drink Qingjiang water people who grow up, Qingjiang flows in their blood vessels wherever they go. Whenever homesickness is touched, the source of my homesickness is always clear river. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a kite string that leads my body and mind, and an umbilical cord of life. Eight hundred miles of clear river, eight thousand miles of clouds and moon, remember each other for a long time, and the world has been entangled in my heart forever. Especially when people get old, memories come to their doors, and the past events that have walked from Qingjiang to the Yangtze River are constantly flashing back, and it is both sad and warm when you think about it.
Once upon a time, my old street and old house were in the Enshi Old Town on the bank of Qingjiang. My hometown is between the Big Cross Street and the Small Cross Street, near the East Gate Tower, leaving the East Gate Cave, and down the bluestone stairs, it is the East Gate Ferry of Qingjiang. Take a ferry, and you can get a shore and you will find the orange orchard. There is a small path leading to the ancient official road and the official slope. Going east, the Wufeng Mountain Pearl Tower stands on the top of the mountain, and the mouth of Qingjiang Gorge is at the foot of the mountain. In my memory, my hometown Enshi has the best scenery in the world, just like the white gardenia in May, blooming in sequence in my gaze.
The river outside the East Gate City and the river outside the North Gate City are actually the same Qingjiang River , but they just pass by the city and are named anywhere. Before the age of 20, I lived in Enshi; after the age of 20, I wandered south and north and returned to Enshi at the age of 40; when I was 45, I left Enshi again and chose to settle in , the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, , the bank of Xiling Gorges, , Yichang City, . In the world of the world, making a living by mediocre means that the hardships and hardships are not worthy of being told by outsiders. Our entire nation has suffered huge disasters and catastrophes. Why should I talk endlessly like Xianglin Sao? It’s better not to say it, future generations will always remember it.
After leaving my hometown, I gradually realized that the Qing River and the Yangtze River are both the basis of my blood and the root of my life. The river beach of Qingjiang, with white pebbles on the river beach, the wet sand and moss under the pebbles, and the grass growing between the cracks of the rocks. The snow-white trellis flowers in autumn along the river bank, turning into a path of memory, winding and thin and long, leading to the distance of the fog. The scene of women in Enshi carrying clothes with their backpacks, walking down the river beach from the high bluestone steps, and swinging sticks to wash clothes is always engraved in memory, and never forgotten.
Yichang on the banks of Xiling Gorge is another picturesque city, and it is a city suitable for writing essays and poems. The ancestor of poetry Qu Yuan was born in Zigui County Lepingli, the ethnic marriage envoy Wang Zhaojun 's mother's home is in Xingshan County . She has been to Xingshan County . She has been to pm countless times and worshiped countless times, and each time she has new gains. Those mountain songs of Changyang , tea songs of Wufeng , fine wines of Yiling , fine wines of Zhijiang , the story of Yuan'an Lazu, the story of Yidu Yang Shoujing, and the neighbors Shennongjia Banbi Rock and Dajiu Lake, Badong Shenniao Peak and Yesan Pass, have brought me much nutrition and subtle inspiration to cultivate my body and mind. The past is not like smoke, but like the river around me, day and night, nourishing my heavy body and soul that has suffered many hardships but longing for peace.
Qingjiang is the river of Ba people, and the Yangtze River is the river of Ba Chu, Shu and Wu. Although living by the ancient river, it always feels fresh. I remember when I was a teenager, I picked stones by the Qingjiang River, and placing them into one side, selling them to builders, earning a few tuition fees. The so-called "square" is the product of the volume of a stone, cubic meters, length, width and height. In order to save labor, my companions and I took advantage of the opportunity to put the stones in the "square" and there was no conspiracy on the outside. But the adults are cunning, and from our nervous and expectant eyes, we can see the "cause" in it. The builder came over with a tape ruler and swept us coldly with the corner of his eyes. Then he took a steel chisel and inserted it into the crack of the stone. When he pried left and right, the stone we had made collapsed with a bang. As a result, not only did I not make more money, but I rolled my eyes.
