Text/Guan Chaotao
Qingming returned to his hometown and passed by the house again. The four-sided loess wall surrounding the wooden house has collapsed on three sides, exposing a decaying skeleton, and the scattered tiles on the eaves are sparse and white. The handwriting of "Taishan Stone Dare To Dang" written on the wooden plaque hanging on the side of the main beam has been blurred. The giant spider weaves webs in every corner, trying to maintain its territory before the house collapses. The pear trees in front of the courtyard could not blossom, and the staggered dead branches swayed in the spring wind, and after breaking, they made a few clicks and clicks, and fell into the mossy yard.
This old house used to be the heart of the village, and I had to go through it when I got home. There is a right-angled turn here, on both sides of which are bluestone roads, each one meter wide, and outside the road is a ditch, about a meter above the ground. Just in this corner, the corner stone is a bluestone, which is one square meter large. Those who can make corner stones, in addition to its hardness and squareness, also need to be trimmed and carved, which is the work of the stonemason. This bluestone stands quietly here, and I don't know how many footsteps have passed.
We in the Guan clan are descendants of Guan Zhong. Genealogy records that during the Song Xining period, a branch of the Guan clan migrated from Longquan to the border of Zhejiang and Fujian, and they practiced two unique skills in this mountainous expanse, one was to make wine and music, and the other was to make stones with their neighbors. In the hands of our fathers, those stones are soft, which ones are to be. As soon as the new year came, the people who went out to make stones came back from outside in groups. Stone roads and stone arch bridges across the country, a large part of them are their masterpieces. That year, when the S301 provincial highway split the mountain and broke the rocks to reach our village, encountered the canyon with the largest drop, unable to build a bridge construction, it was the father and fellow villagers through the original stonemason craftsmanship, built the country's largest single-hole stone arch bridge, under the bridge there is also a stone arcade bridge that can not verify the exact time, which is interesting, together with the "Zimu Bridge", which has now become a famous scenic spot on the border of Zhejiang and Fujian.
The corner bluestone was also carefully carved by the stonemasons of our village, it was one meter high, and the two sides were flat like green cakes cut by knives, and the water flowed to the corner, quickly turning at a right angle and walking towards the other side. Around the corner, small splashes of water are visible. It seems that the flower is still the same flower, but in fact, the water is no longer the water of the past.
Grandma told me that the palanquin she was sitting in, when she reached this corner, she heard the sound of firecrackers. At that time, the car driver could not turn directly, so he stopped and placed the palanquin on the corner stone, and the palanquin pole protruded from the road, in the other direction. The palanquin quickly shook the pole like a paddle, and the palanquin turned in a direction on the bluestone, pointing to Grandpa's house. The bluestone road at the foot is Grandma's red carpet, and at the end is a gate, and Grandpa is wearing a green robe, smiling, waiting there.
That year, Grandpa escaped and went out, and Grandma sat at the gate, staring at the corner. Grandma did not expect that the trickle at the bend was consistent with the route taken by Grandpa, and when it reached the river, it bypassed Zuoxi, Jingning, Qingtian, passed through the Oujiang River, and finally reached the East China Sea. One day, on the corner stone, there was finally the figure of Grandma who was thinking about day and night—my grandfather, who came back alive.
Later, Grandpa started a business selling wood. There is a lot of wood in the mountains, but it is not easy to exchange money outside the mountains. Eighteen bends in the mountain road, shoulder to shoulder people lifted, with feet to walk when is a head. Fortunately, there is a river, so we put water into the water and drift downstream, which we call the discharge.
Letting go is a gamble of life. After the rainy season begins, it is the best time to release the row. At this time, the originally calm river was boiling. Grandpa and the villagers carried the wood dried in the winter to the river, marked it with iron marks, bundled them with ten sticks, tied together with mountain vines, and threw them into the churning river and went down the river. These platoon people, each of them is familiar with water, and must wrestle with the rushing river at any time. Grandpa, as the main family, carried a package and loaded with "light cakes". This cake is said to be the dry food eaten by Qi Jiguang's anti-Wu soldiers, and the Fujian people call it "Jiguang cake". It is a cake made of flour, with a small hole in the middle, steamed, and then baked on a charcoal fire until it is the size of a fingernail cap, skewered with a rope, hung around the neck, and eaten for several months will not be bad. The wooden row went down the river, to Jingning, Grandpa they carried baggage, between the lofty mountains, on both sides of the reachable river, with a square hook tied with bamboo poles, hooked out the logs stuck in the gaps in the stone, and re-bundled the wood that was scattered by the waterfall and threw them into the water, when the water was good, about half a month, they arrived at the entrance of the Spacious and Gentle Qingtian Ou River. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Connecting the broken wood into rows, everyone sat on the wooden row, took off their straw shoes, paddled barefoot, took out the jiguang cake, drank rice wine, and slowly went down the river. At this time, the moon rose. I can't tell if the moon is walking, or the mountain is walking, or the line is walking. Looking up at a full moon, thinking that it was more than half a month, one by one opened his throat and sang with wine:
Water, water, all the way to the end is Wenzhou,
Do life elsewhere, look to you at home,
You fatten the pigs, you make the wine well,
Pork liver you come to eat, pig head to gongxian.
