1
Pozhuang is in a remote part of the town. The highway was built late, but when it was finished, it was far away from the village, winding its way to the county town. Pozhuang people have to travel several kilometers into the city to get a ride. It is not easy to go out, and they seldom come back after going out.
Village people did not expect, in this remote part of the village has been divided for hundreds of years, unexpectedly and “world-class” attached to the hook.
Last year, at the invitation of the county, a person from a certain animal husbandry group came to visit pozhuang’s farmland several times and decided to build a “world-leading” one-acre pig farm here, where they would raise young pigs, raise pigs and slaughter them, and sell the pork to foreign countries.
The boss of Animal Husbandry Group signed a “strategic cooperation agreement” with the county magistrate in the county Party Committee guest house. The project will be “landed” when the red wine cup is touched. The county government also set up a project for the group to promote the headquarters, the head in the town is to put them as the god of wealth, project approval, each joint procedures are not a problem, but to expropriate land, move the grave this matter, although the government to handle, but still have to pass the pozhuang people this pass.
The villagers of Pozhuang are not easy to bully.
According to old people, during the Reign of Emperor Guangxu, “Broadsword Yan Shuqin” gathered people in Liyuancun to protect the ancestral temple and demolish the church, and led the fists and people to wuthering and crossing the Lusi Plain. Several ancestors in Pozhuang worshiped the altar and followed Yan Shuqin to do those heroic deeds of licking the blood.
In these years, although the villagers have been educated by the prosperous times, they have been less aggressive and know how to follow the trend of The Times, but no one dares to say that their ancestors have no foundation of courage, benevolence and filial piety left.
2
However, things went more smoothly and peacefully than expected.
Village branch secretary held a meeting in the town, took back the task of land acquisition, noon brigade department loudspeaker will Ho Ho to ring out: “The villagers of Pozhuang attention, the county, the town to build a large pig farm in the village, occupy our 1000 mu land; They don’t treat us badly. They give us 1200 yuan a year for one mu of land. In the future, when the price of wheat and cob (corn) goes up, the price goes up too… This is a great blessing for our village. We won’t have to work in the fields, so we can still have food and drink…”
The villagers thought it over and agreed it would pay off.
In the last two years, several neighboring villages have long given their land to companies from nowhere, building cattle farms, textile mills, and machinery factories. Most of the workers in the rest of the fields are over 50.
C de ye slant wrapped in a cottonpadded jacket, to their own field for decades to turn a circle, see that a row of wheat field for him to do neat, just haven’t turned green, wheat sprouts drooping no spirit.
C de ye leng a long time on the head of the ground, the body to the cold wind blowing thoroughly cool, come back and say: “the money is a lot, is afraid to sign, draw a bet, the ground can’t come back. They these buy and sell people, but the six is not recognized, when the time comes he raises the pig to earn money, take what to give us? In five or eight years the land was handed over to the public, and the people of Poisons went hungry.”
The son said, “That’s the old calendar. Do you calculate how much wheat and sticks can be harvested from an acre of land planted for two seasons? How much money can be left over from fertilizing and irrigating the land? It’s in the news. The county magistrate has signed it. Don’t stand in the way.
C de ye sighed a tone, say: “early know to have this one, when planting wheat not on fat.”
Chang Bo had been a village doctor for decades. His son worked in the city. Some years ago, his neighbors raised several pigs in the yard, which made the smell stink. He frowned and said: “Such a big pig farm, but a pollution project, we will have to live with the smell of pig manure. And the stinking water and rotten meat are all in the ground, and I don’t know how they are going to be spoiled.”
Moving a grave would bring you nearly ten thousand yuan, or nearly ten years’ income for an acre of land. Moving a grave would bring you nearly ten thousand yuan, or nearly ten years’ income for an acre of land.
The village branch secretary said: “The others is a big company, had thought of you to go ahead. It says we’re going to build a sewage treatment plant and filter all the stinky stuff before we put it in the fields.”
The slightest hindrance and hesitation was cleared away, and the occupied families took great pleasure in signing contracts at the brigade headquarters. C de ye ask: “when can the money arrive account? They can’t afford so much money.”
The official in charge of the registration brigade said, “Go home and wait. They want to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s peanuts.”
Sure enough, within a few days the money hit each of the passbooks; Pozhuang people’s farmland, by the pig farm occupied a majority of the.
3
Then move the grave.
