Today’s narrator is Ma Pengbo, who was born in Baoji City, Shaanxi Province, and then to be more precise, is actually three kilometers from the county town of Baoji Long County, Caiyuan Village. Ma Pengbo lived in this small village for nearly 20 years until he graduated from high school, when he actually left his hometown and went to college in a foreign province.
Now Ma lives in Xi’an and does book publishing-related work, as well as part-time writing. Although he now lives in the city, the stories he writes are invariably related to his hometown, or rather, to the hometown he remembers.
1、The village has changed
In the past, in the countryside, when autumn came, at 5:00 p.m., smoke rose from every house.
At the end of the school day, I looked at my village from the loess, the roofs were lined up, the green smoke was curling, and the trees were dotted with them. I remembered the scene in “Journey to the West” that I saw when I was a child, and it was exactly the same as the scene in front of me.
But now we can’t see such a scene anymore, the trees have been cut down and the kang is not allowed to burn. So the village has become especially cold.
- Rat poison sellers
My childhood home was a house facing south, with my grandparents living in the east wing and my parents, my brother and me living in the west wing. Upstairs there is a small attic for groceries, groceries piled up where the rats are particularly large.
When I sleep at night, I can often hear the sound of mice running around on the floor of the attic upstairs, kicking and tapping, as if dancing. There were even times when, half-asleep, I used to feel the mice thumping through my blanket. I took this for granted and took pleasure in getting up in the middle of the night to beat the mice.
In rural areas, mothers would usually sleep with their children in their arms, shielding their little heads in their crunchy nests to prevent mice from biting their ears in the night.
I remember one night when I was seven years old, I got my brother up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and after the covers were lifted, I suddenly found a little mouse sleeping soundly in my brother’s arms, who was also sleeping sweetly, unaware of it. I went up and grabbed the mouse by the tail and threw it outside the house.
In the past, there were many rats in the countryside, and there was one profession that was particularly popular – selling rat poison. During those years, I watched the man in our village make a fortune selling rat poison by walking the streets and alleys, replacing his bicycle with a bicycle, a bicycle with a tricycle, and a tricycle with an electric car.
Unfortunately, later the village began to raise cats, and the state control of rat poison was stricter, so the village rats gradually decreased, and the man no longer sold rat poison.
- Neuter
In the countryside, a very interesting phenomenon is that each village or rather every few villages are self-contained, in this colony, you can find any craftsman you need, such as lacquer maker, mason, feng shui master, godmother, midwife, etc. What you have in life you can almost always find someone in the village to help you out. However, although there are many professions, there is often only so much one person for each profession.
In the countryside, craftsmen from all walks of life have their own season, and they usually only appear at fixed times of the year, such as lacquer makers on the day of the three volcanoes, carpenters after the autumn, bowl bakers in winter, and spring is the season for neuter makers, who mainly provide door-to-door pig castration services.
I have a relative who was originally a singer, but later became a neuter. Every spring, he will appear in the village wearing an old-fashioned green Zhongshan suit and a locomotive hat on his head.
The other craftsmen in the countryside, such as those selling bean curd, rat poison and cotton, all walk the streets while shouting, but the neuter does not shout, and it is not good to shout. He rode an old-fashioned two-eighth bicycle, hitched his tools to the beam, stuck a wire in front of it, and hung a skein of red cloth on the wire to tell folks of his arrival by ringing a bell.
When he castrated the pigs, the adults would tell the children to stay away, but I did sneak a few times to see him.
The pigs were particularly strong, and he had to lead several young and strong men to put them down and then tie them up. Once the pigs were under control, he was extremely fast, raising the machete in his hand, and in the blink of an eye, he heard the pigs’ harsh dry howl.
The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The company’s main goal is to provide a solution to the problem.
The neuter had no choice but to lament, “I’ve been neutering pigs all my life, but I didn’t expect my wife to be neutered …… “
- Witch
In addition to the neuter, Ma Peng wavelength in that village there is another magical figure, a witch surnamed Liu, it is said that her “magic” is very large, dozens of miles around are ranked ranked in the name.
In our area, we generally call the witch “punishment god” (sound), this word is a dialect, I am not very clear which word. Our “punishment gods” are basically women, and their main job is to help the living and the dead to talk to each other, somewhat similar to the psychic witches in Western culture. In the countryside, witches are the ones who travel between the living and the dead.
In rural areas, witches are postmen who travel between earth and hell.
The witch in our village lived in a remote house at the west end of the village, which was my way to my grandparents’ house in the next village, and every time I passed by I would subconsciously speed up my steps.
In the yard in front of her door, several apricot trees were planted, and I would pass by there during the apricot ripening season, throwing stones at the trees and hitting the apricots to eat. At this time will suddenly hear a long and ethereal voice from the yard, I can not see people, only hear the horrific voice, scared to run, because I know that there is a person who can talk to the ghosts and gods.
