1
A few months ago, my father called and said, “Mr. Tan is gone!”
“When did that happen?” I was shocked when the news hit my ears.
“The night before last, smoking a dry cigarette ignited the mattress, no one was left in the house, and he cremated himself!” My father said.
“Where was he buried?”
“Buried what ah, burned all, not even ashes.”
“Well, after half a lifetime of digging graves, Mr. Tan is not short of that one grave.” My father said to himself on the other end of the phone.
The deceased Mr. Tan, my father said, was a fellow villager, born in the 1960s, rich and prosperous in life, but after his death, there was no money left in his family, he had been a grave robber for half his life, no ashes, no graves, leaving only an elusive rumor.
“Mr. Tan’s ancestors were from western Henan, and in 1958, when there was a famine in Henan, they fled all the way to our place along the northern bank of the Wei River.” (Network picture) “Mr. Tan’s ancestors were from western Henan, and in 1958 there was a famine in Henan, and he fled all the way to our place along the north bank of the Wei River.” (Web Image)
Mr. Tan’s ancestors were from the west of Henan and fled all the way down the north bank of the Wei River to our area during the famine in Henan in 1958.
It is said that Mr. Tan’s father went to private school for a few years, read a few old books, played a good abacus, and could write a good character.
In 1966, when the movement came, Mr. Tan’s father was accused of “speculation”, and all the family business he had earned was rightfully handed over to the state. Since then, Mr. Tan’s father had given up the idea of selling livestock. The white-faced scholar went to the land, plowing the farm, asking for instructions early and reporting back late, and stepped back to being a farmer who ate for his wages.
Mr. Tan is the only son of the family, born in the most crazy years of the movement, in order to continue the ancestral lineage, as soon as the movement ended, Mr. Tan’s father immediately sent Mr. Tan to the village’s first elementary school. Mr. Tan also became one of the first children of that generation to attend school.
As for Mr. Tan’s father, the few old “four old” books in his stomach were no longer enough for him to regain a position in the village elementary school.
2
Although Mr. Tan entered school earlier than his peers, but after the ten-year campaign, his heart had long run wild, and his books were a mess. He tied his son up and hung him from a beam in the house, using twine to teach him a lesson, determined to turn the “rotten wood” into “good wood”. The “good wood”. But Mr. Tan is not half as good, so his father is quite angry.
Although the book is not well read, but Mr. Tan work is very resourceful, dry farm work, accounting books are good at everything. After barely being able to calculate a muddled account, he followed his father and started a livestock selling business. When he entered the business, Mr. Tan was like a fish in water, even the livestock dealer praised him for his shrewdness and ability, and was a piece of material for doing great things. But Mr. Tan was never moved, insisting that his son should be a man of culture with a pen pinned to his chest, and hated his son when he was dying. He then closed his eyes.
After his father’s death, Mr. Tan did not do well in the business world. The second year after the birth of his son, a strange disease began to spread in the countryside, livestock for several days without eating grass, followed by white foam at the mouth, only to be pulled one batch after another to the river filled with lime buried. The livestock could not be traded for the time being, but the family had to eat.
The past business, he has dealt with a variety of trades, know a lot of the three religions and nine streams, from the antique dealer heard a lot of things about cultural relics, on the road to the origin of cultural relics and the market know a little. The antique dealer is a heritage dealer, often pretending to be a grain dealer in this area to move around. Said food dealers, in fact, their true identity is a tomb raider, these, Mr. Tan naturally also understand.
Among the antique dealers there is a feng shui gentleman, and Mr. Tan’s father was a good personal friend, quite a bit of learning. Mr. Tan wanted to take advantage of his father’s face to join the tomb robbers, before the door, it was Mr. Feng Shui politely but. Tomb raiding is ultimately an unseen business, a small boat in the wind and waves, one more person, one less, is a matter of life and death, Mr. Tan understands this.
Mr. Feng Shui good to smoke a mouthful of earth, Mr. Tan entrusted people from Gansu to bring back a lot of, door to door all to offer. The old man understands his mind, for the sake of favor, agreed to take him with the team out a few trips to work, but there are words in advance, only allow him to release the wind to explore the road, not under the tomb to explore the mound.
Mr. Tan has a heart, Mr. Feng Shui kind words, one after another, although not the tomb, this line of work skills also learned a lot. A family always needs to eat. So he decided to rob a tomb.
