"A village banquet became the last farewell ceremony for the villagers. 3 years ago and 3 years later, all that time has left behind, there is only a sigh between leaving and staying."
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Houying Lane is in In a fork in Xihong Road, the quietness here and the noise of the city are only separated by an alley. Many people may not know that this century-old village on the busy Xihong Road is disappearing.
A century-old wooden house, narrow alleys, messy wires, vegetable fields, and temples. It is obviously in the center of the city, but it seems to be stopped in the past and moving forward slowly. And all this is about to be changed by the old reform and relocation.
The water bills in Houying Alley are still in April; the couplets on several doors have not faded yet and look very new; the iron gates that were dismantled said that the conscription date is until June this year.
was caught off guard, and the story of Houying Lane was about to come to an end. The villagers held a village banquet as a final commemoration.
Fuzhou is a city with many gods. Every Jingshe has a patron saint of this land. It is a kind of belief and an emotional bond for residents within the territory. This rural banquet in Houying Lane was the birthday banquet of Yuan Zhenren in the territory. Although he is a local god, Lao Cai, a resident here, is still willing to call him Bodhisattva.
He seemed enthusiastic during the introduction, and repeatedly talked about his plans for the village banquet: celebrate the festival for the children the day before, hold a lottery to heat up the atmosphere, and hold another village banquet to celebrate the birthday of the Bodhisattva on June 1.
△Lao Cai
3 years ago, we visited Houying Alley. Residents at the time said: "The demolition here has been talked about for more than ten years, but there has been no movement."
html After 2003, a reader reread the old article and wrote: "The land here has finally been acquired and will be demolished. There are already people in the alleys. The buildings are empty, leaving only the vegetable garden in silence." (Click here to view the old article)
What does demolition mean? It could be a brief inconvenience, decades of memories, the beginning of a new life, a dispute, the breakdown of a neighborhood, a home reduced to rubble. "We have to demolish everything here, except the temple, because there is no place to house it," Lao Cai said.
When everything turned into ruins, only this temple was left, facing the changes of the city alone.
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『1』
Farewell once
This birthday party is not an easy thing. After repeated discussions between the villagers and the expropriation unit, the relocation date was postponed until after the birthday of the gods in the territory. The villagers felt that the Bodhisattva's birthday party could not be held in advance.
The water and electricity supply in Houying Alley also stopped gradually. Lao Cai and the others had to connect the water and electricity themselves to complete the preparations for this country banquet. This is the last reunion of their village. Everyone knows that there is no chance of seeing each other again.
Three years ago, this was a grocery store. In the photo, you can see the residents here playing mahjong. While four people are playing the game, five people are watching. Sit and chat, the grocery store in the village is often the best place to gather after dinner. Even three years later, they are still used to standing at this intersection, exchanging their differences after moving.
The most conspicuous thing now is probably the word "Zheng" with a red circle. The messy graffiti announces the future destiny. It has to be said that it is a bit punk.
△The current Houying Alley and the Houying Alley 3 years ago
31 On that day, the sky was drizzling, and it was already 6:30 in the evening when we arrived at Houying.
Along the way, you can see children in twos and threes carrying the small gifts they drew, running, jumping, and playing with their friends around them. The parents standing at the entrance of the alley chatted about the recent situation while their children were playing.
At about 7 o'clock, the villagers who helped prepare the village banquet started a celebration banquet. The people at the two tables were extremely enthusiastic and invited us to drink and eat. "Eat whatever you want, eat whatever you want, you're welcome." Lao Cai entertained us warmly. He has lived in this area for more than 20 years.
During the village banquet, four thick incense sticks were placed in front of the temple door. Red candles, fruits and peanut oil were placed in front of the statue. The incense sticks were lined up densely in front of the incense table. Most of the people in the temple were villagers with higher seniority, and they were all particularly concerned about this Bodhisattva's birthday banquet.
