1
In 2004, when Jianping, a comrade I hadn’t seen for years, was chatting on the phone, he asked me to visit him in Xuzhou to catch up on old times. Later, he called me many times, urging me to leave as soon as possible, and said that he was not far from Weishan Lake, the lake scenery absolutely let me linger.
I say have time to go, “see incidentally write something”, Jian Ping listened to, immediately say, that you should come more, “the Song Da in weishan lake is very legendary, enough for you to write a book”.
In late July of that year, I finally got a holiday and bought a train ticket to Xuzhou. Call Jianping, tell him I am going to, Jianping in the phone laughed at my impatience, also let him prepare. When I asked if it was inconvenient, he scolded me for being so unworldly and told me to leave without further ado. He would pick me up at Xuzhou Station on time and be there or be square.
When we got to the station, the train jolted slightly and the speed slowed down a lot. The familiar traveler said, “This is weishan Lake!” I looked out of the window at the endless water and thought of The Song Da jianping had mentioned.
When the train arrived at the station, my thoughts were still floating on the lake. A platform, saw Jianping, he was standing next to a middle-aged man, lean medium height, jiongjiongjiong eyes. When shaking hands, Jian Ping introduced, “This is Song Da”.
Jianping knew Song Da that year, because buy a boat, at that time the sand mining industry in Weishan lake is profiteering, he also wants to go into. Jianping found the ship owner to sell the ship, but never talk about the price, the other side said, you did not buy the ship through Song Da, this business can not be done. Jianping about Song Da dinner, see a few times, the boat bought down, two people also quite chat, they became friends. Later song Da looked for jianping to do a few things, jianping within the policy to do things, come and go, the relationship between the two people will be iron.
Songda’s greeting was peculiar. He looked at me and smiled happily, followed by a punch in the chest followed by an equally vigorous hug. After the bear hug, he asked his driver, Xiao Di, to bag the most famous hotel in Xuzhou. After that, it was inevitable that a big wine would be drunk. When song Da wanted to sing Peking Opera, Jianping nudged me beside him and said, “The climax is coming!”
Song Da singing is the model opera “Red light” in the “thank mom” singing, in the spirit of alcohol, Song Da singing very emotional, to the aphrodisiac department, an old man unexpectedly moved to tears, let us several listeners also make eyes tears.
2
Song Da first made its fortune in Dongping County, north of Weishan Lake, which was once the country’s first fake smoke distribution center. A group of people, relying on fake cigarettes quickly became rich, and then bought large ships to keep on the Weishan Lake, dry sand mining and trading business. Song Da, who sold fake cigarettes and stole lake sand, was very influential in the local area and was known as Dongping Yiba.
Jianping told me that in dongping, it was an offence not to say hello to Song Da when we met on the street. All night long, people threw stones at the Windows of “impolite” houses, and the people inside had no peace. If they wanted to get things over with, they had to treat each other in the bureau, criticize themselves in front of Song Da and receive a lesson.
Song Da loves to sing, “Drink mom’s bowl of wine before leaving, and be valiant in battle.” Everyone in Dongping knows that he always sings this part when he goes to karaoke after dinner. There is no KTV “Red light” accompaniment, he will sing, it is said that the scene is extremely strange and strange, both crying like the voice line, and there is a genuine feeling. Over time, his friends gave him the nickname “Thank you Mom,” as Lian did, and He embraced it.
It was well known that he had a deep affection for his mother, and Sonda’s saying was widely circulated among his men: “A mother makes a man look like a family.” His father died young, his mother sold blood to bring him up, and when he got rich, his mother got cancer. Song Da has always felt that his mother’s disease and the year to sell blood, the heart is full of guilt, his mother hospitalized to see a doctor, he never stint on money. Dongping, not far from Qufu, still preserved the simple manners and customs of filial piety. Although Song Da called the wind and rain outside, and even ran amok, he was still a obedient filial son in front of his mother. The first thing in the morning at home was to greet his mother’s house.
Later, someone chased Song Da from Dongping to Weishan Lake. Song Da was shot and plunged into the lake. His enemies probably thought he was dead, so they took him away. A few years later, Song Da again appeared in the area of Weishan Lake, with a fleet of ships to steal lake sand, stage a comeback, gradually strengthen their own power.