Back then, after my grandfather died, the family invited a witch to burn the yin certificate. The witch sat on a wooden chair in the nave with a dark face. It is said that people in their profession have dark faces because they deal with the underworld all the time, their yang energy is damaged and their yin energy is too heavy.
The witch was in front of my grandfather’s spirit, directing how we should burn paper to the deceased, and when a certain amount was burned, she would ask some of the women and children to go back, leaving only two people at most to stand with her in front of the spirit.
Suddenly, her face changed dramatically, as if she were a different person, her manner of speaking and tone of voice changed, becoming just like her deceased grandparents. She became the embodiment of the deceased grandparents, she asked a question, my aunt answered a sentence, a back and forth for about half an hour. Then, without warning, the witch suddenly fell to the ground.
The family went to help her, she looked disoriented, and rolled her eyes, it looked like she had lost too much blood. Several people helped her to sit down on a chair, she kept breathing heavily, drank a lot of water, and took about ten minutes to return to her usual appearance.
In fact, in the countryside in the past, witches had a great effect on farmers, and there were really people who were very sick and miraculously got better gradually after a few spells were recited by a witch.
I think that the role played by witches can be interpreted as the counselor of rural China.
Because everyone will eventually die, everyone will think about the afterlife and where they will go after they die. This is a very ultimate and deadly topic. The existence of witches brings relief and makes people feel that there is an afterlife through this medium.
Witches broaden the field of village life.
The witch in my village died when I was in the sixth grade. It was said that one day when I went to the pharmacy to buy medicine, I missed a step and fell, and never woke up.
Over the years, it has become rare to see witches in villages near and far. But a very strange phenomenon is that there are fewer witches and more health care products, as if the health care products sellers have taken over the duties of witches, specializing in the elderly, providing them with solutions to combat fear.
5、Mike
In the northern countryside, there is another profession that has really disappeared – wheat cutter.
A wheat cutter is a professional wheat cutter. Because in northern China, according to different latitudes, different climates, the ripening of wheat everywhere is rhythmic, starting from the Qinling Mountains, from south to north, wheat is a cut to yellow.
They will rush to the Qinling Mountains when the first crop of wheat is yellow, south to help people cut wheat, all the way to the north to cut, and so cut to their own doorstep, the whole year the wheat in the north is all cut.
I have a great affection for the wheat customer.
In the past, when the wheat was yellow, the family had to invite the wheat guest at dawn. The invited wheat guest would first walk around the wheat field to measure the area of the wheat field by footsteps, when I was a child, I cut an acre of 60 pieces.
Before the sun came up, the wheat guest started to cut the wheat, and two meals were prepared for the wheat guest in a day. In the past, the rural people had great respect for the wheat customers, not simply as an employment relationship, but as guests of their own families. In the words of my grandfather, “people are to our family to do hard work, originally we have to do the work, they help us get, otherwise our wheat can not be harvested back to fall into the ground. “
After the wheat was cut, my grandfather would call a tractor to pull the wheat back, the wheat was pushed in piles on the tractor, piled up especially high. I was particularly keen to climb on top of the tractor, the tractor while driving, I was sitting there in awe, holding a tree pole in my hand to shake everywhere, walking more than passing folks see me are greeting me, joking, and throw things up to me.
When I was a kid, the autumn harvest was really spectacular, you could clearly feel everyone running on the monopoly, as if there was a race in the field, everyone was hurrying to take back the wheat in the field. Some people will stay there to see how others cut the wheat after they have finished cutting.
It was really lively!
But not anymore, now the fields are barren. The harvester came to cut, the tractor came to pull, went straight over to dry and then into the granary, and the whole process was over in two days.
Since the first combine harvester drove into our village, the lively autumn harvest scene is gone, wheat customers also gradually extinct.
6、The countryside is disintegrating without dignity
I know that with the development of the times, many occupations in the countryside are destined to disappear, I just think they are disappearing too undignified, and the countryside is crumbling too undignified.
In the past, after the death of a rural person, the coffin was carried by the young and strong men of the village, lined up all the way to the cemetery, just like in the “White Deer Plain” TV series. After carrying to the cemetery, and then by the young and strong men with rope a little bit to send the coffin down, the village people a shovel of earth, so that the deceased into the ground for peace.
But now it is different, now in rural areas after the death of someone, will be pulled by a tractor to the cemetery, called an excavator to dig a hole in the ground, and then people put the coffin down, and then the excavator to fill the hole – people are like garbage buried.
In fact, now the rural people do not want to do so, but there is no way, now the rural areas have basically no young people, only the elderly and children left.
Now the countryside has not learned from others, but also to lose their own.
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