When I was in the fifth grade, China was going through an extraordinary period. On Sunday, Lao Yutou and I took the cloth pocket and basket to the mountains in the north of the city to dig wild vegetables and pick mushrooms. At the beginning, I didn't know anything, so I followed him. I would dig whatever he digs, and I would pick whatever he picked. He told me that I was digging mountain vegetables and pine mushrooms and . If I did this, I would definitely have a small harvest. Gradually, I gained more and more, and I was able to fill my cloth pockets and baskets. But I was still very unwilling to give up. These wild vegetables and mushrooms are not enough for our family to spend a week. One day, I saw a cluster of white mushrooms next to an acorn tree. I picked it and thought carefully that this mushroom was completely different from the poisonous mushroom I taught in nature class in school. Although I couldn't name it, I judged that it was definitely not a poisonous mushroom. I put this mushroom in the basket. When he saw it, he stubbornly thought it was a poisonous mushroom. Not only did he not pick it, he also advised me to throw away all of this mushrooms, but I still covered it with the wild vegetables I picked and took it home. After I got home, I asked my mother to find out about the neighbors in the other yard. People said that this was a good mushroom, called "hazel mushroom". My mother went home and boldly cooked the vegetables with this "hazel mushroom". It was indeed very delicious and there was no abnormality. Lao Yu later heard about this and touched my head and said, "You are still smart! This person just wants to study, and you can understand everything after reading."
life is like this. The three families in our small courtyard get along very harmoniously in this small courtyard. In normal days, you often help me and I help you. The couple of Lao Qiu family both go to work and their children are sent to kindergarten. There is no one at home during the day, and his house often has no doors locked. Sometimes when their family returns to Tianjin to visit relatives, they also hand over the keys to my grandma, because they are afraid that other relatives will not be able to enter. Lao Qiu's wife also has a younger brother who works at home and often goes to the market in the city. As long as he comes to the city to do business, he will definitely come to see his sister and bring some agricultural and sideline products, such as eggs, duck eggs, millet and vegetables. After Lao Qiu's older child went to school, the couple couldn't come back at noon when they went to work, and the children's meal became a problem. My grandmother said to them, "Let your Xiaosheng have lunch at my house. My family is yours, who will follow whoever!" His Xiaosheng is six years younger than me and is very close to me. He always sweetly chases me and calls me fifth brother or fifth brother, and pesters me to tell him stories. Sometimes when the guests came to his house, Xiaosheng would sleep at my house. At this time, he always seemed so well-behaved and obedient.
Not long after my mother died of illness, my third uncle returned from a military service. At this time, I lived with my grandmother and my third uncle. I remember that it was a Spring Festival after I went to the countryside. My grandmother passed away for a year, and my third aunt also came back from another place to reunite. She took her mother and her sister to the city to celebrate the New Year together. I didn't know that so many people came before I returned to the city, and there was no place for me to live once I came back. At this time, I felt that this place might not be my home anymore. At night, my third uncle and third aunt placed me in the small woodshed behind the room. This small woodshed may have never been lived in, and it was very cold. Aunt San enthusiastically gave birth to a stove for me, because no one had ever lived in it and the stove had never been born. So the coal in the stove is burning lukewarm. In the middle of the night, I got up because I wanted to get out of the room and felt dizzy. I staggered out of the door, and after I pulled out my hand, I suddenly fell into the snow. When I woke up, I saw Uncle San, Aunt San and Lao Qiu standing next to me. Afterwards, Uncle San told me that it was Lao Qiu who had insomnia at night. When he heard a sudden sound from the room, he thought a thief came in, so he got up to see that I was lying on the ground. I woke up my third uncle and invited a doctor. After diagnosis, the doctor said it was okay, it was gas poisoning, so it was okay to open the windows and doors and ventilate. But thanks to Lao Qiu's timely discovery, I would not die of gas poisoning, but would have been frozen to death in the snow.
As the saying goes, "A distant relative is worse than a close neighbor." This is not bad at all. My family was fortunate to meet these two good neighbors.There are three families who close the door in this small courtyard. When they open their doors, they are like a big family, living a happy life in the same big space and being the best neighbor in the world. In our daily life, we live in harmony, you help me, we are as close as a family, and we are happy. But today, we live in the skyscrapers in big cities. How many people meet each other but don’t know each other. Although they are neighbors, they don’t know what kind of people live opposite each other. Isn’t this the loneliness unique to people in modern metropolis? It is the "rebar and concrete jungle" that separates the joy of living next to each other; it is the modern fast-paced life that separates the tradition of "a distant relative is worse than a close neighbor". It doesn’t matter what causes neighborhood indifference. What’s important is how to relive the neighborhood feelings of living in a bungalow in a slum in the past. That kind of life is the phenomenon that a harmonious society has!
Written on December 21, 2005 in Danfuju
Note:
⑴. Broken half-red beans refer to broken beans picked from red beans, some broken skins, some two halves, and of course other beans with bad quality. At that time, they were all selected manually, and the high-quality red beans were said to be used for exporting to Japan for exchange for for foreign exchange .
⑵ "Lazy tofu" is a food name in Changli; it is a food made of non-oil-pressed beans such as red beans, mung beans and . The method is similar to making tofu. Red beans, mung beans, etc. are soaked in clear water, grind into slurry with stone mills, and then cooked in a pot. Add some vegetables, salt, etc. and can be eaten as vegetables.
⑶ "Nonsense" is the story.