It was the custom at Poorzhuang to bury the dead in the ploughed fields; There are more than 160 tombs in the 1,000 mu of farmland occupied, which contain the ancestors of various families, all with names and surnames, written in the genealogy.
In the countryside, the ancient saying “the dead should be buried for safety” is most respected. Digging ancestral graves is a taboo thing. There is a very vicious curse called “digging ancestors’ graves and kicking widows’ doors”. What’s more, Bozhuang is located in the land of Confucius and Mencius, the villagers most filial piety, everyone is proud of filial piety. Even if the parents are in their own house, not very care about, but after the death of the funeral is in the eyes of the people, all kinds of ceremonies will not be careless. Even if his parents died in the cold and hot days, the filial son also had to kneel down in the cold and hot sun and cry for three or five days.
After burying my parents in the cemetery, but also a lot of “days”, every small day to go to the grave to burn paper, mourning, big day to hold a banquet; During the New Year, family members also hold memorial tablets or images to the grave to lead the dead home, together to celebrate the reunion.
For many years, the villagers have been so pious worship ancestors, ancestors of the rest of the land as the “holy land.”
During the Cultural Revolution, the director of the revolutionary committee took the lead in “breaking the four old”, to ping Zu’s grave, Han family a young young student brought the knife, in the director’s home after window shouted at midnight, the grave was saved. In the 1980s, cremation was carried out to prevent the dead from occupying the land of the living. Even if the dead were buried secretly, they would be exhumed to be cremated in the county seat. This is the case, also did not shake the pozhuang people let ancestors “buried in peace” determination, as usual to add new graves.
This time the villagers will give in?
However, animal husbandry group and issued a big move, called pozhuang people can not resist. They offered a price of 2,500 yuan for moving a single grave, 2,600 for a double grave, 2,600 for three or more (a few ancestors married more than two wives), 2,700; The group pays the owner of the cultivated land a fee of 300 yuan per grave per year for 20 years after the grave is moved to individual cultivated land that is not included in the pig farm.
That’s nearly ten thousand yuan, or about ten years’ income for an acre of land.
4
But more than 160 tombs in the fields are still quiet, but the village has a disturbance, the woman’s scolding voice, the man’s neighing roar from the top of the walls of each spread, upset the chicken and dogs. They were all their sisters-in-law and brothers, for the money promised by the animal husbandry group to move the grave.
Guozhong home of the pig farm commandeer, father’s grave, grandpa’s grave add up to a total of five, had to move to the brother of the country of righteousness. Guozhongdaughter-in-law calculated the account: five graves to give 1500 a year, 20 years is 30 thousand yuan. When all this money is given to the nation, the family suffers a great loss.
That day, guozhongdaughter-in-law went to the Guoyi house early in the morning, smiling face said: “Brother, your brother is thin-skinned, can not open the mouth, but I have to say something. Our old grave to your home inside, you can deposit tens of thousands of dollars ah. It’s dirty work, it’s tiring, and you have to carry the dead body, so let me and your brother do it? You know, your nephew’s engagement money is still to be found…”
The righteousness of a brother is silent.
Who dug the grave, that each cemetery more than 2,000 compensation will be given to who. The daughter-in-law immediately realized that the sister-in-law wanted to keep all the money.
“Sister-in-law, buried in the grave is also the country righteousness dear parents li, the country righteousness don’t take a hand also don’t let a person joke dead. Both of his brothers are involved, and both are capable.”
“Thirty thousand dollars isn’t enough for your family?”
“Five graves, how much space must I take up in my house, and how much less food? On top of that, they’re in my field, and I don’t dare do my work after dark.”
My sister-in-law was so angry that she clapped her hands. “Two shares of money! Can you swallow the mouth that picks on the dead?”
His face was torn and he quarrelled. The sister-in-law, a couple, was dented and hustled out of the gate.
The faithful love daughter-in-law, also love money, with filled with anger to find the theory of the couple guoyi. The two brothers quarreled and quarreled, saying more and more absolutely, thanks to the neighbors to persuade, it did not move.
It is said that every brother knows his own account, but money never knows his own account, and every one feels that he has suffered a loss.
Like the Liu family, such a large family, the population prosperous, clansmen of many branches, a grandfather under the four branches, each has grandchildren, great grandchildren to dig his grave; C de ye this one strength is the weakest, he passes on a son, a grandson.
