Cangnan is the hometown of my parents and the place where my bones and blood came from. I have always wandered between the residence and Cangnan, but I have a deep heart for her, and I have no teeth to forget.
In the 1960s and 1970s, everyone remembered Cangnan and knew that our county was Pingyang, and Pingyang was a county in Wenzhou next to Fujian, Wenzhou was a city in Zhejiang, and Zhejiang was a part of China. In 1981, Cangnan was born. When we grew up in other places, we changed the place of origin on our resume to Cangnan.
▲ In 1964, the author took a hundred days of photography in Wenzhou Photo Studio
In the early 1960s, I was born in Jinxiang, a small town under the jurisdiction of the former Pingyang County. One of my aunt's old houses on Northgate Street is my birthplace. Later, he moved to the side of the vegetable market and lived with his grandparents at the Xia family altar (house). The altar of Tao was next to the Li River that passed through the town, and in my young horizon, it was always so clear and sparkling.
Under the long corridor of "beauty leaning on" on the riverside, I don't know which generation has been set up as a vegetable market. Every morning, outside the altar is a noisy city sound, full of fireworks. "City dialect" (i.e., Jinxiang inner dialect) is mixed with Minnan dialect (the townspeople call it "Fujian dialect") and barbarian dialect (the townspeople call it "rural dialect") that are traded in the city, and it is full of childhood flavors in the unique smell of the vegetable market.
As far back as I can remember, the most memorable thing is the summer altar of The Temple of Tranquility. The milky moonlight is like a wash, and there is a bamboo bed on the stone slab in the courtyard, and a nursery rhyme runs through the ears: "There is a cool breeze on the fan, and it is in the hand every day." Every year in May and June, night and night to fight mosquitoes. The playmates competed to recite "The moon is shining, Uncle Shapo's laundry...", and when they are tired of going to sleep and being carried to bed, they wake up to the light of day.
▲ In 1977, the author returned from Tibet with his parents and studied in the first year of junior high school in Jinxiang Primary School for three months (the fourth from the left in the front row is the author)
He left Jinxiang in the early 1970s and has been growing up in the southwestern border of Lhasa. I have returned to my hometown to read the first year of junior high school for a few months, and I am already a returning teenager who has some psychological separation from Jinxiang, but I still have beautiful feelings for its green waters, green mountains, and continuous tile houses, and my blood makes me tie it and identify with it.
Read the college entrance examination in Lhasa. I learned that Cangnan was separated from Binh Duong and established a county independently, so like all the people in my hometown, I "transformed" from Pingyang people to Cangnan people. My college career is the same as Cangnan And so far, I have spent 40 years together, which can be commemorated together.
▲In the 1950s,
The author's father Xia Zilang and mother Tang Yujiao's wedding photos
His parents returned to their hometown to work the year before they established Cangnan County. Every year when the summer vacation arrived, I rushed back to Jinxiang from the Xianyang City above the QinChuan River to reunite with my family who had recently returned from Tibet. In the early 1980s, Jinxiang was already a well-known base for printing trademark advertisements. Many relatives who are eager to make money have also joined the advertising business. Once back in Jinxiang, everyone can't do without making money, every household is transformed into a printing workshop, and the day and night stamping machines are roaring with "bang dang dang", and the days when this traditional town once hid the quiet time of the past are gone. The pungent smell of rubber water was emitted from the streets, and Jinxiang was transformed into an intensive production center for trademark advertising. Many people wear gold and silver, add famous brands, and make generous shots; the owners of luxury cars can only cautiously enter and exit the slightly wider road surface on the inner side of the moat with superb driving skills; some Jinxiang people who have made their way to Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou, and have become permanent lost customers in their hometowns. As soon as it rained, the muddy Stone Street Road in Jinxiang disappeared; the Lihe River, the mother river that the Jinxiang people once had a clear and memorable memory of the water town, disappeared. In the 1980s, it was the years of hard work of Jinxiang people, the days of leading Wenzhou's economic model, and they completely benefited from the benefits of reform and opening up, but also gradually lost a hometown that continued historical and cultural memory!
However, the Jinxiang people who experienced the changes in the 1980s and 1990s did not erase the Jinxiang City in the depths of their emotions. They were born in Si, grew up in Si, they go farther, the most nostalgic is still from the anti-Wu, Qing Dynasty Xingru, the Republic of China to the new, change the thinking of the 600 years of historical and cultural heritage, is the unique hometown sound of Wu Nong's soft language, is the mouth-watering red crab feet on the table, is the century-old "same spring" fragrant wine aroma, is the early morning from yanting, stone bang, sternwheeler, big fish picked to the vegetable market seafood, is still tongue-in-cheek steamed cakes, ama jelly, fried rice, is the eight rain alleys dripping out of the nostalgia.
