In the spring of 2012, my wife and I took about a six-hour train ride from Taiyuan to Lingqiu County, a small county in the mountains of northern Shanxi Province, where I lived as a child. I haven't taken the green train for a long time, and I have a sense of intimacy in my heart that I have been reunited after a long absence, lying by the window and staring at the mountains flashing in front of me outside the window. After decades of ups and downs, I don't know what the little friends and small mountain villages in my memory are like now, and my heart is full of expectations. "Lingqiu station has arrived, please bring good things to get off the train" I woke up when I heard the radio in the carriage, just stepped off the carriage, we both shouted a sentence almost at the same time, the air here is so fresh! I really experienced the refreshing and refreshing feeling! As far as the eye can see, the sky is clear and translucent, with a few white clouds on the blue sky and rolling mountains all around. Looking at the once very familiar picture in front of me, there is an indescribable nostalgia in my heart, long gone, my childhood memory! The small mountain village where I used to live!
In the autumn of 1969, our family was transferred from the Beijing Air Force Command to a military airport in the Yanbei region of Shanxi Province with my father, and we took a whole day by car from Beijing. When I saw our new home, a two-room temporary house very close to the mountain, the house was simple, the light in the house was dim, the floor was paved with bricks for building the house, the doors and windows were leaking everywhere, my brother cried and shouted that he should not be here, he wanted to go back to his original home, and the family was sad.
It was late to settle down in the new home, I walked out of the house alone, I felt a trace of coolness, the temperature in the mountainous areas of northern Shanxi is much lower than that in Beijing, looking up at the sky, as if the sky here is not as big as Beijing's, because the mountains next to it block the view, but I feel that the moon here appears big and bright, the sky is full of stars, it seems that here is closer to the sky, the silence is silent, the quiet makes people have a trace of fear, dare not speak loudly, fear the people in the sky, as if they came to another world.
I left this small mountain village at the end of 1978 when I was a soldier, and it has been 34 years since I set foot on this land again. As soon as I entered the village, I met a fellow, I told him to find a childhood teacher, the villager was very enthusiastic to show us the way, into the teacher's door, standing in front of him is like an old man, full of wrinkles, the top of the head is no grass, but the mental state is not reduced back then, across time and space can sigh the vicissitudes of life! I remember the heroic appearance of the teacher when he was young, when there were few teachers in the village, he took different classes of the primary school, Chinese and mathematics to teach together, as if he had an inexhaustible energy. As soon as I sat down, I couldn't wait to talk to the teacher, only to know that he had only studied in primary school, was a rural private teacher, and after the reform and opening up, he taught himself English and became the only primary school English teacher in the village, I really admired him very much! The teacher had been transferred to a national official teacher a few years ago, and after retirement, his monthly salary was nearly 3,000 yuan, and he ranked second in the village, and the first was my classmate in junior high school, who opened a small mine in the village. The teacher's son went to college to study architecture, graduated and worked in a construction company in Taiyuan, the daughter married to the county seat, the wife took care of the grandson at the son's house, the children's work and marriage have been settled, the old couple has a pension, from a rural baby to what it is today, the teacher's heart is still very satisfied.
I asked the teacher to see the elementary school classroom, but when I stood in front of it, I couldn't find the way I remembered, the house in front of me was half a wall, the doors and windows were in disrepair, there was not a single piece of glass intact, the yard was overgrown with weeds, and the other classroom used to be a temple, which has now become a stage for village performances. I remember that the blackboards in the earliest classrooms were plastered with cement and then painted with black ink, the long desks and chairs were cracked, and the windows were still made of white paper. At that time, the teachers in the village were very respected, I remember one time a male classmate in the class did not pay attention to the lecture, and was whipped by the teacher, and the children in the army said that you still don't go home and tell your parents that the teacher beat you, and the male classmate said that if you go home and tell your parents, you will definitely be beaten again. At that time, the conditions in the countryside were very difficult, and the students in several nearby villages had to walk several miles to school every day, and the lunch was two yam eggs, and one corn tortilla was considered refined food. When there was a flood in the loop on a rainy day, the students waded barefoot through the water to go to school. Today's classrooms are the best houses in the village, with rows of red brick houses neatly arranged, and the sound of reading aloud can be heard from time to time.
Walking to the east of the village, I came to my classmate's house, it was still an adobe brick concrete house for many years, there was no furniture at home, and I didn't see any household appliances, he worked in our classmate's small mine, earning 2,000 yuan a month, two girls got married, a son went out to work, his daughter-in-law was quite fat, with a smile on her face, and she was an optimistic and cheerful person at first glance. I heard from my classmate that his daughter-in-law met him one year when he went to Yunnan to do a marriage advertisement in a newspaper, and he was the first person in the local newspaper to do a marriage advertisement, and it was successful, and I felt that he was very proud of this matter!
I think of a sunny day after the rain in early autumn one year, I went up the mountain with my friend Huang Jie to step on pine mushrooms, each carrying a bamboo basket, climbing up the mountain from a pine forest at the bottom of the mountain, looking for it while walking, sometimes I found that there would be a mushroom near a mushroom, and there were more than a dozen of them.
At noon, I had a small gathering with teachers and classmates, talked about many stories when we were children, and felt that the years have passed, and I also learned that the living conditions of people in remote mountainous areas are still so difficult.
In the afternoon, I went with my lover to see the house I lived in when I was a child, and it felt much smaller than the house I remembered, and it seemed a little bleak that no one had lived in it for many years. Our family walked to the foot of the mountain less than 100 meters, just across a river loop, to the foot of the mountain, we saw the big round stone halfway up the mountainside, about 20 square meters of room size, there are several such big stones in the nearby ravine, when we were small, we wondered, how can such a big stone stop on the mountainside, we have always thought that it must be a meteorite, until now there is no conclusion. The local villagers call him Shi Ganniang, who encounters difficulties, burns incense and worships to drive away bad luck, and they all say that it is quite effective. I tried to climb the big rock again, feeling that I was not old yet, and asked my lover to take a picture of me. Walking down the mountain, I greeted the taxi driver and told him that on the way back to the county, I found the best spot to take a look at Taibaiwei Peak, she is not only the highest mountain nearby, but also has a very romantic name called Sleeping Girl Peak, when we stopped the car to find the best viewing point and looked at it from afar, it really looked like a girl lying quietly on her back, dreamy and beautiful, full of sunshine, hopes and dreams! It was the first time I had seen her. After less than two days of hurrying, I was about to leave the small mountain village of my childhood, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia in my heart, and the bits and pieces of my life here have been deeply engraved in my heart!