There is a mound not far from the back door of my house. The villagers call this mound a "small hill".
There is a towering ancient tree growing on the hill, and three adults can hold it together.
On the Jianghan Plain within a radius of hundreds of miles, this quaint tree is simply a god-like existence. Because except for this quaint tree, no tree has exceeded its circumference and height.
Listen to my mother (born in 1918): This tree has always existed when she married my father from Jingtan Township, Lu City, Tianmen. According to the villagers, this quaint tree has a history of at least 300 years.
It is like a respected and weathered elder, protecting the peace of the country!
The ancient tree is two meters above the ground, and there are three huge branches. One of them is facing east. One branch is heard from my mother that it was sawed off by the Japanese living in the Zaoshi bunker and burned it as firewood, leaving a huge tree hole.
When I was a child, this tree was my childhood paradise. I often climb up to dig bird's nests, catch dragonflies, and pick the fruits on them to eat.
As night falls, people who have worked for a day move out of the bamboo bed, take out the mat and sit around the cushion under the plain tree, chatting, laughing and laughing.
What impressed me the most was a group of young people listening to my father’s lecture on “Xue Rengui’s Conquest of the East”.
Although my father is illiterate, he has amazing memory and phonetic expression skills. He is the backbone of the village's literary and artistic abilities, and is proficient in everything from fishing drum and colored lotus boat . You can sing whatever you see and sing.
After returning home from the country, he participated in the construction of Xiangyu Railway . He was a vicious person for life, and was poor and did not urge to be a child, and he did not write a essay to be a mortal.
One afternoon after school, I climbed to the top of a branch facing south.
In order to prove that I went to the highest point (30 meters), I hung an empty wine bottle with hemp rope on the branch, which made the villagers shoot with bricks and tiles every day.
I don’t know how many days it was shot down by Lasong, a friend from the same village.
Later, the two branches facing south and west were broken by strong winds, and from then on, the Pu Tree lost its vitality and left a 2-meter-high stump.
Due to material scarcity back then, the stump was chopped by the villagers every day and chopped the axe and burned it as firewood.
But my mother said: Ancient trees have souls, so I don’t want to take advantage of this little thing.
Just like that, watching this quaint tree disappear under my nose.
My old house
Times are long and the world has changed. This ancient tree that brought me endless joy in my childhood will always be submerged in the long river of history. Its majestic body will always be frozen in my memory.
I miss this ancient tree in the west second house of Xinhua Village, which will always live in my heart.
October 8, 2022 at Guangzhou No. 9 Mansion
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