Jianping was familiar with Songda’s habits. Every time they went to the lake, Songda would go to the place where they had been shot and stand, looking at the lake in a solemn manner. Song Da once said that he had feelings for the lake, that it was his place of resurrection, his sand mining fleet before departure, always want to burn a stick of incense, respect weishan Lake.
3
During song dynasty up to go out for a while, jianping quietly told me that these days they are units rectification, a second “detained”, each department head meeting will focus on xuzhou, senior disciplinary sent sea-front supervision and inspection, all people are not allowed to leave, so, he may not be able to accompany me these days, can let me follow the song.
That night, after drinking too much wine, I, Jianping and Song Da all stayed in the hotel. I shared a room with Jianping. I haven’t seen you for years, but I feel like a man from another world, half dreaming and talking till morning. After daybreak, Jianping answered the phone with a somber expression. I patted him on the shoulder and asked him to go to work without dropping the chain.
After breakfast, Song Da suggested me to sleep for a while and then set out for the lake. I said, “I used to do some exercises in Yimeng Mountain.
The “lake” mentioned by Song Da belonged to The Jining district of Shandong province, which borders Peixian County. As the car sped by, I looked through the glass for a moment, but sleep came over me. When I woke up, the car had already entered Peixian county. We discussed on the car. When we arrived at the lake, Xiao Di took me to net lobsters, and Song Da had to go back to Peixian county to get “dog meat and turtle soup”.
We passed a railroad crossing, then turned right into a wood that ended in a wide dam, with paddy fields on one side and a vast lake on the other. Song Da said, this is weishan Lake.
We stopped at a fork in the road, there is a narrow small dirt road, the car could not pass, I and Di xiaodi get off and walk, Song Da sat behind the wheel, the road to say goodbye, drove to another fork in the road.
I went down the dirt road with Di, then went down to the lake, there is a small house, next to the mooring of a boat with engine, the house came out of an old man, said hello, Di took a net from the house, a dozen basket, led me on the boat, to the lake a small island.
In the distance, in the direction of the island, there were two large ships moored at anchor, di said, which were sand dredges, part of Sonda’s possessions. At that time, sand mining was banned in Weishan Lake, but the grass and grass were always desperate for money. Sand mining was carried out at night, and during the day, the sand dredging ship was anchored on the water.
Small di said, just the old man in the small house, is an important “informant”, he has a son who works in the department of water administration inspection, well-informed, the old man lives by the lake, do some of the custody chores, Song Da January give him three thousand yuan, there are dividends at the end of the year.
We parked the boat in the island side, small di on the shore to teach me how to net basket, the result I was not careful, but fell into the lake.
I didn’t think the lake would be too deep, but I didn’t think it would. Fortunately, Being a Marine, I was not in a panic, but had the energy to dive down to see how deep it was. I went down about seven or eight meters, but I still didn’t see the bottom. When I came out of the water, I could still feel the peculiar smell of the lake.
I feel strange, then curious to ask small Di, “this is a lake, or the sea, zha so deep? And a strange smell!” Small di just chuckled and said, can not find the bottom, the dredge drill pipe are in 20 meters up and down, this one have been swept, lake bottom sand less, the ecology has been destroyed very serious, nature has a strange smell.
4
After coming back from the lake, Songda arranged for me to spend the night eating dinner at his house.
Song Da is the two-story small building with a single courtyard, exterior style, interior decoration far beyond the general country level, some European style.
The dinner that day was very rich, except for the “dog meat soup”, the table was full of dishes. Before dinner, small di said something at home, in any case to go back, Song Da will let his daughter-in-law to small Di packed a bento box, every dish to clip some, let him take back to eat with his family.
The woman di calls her “sister-in-law” is a young woman, about 20 years younger than Songda, whom he met at a karaoke bar. The woman was from the countryside and her family was in debt. Song Da had spent a lot of money for her and helped her family pay their debts. After the wife Wu Li of song Da at that time knows, make for a while, Song Da simply put the family half and half split, divorced, married this young woman.
We sat down to eat and talk, during which Songda went out to answer the phone, came back to say he was going to assign the men work for the night, and went out again. Songda’s wife and I continued to chat, talking about weishan lake every family can have a small house, many are rely on the sand mining business.
Information, I have ever seen in the southeast of xuzhou has a much smaller than weishan lake, lake which had active thousands of mining ship and boat loaded with sand, sand mining in some big ship value of up to five million, steal mining profits is tens of thousands of yuan for a night, has been for several years, direct practitioners is tens of thousands of people, including the family, count on this line will be more for dinner.