In addition to picking stones, I have dug sand, sifted sand, sold sand by the river, and carried water to the kitchens of collective units.During the winter or summer vacation, that river beach leaves countless hardships and happiness for the youth of poor families who make a living. When I grew up, I read Mencius's words: "Sincerity is the way of heaven. Thinking of sincerity is the way of man." Only then did I understand that integrity and kindness are the laws of nature, and pursuing integrity and kindness should be the rules of being a human being. Only then did we understand why we never did such stupid things again after the "Shifang Incident". In the future, when I went to the countryside to be an educated youth and worked as a worker in factories, I would have a sense of sincerity and love in my heart, and I would survive no matter how hard or tired I was. That clear river flows from my youth to my youth, flows into the old land, and the clear water of a river washes my whole life.
Where there is water, there are homes, there are nations, and there are stories and legends. Living by water is human nature and a need for survival. Enshi, especially Yichang, is born and flourished by water. A big river has wide waves, and my family lives on the shore. But tracing the root of the source, why did my hometown choose to settle down in a small town surrounded by mountains in Enshi? My father couldn't tell a name for his family's history. He only said that his ancestral home was in Qinghu Village, Gao'an, Jiangxi. When the Ming Dynasty implemented the population migration of "Jiangxi and Huguang filling Sichuan", his ancestors were "filled" to Enshi, Hubei. Perhaps, the history of each family is too long and complex, and modern people are too lazy to find their roots.
father's explanation is equivalent to not saying it. The historical materials of the Ming Dynasty's great migration are almost household names in the central and southern and southwest regions of China. Just like the big locust tree in Shanxi, almost every family regards it as the basis for the clan source, so it has extinguished the individual and long-standing incense of countless families. Fortunately, my father liked the small town of Enshi, this Qingjiang, and this land. He said that Enshi is beautiful and beautiful, and it is a good place to support the family. He worked hard here all his life, and when he was 84 years old, he finally fell asleep here forever.
My father’s hobbies are: reading books and playing mahjong. During the Republic of China period, he even stole the gold and silver jewelry from his mother when she got married and went to bet. As a result, he naturally lost all of them, and later he lost several land, which made the whole family complain. However, my uncle said that he lost a lot, otherwise once he was liberated, our family would definitely have a landlord component. Once, in order to avoid his mother's investigation, he actually put on costume and played mahjong. He wore a top hat, sunglasses on his eyes, a mustache on his lips, and he was holding his Chinese accent. My mother rushed to the casino and under the dim light, she didn't recognize him. This legend almost made us sisters laugh.
He only has an elementary school education, but he loves reading, mainly reading novels and biography. When talking about , how is Chiang Kai-shek , how is Zhang Xueliang, how is , how is Yuan Shikai , how is , Zhang Henshui , it seems that they are the worms in their stomachs, and even those curved intestines, they know clearly. He also tried to write novels, and wrote the beginning in a satin notebook, with just one sentence, and there was no further text. After his mother's death, he wrote several notes in his later years, recalling the broken shadows of the years and expressing his nostalgia and guilt for his mother. Although the words are dry and there are no details, the feelings are sincere. I regard these words as my father's confession of life. My father has no romantic stories in his life and lives a very dry life. No matter how he looks at it, he doesn't look like a man who grew up on the banks of Qingjiang River.
In my genetic gene, I inherit more from my mother. My mother's kindness, generosity, cheerfulness, integrity, strong and tenacious temperament, and her style of acting that does not cause trouble for anything and does not fear when there is something, are reflected in my personality and daily life. In contrast to my father's cowardly, cautious, and hard to move his own country, I am a restless person since I was studying. Like the gadfly that Liu Xiaofeng commented, they are the kind of people who "want to make their lives a little glorious since childhood." Liu Xiaofeng said: "The combination of the pulse of individual temperament and a certain moral ideal is really accidental. It is this accident that determines a person's life's destiny." This is my destiny.
graduating from high school in 1966. After two years of storm and storm, college recruitment was suspended. We were all sent to the vast world. It is said that we can achieve great things there. As an educated youth, it is the same everywhere. I should have gone to the countryside in Enshi, but I chose to return to my ancestral home in Jiangxi to join relatives and friends.Whether it is memory or imagination, my ancestral home at that time was a blank space without trace in my heart. In Jiangxi, he was treated as a poisonous weed and treated as a bad person and fled to Taihang Mountain again. Unexpectedly, this trip will last for 20 years. From then on, in the south and the north, in order to find a bowl of rice, they were as anxious as a dog who was stranded. However, the breath of the two rivers of the Qing and Yangtze Rivers, the indigenous peoples in the desolate mountains on both sides of the river, their stories and legends and charms became my hometown complex that broke the bones and connected the tendons, and also became the inducement for my memory and writing. Xialiba people, my nation, my identity, my homesickness.