On the first day I arrived home, the most homely was going to bring wine to Ha !!!
It's so tired! It's so tired!! It's really tiring!!!
It's really boring!!!! It's really tiring!!!!! It's really boring!!!!
The moonlight is like water, the mountains are like paintings, the wooden rows are like flocks of soldiers, light, walking in front, heavy, slowly following behind, gulls and birds skimming the river, fish jumping on the wooden rows, and falling into the water, the river surface sounded a burst of snoring, and soon arrived in Wenzhou.
On the dock, wenzhou guys took a square hook, salvaged the loose wood that arrived first, and stacked it on the side of the road, waiting for the main family to return the wood with the iron mark number and ransom money. When the last batch of people drifted down from the river, the owners of Wenzhou greeted their own people, selling meat, making beds, washing...
Grandpa was the prestigious lord of the upstream platoon, and the ransom money was never less, so he was surrounded by merchants on the shore, and the yarded wooden pile was quickly snapped up. In exchange for the ocean, they were packed together in the cargo of salted fish, kelp, seaweed, shrimp and cloth purchased, and escorted by a few guys who would be southern fists hired by the owner of Wenzhou, rushing to their homes day and night, crossing Lingxi, xiafenshuiguan, taking Taishun, and diverting to Shouning, Fujian. At dawn three days and nights later, Grandma was opening the gate and looking up to see the white fog in the corner of the wall at the other end of the road, and Grandpa stood smiling on the bluestone in that corner, tears filling Grandma's eyes. This morning, the green fruits of the pear trees in the corner of the wall break free of the dew and shake off the petals. At that moment, early summer came.
The guns and artillery outside have never stopped, and every day there are troops dressed in different costumes who walk through the riverside road and travel along the Zhejiang-Fujian Ancient Road in the direction of Fujian. Grandpa no longer went out to put out the rows, and hid in the back mountain every day. Then the pigs in the house were dragged away, the wine was scooped up, and the ocean in the barn was taken away. The pig refused to leave in the pig pen, and finally ate the gun, and several soldiers took knives and opened their stomachs on the spot, except for the pig's internal organs and the pig's head, which were not easy to take, even the wool with meat, unloaded eight pieces, and carried it on. Grandpa said to Grandma, but it fulfilled his song "Pork liver you come to eat, pig head to Gongxian" came to Gongxian" . The cattle were also pulled away and dragged to the corner stone and refused to leave, and the men pointed their guns at the bull's head, but in the end did not pull the trigger. It became the only good thought of that era.
At the end of the 1950s, my father was only eight years old, and my grandfather could not do farm work, so he had no choice but to pay money and take his two brothers out of the house to go out to the dead wood forest to grow shiitake mushrooms. When Grandpa walked to the corner stone, he was hit by his father who was playing home. Grandpa's hand touched his father's head and said, "Boy, listen to your mother!" After saying that, he left, and the back disappeared into the corner. It was also my father's last memory of his father.
This year, my grandfather died of illness under the banyan tree at Fuzhou Railway Station. At that time, my adult uncle took the national food stamp, thousands of mountains and rivers, and went all the way to Fuzhou. Grandpa was found in tens of thousands of urns at Fujian funeral homes. When Grandpa set foot on this land, incense candles were lit on the corner stone to illuminate Grandpa's way home. Grandma cried and said, "Back! Back! ”
The top pillar of the family is gone, how can the children of the family live? The second uncle and sister-in-law were adopted because they could not afford to raise them. On that day, Grandma delivered to the gate and watched her child disappear from the corner bluestone. My father was too thin and weak, and the adoptive family was afraid of not being able to feed himself, so he stayed.
Twenty years ago, I went to serve and walked down the steps draped in red flowers to the sound of firecrackers and drums. I stood on the corner stone, looked back at my grandmother, and resolutely turned away. Later, I learned from the letter that Grandma opened the gate every morning and stopped looking up, and went directly to the corner stone to stand, waiting for me to return, until the time of death, I was still in the northwest. Father said that when the coffin reached the corner stone, it was impossible to turn, and several people stood in the ditch, holding it with their hands, turning in another direction little by little, just like 60 years ago waiting for the flower car to turn at the door, and the grandfather was already waiting for her.
Back in my hometown, I found that the bluestone had been covered with cement. Villagers say other pavements have been poured with cement to facilitate the passage of trolleys, bicycles and motorcycles. The smooth sides of the bluestone knife have grown with mottled moss. It's really old, the village is old, the stonemasons are old, my parents are old, and even I am already the father of two children. The corner stone is sealed in cement, and its story is sealed in memory.
After paying homage to my grandfather and grandmother, in the twilight, I left my hometown again. My father sent us, and as he passed the corner stone, he said to my daughter, "Yue, read well!" "Like Grandma told me, the voice remained on the corner stone. It's just that the corner stone is my corner, but it's not my daughter's. The rainwater flowing down from the Donggong Mountains struck a cluster of small waves on both sides of the bluestone in the corner, and seemed to be singing: "Endless life, endless life." ”
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