People around the house to discuss distribution plan, someone said c de ye in the care of ancestors did not give a strong, should not share the money of a cemetery. C de son see the other side numerous, dispute however, hit table sabo put malicious words: even if spell knife, also have to count me one!
5
Pig farm is a big project, rather than build their own pigsty, step by step to set the date. Above the time to move the grave, village people had to stop fighting, each step back among the clan, agreed on a penny plan, hurriedly dig the grave.
Some of the family’s land was expropriated, ancestral graves have no place to settle, the village party secretary saw a business opportunity, the family’s several acres of land planning into a cemetery, who moved the grave to his family’s fields, he will get the annual compensation of 300 yuan.
Carpenters in a neighboring village also saw a business opportunity and made a fortune. The coffins of the ancestors had been rotten and broken into pieces of wood, and their descendants could not let them go naked into the new grave. So the carpenter invented a coffin-like wooden casket, more than a meter long, painted black, cheap and presentable. The carpenter stacked it up in the back of three wagons, and took it to the street at Porterhouse, where it was soon sold out.
In the early morning fields, when the northwest wind was blowing hard, people walked towards the cemetery with wheat seedlings and put shovels on the cemetery with cold faces. The green stalks of wheat spread unimpeded far away, followed by the grey sky.
Guozhong and Guoyi brothers did not speak, but worked together to level the grave, shovel after shovel dug down, turned up a pile of wet new soil, finally saw the bad wood.
C de father and son fought for the right to dig grandfather grave, but dig up to spend a lot of energy. The Liu family was once a famous family in Bozhuang, and the house of the Liu family in the Republic of China was called “The Liu family compound”, which was quite famous in the countryside. After “land reform”, house courtyard and land are subdivided, Liu jia just gradually power is small. My grandfather’s grave was tall and round, with a black brick vault and a semicircular arch at the entrance.
Flat to the cemetery, C de ye has panted, dug to the black brick, see the brick by the white lime cement, can not go down the shovel. The son ran home and took a pickaxe. He chiseled and pried little by little, and finally opened the grave. Although the coffin was in bad shape, the coffin plank was half a foot thick, which was more valuable than other thin coffins.
Father C de body down to the grave, shaking rope clearing wood chips and blue bricks, forehead covered with a layer of cold sweat. When he gathered up the two bones and put them into the wooden box, he sat down on the ground and did not get up for a long time.
Like c de ye, can find the ancestor of a bone, it is lucky, a lot of people dug along while, but what did not find. For the grave is in the ploughed ground, and the edge of the grave is scraped with ploughs and harrows every season; When the children and grandchildren go to raise the graves, they usually add a shovelful of earth on one side and a shovelful of earth on the other side. As the sun and the moon accumulate, the head of the graves will deviate from the position of the graves. This is what the old people call “visiting the grave”.
People who could not find the bones of their ancestors had to wrap a handful of loess in a mud pit and put it into a wooden box.
6
These days, uncle He saw all his neighbors have earned money, and they are worried at home. He had a crippled leg, was alone, had no strength to dig a grave, and no money for him.
He thought and thought, and he did come up with an idea. He had a brother who died young. He had been buried in the field without a grave, and people did not remember him. He took two crutches and went to the small wood at the end of the village, where he built a cemetery and told the brigade officials that it was his brother’s grave and that he would have to give him some money.
I don’t know that the animal husbandry group had the forehand to send people to count the tombs within the land acquisition area one by one before moving to the grave, and register them. No money will be paid for one more tomb. River uncle flat from the grave plot was found on the spot, in vain a big effort.
When the land was handed over and the graves moved, the farmland became a site for the animal husbandry group, and mechanical troops were stationed in the fields.
On the day the ground was broken, many villagers went to visit it. Father C de was still standing on his own land.
Not far away, the roar and rumble of machinery were heard, and huge shovels of steel opened the fields, and the yellow soil rolled up like turbidiouswaves, and drove the beds and rows of wheat below them. The earth had never been turned over in winter, and the smell of the earth, fresh in the cold air, gradually filled the fields.
Father C de motionless, purple black face flow down two lines of clear tears, murmured way: “seventy-two lines, crops go up. Grain is not to earn money, but the village do not grow grain, money to buy where?”
“Lizulizong, don’t blame the ans…” C de ye old voice with a cry.
(The characters in this article are pseudonyms)
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