Song Da had six ships in all, three for sand mining and three for sand transportation. In Weishan Lake, he was not the only one who mined sand, and there were countless boats. They formed a cliquey group, in which Song Da was a very important figure. In small di these “subordinate” eye, can work under song Da, the boat that goes up song Da works, it is a very decent thing. Of course, can board, are water, physical strength, technical excellence.
There is another story about Song Da’s “Ai CAI”. It says that in those days, there was a “capable man” in the sand mining team. He had rich experience in sand mining, and he could judge the approximate thickness, area and quality of the sand layer at the bottom of the lake and how much money could be sold just from the sand samples. But later, when he had made enough money and was tired of the rough life of seeking wealth in danger, he retired from sand-mining and lived in seclusion, raising ducks by the side of Weishan Lake.
Song Da wants to ask this person to come out all corners of the country again, come to look for once, the result is rejected. One night, His men pulled the man out of bed, wearing no pants, and put him in the car. By the time his family found him, he had become one of His crew members. Later, when the hermit told his family about the night, his legs began to shake, and he had to tell Sonda that he would do anything, but that he would not be short of money.
Song Da in money is very straightforward, acquaintances if a family business treat, he always want to pay the most part of the money, of course, there is a premise here – he must be the first person invited. The magnanimity and style he wanted could not be distinguished, perhaps because of the prevailing atmosphere in the water margin. Song Da’s character was full of tension, which was similar to his own style of “chivalry”. He claimed that he was born at a bad time. About, “little brother” people are easy to be attracted to this charismatic personality, willing to follow.
The double life on Weishan Lake
That night, After Songda’s wife went upstairs, Songda and I stayed downstairs. Sand mining operations in the evening, the need to always command, so Song Da at night almost did not sleep, I would accompany him to tea chat. It was hard not to talk about his mother: the old man was still in Xuzhou, his ex-wife Wu Li knew an old doctor of Traditional Chinese medicine and took the old woman over for a few days. Song Da had just visited him before he met me at the station.
Between Song Da and ex-wife Wu Li, still maintain delicate relation. He always feel guilty to his ex-wife, two people had a hard time together, the feelings are still there, but the man wants something else. After her divorce, Ms. Wu took her children to Xuzhou to pick up a clothing store on a pedestrian street. Song Da often ordered his men to take care of his “elder sister-in-law” whenever his family or relatives bought clothes, and sometimes even paid for his younger brothers to go to his ex-wife’s shop to buy clothes.
He went out again in the early hours of the morning and came back with a dozen baskets saying that I had netted lobsters the day before, each containing about twenty.
The most delicious lobster I have ever eaten is from Weishan Lake.
5
In the middle of the next night, Songda’s cell phone rang again: ‘There’s something wrong on the lake, it can’t be solved there.’ I said I couldn’t sleep anyway and wanted to go with him to the homework site. Sonda thought for a moment and took me with him.
By the lake, there was already a boat waiting, with a searchlight shining brightly on the dark surface of the lake. We got into the boat and started the engine, and there was a loud crash and no echo.
The boat walked on the lake for about forty minutes and arrived at the scene. On the dark surface of the lake, the lights of three mining ships were flickering, shadows were moving and machines were roaring. Each was leaning against a sand carrier on its starboard side, and the sand from the bottom of the lake was released to the carrier through a thick pipe.
Our boat pulled up, and the men on the dredge reported that they had encountered some rock, and that it was a little hard to get the drill down, but the bottom was sandy and thick enough to fetch a good price, except that the operation was too time-consuming. When they called Sundar, a boat passed by on the lake. They thought it was a patrol boat, so they stopped working.
Songda took a pinch of sand and thought about it. “Keep fighting,” she said. “The source said there was no action tonight.” The man on the ship said that it was better to be careful, because the father and son of the informant felt unreliable. Sonda glared at the man and said that the servants were not to be used. The man was silent.
As they left, Mr. Soong told the crew to “pull out all together” at four in the morning, and to stop when a strange ship passed by. Their operation is to dig sand secretly at night and sell it spontaneously formed in the dock during the day. As long as the quality is good, the market will not worry about.
In the end, the night went well and the sand fetched a good price.