▲Jinxiang East Gate Square House (Photo by Li Shiming)
In 1987, the author had a wedding ceremony here
The total population of this small, micro-carved town has never exceeded the university I sought. The ancient buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which are dilapidated and almost in danger, still emit fireworks in the world, and the new and old Jinxiang people who pour in and go out stubbornly continue the dialect tradition of the town. Jinxiang exquisite cuisine is still famous, the enthusiasm of traditional festivals has not decreased by a point, reflecting the modern Western culture into the Golden Township Baroque architectural style of the square house, by the nostalgic Jinxiang people to constantly evoke the local friendship of the museum, it is this ancient town and the world synchronization of architectural landmarks; Shen Taifeng, Yujia Daotan is now also an ancient tree new branch, on the Internet red route, become the Golden Punch Point that Jinxiang must travel to.
As a cangnan person who has been wandering outside the province since childhood, I can still stumble and continue to use the Jinxiang dialect to talk to the villagers, and I have always been in a state of imminent separation from the Golden Township of Cangnan and have to choose the posture of looking at my hometown, which makes me no longer be bound by blood and nostalgia, and re-examine the special relationship between a certain "umbilical cord" of nostalgia and the "mother" of my hometown. I found that the so-called hometown is not only the hometown of parents, the hometown of blood and bones, but also the hometown of regional identity and cultural identity. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Jinxiang was only a temporary guest residence for all the influx of officers and soldiers from various provinces, but in the past 600 years it has become the "hometown" rebuilt by these people from other villages. Therefore, hometown is a very unreliable concept, just like the 40-year-old Cangnan and the 3-year-old Longgang, just like the Cangnan descendants who naturalized in other places after the reform and opening up, and the hometown is only synonymous with the ancestral place.
▲Jinxiang North Gate (Wangjing Gate)
One year I met a ninety-year-old couple on the coast of Taitung, each sitting in a wheelchair, and their children heard my mainland accent and took the initiative to talk to me, knowing that their parents were Hunan veterans who entered Taiwan in 1949. I asked them if they had ever returned to the mainland, and I replied, "I can't go back!" "Hunan is the hometown of the second elder, but it is only the ancestral hometown of his descendants; I have a friend, my father is a cangnan native, very early in Fuzhou, I met a Taiwanese woman who could not go back because of the sudden division of the two sides of the strait, so I married them, Fuzhou is not their hometown, but it has become the hometown of their children and grandchildren."
But small people always have to live in "identity", and without psychological maintenance, there is no place worthy of emotional refuge and soul placement. Therefore, "hometown" is a changing, tangible "identity" entity, and any demolition, deconstruction, reorganization, and name change from the administrative side will more or less shake your understanding of your hometown. Therefore, as cangnan in the administrative sense, her population of more than one million people maintains the emotional conversion and smoke of the Cangnan people who go out and stay, and she has become the "physical hometown" of a small number of people, and has become a kind of "psychological hometown" that is similar to the soul context!
Cangnan is no longer the birthplace of my daughter, and the inner person is a Shaanxi native from Jiaozuo, whose father is Jiaozuo and whose mother is From Yueyang. Because my parents and brothers and sisters lived in Cangnan for decades, I used the winter and summer vacations to travel back and forth between my workplace and Cangnan for decades. It used to be Xianyang to Cangnan and later from Xiamen to Cangnan, so I could observe and look back at this place called "hometown" intermittently. In the territory of China, Cangnan is just a small county; from a global perspective, Cangnan is just a drop in the sea and a small point of the earth; but for the Cangnan people who eat in Sisi, live in Si, and die in Si, Cangnan is the "big world" that they see and believe, so any hometown cannot be underestimated.
▲Jinxiang Ximen Street (Photo by Cai Jinla)
Because my parents live in Longgang for a long time, and my brothers and sisters live in Lingxi, the county town, I don't go back to Jinxiang every winter and summer vacation. Even if I take the time to return, my relatives and friends are also changing the method and changing places to accompany me to a hometown larger than Jinxiang, they are the smoke and rain jade cang, the shanshui bridge pier, the hidden bowl kiln, the seafood Pavilion, the grapefruit horse station, the fairy five phoenixes, the Lulu Mountain, the cangnan of the historical and cultural town in the southern boundary of Wenzhou, and the modern Cangnan surrounded by mountains and seas, the people coming and going, the business and travel, the ever-changing, and the chongwen re-education.
Cangnan is synonymous with all those who are related to her, and I am not out of touch; Cangnan's name is 18 years younger than my name, which does not prevent me from identifying with it and emotionally identifying with it.
Since Cangnan has become a fate full of nostalgia because I cannot choose as my hometown, all I can do is to extend my arms to embrace her warm acceptance, and express my deep blessings and look back for a long time.
——Written on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of Cangnan County
About the Author
Xia Min, born in 1964 in Jinxiang, Cangnan Province, is currently a professor and graduate supervisor at the School of Marine Culture and Law of Jimei University in Xiamen, Fujian Province. He is mainly engaged in the study of folk literature, cultural criticism, and chinese classics outside the Ming and Qing dynasties. He has published 7 monographs and 1 collection of essays, and has won the "Mountain Flower Award" of Chinese folk art.
Organizers
Propaganda Department of the CPC Cangnan County CPC Committee
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Xia Min and others
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Ear East