That grass hut, my former home

Fan Fu

In my old house, there used to be a grass hut, which was the shelter of my parents after they had separated their families, and it was also the home where I had lived for twenty-two years.

The grass hut sits north to south, low and narrow. There is an alley behind the house, and in front of it is a compound shared by two families. There are doors and windows on the south wall, the east gable on the west side next to the neighboring house, a small window for walking smoke and ventilation on the upper part of the east wall, and two open spaces outside the east wall, where several large Chinese locust trees grow. The shed is about four meters wide, six meters deep, and twenty square meters. On the right hand side of the entrance door is the earth kang, where the family rests at night. To the north is connected to the kang is a stove on which two iron pots, one large and one small, are placed on it. About two meters between the stove door and the north wall, a small amount of firewood can be placed outside the stove door for cooking and cooking pots. There is an earthen platform on the north wall, and a wooden board is set on the top, and three larger urns are placed on the wooden board, which are specially used to hold rice noodle debris. Under the western wall of the room, there are a few tables, which is where the family eats. In the northwest corner, a board about one square meter in size is supported by an earthen platform, on which small items such as dishes, plates, cans and dishes are placed, and it is also a special platform for the mother to roll the noodles and cut vegetables.

Due to the low grass shed and the continuous kang of the pot table, many times the smoke is not smooth. At that time, the family could not afford coal, my father worked in a factory in Xi'an, no one went up the mountain to cut firewood, and the fuel used for cooking was mainly the straw of crops, such as wheat straw, corn stalks, bean straw and leaves collected in autumn. It is fine on a sunny day or when there is no wind, but when the firewood and grass are wet on a rainy day, or when the wind and smoke outside cannot come out, the smoke in the cooking house is filled with smoke, and the smoke makes people cry for a long time, which is simply to exchange tears for food, which is unbearable.

In autumn and winter, sometimes strong winds will suddenly roll away the thatch on a certain part of the roof, and if it cannot be repaired in time, it will leak rain when it rains. The rainwater goes down the wall twice, and after a smoke, it will form a strip of sauce color that is long or short, thin or coarse, making the hut more shabby and shabby.

Every autumn, when indica is ripe, people drop the grains of rice on a wooden shelf or a special wooden frame, bundle the straw into small pots of thick bales, and then bundle a dozen small rafters into large rafters. According to the needs of the people who live in the grass shed, the grass hut is transported back by unicycle and a new layer of grass is added to the grass shed. Indica is a traditional crop in the hometown, about one meter and five meters tall, inexpensive, both to use and keep warm, the most suitable for indica grass shed. Giving grass sheds is a technical job, and if you are not careful, you may risk falling down and falling. Every year, my family asked an experienced person to do this work, and after it was completed, a certain amount of work was allocated to him.

On a fine day near the end of the year, my mother would organize us to move everything in the house to the yard and put some white soil dug up from the wild in the washbasin, that is, clean and free of impurities

Mud, with water and into a thin paste, find another broom, and paint the thin mud paste evenly on the wall, covering the wall blackened by fireworks and the scars formed by the rain leak. The whitewashed walls are bright and tidy.

Under the eaves of the grass hut, there are many families of sparrows. They hollowed out the decaying rice grains of age and set up camp in them to have children. Every day at dawn, the early sparrows wake us up from our slumber with their unpleasant songs. At dusk, they return home on time and enter the dream before us. Sparrows live under the same roof as me and spend more time together than other migratory birds. In winter mornings, sometimes sitting on the kang and opening the windows, the snow-covered Summit of the Jiawu Group is still faintly visible, and the ice ridges hanging under the eaves are thick or thin, long or short, which will make people shine and be surprised.

One day, I looked up at the roof and suddenly noticed that the ridge was somewhat curved and had a noticeable crack. The father was shocked, and hurriedly found someone to help, and found a bowl of thick logs, which was erected in the place where the pot table was connected to the kang, and on top of the broken part of the ridge. This log has been around for years, adding another not-so-beautiful landscape to the shabby thatched huts.

In this cottage, the family is in the same boat, suffering and suffering, we work at sunrise, sunset and rest, the grass hut witnesses too much of our hardships and expectations, although it is simple and poor, but also makes people feel kind and warm. In the spring of 1976, during the beautiful time of the peach blossoms, my parents found someone to fold the grass shed, invited two carpenters from the neighboring village, and built three tile houses with civil structures on the original site of the grass shed. Since then, my family has ended the grass shed era and turned a new page in life.

That grass hut, my former home!

7 January 20202

Fan Fu, surname Yi xiang, Chang'an Wang Mangren, born in 1954, member of the Communist Party of China, retired teacher, member of the District Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, member of the Zhongnan Literary Society, and literary enthusiast.