with these artists, let alone eat at the same table with them. The ancient farming culture is soaked in their blood and passed on from generation to generation.
Grain has been the strongest currency in my hometown over the past century. There is food in the stock, so I don't panic. Buy a hoe for six liters of wheat, a sickle for two liters of rice, and two catties of sorghum for a catty of pigs...but it's a real price, fair trade, no deception. Grain bartering is still common in the village. The most frequently used word in the transaction is "changing", changing noodles, changing buns, changing watermelons, changing plastic basins... All kinds of taxes and fees collected in the township are grains, and the tuition fees of elementary schools are grains. Who can get the money?
People on the Great Plains do not regard individual lives as important. This can be seen from the names they give to their children and grandchildren. They are often arranged casually one by one in order: the big child, the second child, the small three, the small four, the small five... or the big happy, the second, the third, or the big expensive, the second expensive, and the third expensive. When a stranger asks where Ergui’s house lives, he is often asked: "There are several Ergui miles. Are you asking about Li Ergui or Wang Ergui."Is the bald expensive or the lame expensive?

What everyone values ​​most is the continuation of the family chain. From the ancestors to the descendants, the chain is the continuation of the family. Absolute talent is the most important thing. No matter how tight the country’s family planning policy, the head can be broken, the blood can flow, and the scalpers in the hometown are also the most like the people in the hometown; no matter the direction, no matter the future, no kick Don’t bite, just pull forward docilely. Get a whip, squeeze your eyes, and continue to pull.
Actually, the village has also changed. When I was six years old, a piece of dried elm money was scraped at the door of my house, and a few small trees were born after a spring rain. The elm sapling is now a big tree in a hug. My father was an axle man who could kill a cow with one punch. Now he has less hair and no teeth. It's as thick as a brain bag.
The small one has grown up, the big elder is old, and old to die... The village is crowded and noisy. Asphalt roads have replaced Huangtu Street, and various black-smoke machines have replaced manual labor. Work. The food has changed, and the clothes have changed. Especially the magic tricks like TV. Although it is only a small window, it reflects the various ways of life of people from all corners of the world. Look at this one, and then look at it. That house, seeing too much, can't help but make people feel excited. Especially young people, like a restless horse, burning like a ball of fire. If you can't hold it back, you will have a joy, jump high, and run violently. For a while. Seeing a blurry scene at the end of the sky, I wanted to run over to see what was going on.
The people in my hometown are a bit tired and less bloody; too stable, less agitated; too regular, less agitated Too docile, less rebellious; too heavy to sleep, less dreams.
Fathers and villagers, during the long night, wake up a little bit and have a few dreams! Even if you are dreaming of marrying a wife, No harm.

Male, born in 1965, a farmer. Henan Provincial Writers Association member, Hebi City Writers Association. Literary works with more than one million words are scattered in "Yuhua", "Mei Wen", "Yanhe", "Sichuan Literature", "Sunshine", "Henan Daily" and other newspapers. The works have been reprinted and combined A variety of selections of income.