I have been staying in Weishan Lake for four days and spent every night in a tense atmosphere. The fifth day early in the morning, Song Da wire operator report: night supervision department may have to have action. He then arranged to hide the ship, all the crew leave the shore, leaving only a boy to watch the ship.
This day at noon, small di came to the phone, said that a sand ship was not tied down, drifted to the channel, by a passing iron ship crashed. The men of the iron ship were not likely to pay for it, but Sonda’s men had kept them on the shore at his command.
When Sonda and I arrived at the scene of the accident, the two groups were deadlocked. The “eldest brother” of the other party is an exercise home apparently, the body shape is brawn, raise one’s hand to move between feet, show agile and tactful, and, the other party person is much.
The two “big brothers” stood in their respective camps, facing each other. During the ten minutes of the confrontation, Soong Da, with a sullen face, spoke only three sentences, two or three minutes apart, till at last he found himself killed:
‘Where are you from?
“Will you pay for it or not?”
“Can you leave standing without paying?”
A man in the other camp had seen Sonda and wanted to come out to smooth things over. As soon as he said a word, Sonda raised his hand and slapped him across the face.
Song Ended the confrontation on his own initiative and left a message: give half an hour to think about it, pay for the repair of the ship, plus two thousand yuan for the brothers’ lost work. Sonda turned and walked to an open field near the bank and made a phone call. Half an hour later, twenty or thirty boats came successively, sealing the lake. The shock and awe worked. The other hesitated for a moment, then immediately put on a smiling face and came to Songda, agreeing to pay compensation.
At dusk that day, the golden sun was shining all over the Weishan Lake. Occasionally, a returning boat sailed across the lake. In the distance, a huge fleet of ships was passing through the lake along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. I admired the magnificent scenery of Weishan Lake. “In your eyes it’s just beauty, in mine it’s treasure,” Soonder says with a smile.
I added that the people on the boat would enjoy the scenery on the way, and I talked about the combination of work and rest. Song Da unexpectedly did not say a word for a long time this time, then gawked at the lake for a while, mouth spit out five words: “riches and honour in danger to seek.”
6
Song Da sent me to Xuzhou on the day of my return to Shenyang. On the way, I remembered the meal when I came, casual dress casually asked, how much did the meal cost? Sonda, somewhat displeased at this, said that his friend did not ask such questions.
Jianping was also at the station, waiting to see me off. I heard Song Da whisper to Jianping that the matter had been done and the money would come back in a few days. I am curious, asked 1, Jianping smiled, also whispered to me: the top check is strict, his ship quietly processing.
About six months after his return to Shenyang, Song Da called me about his ex-wife. Wu Li will come to The Wuai market in Shenyang to replenish her stock. I hope I can take care of her. Then I met Wu Li, a very simple woman, probably overworked, with a face older than her years and a haggard expression.
I helped Wu Li send goods, before leaving to invite her to have a meal, I advised her to actually need not so hard, and not lack of money. But she sighed and said that she had a job to do and wanted to save more money in case something happened to Sonda and she needed it. She knew all the hidden blessings of Sonda.
I thought about it and said, you still have feelings for him. Wu Li smiled a bitter smile, and calmly said, no feelings is to deceive their own, after all, together for so many years, and there are children, Song Da, after all, to her good, from the two have no difference what, this is enough. In fact, she was worried that her new daughter-in-law and Song Da would not last long.
I tried to say something else, but I didn’t.
Later that night, regulators raided the house and, although the informant had called in advance, Mr. Soong had been too drunk to hear the phone ring.
Song Da’s sand mining fleet was destroyed and sentenced to three years in prison.
Song had a good sleep before he went to prison, He later said, and felt free at last — at a time when he had been financially stretched for years by his mother’s medical care and boat maintenance, and was often struggling to save face.
Song Da’s first year in prison, his wife went to Hainan, the next year, his mother died of illness. Wu Li was responsible for all the family expenses in those two years.
On the day of his mother’s funeral, Songda was allowed to return home for the funeral. In front of the portrait of his mother, he knelt in handcuffs and burst into tears as he sang the words “Thank you Ma.”
Afterword.
Three years later, Song Da released from prison, he sold the small building in the family, in weishan Lake to start again, just like he was from the bed to catch up with the “hermit”, raised ducks, produced by the red heart duck eggs, sales do not worry.
Later, Song Da and Wu Li remarried. Since then weishan Lake on the less a “sand mining pirates.”
(The name is a pseudonym.)
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