A whole row of electric vehicles are parked in the alley. In villagers' homes near the temple, dishes are placed on one or two tables.
What used to be the most ordinary daily life in the market becomes special on days like this. Soon, this place will be transformed into what the city looks like now, and scenes like this will become increasingly rare amid constant transformation.
Neighbors usually mean a kind of kindness and companionship. In addition to chatting and making friends together, during the New Year and festivals, each family will prepare a piece for each other to make rice dumplings. If something happens at home, as soon as you step out the door, neighbors will help each other. That's why there is this saying - distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors. However, this lifestyle has gradually become history and a strange experience in modern cities.
Our attachment to the land and our expectations for the ties of neighborliness cannot be understood until we lose them. I can't help but think of the sentence in Luo Dayou's "Lukang Town": "People in my hometown get what they want but lose what they have."
A city full of servitude, high-rise buildings residential buildings, fast-paced life and A more closed home disrupts the simple relationship between neighbors.
Each other's company disappeared during the demolition, leaving only some fragmented puzzle pieces in memories, gradually moving towards forgetfulness. People's relationships and lives are also changing invisibly. According to Lao Cai, you can only "get used to it wherever you live" because everything is "money-oriented".
△ "Thousands of households welcome the renovation, and the benefit project warms the hearts of the people." Not far away, there is a slogan "First move first to get benefits, then move and then conquer without taking advantage of it."
The village is like a whole, a station parked in the past. Time does not run as fast as in the city, but has its own fixed rhythm.
The people living here are facing a separation.
「2」
A late-night adventure in the ruins
After leaving, what was left was a ruins and debris all over the ground. In the ruins, the last traces of life still remain, including objects from the past, wall stickers, and old furniture. Time here has been displaced.
Late one night, I walked into this place again, like an adventure in a foreign land.
Houying Lane is usually quiet during the day, with only the sounds of metal security fences being dismantled and the occasional barking of stray dogs. The breakfast shop at the alley was hung with rice dumplings, and people were coming and going. Xihong Road was filled with ads every 15 seconds, mixed with the sound of traffic, engines and horns.
The dividing line between tranquility and hustle and bustle is the shallow alley leading to Houying Lane. The Houying Lane becomes even quieter late at night until 4 a.m. when the swallows and sparrows inhabiting it wake up.
Houying Lane is said to be the barracks where soldiers and horses were stationed in ancient times. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the increase in wars, more troops were transferred to the urban area of Fuzhou, especially the Drum Tower area, and the camps were also expanded. That's why there are many place names related to "camp" in Fuzhou City.
There is only a lone lamp left at the entrance of the alley. The unit building on the left is a settlement for some veterans. Now most of the iron security windows have been demolished, leaving only the room that the workers used as a temporary residence. During the day, "Old People's Day 1994" is written in red letters on the enamel basin in front of the window, recording the time this community has existed.
In the firewood room on the first floor of the community, there is an electric switch that looks like it was in the last century. Various advertising slogans are posted on the wall on the second floor of the concierge. Next to it is a small vegetable garden, and the plants growing in the foam boxes are still alive.
Taking advantage of the darkness, palm-sized spiders crawled in the ruins.The walls are already mottled, various ferns are growing on the eaves of the unit buildings, and there is a black oil stain on the exterior wall of the kitchen of each house.
Walking deeper into Houying Lane, you will feel a strong sense of alienation. Because the furnishings in the house seemed too old, and the dilapidated floor was a bit scary.
In addition to the characters "Zheng" on the outer walls, the most common characters here are actually the characters "福" and "囍". The wooden house is very large, usually with two patios and several side-by-side rooms, and is probably inhabited by a family. Some rooms have alphabets and new words taped on the walls, some have certificates of merit, some have the word "囍" taped in front of their dressing tables, and some have stickers with young girls from the last century.