3
Involved in tomb raiding, Mr. Tan then lived a life of day and night.
With the experience he learned from stealing, plus the Luoyang shovel bought back from the hands of a cattle dealer in Henan, Mr. Tan began nearly half a month of treading in the dark. After half a month of wandering around the loess plateau, the point was set in the North Mountain. The cemetery has always been selected by the folk to focus on the mountains and water, and the north mountain facing the river, new graves and old mounds are dense, is a blessing in the eyes of the people, he left the tie rod in the ground, make a mark, and began to think about the day to do it.
Tomb raiding manpower should be more. When there were six people under Mr. Feng Shui, two were responsible for drilling, one for transporting the soil, and one for digging, while the hole was less than half a meter in diameter and could accommodate only one person up and down, the most tiring work of planing the soil, which had to be replaced every quarter of an hour. The hole to guard three people, two people up to lift the soil, a person responsible for receiving. Mr. Tan could not get all these people together, so he had to call on the other two fellows in the village who were selling livestock with him, and the three of them worked together to prepare for the first job.
On the day of the action, Mr. Tan slept until midnight, drank a pot of strong tea, picked up the tools and companions in the agreed-upon place to meet.
Of the three men, only Mr. Tan had actually witnessed tomb raiding, so the job of digging and playing the hole naturally fell on his shoulders. He grew up with the land, arm strength is excellent, take advantage of the moonlight, grabbed a short-handled shovel to dig, three people take turns to work, although the speed is strange slow, but also smoothly hit the cooked soil layer.
For the first time in the tomb, everything went smoothly, and it was a good omen to find a few things up. There are rules of the trade, the tomb raiding business also has its own rules, the excavated soil has to be backfilled, the excavated bones also have to be re-buried into. A square of solid soil dug out must have three quadrilateral virtual soil, several meters deep in the hole dug out of the soil must also be piled up a small mountain. Mr. Tan was cautious in filling the soil, knowing that if the soil was not filled properly, there would be a big problem in irrigation in the coming year, when the ground would open a big mouth and water would pour down, which could not be stopped.
No one knows how much treasure Mr. Tan got from his first tomb-robbing, but later he heard rumors that his first harvest was very rich, and from then on he embarked on the road of tomb-robbing.
People in the village gradually became aware of the “business” he was doing, and they quietly cursed behind his back: “Plowing people’s ancestral graves, sooner or later cut off their children and grandchildren”. Once, a woman in the village because of the well water flowing through their own land, suddenly sinking, standing at the entrance of the village cursed at the top of her voice: “Pimp, in my family’s land to shave your ancestors!” Hearing the curses, Mr. Tan silent, back on the shovel, in the dark to give people to re-block the cracked mouth.
Mr. Tan knows that there is a way to steal.
4
Tomb robbers make a shameful living, collecting money from the dead, and inevitably taking a few innocent lives. According to the rules, when robbing a tomb, one person digs below, and one person meets on the ground. “People die for money, birds die for food”, when the value of things sent to the ground, there are ruthless people see money, they immediately backfill the virtual soil, the bottom of the life of the companion buried.
Mr. Tan’s reputation in the village is still good, tomb raiding “business” has been lukewarm, not stolen out of a particularly valuable treasure, but also has not encountered the poisonous hands of his companions. But that time when the sale of goods encountered a “blackmail”, but he walked in prison.
That year was a rainy autumn, the Tan family’s old well stepped off half, to dig a new well. On the day of the groundbreaking, out of professional habit, Mr. Tan symbolically drilled down a few meters with a tie rod, lifting up but accidentally found a cooked soil layer. He was immediately dumbfounded, excusing himself from the crowd.
At night, he called up his accomplices and began to dig up in earnest, and it is rumored that this was one of the most rewarding operations in Mr. Tan’s tomb-robbing career. Village people are still speculating about Mr. Tan’s tomb raid, some say he stole a large tomb, others say he stole not a tomb, is the Tan family’s ancestral property buried under the house back then ……
After digging out, Mr. Tan contacted the feng shui gentleman who took him out of live back then wanted to sell the goods. The old gentleman gave a considerable price, according to the rules, the delivery location by the buyer to determine. To avoid the wind, the old man chose the delivery location in the blacksmith store on the way to Huating. Mr. Tan set up the wagon and loaded a cart full of grain.