Later, my family and I settled down in Yichang, and it was already 1993. For the first time, I stood at the gate of Yang Shoujing's former residence. I saw the river flowing into the Yangtze River and was greatly shocked. I realized that life should be like this, and literature should be like this. Don't stop learning and thinking, accumulating and creating for a little value and soul. I want to be like a drop of water, which will not dry up when it flows into the two rivers, and will flow into the sea to the east. My friend Ye Mei , who is worth remembering for the rest of my life, said to me: "After all, how far away is, no matter where, at that time, as long as I keep pursuing my dreams, it may seem far away in the sky, but in fact it is near in front of me." No matter how time passes, no matter how old the years are, my inner waves remain the same, and my watch will not change.
Because of this, after I entered the old age, my literary creation became more conscious, diligent, calmer and richer than when I was young. In addition to insisting on writing prose and lyrics, writing novels is also included in the agenda. When I first entered the literary world in Shanxi, I wrote a collection of short and medium stories. When working in Enshi Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Ye Mei read my novel and said, "Your novel is beautiful and has a tendency to be beautiful. But it is very floating and lacks something with a root." Literature said bluntly that helping each other is precious. I understand myself that this has something to do with my wandering around and living in no way. My roots are in Enshi and in , Three Gorges . I listened to her words, and after returning to Enshi, I basically did not write novels but specialized in national prose. The collection of prose "Records of Western Hubei Style" won the first Hubei Literature Award. Not long after, the Provincial Writers Association published the collection of prose "Notes from Three Gorges People" for me. Now that I am old, I picked up the novel again. No matter how well you write, after all, there is a root cause. If you fall on your own land, you will feel at ease.
I don’t remember who said: The literature of a nation originally originated from the folk literature of its own nation. Therefore, although Chinese characters are the ideologies of Tujia literature, ancient songs, epics, narrative poems, legends, etc. in its folk oral literature have strong national elements. Whether writing prose, lyrics or novels, I firmly believe in one thing: the style comes from the people, and any trick comes from the people. Growing by the ancient river, I am extremely glorious. Facing the Qing River and the Yangtze River, you can see the mountains, the water, and remember your homesickness. Time has lasted thousands of years and has passed down through generations. I must pick up my pen, follow their footsteps for my ancestors and my fellow villagers, and chant the Lower Liba people on the land and rivers that gave birth to me and raised me, and write down the memories of our nation.
I admit that I grew up drinking Qingjiang water, I grew up drinking Yangtze River water, and I grew up thriving in the immersion of Bachu culture. Reality is a flower, history is the root, and once you find the past, you will see the future. Time flows quietly in the river. My joy, my sorrow, my loneliness, my arrogance, my pain, my happiness are all the feelings and memories hidden under the riverbed in the long river of life.
So, let me tell you gently that the past events from Qingjiang to the Yangtze River are a story that will never be told. All pictures in the article are from the famous photographer Mr. She Daike's "Watching the Three Gorges - Old Three Gorges Photography Exhibition". Thank you and pay tribute to Mr. She!
Author Profile: Gan Maohua
Gan Maohua, Tujia, a well-known essayist and lyricist. Member of the Chinese Writers Association, Member of the Chinese Minority Writers Society, Member of the Chinese Prose Society, and Special Invited Writer of the Chinese Prose Network. He has served as a director of the Hubei Writers Association, a director of the Hubei Popular Music Arts Committee, executive vice chairman of the Yichang Writers Association, and honorary president of the Yichang Prose Society. He has published 15 literary works of various types, including novels, prose, and has won important awards such as Hubei Literature Award, Hubei Minority Literature Award, Hubei Qu Yuan Literature Award, National Bingxin Prose Award, Ministry of Culture Star Award, National "Five One Project" Award and other important awards. His representative works of prose include "Records of Western Hubei Style", "Notes from the Three Gorges People", "This Land and Water", "Traveling through Bashan and Chu Water", etc. His representative songs include "Women in the Mountains Calling the Sun", "Sister in Qingtan's Sister Yetan's Sister", "Hi-King Jiang Gallery Tujia Girl ", "Accusing her when she beats the piano and cheers", etc.