Walking along the alley, there is an old house on the left that is more than 200 years old. It is the place where an aunt grew up. Her cousins originally lived there. Later, they all went abroad to develop, and she was the only one left. There are probably three or four such large houses on this land.
In Houying Alley, the time clues are confusing. One family has a long wooden balcony, half a circle around the entire outer wall of the house; sometimes you can see guerrilla cartoons on the ground; some homes are paved with old floor tiles from the 1990s; there is a vegetable patch in the village with rattan The bamboo poles are surrounded by lush greenery, and in the distance are modern city buildings with two rows of outdoor air conditioners.
△The suspended wooden balcony leads from the second floor to the third floor.
In the night, there was a family who was not asleep yet. They lit yellow lights, clearly distinguishing themselves from the tall buildings not far away.
The messy ruins symbolize the settling of the dust of this separation. At 5 a.m., breakfast stalls start to open and the city gradually wakes up.
『3』
Reconstructed Story
At night, I followed a stray cat and broke into the house. An abandoned dog was awakened and growled at me, trying to defend its territory. Outside the house, the lights of the collection office were bright all night long, waiting for the last few families to sign the agreement. The time that
belongs to here will eventually become history. A hundred-year-old house and a thirty-year-old unit are mixed together and will soon be razed to the ground.
The remaining appearances in the ruins are usually profiles of the residents' lives. There is still soy sauce in the soy sauce bottles; landscape paintings and old calendars are pasted on the back of the wooden bed frame; there are a few skewed straight lines drawn on the edge of the door, with numbers written on them. It should be the height of a child; the wooden doors, tables and chairs have been painted light blue; the hall on the first floor is covered with colorful wallpaper, and there are still shrines...
The atmosphere of life in the ruins has not followed the owner. Leaving and disappearing becomes a kind of foreign land in the city, and the true shadow of the past is found in the chaos.
Abandoned stray dogs, walking cats, swallows on the eaves, and all-pervasive mosquitoes have temporarily taken over the place, and the village seems to have regained a different kind of vitality.
Sometimes I fantasize about what a city will look like after it completely dies. Perhaps from the time when moss began to grow, to low shrubs climbing up to tens of meters of tall buildings, animals returned from the edge of the city to the center. The place gradually regained its vitality, but there was no trace of humans.
In modern cities, ruins are short-lived and will be covered by more modern buildings, just like old clothes with new patches. The city is constantly being renovated and transformed, just like a growing life.
But when old houses, vegetable gardens and high-rise buildings are in the same frame, we still have a subtle reverie and call this the magic of reality.
△High-rise buildings in the distance and vegetable fields nearby
3 years ago, most people here were eager to leave. Three years later, they had to face a new life after relocation and gradually develop new habits. It’s just that the strong human touch in the old village is lost among the new buildings and communities. The intimacy of neighbors only exists in memory.
The shortcomings of the old house are gradually revealed, including messy wires, fire risks, and water-seeping eaves during typhoons. The safety of living here is also facing a test.
All kinds of things are intertwined, making the residents’ emotions towards the village more complicated. "It would be a pity if it was demolished. It wouldn't work if we didn't demolish it," Lao Cai said while taking us around the house.
In the tide of the times, old villages are gradually disappearing. The residents have no choice but to adapt to this era as much as possible. Is the gradual indifference of neighborhood relations caused by demolition, or is it the result of the emphasis on personal privacy under the influence of the times?
The current of the era is rolling forward, and demolition and reconstruction are inevitable. The memory stops in place, and sometimes it seems at a loss when facing the coming changes.
It’s just that the feast is hard to come by, and the traces of life turn into ruins. The houses left on the land will eventually be replaced by the same commercial housing.
Objects, neighbors, relatives and friends, and past events only stay in one's memory one by one, becoming more and more profound over time, or gradually forgotten. Perhaps as the song goes: "And everything that comes and goes is like a lonely crucian carp."
"I am eager to return to my hometown."
-END-