He trusted the old gentleman and was no longer as cautious as he used to be when delivering, and drove the wagon directly into the backyard of the blacksmith’s store. Not seen for years, the old gentleman was older, his team was bigger, equipped with a van, and no longer smoked clay cigarettes, but smoked foreign cigarettes from outside. After inspecting the goods, the old man changed his mind to pay only half of the initial price, the other half to play an IOU, to be made up in full later.
Mr. Tan knew that an IOU was a blank check. He turned to leave, but was unexpectedly kicked into a corner. The old gentleman and his fellows were not polite and rolled the goods buried in the grain into the car, leaving only half a cart of grain and half the price that had not been negotiated.
The old gentleman is not quite “black”, leaving half of it behind, remembering the friendship of the year. Mr. Tan was indignant, but there was nothing he could do. The rules are the same as always, he himself took a large share of the sale of stolen goods, the other two associates split the remainder.
On the fourth day after the incident, the police car drove into the courtyard of Mr. Tan’s house. Mr. Tan was handcuffed and shoved directly into the police car before he could finish his bowl of noodles. He was reported, fined $5,000, shaved his head and stayed in detention for three months in a row.
Who exactly reported Mr. Tan? Some people say that he worked with the other two daughters-in-law, when Mr. Tan delivery back, the price is reduced by half for no reason, they bite is Mr. Tan swallowed the other half; others rumored to be the day of the mason onlookers.
5
Mr. Tan was almost fifty years old when he told these past stories in the village well house.
At that time, I was 11 or 12 years old, running around the village all day with a group of young friends, stealing peaches and gourds, fighting in trees, enjoying the most carefree time. Mr. Tan’s only son, who was three years older than me, died tragically when he reached the age of ten. He was sleeping alone under the earth cliff when he was hit in the head by a falling earth, and when he was dug out from the mound by the village people, his nose and mouth were stuffed with mud, like boiled mud, and he was not breathing before he was taken to the hospital.
The women of the village whispered privately, saying that this is the ancestral graves of people, the kid to settle scores. The pain of losing his son was like a thunderbolt from the sky, knocking down Mr. Tan, and adding a bit of desolation to the Tan family compound. Mr. Tan buried his son at his father’s feet, the afternoon of the burial, after the crowd had dispersed, he was independent between the new grave and the old mound, teary-eyed, gazing at the piece of land beneath his feet, preparing his final home.
He had been a tomb raider all his life, but he had no grave after his death.
With the advent of the new century, along with the roar of large machinery, those lonely thousands of years of cultural relics continue to unearth, the value of time has soared. The astonishing thickness of the loess that was unearthed titillated the hearts of the local villagers, and the number of people involved in tomb raiding in the countryside increased. Even children learned to find cooked soil and use the Luoyang shovel.
The village built a brickyard, bulldozers split the cliff piece by piece, children followed behind to find the exposed black soil, some found copper jars, some dug up copper coins, some touched the skull, and others pulled out jade from the skull.
Mr. Tan never did the business again after his son’s death. But the children digging to the copper pot, will take a look at him, he saw more, a copper coin, can tell many interesting stories.
The sudden rise of tomb raiding in the countryside alarmed a group of experts, and the archaeological team soon stationed in the village, a piece of the cliff with a tightly surrounded by a barrier, the archaeological team stationed two months after the rush to leave, and then another group of people arrived in the dust, this time, they brought a stone inscription. The village plasterer helped to build a base for it – it turned out to be a Qin palace from the Spring and Autumn period, and now it is a heritage reserve.
The village’s food can continue to be cultivated, but the depth cannot exceed one meter. The county has assigned special staff to manage the site, focusing on combating tomb-raiding activities.
Tan does not talk about the erection of the monument, and has not spread a word or two about the descendants of the tomb robbers. The pain of losing his son wore out his youthful vigor, and the loss of his spouse in his later years completely reduced him to an old man in his old age. He lived alone with a house and a compound.
The hard-earned wealth he had saved in the first half of his life was enough to keep him in peace. However, in 2012, he was struck down by a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and was bedridden for several months, barely recovering half his life, half paralyzed, with limited mobility, rarely going out, until his life was ended by a pipe of dry tobacco.
A lifetime of grave robbing, but Mr. Tan failed to prepare a grave for himself.
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